PALESTINE POLICY

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25608, 24 September 1948, Page 7

PALESTINE POLICY

Mr Bevin Speaks

In Commons

MEDIATOR’S PLAN SUPPORTED

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 23. The British Government was “squarely behind Count Bernadotte’s recommendations on Palestine,” said the Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin) in the House of Commons yesterday. This did not involve recognition of Israel, but it involved the policy which the British delegation to the United Nations must be instructed to follow, said Mr Bevin. It would be best, for all concerned, Mr Bevin said, if Count Bernadotte’s plan in his report to the United Nations were put into operation in its entirety. The Palestine problem coUld not be solved by delay, and the British Government hoped that the United Nations would lose no time in throwing the full weight of its authority behind these proposals. Both the Jews and the United Nations «had to give the Arabs a reasonable assurance that there would be no future Jewish expansion. The Arab cause had been insufficiently appreciated, and he entirely agreed that the. United Nations should give special guarantees. Mr Bevin urged both the Arabs and the Jews to acquiesce and do nothing, to prevent the implementation of Count Bernadotte’s proposals. “We are absolutely opposed to any attempt to prolong the present instability or secure any settlement by force or threat of force,” he said. Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent says that Mr Bevin’s statement on Palestine would in any context, other than that of Berlin, have leapt into the heaalines. He adds: ‘iMr Bevin ranged Britain squarely besides the United States in support of Count Bernadotte’s recommendations. Britain for the first time supports a partition plan for Palestine which will leave the Jewish state in permanent being. The British Government until now had consistently opposed such a course unless both the Jews and Arabs accepted it. “British political quarters feel that though Mr Bevin said that approval did • not carry with it recognition of the Jewish State, such a course could not now be indefinitely delayed.”

A Washington message says that Mr Bevin’s endorsement of Count Bernadotte’s recommendations as a basis for a compromise solution of the Palestine problem was hailed there as bringing to an end years of irritation and difference between the United States and Britain on Palestine.

The French Cabinet yesterday expressed general approval of Count Bernadotte’s report, particularly the section dealing with the internationalisation of holy places, a solution long advocated by France.