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ANNEX STATEMENT BY SIR CARL BERENDSEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE NEW ZEALAND DELEGATION, BEFORE THE POLITICAL AND SECURITY COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS, ON TUESDAY, 20th APRIL, 1948 It is a sombre, indeed a tragic, occasion which has led to this meeting, and it is a heavy responsibility that falls upon each and every delegate in this chamber. The occasion calls for the most complete integrity of thought and action, and it is clearly the duty, as well as the right, of every Government represented here to express its thoughts on the incredible and shocking situation that has developed. It is a time for plain speaking, and I am sure that none of my colleagues will take offence if I do in fact speak plainly. The problem with which the Assembly was called upon to deal last November was admitted by all to be most difficult and intractable. The situation as it presented itself then was the cumulative result of a long series of events stemming perhaps from the dim ages of the past, but for most practical purposes originating in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. That document like —most regrettably like —the vast majority of international documents, is not notable for clarity or definition. All, I think, agree that it is open to more than one construction, and the exact intent of its meaning has been a matter of repeated and lengthy debate and discussion in the ensuing years. Nor, indeed, have those portions of its intent, which are common ground to all, been free from dissent from its very inception. I have no intention of entering into any analysis of what the Balfour Declaration did mean or what was the ethical basis even for that portion of its intent upon which all agree, as a minimum, it must mean. Even that aspect is perhaps beside the point. The mandate over Palestine was entrusted to the United Kingdom—with the definite approval of many of those nations represented here—and for a very lengthy period the British have been administering that territory with what any impartial observer must agree has been a commendable degree of material success, and certainly at all times with the highest motives and intentions. But it may well have been that throughout the whole of that period they have been attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable, that the conflicting rights and interests in that holy but unhappy land —of the Arabs on the one side and the Jews on the other —were not at any time capable of acceptable compromise. From time to time blood has been shed in the course of this long and acrimonious dispute, and I would remind my colleagues of what I fear many of them are too often inclined to forget, that on very many occasions the blood that has been spilt has been the blood, not of the two principal contestants in this unhappy quarrel, but British blood, the blood of those who were, as trustees for humanity, endeavouring to carry out a thankless and perhaps impossible task. Finally, the British decided that they could no longer bear this burden, that the problem had become, if it had not always been, an international problem, that not only was it unfair that the burden and the odium of this task should fall upon the British alone while others at all times have felt free to offer advice and criticism from the sidelines without, of course, shouldering any portion of the responsibility for themselves, but also because of this factor, that the United Kingdom, having devoted its all to the