TRUCE CALLED IN PALESTINE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25081, 13 January 1947, Page 7

TRUCE CALLED IN PALESTINE

Irgun Zvai Leumi’s Announcement SEARCHES FOR TERRORISTS < (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 11. Irgun Zvai Leumi, in a letter to the Palestine Government Information Office, confirmed the agreement on a temporary truce against the British Army. The letter asked the office to announce the news, as a communique to the newspapers gave no reason for a truce. Police in Jerusalem surrounded three houses at Rishon-Lezion and arrested four known members of Irgun Zvai Leumi. Troops of the 6th Airborne ©ivision, searching Tel Aviv slums, arrested 22 Jews, including a woman who is suspected to be the organiser of the Irgun Zvai Leumi secret broadcast. She is the sister of the late David Raziel, who was founder and first commander-in-chief of Irgun Zvai Leumi. She was living in a flat with her two children. Her husband is reported to be a political prisoner in Eritrea. Four armed officers Escorted her in a staff car to the Latrun detention camp. Reuter’s correspondent in Rome says that two Irgun Zvai Leumi leaflet bombs exploded, one in Rome and the other in Venice. They said: “The vanguard of the clandestine Jewish Army of Liberation, with headquarters in Italy, means to destroy the British forces until the Jewish State is restored within the historic boundaries of our own country.” The vice-president of the American League for Free Palestine (Professor Smertenko), in an interview in Paris, said that the league supported the underground resistance movement in Palestine and provided money for sending illegal migrants. If it did not financially aid the underground’s military activities, it was “not because we do not want to, but because, under American law, we must not aid the military activities of any foreign group.” Professor Smertenko added that he had postponed his departure for London until‘January 15. . Reuter’s correspondent in Paris says that Professor Smertenko conferred with the chairman of the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation (Mr Peter Bergson) and the head of the Paris branch of the committee (Mr Samuel Merlin), to draw up plans for his trip to Britain. The Air France airline later cancelled Professor Smertenko’s passage from Le Bourget to London at the request of the British Embassy, says the “Evening Standard’s” correspondent in Paris. London Conference The Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government (Mr H. L. G. Gurney) has officially invited the Arab Higher Committee to send an Arab delegation to the London conference on Palestine. The vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee (Jamal Husseini), to whom Mr Gurney gave the invitation, said that the chief cause pre-, venting the Arabs’ participation—the British Government’s intervention in the Arabs’ right to choose their own delegates—was now removed. The Higher Committee contended that the British Government’s invitation to the last conference excluded its chairman, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem correspondent of “The Times” says the possibility that the Palestinian Arabs will be represented at the resumption of the Palestine talks in London this month, has unexpectedly come to the fore with Sir Henry Gurney’s invitation to the Arab Higher Executive to send a delegation. The invitation was to the executive collectively and did not specify members of the Executive in Palestine. Thus, theoretically, it did not exclude the Mufti, who is m Egypt, which was a point upon which the Executive remained adamant when it refused to send delegates last time.

There is little ground for thinking the Government is any more willing than before to see the Mufti received as a delegate in London, but the obvious assumption is that is understands the Executive will not now put the Mufti’s name forward. The Executive will remain satisfied at having scored its nominal point that it should be free to choose its own delegation. The other point of difference which arose last time, the question of the agenda, seems to have faded away too, probably because the Arabs believe the Morrison plan dead. The alternative to this plan, partition, which is now being commonly discussed, has not exactly received the blessing of the Palestinian Arabs publicly but it may be they fear that if they do not go to London with their case they will lose altogether by default and they prefer to argue their viewpoint themselves rather than leave it to delegates of the Arab States. « DOWN IN SOUTH CHINA_ SEA SOME SURVIVORS RESCUED (Rec. 11.30 pjn.) MANILA, Jan. 11. An airliner bound for Hong Kong with 44 aboard crashed in the South China Sea. Twenty-seven have been saved, leaving 17 yet to be accounted for, A message from a rescue ship. General Collins, reported that 16 survivors had been taken on board and 11 more remained to be picked up from liferafts. Four air sea rescue aeroplanes, with lifeboats, took off from Clark Field to aid. the survivors. ADMINISTRATION OF TRIESTE (Rec. 7 p.m.) NEW YORK, Jan. 10. The Security Council voted by 10 to 0 to take over responsibility for the administration of the Free Territory of Trieste. The council, after the peace treaty is signed with Italy in Paris on February 10, will appoint a governor.