A Foreign Office spokesman denied today that Britain is planning to allow King Abdullah of Transjordan to occupy a large part of Palestine and seize for itself Haifa, the port of Aqaba and the Negev area.
“Britain has no such plans,” he also revealed that talks between the British and Syrian Governments on the recent illegal entrance of Arabs into Palestine from Syria are continuing, and that no answer had been received from Transjordan to the British note concerning the entry into Palestine of 750soldiers from Transjordan.
A government spokesman said yesterday that Britain does not consider the Agency’s demand for the establishment of a Jewish militia in Palestine to be in accord with the U.N. partition decision.
Commenting on reports that Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Agency, told the U.N. Implementation Commission that the British refusal to permit the setting up of an armed Jewish militia, defies the U.N. Palestine decision which Britain promised not to obstruct, the spokesman emphasized that the Assembly’s action did not provide for a Jewish militia but for a force which would be recruited from the populations in both states. Since the area of the Jewish state contains 45 percent of Palestine’s Arabs, it would be expected that the militia would be: organized on a similar ratio.
Shertok was, therefore, the spokesman said, “not ca solid ground” when he complained about Britain’s attitude to the Jewish militia. At the same time, the spokesman admitted that it would be up to the Implementation Commission to decide about the actual composition of the militia in view of the fact that certain sections of the population are opposed to the U.N. decision.
EGYPTIAN AIR FORCE PREPARING TO OPERATE AGAINST JEWS .LONDON HEARS
Stressing that “non-intervention on the Spanish model is in fast in full swing to the Holy Land,” the leftist weekly Tribune called today for a Government statement on British armament exports to the Middle East. Such a statement, the weekly declared, might be reassuring in view of persistent reports that the Egyptian Air Force, with the knowledge of the British, is preparing to operate against the Jews from airfields in southern Palestine immediately after the British mandate is relinquished on May 15.
The Tribune cites other reports to the effect that two squadrons of Mark II Tempests, with all accessories, had been rushed from Britain to Egypt for that purpose. The weekly gave on grounds upon ‘which to substantiate the reports.
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