The Palestine Case

The grey, weather-streaked building on New York City's Flushing Meadow, unused since December, reeked of furniture polish. A sweeper swabbed a Kilroy variation off a blackboard in the main reception room of the United Nations General Assembly chamber; it had read: "The Irgun Zvai Leumi was here."

This week the delegates of 55 nations moved in, swiftly elected Brazil's tall, grey Dr. Oswaldo Aranha president of their special session and, without formality, buckled down to the Palestine question.

The views of the nations seemed as irreconcilable as the conflict in Palestine between Jews, Arabs and British. Britain, which had thrown its failure to solve the Palestine problem into U.N.'s lap, went on record in London that it would not be bound by any U.N. solution which it could not approve. The Arab delegates wanted a wide-open discussion and an end to Britain's mandate. The Jews, with a golden opportunity to present their case to the world, were split into rival groups, each demanding to be Jewry's voice before the Assembly. (The Jewish Agency, principal champion of Jewish rights in the Holy Land, refused to be mere observers at the session; its spokesmen stayed away pending decision on their request to be treated as a voteless delegation.) On one point the delegates seemed unhappily agreed: the stored bitterness of 25 years of Palestine troubles would be freely poured out in the General Assembly.

In Palestine last week a bomb split the Egypt-Palestine night express train, carrying about 500 British troops. The dead: five British soldiers, three civilians. Near Tel-Aviv a van loaded with explosive blew up near a police billet: four British were killed. In Haifa, terrorists assassinated A. E. Conquest, chief of the British Criminal Investigation Department in northern Palestine.

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