PALESTINE SEARCH BY BRITISH POLICE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1945, Page 5

PALESTINE SEARCH BY BRITISH POLICE

Illegal Immigrants Round-Up

N.Z.P.A.—Copyright—Rec. noon

JERUSALEM, Oct. 4.

Large parties of British mobile police, operating with armoured cars, have surrounded blocks in the centre of the city and have begun intensive searches. The Government Commission for Immigration has invited men and women who entered Palestine illegally, but who joined the forces voluntarily, to register for legalisation rights. The Government, however, at present has no plans to legalise the status of nearly 20,000 illegal immigrants who entered Palestine in the last five years, and this number will be subtracted from the quota of 75.000 approved under the Palestine White Paper. ,

In London the secretary of the Arab League, Azzam Bey, has made a statement in reply to President Truman's letter to Mr. Attlee, requesting Britain to facilitate the unrestricted entry of Jews from Germany into Palestine.

"I would remind President Truman that the Arabs were officially given to understand both by him and by the late President Roosevelt that American policy toward Palestine was based on consultation with the Arabs also the determination not to use force for a settlement," the statement says. "Americans are in the best position to understand the clash of racial interests in Palestine, especially if they realise that the driving power behind immigration is racial and political will to domination. The .Arabs are opposed to this idea of domination, backed by European imperialism. The Arabs are willing to'take an etjual share in . solving the Jewish problem."

The Times, in a leader, says: "While many will share President Truman's anxiety to relieve Jewish

suffering, his suggestion that Britain should assume responsibility for altering at a stroke the population ratio in Palestine to the disadvantage of the Arabs will find little support. The decision to refer the matter to the Council of the United Nations was right not only because the Palestine problem has important implications, affecting international security, but also for the reason that, the undoubted debt which' is owed to persecuted Jewry is owed by Western civilisation as a whole and cannot be discharged by vicarious action. It cannot be shifted to the shoulders of an economically backward Arab world, which has done nothing to incur it."

The Government of Iraq in a Note to Washington states that it considers support of Zionism contrary to the interests of Iraq and all the Arab peoples.

President Truman told a Press conference that he had received a reply from Mr. Attlee about his Palestine suggestion; but he refused to divulge the contents or to discuss the subject until he had talked with Mr. Byrnes, who left London for Washington yesterday.