The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 1948. Palestine

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25450, 23 March 1948, Page 4

The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 1948. Palestine

General Marshall’s statement on the American proposal for a temporary United Nations trusteeship over Palestine to “ give the Arabs and Jews “ a further opportunity to reach “ agreement regarding Palestine’s “ future government ’’ included a definition of the aims of American policy. America’s interest in a peaceful settlement in Palestine, General Marshall said, “ arises not “only out of deep humanitarian “ considerations but also out of vital “ elements of our national security ", Victory has therefore gone to those officials of the Administration, inside the State Department and outside it, who have argued, against President Truman’s support for the U.N. plan, that partition, and action to enforce it, would jeopardise American security, in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond it.

The victory was foreshadowed, and the way for it prepared, by Mr Warren Austin’s statement last month. Mr Austin made a distinction, sharper perhaps in theory than in practice, between the Security Council’s unquestioned power to use armed force to prevent aggression and remove a threat to the peace and its lack of power to enforce a political settlement, whether that settlement was “pursuant to a recommendation of the General As- “ sembly or of the council itself ”. Mr Austin returned to much the same theme on Friday, though in terms that were less specific. Partition could not be carried out peacefully (a point on which there has never been room for doubt); the maintenance of international peace was at stake; and America’s opinion on the best way to keep the peace, or restore it, was that the Security Council should recommend a U.N.

trusteeship to the General Assembly and to Britain.

There is not much profit, perhaps, in reconsidering at this stage all the

circumstances in which the American decision has been reached. They are circumstances which leave plenty of room for doubt about the wisdom not only of American but of British policy towards Palestine since partition was decided upon. But w’hen full allowances have been made, it is still not easy to believe that the new American proposal can be put to work more effectively than enforced partition, either, in the interests of the Jews and Arabs or in those of the United Nations itself. It is, indeed, difficult to avoid the conclusion that an attempt is now being made, in effect, to turn UN. policy into the same road and against the same obstacles which brought the British Government finally to surrender its mandate. The pattern is well known. As the “ Manchester Guardian ” put it

recently, you send out the Peel Commission, which duly recommends partition as the best solution, ■the Arabs protest, so you send out the Woodhead Commission, which, reports that partition is impossible. •And so on. But this time the issues are even more important. If the Jews are tempted to believe that Arab threats of resistance defeated partition, they must also be strongly tenipted to believe that there is no reason why they, in their turn, should accept a decision, or recommendation of the U.N. Assembly or the Security Council which they fear may work unprofitably, or less profitably, for them. The Arabs, too. can hardly be expected to accept any other U.N. proposal on Palestine of which they do not approve. And since it is unfortunately true that there appears to be no solution acceptable to both sides, it is hard to see that the American proposal, if it is to make any effective contribution at all, will not still require the U.N., as partition required it, itself to provide force to keep the peace or to sanction the use of it.

If all that is true, of course, the American reversal of policy can hardly bring gains that will balance its cost to the United Nations. And it can hardly do much, either, to answer those critics, many of them Americans, who have seen in recent developments a tendency for America to relegate its commitments in the U.N. to a place determined primarily by its own strategic needs and interests. It may be too much to see, as some of the critics have seen, indications that the Truman Doctrine is in the process of being extended to embrace the whole Middle East, and perhaps other areas as well. Yet the course of American policy, together with statements by some of the Administration leaders, leaves it difficult to believe that the force behind the American proposal lies no deeper than General Marshall suggested: a negative desire to avoid the risks in open warfare in Palestine. Whether the proposal will be tested depends now on Mr Gromyko. France and China are ready to agree to it. Britain has offered no comment. But it will hardly watch developments without some anxiety. It has, significantly, lost no time in reaffirming its determination* to end the

mandate on May 15 and to withdraw its troops by August 1.