Towards a Palestine Settlement
An agreed settlement between Arabs and Jews in Palestine has always been the object of the British Government, and it was only because, after many attempts, this became clearly impossible, that the problem was handed over to the United Nations. In the past two weeks a good deal has been heard at Paris about a Conciliation Commission which might negotiate on the spot between the interested parties ; the idea is well-intentioned and in principle has the support of the British Government. But no commission has any chance of success which starts with any obligations towards one or other side, and the suggestion made by the American delegate last Saturday that no modifications of the partition proposal should be approved "unless fully acceptable to the State of Israel" is such a one-sided obligation. Neither Arabs nor Jews need any en- couragement in their intransigence ; the debates in Paris have shown that their demands are as uncompromising as they were six months or a year ago (on the Jewish side even more uncompromising). It is obvious that what the situation now demands* is not a new mission on the Bernadotte model, vaguely briefed and spasmodically supported, but a commission which has been very clearly told what are the minimum territorial and other changes the United Nations will sanction in the Bernadotte plan, and which is authorised by the Security Council to negotiate only within these limits. In the course of its negotiations it must inevitably run across the tenderest prejudices of the Arabs and Jews—if it did not there would be no need to send it out. The first essential is to ensure that its terms of reference are precise, which can only be achieved as a result of the closest liaison between this country and America. Apparently the Americans believe that Dr. Jessup's speech of Tuesday has brought his country's viewpoint reasonably close to the terms of the British resolution. A revised British resolution aims at closing the gap further. Without real agreement on detail between the two countries, the Conciliation Commission Might just as well never set out.
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