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Arabs, Jews Prepare for Commission Hearings

October 29, 1936
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Arab and Jewish groups rushed to completion today preparations for laying their grievances before the Royal Commission which will leave England next Thursday to investigate recent disorders in the Holy Land.

Meanwhile, curfew restrictions, which had bottled up Jerusalem’s night life for nearly six months, will be completely lifted tomorrow, it was announced. Recently, the ten-hour curfew was cut down to the hours between midnight to four a.m.

Arab stevedores at Jaffa prepared to strike tomorrow protesting the inauguration of a new harbor at Tel Aviv, whose competition, they claim, will harm the Jaffa port. Jaffa was the center of the recent 175-day general strike.

Arab leaders appealed to the native population for funds to provide medical care for wounded rebels. Prominent Arab women, collecting contributions for the fund, reported $2,500 received to date. Arab physicians were reported visiting villages at night to assist injured insurgents.

The political subcommittee of the World Zionist Organization’s general council, mapping plans for Jewish representation before the Royal Commission, planned to have Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, as one of the Jewish witnesses.

The subcommittee will meet again next week, after which the Jewish Agency will call a conference of all Jewish groups expected to give testimony before the Royal Commission in order to form a united front.

The Arab Supreme Committee designated a special committee to represent the Arabs at the Royal Commission. At the same time, its president, Grand Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini, ordered sermons in mosques devoted to the anti-Jewish boycott which is gaining ground throughout the country.

High Commissioner Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope will address the Palestine population over the Government radio station tomorrow on an important matter, it was announced.

Lieut. Gen. John G. Dill, commander-in-chief of British military forces in Palestine, and members of his staff visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, center of controversy between Jews and Arabs where sanguinary riots broke out in 1929.

The Government warned persons licensed to carry arms not to wander about the country because of the danger of being mistaken by military patrols for unlicensed arms carriers. The warning was interpreted as foreshadowing a more intensive search for illicit arms.

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