Battle in the Snow

News from Palestine sounded all the same: a score of Arabs killed here, a dozen Jews killed there. That was the day-to-day story of Palestine. Since the U.S. decided to support Palestine's partition, over a thousand Arabs, 750 Jews and 105 Britons have been killed. The U.S. reversed itself last week supposedly to stop the killing (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But war between Jews and Arabs seemed as inevitable as before.

"Wonderful!" cried Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, when he heard the news of the U.S. decision. Then he added more soberly that the Arabs would settle for nothing less than a full Zionist surrender. Said he: "I am afraid the Zionists will lose their heads. ... If the Jews fight, we will accept the challenge."

The Jews seemed dead set on fighting. The Jewish Agency announced that it would proceed with the establishment of a Jewish government in Palestine. Said the Agency Executive Chairman David Ben-Gurion: "It is we who will decide the fate of Palestine. . . . The Jewish state exists because we defend it."

Some observers thought that under the proposed U.N. trusteeship arrangement, the British might be willing to stay on in Palestine. But the British would have none of it. London announced that it still intended to surrender its Palestine mandate on May 15, withdraw its last troops by Aug. i. Snapped a Colonial Office spokesman: "Nothing could be clearer!"

One night last week three inches of snow drifted down on the mosques, churches and synagogues of Jerusalem. In the sparkling morning, Jewish and Arab boys had a snowball fight across Princess Mary Avenue. Soon there would be different battles in that street.

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