Britain Will Not Take Palestine Financial Surplus, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 16, 1947.

Click here to view the original article.

LONDON, Nov. 15 (AP)—The Foreign Office denied today that Britain plans to take over any financial surplus in Palestine before leaving, to pay the costs of evacuation and combating unauthorized Jewish immigration.

“Not only is there no such plan, but there is no such intention,” a Foreign Office spokesman told reporters. A report of such plans, credited to the New York Herald Tribune, had been published in London newspapers.

The spokesman declared there would be “very little” left in the Palestine account after the British withdrawal, chiefly because of the amounts which will have to be paid out in pensions to civil servants “mostly Jews and Arabs.”

“When all the expenses are met,” he declared, “there is far more likely to be a deficit than a surplus.”

The spokesman said British operations in Palestine “never have been a profitable concern; to the contrary, it has always been a very great drain.”