ARAB CASE IN PALESTINE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 7

ARAB CASE IN PALESTINE

Mufti’s Office In New Executive NOTE TO POWERS EXPECTED (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 13. The Arab League Council, M the closing of its session at Bludan, near Damascus, last night, dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and the week” old Arab Higher Front, and approved instead a new fouj>man Arab Palea-’ tine Executive Committee w*th the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as spiritual head. The members of the committee are Jamal Husseini, Dr. Husseim Khaiidi (who were the former Higher Front), Emile Ghori, and Ahmed Helm! Pasha. The last-named is a Jerusalem financier, politically independent. AU four were originally members of the Higher Committee. ’‘lt is understood that an Arab League Note to Britain will demand that the Palestine Jews be disarmed, and will deciare that if this is not carried out the Arabs will claim the right to atm all the Palestine Arabs,” says the “Daily Telegraph correspondent at Bludan. “A Note to America will threaten •sanctions’ on air facilities, trade, and cultural institutions if the United States persists in its present attitude, the Arab League’s point of view being that America, as only one of the 51 members of the United Nations, has no greater voice than any other on Palestine."

The correspondent adds that when the Palestine question* is settled the Arab League will propose an international conference to decide the future, of Europe’s displaced Jews. According to Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the League, all the Arab States would be wiljing to take their quota of Jews as long as the rest of the world did likewise.’’ The Arab League Council yesterday passed a resolution saying that BritishArabian friendship would cpllapse unless Britain acceded to Egyp’i demands for evacuation and the union of the Nile valley. The league expressed concern abdut the interruption of the British-Egyptian negotiations. It is officially stated in Paris that a police investigation has revealed that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem left France aboard an American aeroplane nearly a fortnight ago. M. Rene Desvaux, chief of the Paris Judiciary Police, has been dismissed as a result of the Grand Mufti’s escape. The Paris correspondent of the Associated Press ' says that the Grand Mufti made no secret of his intention to depart from France. He told a friend at least a fortnight earlier that he was leaving. The Grand Mufti travelled with a Syrian passport in a car which the French Government had supplied for the duration of his stay. He was driven to the house of a friend, where he got out, sending the car to the house of another friend in Paris, presumably to throw any trailing police off the track. He then left France by aeroplane for Damascus. In Jerusalem to-day, Dr. Izzat Tannous, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, said he understood that the Grand Mufti was “safe,” but he was unaware of his whereabouts. He added that the Grand Mufti was probably in Syria.