Dr. Mordecai Eliash, chairman of the Emergency Committee of the Jerusalem Jewish Community, and Daniel Auster, former mayor of Jerusalem, have arrived here from Palestine on a mission in connection with the current discussions at the United Nations on a formulation of the international status of Jerusalem. They are expected to present their views to the U.N. working group dealing with the Jerusalem question.
In a Joint statement issued today, the two Jewish leaders said that “it should still be possible to localize the trouble in Palestine and to restore order, if the Palestine Government would cease to act as a disinterested onlooker, and would not only sternly warn the Arab community that it must call a halt to the violence which it initiated, but in fact take effective measures to put an end to that violence.
“By delegating to the Heganah and the Jewish police forces direct duties of preventing breaches of the peace, “the government would minimize the recourse to acts of retaliation and reprisals which are resorted to at present as the only means to impress upon the Arabs that violence is a game which two can play,” the statement pointed out.
Reporting on the role which the Palestine Government plays at present with regard to the disturbances there, the two Palestinian leaders emphasized that “once looting and burning of Jewish property came to be regarded as acts which the government was not going to stop by the use of force, murder became similarly legalized in the eyes of the Arabs.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
