READY TO ACCEPT TRUCE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 137, 22 March 1948, Page 3

READY TO ACCEPT TRUCE

TERMS ANNOUNCED BY ARABS

Serious Explosion in Haifa

(N.Z.P.A.-Copyriglit)

(Rec. 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, Mar. 21

The Arab League's Political Committee, meeting in Beirut, announced its readiness to accept a truce in Palestine provided the United Nations expels all Jewish terrorists, disarms Haganah, and halts further Jewish immigration.

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, said the Arabs were ready to disarm their fighting men if the United Nations forced the Jews to take similar steps.

A Jerusalem report says a British officer and five Arabs were killed when British troops fought off Arabs attacking a Jewish convoy near Beit Nabala. Four Jews were killed and 26 injured when a lorryload of explosives blew up in front of a Jewish compound in Haifa.

British artillery was called in to-day to stop a two-hour battle between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem. The Arabs alleged that Jews firing at an Arab crowd round the Jaffa Gate started the trouble.

An explosion in Harbour Street, Haifa, damaged a six-storey Jewish trade union building. The fire completely gutted the ground floor. Rescue workers had to lower survivors ijom the upper floors with, rope©. Two further deaths brings the total deaths to six.

Jews blew up -two houses in Haifa, killing one Arab. An explosion wrecked the railway bridge between Acre and Haifa. Reuter’s Haifa correspondent says the explosion in Ronboire Street set on fire and destroyed 16 parked cars and lorijes, wrecked 100 yards of road, •set on fir© two warehouses and damaged a' dozen buildings. An eye-witness said two Arabs in European clothes jumped out of the lorry, which they directed towards a Haganah roadblock. The lorry careered towards the roadblock, but before it reached it it crashed into a Jewish lorry in a car park' between warenouses.

Hagana guards yelled a warning, and hundreds of Jews fled into side streets and alleys. The lorry exploded three minute® later, parts of it being blown to the top of a building. Debris fell oh ships in the harbour.

HEBREW STATE % PROCLAMATION EXPECTED (Rec. 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, March 21. It is reliably reported that the Jewish National Council, probably to-morrow or on Tuesday, will proclaim the existence of a Hebrew State in Palestine, says the Associated Press Tel-Aviv correspondent. The Jewish Agency held a meeting in Tel-Aviv to-day .to work out details of the proclamation, and gave the elected Assembly of Palestine Jewry notice to convene on Tuesday in TelAviv, which is the prospective capital of the new State.