Evening Star · Washington, District of Columbia · 25 April 1948

CP-1948-082

Arab League Denounced For Inaction in Palestine

By the Associated Press, Cairo

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Transcribed from the clipping

“CAIRO, April 24 (AP).—Leading Egyptian newspapers bitterly attacked the Arab League tonight for the first time in its three-year history, accusing it of inaction in the face of the ‘Arab catastrophe in Palestine.’

Editorials denouncing the league’s leadership appeared in Al Balagh and Al Zamane after 200 Palestinian Arab students staged an angry demonstration at the league headquarters during the day. Al Balagh, organ of the powerful Wafdist Party, declared: ‘We can no longer suffer one catastrophe after another. Zionism in Palestine means no Arabs will be left.

Is this realized by leaders who fly from one place to another, meet and then adjourn to take secret decisions that remain forever secret?’ The politically independent Al Zamane said: ‘We can no longer bear to hear what happened today in Haifa and what may happen tomorrow in Jaffa. Arab countries had pinned their hopes to the Arab League.

We were told—wait and you will see the flag of Arabism waving over Palestine. But Palestine cities are disappearing one after another while we still are making speeches and promises. Arab countries are raging and demand to know what the Arab League will do.’

Resentment against the league’s Palestine policy was reported widespread not only in Egypt but in Syria and Iraq where protest strikes have occurred.”

Context added by this archive

The subheadings are “Catastrophes Cited” and “Resentment Widespread.” The word the archive dates to the 1990s is here in April 1948, in translation, inside quotation marks, in Associated Press copy: the Arab catastrophe in Palestine.

The same page carries the jump of the main Palestine story, where every street of Jerusalem is blocked by road barriers twenty feet high, and Gen. Ismael Safwat Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Arab volunteers, admits publicly that present Arab forces in Palestine are incapable of saving the situation.

Cite this clipping

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