JEWS AND ARABS CLASH OUTSIDE CITY OF JERUSALEM

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 December 1947, Page 5

JEWS AND ARABS CLASH OUTSIDE CITY OF JERUSALEM

CHRISTMAS DAY WAS WORST IN PALESTINE SINCE PARTITION (N.Z.P.A.—Copyright.') Recd. 5 p.m. Jerusalem, Dec. 27 With more than 100 people killed or injured, Christmas Day was one □f Palestine's worst days since the partition decision. The known deathroll since the partition now totals 380, and more than 700 have been wounded. For over two hours the sounds of heavy gunfire mortar bombs and grenades reverberated through Jerusalem last night from the direction of the Mount of Olives. The Haganah sent a punitive party to Silwan a village in the Mount of Olives area, where Arabs recently ambushed a Jewish funeral procession. Members of the Haganah, wearing steel helmets, wrecked five houses with explosives. One Arab was killed and two Arab children wounded. Ten armed Jews were killed and a 10-year-old Arab child seriously wounded in another attack on a Bedouin camp at Mount Carmel. “Considerable forces" of Jews and Arabs skirmished on the outskirts of the Arab town of Tulkarm after Arabs opened fire on a Jewish ploughmen. British police and troops intervened. Two Arabs are reported killed and several wounded. One Jew is missing and live were wounded. Hans Beith, leader of the Jewish Youth Movement, and Golda Meyerson, were in the same two-miles-long convoy on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalm .when Arabs, armed with bombs, machine-guns and rifles, attacked it last night. It was the biggest Arab ambush yet. Six hundred Arabs raked the convoy from concealed hillside positions. Haganah de.ence troops fired back and the convoy forced its way through. Beith was shot dead.

A Haganah spokesman said the increase in Arab sniping and attacks on road convoys arose from the arrival in Pr/estine of 200 Syrian-trained volunteers under the command cf five former German officers. Recd. 5 p.m. London, Dec. 27.

While in Jerusalem the authorities still counted the casualties arising from Haganah’s punitive night attack on Arabs in Silwan village in the Mount of Olives area which closed another day of violence in Palestine, an Arab leader told Reuter in London that Palestine was heading for the “biggest, bloodiest flare-up ever known in the Near East.” He was Izzedeen Shawa Bey, head of Palestine Arabs Political Mission in London, who has just returned from visiting Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. He said the Arab threat to fight any attempt to form the Jewish state in Palestine was serious and recruiting was in full swing In every Arab town and village. "The Arabs are determined to clear up once and for all the question of Jews in Palestine,” he said. "They will stop at nothing. Arab chieftains, despite contrary reports, are united in this."