Arrivals & Departures

The Palestine powder train burned shorter & shorter. Encouraged by their easy success at Haifa (TIME, May 3), the Jews attacked Arab Jaffa and began to attack Arab quarters in Jerusalem. But the British, who wanted to win back Arab friends in the last days of the mandate, decided that there must be no more Haifas. They beat the Jews back from Jaffa, ordered a cease-fire in Jerusalem suburbs, and rushed reinforcements from Cyprus, Malta and Suez to hold the Jews.

Road to Damascus. For the first time, the Arab world was glimpsing the sickening possibility of defeat. Fat effendis in tasseled tarbooshes and doublebreasted business suits were streaming from Jerusalem in new American sedans that swayed under the load of rolled-up Turkish rugs and bundled household goods. Their escape route led past Gethsemane and Bethany to the Dead Sea, through Jericho, across the shallow Jordan by Allenby Bridge to Arab Trans-Jordan; then, past caravans of sneering camels, to the crowded, expensive hotels of Damascus and Beirut.

The rich refugees left a trail of alarm and despondency. In the hotels they cursed the British and the Jews ("At least Hitler would have killed them all"). Said one British official in Jerusalem last week: "The whole effendi class has gone. It is remarkable how many of the younger ones are suddenly deciding that this might be a good time to resume their studies at Oxford . . ." Meanwhile, Arab papers trumpeted minor troop shufflings as major victories. When a detachment of Trans-Jordan's Arab Legion took positions around Jericho (under British commanders), one Beirut paper headlined: ABDULLAH'S ARMY STANDS BEFORE JERUSALEM.

Road to Amman. Plump, turbaned little King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan was indeed the center of Arab hopes. The danger of defeat, which sent Arab refugees scuttling from Palestine, sent Arab politicians to Abdullah in Amman. Cabled TIME Correspondent Eric Gibbs after a visit last week: "Amman has become an Oriental boom town, crowded by Arab politicians, foreign diplomats and correspondents paying exorbitant prices to sleep four in a room in the Philadelphia Hotel. The streets are crowded with Arab Legionnaires in spiked helmets with Beau Geste backflaps, Bedouins in rags of lacelike complexity, donkeys, camels, jeeps, trucks, U.S. cars. Through this tangled mass, a Legion jeep, mounting a Bren gun and a loud horn, clears the way for three white-helmeted motorcyclists preceding King Abdullah's lordly Cadillac."

Abdullah's Legion was the only major Arab force ready to move quickly and effectively. But it was easy to exaggerate what such a force could accomplish. And the Legion could not move far without a green light from the British, on whom it has depended for money, arms and leadership. One of Abdullah's visitors last week was Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, mild-mannered secretary general of the Arab League. He made no rash claims. Unshaven and weary, with his tarboosh pushed far back on his head, he admitted disconsolately that the Arabs were "the most inefficient and undisciplined people in the world." They could not at present, he thought, defeat the Jews in pitched battles, but he claimed that they would win in the end. Asked how long it would take, Azzam smiled wanly: "Six months, nine months, perhaps a year."

Meanwhile, at Lake Success, the U.N. General Assembly ended its second week of discussion of what to do. There were prospects of peace in at least one small part of Palestine: Jewish Prime Minister-to-be David Ben-Gurion, who had been visiting Jewish militiamen during Passover, cabled his representatives at U.N. to accept a truce for Jerusalem's Old City. But most of the U.N. debate was still concerned with procedural issues. Between meetings, the delegates of the 58 nations sent their assistants to the newsstand in the U.N. cafeteria to buy the latest editions of the newspapers, to find out what else had happened in Palestine.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.