PARTITION PLAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 August 1946, Page 7

PARTITION PLAN

- Rejection by Jewish Agency AGREEMENT HOPES FADING (Recd. 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, August 5. The slender remaining possibilities of Jewish agreement to the British proposals for dividing Palestine into Jewish, Arab and other zones received a set-back when the Jewish Agency executive rejected the plan, says the Associated Press Paris correspondent. A communique issued by the Agency stated that the plan was not acceptable as a basis for discussion. The executive announced it intended to submit to the Paris conference a memorandum criticising the omissions from the draft treaties of the Jewish viewpoint. A spokesman listed the omissions as:—l.JNo stipulation for adequate protection for Jewish communities in defeated nations; 2. No assurance of the restitution 01. rights and properties; 3. No provision to ensure that heirless property goes to the community instead of to the State.

Eight hundred illegal immigrants from five ships at Haifa, mostly women and children, landed to-day, leaving approximately 1500 aboard. Prior to this disembarkation the secret Jewish radio “Voice of Israel asserted that British troops and reinforcements were being centred in the Haifa area and that those aboard the ships would not be permitted to disembark. Security Measures. Pressmen were to-day re [used passes to visit the port. These tigntened security measures were apparently the result of widespread reports in Jewish circles that the Haganah might attempt to disembark the immigrants by direct action. Davis Horowitz, a member of the temporary executive of the Jewish Agency, said the entire Jewish community would “resist” any attempt to prevent the landing of more than 2000 illegal immigrants aboard the five ships. He added that the insanitary conditions in which the immigrants were living made disembarkation imperative. The Times Haifa correspondent who went aboard the four immigrant ships said they were floating slums. Most of the Jews aboard came from Rumania, Hungary and Poland, with some Russians. A few talked. Those who did were cautioned by others. A few looked ill and under-fed. They had made little effort to clean up the decks. No one on the ship Haganah seemed to be in command. Charts Holed Charts were holed so that no one, theoretically, knew where the voyage began and where it was to end. It was. hard to tell which was the captain, which the deckhand, which a pilgrim and which simply an adventurer. . . There was only one lifeboat, which was plainly unseaworthy. A Paris message says that the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation appealed to the Council of Foreign Ministers for permission to represent the Hebrew nation at the Paris conference, stating that a precedent was established in the recognition of Ukraine and White Russia at San Francisco. The committee, which claims to represent the stateless Jews in Europe and the Jews in Palestine, described itself as acting pending the establishment of a provisional Hebrew Government. CONFERENCE REPRESENTATION TO PARIS (Rec 10.15 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 5. All religious communities represented at the international conference ot Christian Jews at Oxford reported that adherents in different parts ol the world were suffering persecution and restriction of rights in. varying degrees, says a statement issued at the conclusion of the conference. 'T’he delegates, after hearing committee reports, decided to make representations to the Paris conference, asking for the creation of an international council to promote good re “ lations between Christians and «ews, and also the creation of emergency machinery to combat the growing wave of anti-Semitism, especially m Each group, whether Jew or Christian, feared attack from venous forms of totalitarianism. Aware of the General feeling of insecurity ad felt that they must combine to oppose attacks.