LONG DEFERRED DECISION

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5330, 18 February 1947, Page 4

LONG DEFERRED DECISION

JfORCES other than the demurj rers of distraeted Zionism ' and of the alert Arab delegation | have at last wruhg from the j British Government the decision ~ j to hand over the Palestine probj lem to the xUnited Nations j Assembly or the Security Counj cil. The recent order for the j evacuation of British civilians I from the country was interj preted ' by Aiany people — most | certainly by both the Jewish 'and ! Arab populations— a/a preliminj ary to the establishment of j martial law. Indeed, it is I claimed that » the military are • already in charge of the country i to the extent, that „it is already ! operative. A renewed outbreak 1 of violence was certain to proj ceecl from these new dispositions } aiid on past performance, it was j by no means certain that the 100,000 troops already on service there constituted a force j adequate to cope with a worsenI ing situation, let alone restore" I some measure of tranquillity. The bungling of Whitehalkls now tardily admitted on all hands and leaves the bemused Foreign Minister, Mr. Bevin, with hardly an apologist among the leading^ organs of public opinion. In his final failure to bring the Arabs to agree to some form of partition, which the Jewish leaders are believed to have been prepared to accept a j short while ago, he saw aheacl an | intensified struggle in which j sooner or later all elements in j Palestine inevitably. would be- ., come involved. There was no ' | way of retreat by way of openi ing the gates to the illegalljr infiltrating immigrants, for he had become too deeply committed in that respect, ancl the hope of in- - ducing the more moderate of the; _ Zionist organisations to co-oper-ate in this present 'method of maintaining the mandate was extinguished at Basle. ' Therefore, he has thrown in liis hand, for the deploying of an other 100,000 men needed to make effective the existing system .of control which would have roused the people at Home, struggling desper'ately to fend off the 6 assault of General j Winter, to a mood of exaspera- ! tion. No doubt Cabinet agreed ] that with the forthcoming vital decisions concerning Germany and Japan, it eould not have a violent controversy in the United Kingdom on another ~ foreign issue. . o Our Continental commitments are certain to remain heavy for a number of years, but the limits of these from the military point of view are not predictable with any certainty; our Army occupation force in Japan has been reduced to a minimum but to maintain our police roleJn .Palestine would have more than absorbed this saving in manpower. Tahere was also, no doubt, a realisation that hostility abroad to our Palestine policy, "or rather, the laek of it, was having a reaction increasingly to the detriment of our relations, political and economic, with other countries. Now that the move has been made thqt should have been made in the first instance, it is sincerely " -to be hoped that it will be widely accepted as an earnest of goodwill, rather than the last throw of a ruined ganfbler.