Another Two Years?

The UN special assemply meeting in New York today to consider the Palestine problem seems inevitably headed for a maze of blind alleys. Great Britain proposed this committee-constituting sessions so that the UN regular assembly in September might receive its own report on Palestine, emphasizing, no doubt, the difficulties facing the mandatory power to date. And in a desperate play to break the issue wide open, Arab League delegates will insist that today's meeting immediately cut short British control and declare Palestine independent. But this is only one of several obscuring political issues; the UN's true task is to find quick relief for more than 100,000 Jewish DPs still in Europe, two years after V-E Day.

The Arabs, in numerical majority in the Holy Land, and, perhaps, hoping for Russian votes in the special assembly, seek an independent Palestine-which would give them immediate control. This catastrophic plan will not be adopted, for the United States supports the British view that only an investigating committee be chosen now. But even this Anglo-American proposal is frustrating and inconclusive. Not only have numerous impartial groups submitted reports on Palestine in the past dozen years, (the most recent was the Anglo-American Commission on Inquiry last spring) but it has already been stated in the House of Lords that should Britain find the new recommendations unfavorable, it will not enforce them.

Finally, there is the question of the composition of the investigating committee. The Jewish Agency, sole spokesman for the Palestine Jewish community, insists that it be represented so that the Jewish case may be presented in convincing manner. On both ethical and legal grounds, the Agency should have its request granted; whether it will remains to be seen.

But above and beyond these considerations lies the refugee problem, in which time remains the crucial element. It would be criminal for either the mandatory power or the UN to put relief for the Dps until Palestine's political status is settled, a prospect that now seems months or years away. It may be that the UN itself should sponsor immigration of 100,000 Jews into Palestine while the forth-coming investigation takes place. At no other time could the real and not the imagined effects of large scale Jewish immigration be under such careful UN scrutiny. The results of such immigration would go a long way towards determining whether partition, a new mandatory power, or some other solution, would be best for Palestine. It is very possible that, in the light of America's new policy of halting further Russian expansion, the Arab threat to raise Middle East havoc as an answer to Jewish immigration is no threat at all. But despite all speculation, UN failure to deal with the refugee problem at once will convict it of its greatest weakness to date-a disregard for humanity.