FROM BAD TO WORSE IN PALESTINE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22623, 28 April 1948, Page 4

FROM BAD TO WORSE IN PALESTINE

ALTHOUGH this morning’s news stated that no official confirmation bad been received that Arab armies from neighbouring States were advancing into Palestine, it would be futile not to acknowledge that a grave situation is developing. The Holy Land has already reached the condition of open warfare between Arabs and Jews, and unless the United Nations act swiftly in accordance with the provisions of the Security Council, the prospects of civil strife on a major scale, perhaps leading to a conflagration still more serious, cannot be ignored.

Much valuable time was lost in the first place by an apparent refusal on the part of other Powers to realise that Britain was in earnest when she announced her intention to withdraw. It could he argued that, since Britain has had so much experience in troubled Palestine, she should remain an active arbitrator until permanent peace is established or at the very least co-operate with other members of the United Nations in enforcing a solution. But after a long period of thankless and worrying endeavour, accentuated by a steady loss of British lives and an expenditure that can be illafforded by a nation which had already been debilitated in the struggle to save the whole of world civilisation, the United Kingdom has cried, “Enough!”

It is all very well for representatives of the Australian and New Zealand Governments to press for the implementation of the partition scheme. Perhaps a partition scheme of some kind, involving a sensible modification of the original plan, would have won Britain’s support. It might also have induced the Arabs to see that partition was only a name for something which might just as well have been called a federal union. But the boundaries marked out in the basic scheme were quite hopeless as a peaceful settlement measure, and British experts saw this at a glance. Eventually America also understood the position, and submitted the trusteeship proposal as ah expedient. To let the Jews and Arabs fight it out between themselves is tempting but unthinkable. Only a miracle could prevent the civil war from spreading into an international conflagration. Unless the Security Council acts fast and takes firm steps to bring the situation under control, it will crash just as lamentably as the old League of Nations. One risk is that, if all else fails, the Russians may intervene on their own account. If they did so in the name of the United Nations they would, superficially at least, have an impressive case —the restoration of law and order in Palestine. But in Russia’s present mood there would be much more than a peaceful mission hound up in the situation. Her troops would march into a very strong strategic position both for future expansion and the acquisition of oil. An enforced temporary trusteeship and then the working out of a greatly modified partition plan seem to offer the only solution of this dangerous problem.