Deadlock at Port-de-Bouc
The weary story of the attempts of illegal immigrants to get into Palestine has reached a new depth of frustration and confusion this week. The monotonous diversion of one ramshackle hulk after another from Haifa to Cyprus, whence the immigrants are filtered slowly into Palestine under the legal quota, has now been varied by the return of 4,50o Jews to France, whence they came in horrible
conditions in the President Warfield. The French authorities have invited them to come ashore from the three ships to which they were transferred, the immigrants have refused, and the deadlock is complete. It cannot be broken except by the use of force by the British Navy, which is unthinkable, although the growing collection of trouble-makers at Port-de-Bouc would no doubt welcome it and be sustained by the stream of anti-British abuse coming from certain sections of the French Press. The attitude of the French authorities ;s correct. The invitation to the immigrants to land was courteous and no doubt sincere, but the lapse by which the President Warfield was allowed to leave in the first place, overcrowded and insanitary as she was, was gross. As to the announcement of the refugees' spokesman that they will only disembark as dead men, the greater probability is that they will ultimately disembark, alive, in Cyprus. And as to the French announcement concerning the observance of emigration regulations (which has been misleadingly published by the Jewish Agency as if it contradicted instead of supplemented the agreement for the return of the refugees to France), it is to be hoped that in future it will be observed, if only to prevent unnecessary human suffering.
Previous page
