FOOD SHORT IN JERUSALEM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 146, 2 April 1948, Page 3

FOOD SHORT IN JERUSALEM

ARABS BLOCK ROADS TO CITY

Attacks on Jewish Convoys (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright). LONDON, March 31. With bread, eggs, butter, and sugar already rationed in Jerusalem, and supplies dangerously low, tbe Jewish Agency stilt has not asked for Government aid in escorting convoys, though the Arabs control all roads leading to. the Holy City and have inflicted crippling losses on Jewish vehicles. Several hundred Arabs to-day attacked a Jewish convoy from Tel Aviv, which was attempting to take food to the Jewish community in Jerusalem. The Arabs claimed that they surroun ded the convoy and killed and wounded many Jews in a'prolonged battle. • The London correspondent of the New Zealand Press Association* quotes correspondents in Jerusalem to say that; more than 90,000 Jews in Jerusalem may be starving within a few days unless the United Nations takes action.

He adds that an urgent radio call has been sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Mr Trygve Lie) by A . senior, member of the United Nations Palestine Commission, asking him to send Mr Frank Begley, the United Nations senior Security officer, to form the nucleus of an international police force to guard Jerusalem. The possibility of a truce is also mentioned, and it is said that the Arab League is in favour of it.' The correspondent of the “Daily Mail” says that it is obvious that the Arab strategy is to starve out the Jews In Jerusalem. There is only one way for the fertile Jewish -coastal strip between Tel Aviv .and Haifa to feed Jerusalem, and that is by road. Convoys must go by the 41-mile road that winds through a deep ravine which Is ideal for ambushes. Convoy Losses Already the British have counted 44 burned-out Jewish food convoy vehicles in two miles of the road and Jewish Jerusalem is on extremely short commons. The Arabs have threatened to blow up Jerusalem’s water pipeline after the British leave on May 15 and to blow up and block the road from Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem correspondent of the “Daily.’Herald” says: “Children in Jerusalem are down to one glass of milk and two eggs weekly at lOd each. For adults there is neither. Sugar has disappeared. Meat at 12s and fish at 11s per lb are almost unprocurable Many shops have nothing but a few handfuls of macaroni to offer at high prices. ‘To-morrow again, not one of the 200 lorry loads of food necessary to keep the city property fed will arrive. Nobody can say when another can get through. At last the population have realised that they are living in a besieged city, that the Holy City, within a matter" of days, may be a city of starvation. A bread rationing system has been hastily begun to-day—about Boz a person daily. “I am afraid that this ration cannot be maintained for .long. Families have been without bread for two days and they could not get a ration to-day. The population bitterly blames the British Administration.”

ATTACK ON CROSSING

JEWS SUFFER LOSSES (Rec. 11.15.) JERUSALEM, April 1, The police’announced that a Jewish food convoy, trying to fight its way to 100,000 Jews besieged in the Old City of Jerusalem, has already lost two armoured cars, one lorry and one tractor. N / Arabs ambushed and stopped the convoy at the village of Hulda, .in the Judean Hills south of Lydda. The Arabs, in their attack last night, are reported to have captured six of the armoured lorries. Another report says that 10 of 60 lorries from the convoy broke through the ambush after severe fighting. BRITAIN’S POLICY PROFESSOR LASKI’S ATTACK - 1 NEW YORK,-March 31. Professor Harold Laski, speaking on Palestine charged the 'British® Government with, having “sacrificed its honour—and the .tews—to oil and strategy.’ 5

Professor Laski, a former chairman of the British Labour Party’s executive committee, was addressing tire American Jewish Congress. He said that the British Government bore a major responsibility for “one of the most cynical betrayals in history.” The Government bad- failed to honour its pre-election pledges to repeal the White Paper, and the Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin) was playing “a sinister role in tlve story.” The United States Government, lie .paid, 'must bear a heavy share of guilt, while American, and Avorlcl Jewry could not escape their share. The United States Government had made the Palestine issue a political one, and had made the situation! far more critical by painfully obvious irresolution. Professor»Laski concluded: “Let us pray that the world may recognise swiftly that the echo of the first guns fir fed in Palestine after May To will resound throughout the world; for they will be the first shots of the third global war.”