Blasted Dawn

"Shot at?" Pretty young (27) Mrs. Betty Tobin, a U.N. secretary, pondered the question. She was one of the advance party of the Palestine Commission. "No," she concluded, "it wouldn't scare me. I was in London during the blitz, and you get kind of hardened to it."

The six members (four men, two women) of the advance party would need all the hardening they had. Keeping their arrival plans secret, they took off this week from New York City's LaGuardia Field. First stop: London. Destination: the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where, under British protection, they would try to prepare the way for the U.N. Palestine Commission.

The same day that they flew the Atlantic, hate-riddled Palestine erupted in the greatest violence, of deed and word, since U.N. voted to partition the country.

Just before sunrise, an armored car and "three trucks, all manned by men in British uniform, drove into Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem's Jewish shopping district. A suspicious British police patrol followed, found the trucks abandoned and spewing smoke. Seconds later they disintegrated with a blast that crumpled nearby hotels, apartments and shops, ripped out windows for a mile around. In Ben Yehuda's rubble at least 52 lay dead, more than 100 wounded.

Jews blamed anti-Semitic members of the British forces for the outrage. They drove off British police who tried to help rescue the wounded. Then, in a series of reprisal attacks, they killed nine British soldiers, wounded at least as many. Jerusalem was all but paralyzed as armed bands of Britons, Arabs and Jews prepared for more fighting. Said the terrorist group Irgun Zvai Leumi: "As from today all British personnel, military and police, entering Jewish sections, will be subject to execution."

Said the British administration: "It is unbelievable that this act has been committed by members of the security forces." An Arab military source said that the explosives were planted by "seven Arab commandos in Palestine police uniforms . . . trained in Syria under Czechoslovak officers."

The same day, in Cairo, the Arab League announced that, if U.N. sends a security force to Palestine, member states planned to contribute regular army units to an "Arab Liberation Army." The League had earlier resolved to block the building of oil pipelines and threatened to "reconsider" oil concessions.

On their side, the Jewish Agency laid before the U.N. Palestine Commission detailed charges against British rule in Palestine. Britain, said the Jews, had "persistently yielded" to Arab violence and had helped to arm the Arabs, but had hamstrung Jewish defense efforts by searching out arms caches and disarming Jewish defense forces. "A swift assertion of lawful authority," said the statement, "can nip the evil in the bud and prevent violent movements from gathering momentum."

Palestine's violence was now a problem for the U.N. Security Council, which displayed little confidence that its members could agree on what to do. Far clearer than the solution was the mounting scale of death and massacre that could be expected as Partition Day drew nearer.

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