ARMED OPPOSITION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26693, 12 February 1948, Page 7

ARMED OPPOSITION

ATTACKS ON PALESTINE COMMISSION ARAB SQUADS IN TRAINING N.Z.P.A.—Copyright CAIRO, Feb. 10. Arab suicide squads are training to attack the Palestine Commission when it arrives, said Jamal Husseini, deputy chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Organisation, in an interview with the Associated Press correspondent. He added that the Arabs would “fight to the end any force sent to Palestine to implement partition, whether that force be American or Russian.” Hamid Pashashi, the Iraqi Foreign Minister and chief delegate to the Arab League, said Arab regular armies should enter Palestine immediately. A clash with the British was unlikely, as Britain was a friend of the Arabs. The “ underground ” railways have shuttled more than 5000 Syria-trained fighters of the Arab Army of Liberation through the Transjordan into Palestine, says the United Press correspondent in Tel-Aviv in quoting reliable sources to-day. The battle for the Holy Land is expected to shift soon from the cities to the rugged mountains of the north. The Arab force, which is under the direction of Fawzi el Kaukagi, is said to contain a large number of Syrian Army “ volunteers,” who were ordered to resign and take up duty in Palestine. For the most part these men have never been under fire, but they are better trained than the unorganised Arab bands, which so far have come into conflict with the Jews. They have been transported to the village of Tubas, north of Nablus, which was Fawzi Kaukagi’s headquarters in the Arab rebellions of 1936 and 1939. Arab-Jevv clashes A Jerusalem report says the city’s biggest serie"s of Arab-Jew clashes flared up this morning and continued for some hours. Fighting began when snipers fired on police guarding a road block. It swept through the city as Haganah posts opened up and Arabs loosed a barrage of fire from rooftops and sandbagged positions on the Old City wall. Some of the fire was directed on the British Officers’ Club and army posts surrounding the public information building. , . : Civilians caught in the streets flattened themselves against buildings, while British troops deployed amoiff the trees and directed heavy Bren gun rifle fire at the gun flashes from the walls. Two companies of British infantry used mortars and small arms when intervening in a pitched battle in the Montefiore area between Arabs and Jews. Reuter’s correspondent reports that a detachment of Highland troops and a detachment of the Warwickshire Regiment were pinned down by crossfire from Haganah machine-gunners in the Yemin Moste quarter and Arab t fire from the Jaffa Gate area. The Arabs warned British police in the No Man’s Land between the firing ',o vacate their positions, Arab attackers in the Montefiore section withdrew at dusk. This is the first time British troops have been employed as infantrymen in Jerusalem since the partition disturbances started. Pakistan Takes Issue From Washington it is reported that a Government official said to-day that President Truman had received a communication from the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr Ali Jinnah, taking issue with the United States stand on the partitioning of Palestine, but he declined to disclose any details. He said the Palestine situation would soon become “ so ticklish ” that all officials had been forbidden to discuss any aspects He indicated, however, that Mr Jinnah had warned of repercussions far beyond Palestine if the United Nations Commission proceeded with its mandate to divide the Holy Land.,