Showdown

The Inspector General of Palestine Police stared stolidly at a vase of huge sunflowers. The Commander of the big British garrison, Lieut. General Sir Evelyn Barker, nervously paced around the quiet, white-paneled study in Jerusalem's Government House, smoking one cigaret after another. They were helping High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham, who now & then stopped to fondle his dachshund, draft one of the most drastic orders London had ever authorized in its 25 years of mandate over the Holy Land.

It was what General Barker had wanted for many months: a show-down with Palestine's Jewish terrorists. A virtual declaration of martial law, it ordered the immediate evacuation of "nonessential civilians" and all British women & children.

The worst of the immediate backlash came from Palestine's 5,000 British civilians. Infuriated businessmen cried: "You can't ruin British trade." British women refused to fill in forms for their evacuation. Some British "went underground," moved in with Jewish friends. But this week 40 army transport planes were lined up to carry the first contingents back to Britain. Waiting for transport, hundreds of British were jammed in concentration areas behind protective barbed wire.* Streets in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other towns bristled with Bren gun carriers and road blocks.

This explosive situation might be set off by the hanging of Dov Gruner, a Jewish terrorist. As a threat of reprisal, his Irgun Zvai Leumi pals had kidnaped two Britons as hostages, released them after the Government had postponed Gruner's execution (TIME, Feb. 3) until this week.

"Squalid Warfare." Meanwhile in Britain's House of Commons, Winston Churchill bitterly flayed the Government's failure to bring order out of the Holy Land's "squalid warfare." He repeated his suggestion that the U.S. join Britain "on a 50-50 basis" and share responsibility for a solution in Palestine. If Washington did not act on the suggestion, then Britain should get out, turn over its mandate to the United Nations.

The British Cabinet was divided on Palestine policy. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones, thoroughly sick of the whole mess, wanted to partition the country between Jews and Arabs. Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin still hoped to persuade Arabs and Jews to accept some modification of Herbert Morrison's federation plan (TIME, Aug. 5). Arabs at London's Palestine Conference, which had resumed its meetings, showed little sign of agreeing on federation or anything else; that was true also of Jews who were meeting unofficially with the British.

Cunningham's order might frighten both sides into compromise. Last week that seemed unlikely, and the prospect of more months of turmoil stretched ahead.

* Palestine's 4,900 U.S. citizens were not affected. Most of them thought, as did most British civilians, that the drastic order was unnecessary.

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