501.BB Palestine/7–747
The Consul General at Jerusalem (Macatee) to the Secretary of State
No. 118
Subject: UNSCOP in Palestine—the third week.
Sir: I have the honor to refer to my despatch no. 113 of June 30, 1947, and in continuation thereof to submit the following report of the activities of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine during its third week in this country. The Department will recall that at the end of the second week, as recorded in the despatch under reference the Committee expressed its abhorrence of terrorists’ deeds, and conveyed its sympathy to the British official attached to UNSCOP for liaison purposes, who had been severely battered while resisting terrorist attempts to kidnap him.
Setting out again on the morning of June 30, the Committee had for reflection the fact that the immediately preceding week-end had witnessed the deaths of four more British soldiers at terrorists’ hands; it also had for reflection the fact that there was no sign of a weakening of the Arab boycott. The first three days of the week were scheduled for the last leg of the Committee’s tour of Palestine, covering the regions of Sharon, Esdraelon and Galilee.
[Here follows an account of various visits by UNSCOP.]
Meanwhile, on the previous day, the British Government had sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations a communication1 which constituted a reply to the Resolution which UNSCOP had forwarded to the Secretary General mentioning possible repercussions which might be expected if certain condemned terrorists were executed. The British Government’s statement was, in effect, a repetition of that of the Palestine Government. It stressed that (a) the death sentences had not been confirmed and therefore the whole matter was still sub judice; (b) if the sentences are confirmed then the High Commissioner may exercise, if he thinks fit, the royal prerogative of pardon delegated to him. At this point, the British statement added:
“It is invariably the practice of His Majesty’s Government not to interfere with the High Commissioner’s discretion, whether or not exercised by this prerogative.”
Concluding, the statement referred to the General Assembly’s Resolution on Palestine adopted on May 15. In this connection, the British Government states, it interprets the Resolution as applying [Page 1118] to action calculated to disturb peace in Palestine; it “cannot admit its relevance to normal processes of Justice there”.
[Here follows an account of further visits by UNSCOP.]
The public hearings scheduled by the Committee in the YMCA auditorium in Jerusalem got into full swing on July 4 when David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, commenced presentation of the case, as he put it, for “establishing Palestine as a Jewish State”. The two-hour statement made by Ben-Gurion has been lengthily reported in the press, but certain general trends may be recorded briefly here:
- 1.
- “The settlement of the twin problems of the Jews and Palestine was perhaps the supreme test of the United Nations . . . . Great empires had tried to assimilate and crush the Jews, but they had with an indomitable obstinacy preserved their identity.”
- 2.
- “There had been ‘a very sad and very painful conflict’ between the Jews and the Mandatory . . . . Palestine is not part of the British Empire.”
- 3.
- “The Government’s memorandum abounds in ‘half-truths’ . . . . Palestine is the only place in the civilized world where racial discrimination still exists in law” . . . .
- 4.
- “Promises made to the Arabs have been fulfilled . . . . The Arabs have their freedom in an area 125 times the size of Palestine . . . . An Arab minority in Palestine would remain safe in national association with their race . . . . a Jewish minority in an Arab State, even with the most ideal paper guarantee, would mean the final extinction of hope for the entire Jewish people for national equality and independence” . . . .
- 5.
- “The Jews are against the continuation of the Mandate, whether of Britain or the United Nations . . . . Only by establishing Palestine as a Jewish State can the true objectives be accomplished: immigration and settlement for the Jews, economic development and social progress for the Arabs . . . . Nothing will further the Jewish Arab alliance more than the establishment of the Jewish State . . . .”
Mr. Ben-Gurion was followed by Rabbi Fishman, President of the Central Council of the World Mizrahi, who addressed the Committee in Hebrew. Rabbi Fishman outlined the central position of Palestine in Jewish religious and ritual life and emphasized that “it was only in Palestine that the orthodox Jew could fulfil himself religiously”. The Rabbi added, “In our view, it is the duty of every Jew to come and live in Palestine and any regulation restricting the fulfilment of this commandment is not only devoid of legal authority, but positively sinful.”
Following Rabbi Fishman, Mr. D. Horowitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Economic Department, gave the Committee a series of statistics. With his assistants displaying many charts, Mr. Horowitz [Page 1119] gave a running commentary for about an hour and a half, with two main objectives:
- 1.
- To prove that with the advent of the Jews, no Arab had ever been displaced, and,
- 2.
- In fact, because of the impact of Jewish economy on Palestine, the lot of the Arabs here—economically as well as hygienically—was vastly better than that of the Arabs of surrounding countries.
Mr. Horowitz, in discussing “absorptive capacity”, insisted upon the point that more and more immigration was the only answer, “that each man added to the population is not only a worker or an employer, he is also a consumer . . . .”
The meeting adjourned at two o’clock in the afternoon of July 4, leaving observers somewhat exhausted. It might be safe to assume that members of the Committee also found the session exhausting, especially those members who are not fluent in English. (The public hearings have been conducted entirely in English, with the exception of the discourse by Rabbi Fishman, which, as noted above, was in Hebrew and later translated into English.)2
On Sunday, July 6, the hearings resumed with Mr. E. Kaplan and Mr. F. Bernstein, the Treasurer of the Jewish Agency, and the Head of the Trade and Industry Department, pointing out in some detail the economic hardships which they contend the Government of Palestine has imposed upon the Yishuv3 and the country as a whole during the past twenty-seven years. In fact, condemnation of the Government of Palestine occupied an even greater portion of the speeches of these two gentlemen than it had those of their predecessors. Mr. Bernstein perhaps made his cardinal point when he told UNSCOP:
“. . . . The Palestine administration, barely tolerating Jewish development—instead of assisting it—seemed chiefly concerned with what was explained as the protection of the Arab population from the dangers threatening them from Jewish colonization.
“The Arab population nevertheless derived immense advantages, but what Arab goodwill towards the Jews could have been obtained as a result of economic benefits was largely lost because those benefits were represented as the gift of a ‘protecting’ Administration which, by the very attitude of the protector, denounced Jewish colonization as harmful and dangerous to the Arabs.”4
At the close of the third week, the view was widely held in Jewish circles that UNSCOP had had insufficient contact with the Yishuv. Typical of this feeling, the Palestine Post featured an article entitled, [Page 1120] “They Don’t Meet the People—UNSCOP REMAINS REMOTE”. Probably no member of the Committee would disagree with that article, so far as the Arabs are concerned, because contact between their leaders and UNSCOP continues, apparently, to be nil. However, many a member might properly be somewhat annoyed if the Post was referring to the Jews, whose organizations, settlements and people UNSCOP had listened to and visited to the point of complete physical weariness.
The uneasiness in Jewish circles was perhaps reflected by a sentence in the same article in the Palestine Post, which made reference to the Arab boycott and the Mufti thus:
“So far as the Arabs are concerned, UNSCOP is getting only a monstrous reflection of an exile’s sinister shadow over Palestine, monstrously exaggerated.”
Respectfully yours,
- For telegram of June 30 from the British Representative at the United Nations to the Secretary-General, see UNSCOP , vol. ii, p. 14.↩
- For texts of the statements made by Mr. Ben-Gurion, Rabbi Fishman and Mr. Horowitz, see UNSCOP , vol. iii, pp. 8–34.↩
- The Jewish community in Palestine.↩
- For texts of the statements by Messrs. Bernstein and Kaplan, see UNSCOP , vol. iii, pp. 34–47.↩