NEW MILITARY OPERATIONS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 270, 27 August 1946, Page 3

NEW MILITARY OPERATIONS

SABOTAGE OF BRITISH SHIPS JEWISH VILLAGERS ROUNDED UP (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright.) (Rec. 11.40 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 20. In a new military operation to prevent the sabotage of British ships in Palestine ports, more than 4000 British troops with tanks, armoured cars and bloodhounds, surrounded the Jewish fishing settlement of Sdoth-Yom.

While two planes circled overhead and police launches patrolled off Ihe beach, the troops escorted the settlement's 200 inhabitants to a temporary enclosure.

The troops’ search for limpet mines which Jewish terrorists have _ used against two British ships was fruitless. After the search the troops rounded up 94, the entire male population of Sdoth-Yom, and removed them to Rai'a internment camp. The men at first, reufsed to come from their ramshackle bungalows,, but finally decided that resistance was useless. They were led off to hastily erected barbed-wire pens. Brigadier R. H. Anderson, commanding operations, said that no arms or explosives had so far been discovered, but equipment was found leading to a suspicion that the place was used as a landing spot for illegal immigrants, including rubber dinghies, a, bundle of passports, and a number of trunks filled with clothing. Tiie Haifa correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Agency reports that strong reinforcements of military and police arrived at Acre prison, where 18 members of the Stern Gang are under sentence of death, and 14 Arabs are in the sixth day of a hunger strike. Conference Date Fixed The British Foreign Office announced that the conference on Palestine will open in London on September 9. Invitations have already been sent out to Arab States, the Jewish Agency and the Arab Higher Executive in Palestine.

The Arab Higher Executive sent a memorandum to General Sir Alan Cunningham in Jerusalem stating the conditions under which it is prepared to participate in the‘talks, including the addition of a stipulation that the Grand Mufti must attend. The conditions are: (1) Rejection of any form of partition; (2) complete independence of Palestine ; (3) acceptance of the idea of independence as the basis for negotiations without reference to the Balfour Declaration, or the League of Nations mandate; (4) no Jews to sit at the conference. General Cunningham told Jamal Husseini who handed him the memorandum that there would be certain difficulties involved in meeting the Higher Committee’s request that the Grand Mufti should be. invited. He also said it was desirable that representatives of Arab municipalities, commerce and labour be invited.

Jamal Husseini replied that the committee did not favour this.