REFUGEES: Nobody Liked It

Only a miracle comparable to the parting of the Red Sea or the revelation of the Koran could have made the Anglo-American Committee’s report on Palestine (TIME, May 6) entirely palatable to Arabs, Jews and the British Empire. By refusing to recommend either an Arab or a Jewish Palestine, by supporting neither totally restricted nor totally unrestricted Jewish immigration, by hewing to the line of compromise through 40,000 considered words, the Committee found itself in a no man’s land between uncompromising factions.

In the proposal for immediate transfer of 100,000 Jews from Europe, ardent Zionists saw only a denial of immigration to a million other Jews they want to settle in Palestine. “The central problem of the homeless, stateless Jewish people,” they cried, “has been left untouched.” Arab leaders were even more incensed. They saw the admission of 100,000 refugees as “an invasion. . . . Our reaction will not be words. . . .”

The first nonverbal reaction was “civil disobedience.” Arab workers in Palestine walked out in a twelve-hour general strike. Diehard pan-Arabs called for a jihad, or holy war, to wrest back Palestine from the infidel. In Jerusalem, the Arab temper flared most angrily. A mob surged from the Mosque of Omar, shouted “Death to the Americans and British!” and stoned a column of Tommies. They fell back before British batons and a sudden heavy rainstorm. Tanks rumbled up to the Damascus Gate. The 100,000 British troops in the Holy Land were alerted.

The British Government, hard-pressed by the Arabs (and by Russian influence in the Middle East), shied from implementing the Committee’s report. Announced Prime Minister Clement Attlee: Britain would not approve the immigration of 100,000 Jews to Palestine unless

1) the U.S. stood by with military and financial aid in the Holy Land, and

2) Jews and Arabs surrendered hidden weapons and disbanded “illegal armies.”

Almost every reaction to the report indicated that no one regarded its immediate recommendations as more than a temporary compromise. The report contained one long-range proposition that might well point the way to a solution: an internationalized Palestine under U.N. supervision. Inside the Holy Land, despite Jewish resentment and Arab demonstration, there were few signs of a major crisis. Whatever might be brewing beneath the surface, both Arabs and Jews seemed well aware that the issue would be settled outside the country.