News Brief

An undercover struggle between military and civil authorities for the upper hand in the new military administration of Palestine has come dramatically to light here.

Internal strife among the authorities centers around preparations by the army to carry out large-scale dynamiting of buildings in terrorist-ridden Arab and mixed quarters of Haifa. Because of the strenuous opposition of Morris Bailey, District Commissioner of the Northern District of Palestine, which includes Haifa, the army’s action was postponed at the last minute.

The plan contemplates dynamiting of 140 buildings, cutting a huge swathe through districts which for two and a half years, and particularly during the reign of terror in Haifa last Summer, were invested with Arab rebels, constituting their base of operations for shootings, bombings and raids throughout the city and its suburbs. These quarters have been the scene of scores of murders and assaults on Jews, policemen and Arab civilians who fell under the rebels’ displeasure.

The demolitions would open a boulevard to be named King George V Avenue, seventy feet wide and a mile and a quarter long, extending from King Feisal Square in the northern part of the city near the shore of Haifa Bay, up to the Cave of Elijah on the slope of Mt. Carmel, and connecting with Haifa’s main business street, the broad modern Kingsway along the bay shore.

The neighborhoods in which the demolitions are planned consist chiefly of typical oriental slums and bazaars, with narrow, winding alleys and ramshackle houses, primitive, poverty-stricken, and unsanitary. Besides being a terrorists’ lair, they are Breeding places of disease and a perpetual racial problem. While most of the buildings to be destroyed are Aras homes and places of business, there are also a number of Jewish structures, including three synagogues (two of which were previously damaged by incendiary fires set by terrorists), a public bath and a large part of a Jewish street evacuated during the riotous days of last July.

On October 25 and 26 the troops evacuated buildings scheduled for demolition and adjacent neighborhoods. The region was heavily cordoned off by troops and police. Veterans of the Jewish Legion, who served with the British army in Palestine during the World War, were mobilized to assist in patrolling. On the morning of the 26th, thousands of residents of Haifa gathered at windows and on rooftops to watch. The first charge was to be exploded at 10 a.m.

Ten minutes before that time, an automobile raced into King Feisal Square, center of operations, with a courier aboard. A bugler blew the order “Stand to.” All activities were suspended. A few minutes later, to the astonishment of onlookers, the troops abandoned their work and withdrew.

What had happened, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned, was that District Commissioner Bailey had emerged triumphant at the last minute from a political skirmish with Brigadier General Evvarts, military commander of the Northern District. When General Evvarts ordered the demolitions, Mr. Bailey began a vigorous campaign against them. He sent a memorandum to High Commissioner Sir Harold Alfred MacMichael opposing the plan. It the destruction was in tended as a punitive measure for the many political crimes committed in the Arab quarters, Mr. Bailey argued, its effect would only be to still further inflame the Arabs. If it was intended as a measure for security and civic improvement, he said, it would bring in its train a long series of costly damage claims.

The postponement is temporary, and the final settlement of the dispute will affect matters far broader than the particular issue involved. Under the newly installed military regime, created after the Palestine Government and the British Government had admitted that civil administration in the country had almost completely broken down, the army command was to constitute the supreme power in the country, in order that it might take all measures it saw fit to restore order. The military commanders appointed to the various districts were made superior to the civil district commissioners, who were to act as their “political advisors.

If, as would appear to have occurred, in the first case of dispute between the military commander and his subordinate, the District Commissioner is able to go over the head of the army administrator and secure reversal of his orders, the military rule would seem to be largely a fiction, the actual regime in Palestine remaining the same as previously.

An interesting sidelight on the events here is that no news regarding the contemplated demolitions was allowed to be cabled abroad, the Government censor suppressing all despatches no the subject, although the preparations were carried on under the eyes of all Haifa and were known throughout Palestine.