Palestine Political Storms Loom

By John Kimche, Overseas News Agency, Tel Aviv

Transcribed from the clipping

“Tel Aviv, Israel (ONA)—While Palestine is today enjoying a breathing spell from the war, political storms are looming on the horizon… No less difficult is the problem of the Arab refugees. There has been a remarkable change in public opinion. When the Arabs started leaving Haifa and villages near Jewish settlements, the Jews made frantic appeals to them to stay or return. Jewish public opinion was obviously distressed, seeing the Arabs’ departure as part of some deep Arab scheme. Suddenly the Jews have now awakened to the fact that it is advantageous to have no large minority in the new state, and feeling is hardening that a permanent settlement might be considered which does not provide for the return of the refugee Arabs. This has led to a demand by the parties of the right, including the orthodox Mizrachi faction, that plans be made immediately for the exchange of the Palestine Arab refugees for about 250,000 minority Jews in the Middle East… For one thing the Arabs may not agree, and carrying out a mass transfer without Arab support would be impossible… The Tel Aviv Government remains undecided, but officials realize that the decision is the most fateful facing the Jews today… it marked the first time that the Palestine Arabs had publicly suggested a settlement with the Jews.”

Context added by this archive

A correspondent describing the return question being decided while it was still open, four months after Haifa.

Cite this item

"Palestine Political Storms Loom," Gazette and Daily, 11 August 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-060. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-060

Elsewhere in the archive

JEWS TAKE TWO FORTS FROM ARABSMt. Vernon Register-News · 1948 · the same year
Jewish Reprisal Raids On Two Arab Villages Take Toll of 8 LivesThe News Journal · 1 January 1948 · the same year
CRISIS NEARS CLIMAXChicago Tribune · 9 February 1948 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

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