FIERCE BATTLE RAGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26638, 8 December 1947, Page 5

FIERCE BATTLE RAGES

Jewish Forces Enter Jaffa FINAL WARNING TO ARABS New Zealand Press Association—Reuter—Copyright. Rec. 11 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 6. A fierce battle which raged on the Tel AvivJaffa border to-night was fiercer than anything since pre-war disorders in Palestine, says the British United Press correspondent, when Jewish forces went over to open warfare and used bombs, mortars, Molotov cocktails, tommy guns and rifles. The battle opened when a bomb exploded in Abukebir, the slum quarter of Jaffa, which is mainly inhabited by Arabs. A series of explosions followed and rocked Jaffa and Tel Aviv. A bomb exploded in a three-storey house which collapsed, killing a Jew in the debris. Within a short time, the fighting spread until the entire Jaffa slum area, known as Shekhounat Shapiro, was in flames. British armoured cars, police and troops with guncarriages arrived, but the fighting spread over the Salameh quarter, on the road to Lydda airport, over Abukebir, on the road to Jerusalem and to the Arab village of Sumil, north of Tel Aviv. Reports say that the Jews attacked as a final warning to the Arabs to keep the.peace.

Large fires lit up the industrial outskirts of the twin cities, Jaffa and Tel-Aviv. The correspondent described seeing an Orthodox Jew knifed and his head battered, and an Arab curfew breaker snatched out of the hands of two Jewish constables who had arrested him. The Arab and the two policemen were all knifed and the Arab died.

Thousands of Jews in Jerusalem swarmed into the Jaffa road to-day and stoned Arab vehicles in retaliation for the recent Arab attacks on Jewish buses. Police in armoured cars and Haganah men bored into the mob in an attempt to restore order. Jewish buses returned to regular time tables, but their windows are covered with steel wire netting and they move in convoys.

Jewish sources said that gunmen of the Irgun Zvai Leumi led an attack on Arabs in Abukebir. After an affray between a Haganah patrol and the police yesterday, the Haganah told the police through the Mayor of Tel-Aviv, Mr Israel Rokach: “We are not giving up our guns voluntarily any more.” Mr Rokach said he appealed to the police to withdraw and turn over the security of Tel-Aviv to the Haganah, but had no reply. The Government in Jerusalem said that under no conditions while the British were responsible for security would the responsibility be delegated to any other body than the police. The prospective Premier of the Jewish State, Mr David Ben-Gurion, protested to the superintendent of police in Southern Palestine, Mr F. M. Flanagan, against British armoured forces firing on Haganah men. Mr Flanagan advised him to prevent Haganah men from moving about with arms. Mr Ben-Gurion returned that the Jews could do without British police. A new secret Arab radio, calling itself “The Voice of Revolution,” last night urged Palestine Arabs to cross the borders and join the army of liberation now being formed in Syria. The Lebanese Parliament voted £114,000 (sterling) as the first instalment of its contribution towards the “ liberation of Palestine.” Ministers and deputies agreed to give one month’s salary to aid the Arab cause. The Parliament declared that it regarded the United Nations legally incompetent to deal with the Palestine problem.

It is learned that Cabinet has fixed May as the month for Britain’s termination of the Palestine mandate. It is believed in political quarters that the Arab Higher Committee and the Egyptian Government have decided in favour of restraining Arab outbursts against partition if possible until after the British evacuation, so that the Arabs would not be fighting the British Army. A general Arab world decision to this effect is likely to be made at a meeting of the Arab League on December 12. The ultimate attitude of the Arab States to the use of their armies in the field remains a matter of speculation. The Middle East meeting at Alazhar mosque adopted a resolution calling for the creation of a “ higher organisation ” to take material and moral measures in the Palestine struggle, and urging the Egyptian Government to give facilities for the training of volunteers for military action. Azzam Pasha, secretarygeneral of the Arab League, told the Assembly that they would get arms when trained. Egypt would lead tfre Arab countries in the struggle. Another speaker, waving a gun in one hand and the Koran in the other, declared: “ With these two weapons, onward, Moslems, to war.” Another declared: “I am taking a rifle and going to Palestine. He who wishes to go. let him follow me.” Reporting that Britain has now made plans to speed up the exacuation of Palestine by two months, the Daily Mail’s correspondent in Jerusalem says that all Palestine Government departmental heads have been instructed that they must consider May 31, 1948, as the deadline for getting out of Palestine, instead of August 1» which hitherto had been the official date. It is intended that the evacuation shall begin at the earliest date, probably towards the end of January.