Conflict in Palestine, United Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 23, 1947

British Block Refugee Ship, Seize 800 Jews

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JERUSALEM, Dec. 22—The Royal Navy today seized the “You Can’t Scare Us,” a refugee ship reportedly loaded with 800 reinforcements for the Jewish “defense army” Haganah.

Although all of the ship’s passengers were said to be young they were reported to have given up without a struggle.

British patrol craft sighted the ship, a schooner, at noon and followed it until a light breeze drove it into territorial waters. It was reported to have been taken to Haifa, and the refugees were expected to be taken to Cyprus tonight.

Three Jews and four Arabs were killed today. The three Jews and one of the Arabs were killed in sniping around Bat Yam, a suburb of Jaffe. The other Arabs were killed in a brief but hot battle with a Jewish truck convoy at Yagour, near Jaffa.

(The number of persons killed in the Holy Land since the United Nations voted for partition November 29 has reached 304, an unofficial Associated Press tabulation showed. The toll for the entire Middle East stood at 424.

(Frontiers facing Palestine virtually were closed Monday night to all non-Arabs as Middle East nations adjacent to the Holy Land intensified their preparations for war against Zionism.)

LEGION TO REMAIN

A spokesman for the British Palestine government said the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan, the beat Arab fighting force in the Middle East, would at be removed from the Holy Land as the Jews demand, “so long as Jewish attacks on the British continue.”

The Yagour battle was fought at the same spot where Jewish convoys exchanged fire yesterday with Arabs. Arab snipers hid in irrigation ditches outside Yagour today and opened up on the convoy when it passed through. The armed guard fired back and killed three Arabs.

British police hunting for arms seized 46 Arabs in four places. Thirty were arrested at Ras El Ain near Tel Aviv. When three rifles, three pistols and 1000 cartridges were found in their bus. Eight of the others were arrested when a truck in which they were riding was found to contain three rifles.

ARAB ‘CAPITAL’

(According to Associated Press the Arabs have established Nablus, 30 miles north of Jerusalem, as the capital of their resistance movement. Young Arabs, many of them bearded, are massing in the town and are openly carrying arms in the streets without interference from the outnumbered British police.

(In the face of the bitter Arab-Jewish fighting some members on both sides were making their own personal peace. In the port city of Haifa Jews living in Arab districts have traded apartments with Arabs living in Jewish sections Jews and Arabs also are working side by side on the docks and in the oil refinery and have co-operated to speed the shipment of Palestine’s citrus crop.)

The Arab newspaper Falastin (of Jaffa) reported that Palestine Jews in Lebanon had been warned to get out not later than January 1. It said the warning was the result of “pressure put on the Lebanese government by the Palestine Arab Higher Committee.”

PRESS ATTACK

The Palestine Post, a Jewish publication, said “one more step has been taken by a Arab state down the slippery-slope of defiance of international law.”

It was reported earlier that a resolution had been submitted to the Arab League which would declare Jewish citizens in all Arab countries to be citizens of the Jewish state of Palestine and therefore “enemies of the Arab states.” Under this proposed resolution, they would be interned as “political prisoners” unless they joined the Arab forces.