Decision On Palestine Is Final

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 September 1947, Page 7

Decision On Palestine Is Final

(Rec. 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 26. Britain will begin the withdrawal from Palestine immediately the present United Nations debate ends, unless an agreed solution is found, said a Foreign Office spokesman in London. He added that Britain would relinquish the mandate even if the Assembly transferred the decision to another session. Britain’s decision was “decisive and considered.” The withdrawal, however, would not mean that Britain was pulling out of the whole of the Middle East. The evacuation would be part of a general rearrangement of the British Middle East forces, which the evacuation would automatically strengthen. Developing New Bases Reuters’ political correspondent says that, according to reliable sources, the rearrangement of the forces would involve the development of bases in East Africa and lend critical interest to the coming Big Four discussions on the future of the Italian Empire. It is considered that Britain, on withdrawing from Palestine, would not concern herself with handing over authority to any racial group and it is recognised that a period of anarchy might follow. Whitehall considers that the United Nations cannot produce a satisfactory solution where Britain failed ovei' a quarter of a century, and that Britain’s willingness to assist the other United Nations” members in enforcing an agreed solution, though insisting herself on relin-

quishing the mandate, would depend on the Cabinet’s estimate of the plan’s inherent justice and the amount of force likely to be entailed. The Arab office in London, . in a statement broadly welcoming the British decision on Palestine, said the Arabs would regard as thoroughly unacceptable any move to hand over the British administration to a foreign authority. It added that the Arabs always held Britain solely responsible for creating the Palestine problem. She could not in their eyes escape the responsibility of solving it by handing the country to the United Nationsor any United Nations group.