The United Nations will enter the second phase its deliberations on the Palestine issue tomorrow following the conclusion of the ##al debate on Palestine during the week-end by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, veteran leader the world Zionist movement, the last speaker, who was preceded by Jamal Husseini, ##-chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee.With the general debate concluded, the Ad Hoc Committee will start discussions tomorrow on 16 specific proposals concerning the Palestine question. These proposal ##ude one made by the U.S. delegation to establish a sub-committee which should pre## a detailed plan for partition, and its implementation. The sub-committee would ##lated to report to the Ad Hoc Committee by October 27th.
WEIZMANN’S ADDRESS LAUDED; IMPRESSES U.S. DELEGATION
ASKS INTERNATIONAL POLICE FORCE AS SYMBOL OF U.N. SUPPORT
“We feel, however, that the prospects of peace will be brightest if the Jewish forces maintaining security within our own state are accompanied at the outset by an international force to symbolize the consent and decision of the United Nations. But in all circumstances our people are prepared to make full provision for their own defense.”
Jamal Husseini speaking on behalf of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee ###ned the U.N. against accepting a decision in favor of partition. “The Arabs,” he said, “will never give way under any pressure to part with any portion of Palestine.” He threatened that “a small Jewish state of a million people can have no chance of survival” in the heart of “seventy million antagonized Arabs and hundreds of millions of people of the Orient who support the Arab defense of their own country against the Jewish invasion.”
Bitterly attacking the United States for favoring partition, Husseini called ##on the American people to prevent the U.S. Government from participating in the imforcement of a pro-partition decision, threatening that such participation would work against American interests.
Dr. Weizmann made it clear that while accepting the principle of partition he asks the U.N. to give consideration of the modifications proposed by the Jewish Agency, especially in respect to Western Galilee and the Jewish district of Jerusalem. is to the proposed economic union between the Jewish and Arab states, he expressed the opinion that this “progressive idea” is bound to triumph over any temporary resistance which it may meet.
EXPECTS ARAB-JEWISH COOPERATION; HAILS U.S. AND SOVIET STATEMENTS
Explaining why he considers partition the best solution under the circumstances, be said: “It is the only solution which promises finality, a clear definition of the limits within which Jews and Arabs are free to develop their national wills. Above all it offers equality which is the essential precondition of Arab-Jewish cooperation. Then the Jews face the Arabs, as equals, members of this Assembly, and of the family of nations, only then will the prospect of a real partnership open out. A Jewish state in Palestine will in its own interests, as well as by its own ideals, seek close cooperation with the Arab states on its borders. The majority report in a loving passage refers to the results which can ensue from such equal cooperation between the two Semitic peoples.”
DECLARES PALESTINE CAN PROVIDE HOME FOR 1,000,000 JEWS IN EUROPE, ORIENT
Touching upon the problems of the displaced Jews, Weizmann said this problem as will as the problem of other Jews in Europe who may be impelled to seek new homes else where can be solved within the framework of the partition plan. “The Jewish problem in its acute phase today is the problem of one million Jews in Europe and the Orient who have no assurance of a secure existence. The proposed Jewish state by intensive {SPAN}##riculture and irrigation and by industrial development can provide homes for them all.”{/SPAN}Weizmann started his address by referring back to the atmosphere at the session of the League of Nations Council when the Palestine Mandate was ratified. “I am testify that the establishment of the Jews as a nation amongst the nations of the world was the real purpose and motive of that international covenant endorsed by the ?ague of Nations,” he said.
“In the light of this knowledge,” he continued, “I cannot fail to be amused by such frivolous assertions as that made by an Arab delegate here to the effect that the motive of the Mandate was to reward me for alleged discoveries of poison gas. I cannot avoid the conclusion that those who made these assertions must have been equally unversed in the political and chemical literature of the time.”
Pointing out that subjugation of the Jews as a minority under Arab rule is a solution which all impartial commissions have rejected, Weizmann declared: “I will not discuss whether it is a good or bad fortune to be a minority in an Arab state. I would leave the Jews of Iraq, or Yemen and Tripoli–and the Christians and Assyrians of Iraq to pronounce upon that. Here I would only say that it is not the purpose for which under international auspices we were encouraged to come to Palestine. The idea that a national home can never be equated with a minority position in an Arab state deserves no consideration at all. It would burst out of such an unnatural subjection.”
JEWISH-BRITISH FRIENDSHIP WILL GROW AGAIN, WEIZMANN ASSERTS
Weizmann expressed the hope that when the Jewish people is secure in its independence the traditional British-Jewish friendship will once again become evident and the present tension will vanish as “a passing nightmare.” The “great services which Britain rendered in helping to lay the foundations of Jewish independence will be remembered with appreciation while the sordid consequences of the White Paper pass into forgotten history,” he declared.
The Jewish leader emphasized that by deciding in favor of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine the U.N. will fulfill “a proud historic mission.” He anumerated the considerations “of justice and humanity” for a persecuted people which should motivate the U.N. to establish a Jewish state: Equality for the Jewish people amongst the nations; the redemption of desert soil by cultivation; the creation of a new economy and society; the embodiment of progressive social ideas in an area that has fallen behind the best standards of modern life; the revival of one of the oldest cultures of mankind.”
Weizmann said he was “interested and not a little repelled” to hear Zionism described by the representatives of Iraq and Syria as Nazism. “Making due allowance for the legitimate joys of debate, I consider that this carries distortion and libel very far,” he stated. “Of course, I do not dispute the right of those two gentlemen to speak with authority and intimacy on the nature of Nazism. I cannot rival their contacts in that field. But on the nature of Zionism I hold myself a better exponent than they. The character of our movement as a genuine effort at national liberation and society building cannot be obscured by such slanders. Some of them, including ##surd allegations about children being snatched from their homes, are worthy success## of the most atrocious libels in the sordid history of anti-Jewish incitement. ## one who invents or gives currency to such statements can have any reason for pride.”
Weizmann concluded by appealing to the members of the United Nations to hear the Jews “at this moment of their agony” and to solve their problem by establishing for them an independent state in Palestine. If the Jews are admitted to membership in the U.N., he said, they will enter it with a sense of the spiritual and intellectual ##llenge which the idea of the U.N. holds for the conscience of man. “In giving us this opportunity you will be faithful to the noblest ideals which have been conceived ## our ancestors and transmitted by them to the common heritage of the world,” he ##nted out.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
