A Spectator's Notebook
THE FOREIGN OFFICE'S scheme to get the Allies to favour a settlement of the Palestine problem on the basis of Israel's 1947 frontiers—i.e., the boundaries laid down by the UN partition of Palestine plan—seems to have been thwarted. Nobody ex- cept the Turks seems to have been very interested in it, and-even the Arabs did not welcome it. Not that the Foreign Office will for long be deterred by little things like that. The history of its attitude to the 1947 frontiers is pure fantasy. The time to support the 1947 frontiers was 1947. But when the UN voted in favour of the partition plan on November 29, 1947, Britain abstained. From then until the beginning of the Palestine war in 1948 the Labour Government and the Foreign Office did everything they could to sabotage the plan— and they were successful. One would have ex- pected, therefore, that prudence if not decency would have prevented the Foreign Office ever mentioning the 1947 frontiers again. But since Sir Anthony Eden's unfortunate Guildhall speech in November, 1955, the 1947 frontiers have been in the foreground of Britain's Palestine policy—ex- cept, of course, for the two or three months following the Suez intervention. Obviously reason has nothing to do with all this, so it is no use pointing out that appeasement at other people's expense did not work very well at Munich; that appeasement of the Arabs has been consistently unsuccessful; that before making her reparations agreement with Israel Germany was threatened by the Arabs with trade sanctions, but paid no attention—and her trade with the Arabs has since multiplied by three; and that in France's recent negotiations with Egypt the subject of Palestine was never mentioned. The 1947 frontiers will con- tinue to occupy in British foreign policy much the same place as does Chiang Kai-shek in America.
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