Talk on Palestine
After avoiding their duty to speak on the Palestine question at the United Nations for so long that at one point Sir Zafrullah Khan proposed that, since no one seemed to want to speak, the session of the Palestine Committee had better be closed, the dele- gates of the United States and the Soviet Union have both recom- mended that the Report of the U.N. Special Committee should ba accepted. They have therefore declared in favour of partition. while proposing that a sub-committee should be formed to work out its details. But it cannot be said that the end of this rather unedifying struggle for posteriority in one of the most vital and dangerous of all international issues has brought a solution any nearer. The American statement was singularly devoid of any sign. of a positive policy, and apart from calling for a settlement during the present session, as he could hardly fail to do in the face of the clear British intention to withdraw unless the present intoler- able situation is ended, Mr. Herschel Johnston confined himself to suggestions for amendments to the report, an unhelpful statement that the British are bound to stay on and keep order during the transi- tional period, and a suggestion that the United Nations should recruit a special voluntary international police force. The Russian statement had even less positive content, but at least it contained no acceptance of the fairly obvious bait which the Syrian delegate held out during an attack on "dollar imperialism" which might almost have come from Belgrade. So at least the possibility of another division among the Great Powers on the very basis of a solution has been reduced. Moreover, the Arabs have been given as plain a warning as possible that there will be no support for their extreme claim for an Arab State throughout Palestine. Pos- sibly they will now begin to consider a compromise, though there was little enough evidence of that at the conference of the Arab League Council which the Mufti recently attended in the Lebanon, and talk of a gathering of Arab forces on the Palestine border does not abate. But the time for a decision is getting nearer and the clear statement of Sir Alan Cunningham that Britain is not
bluffing in her threat to withdraw if an acceptable agreement is not reached brings it nearer still.
