Arabs, Jews Can’t Get Together on Palestine Truce, United Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 9, 1948.

NEW YORK, April 8 (U.P)-The United Nations negotiations for a truce in Palestine verged on failure tonight.

Neither Arabs nor Jews budged from their conflicting positions on what will be needed to halt the increasing Holy Land bloodshed.

After two hours of private negotiations with delegates of the Arab Higher Committee and 90 minutes with spokesmen for the Jewish Agency,
Alfonso Lopez of Colombia, president of the Security Council, announced- “The prospects (for a truce) are not as favorable as I anticipated.”

Jamal El Husseini of the Higher Committee said flatly that the Arabs of Palestine would not negotiate with the Jewish Agency and that truce without “justice” was impossible.

Moshe Shertok of the Agency said he saw no “bridge” which would bring the feuding Arabs and Jews together on a cease-fire agreement.

Lopez, negotiating with the aid of U. N. Secretary General Trygve Lie, decided to make another try on Saturday,

The statements given to reporters by Shertok and Husseini appeared to mean the Security Council would fail to get the Palestine truce which it desires as a prelude to attempts to settle the Holy Land problem.

The truce move was initiated by the United States as a prelude to its plan for shelving Palestine partition and imposing a U. N. trusteeship there.

Rabbi Reichert Comments On Partition Reversal

“If it now appears to our Government that the decision to partition Palestine was a mistake, then surely it is far better to reconsider that decision now than to compound the original error.” Rabbi Irving F. Reichert said yesterday.

Rabbi Reichert, Rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, spoke as national vice president of the American Council for Judaism. The group is opposed to Jewish nationalism.

“It is a great tragedy,” Rabbi Reichert said, “that Palestine, which was to be a land of peace and security for disinherited and persecuted Jews, is today the most insecure place on earth.

“The rejection by extremists,” he continued, “of all proposals for a democratic commonwealth or a binational state, and their inflexible insistence on nothing short of a Jewish state, has already cost thousands of lives and the destruction of much valuable property.

“Unless peace is quickly restored,” Rabbi Reichert held, “the prospects are too appalling to contemplate.”

Jewish Protest Meeting Held in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, April 8 (AP)-A Jewish protest meeting drew some 15,000 persons to the steps of City Hall today.

Decrying the U. S. Government’s reversal on Palestine partitioning, Representative Holified, the main speaker, said- “Our vacillating policy is disgraceful. The roots of opposition are moved chiefly by base financial greed.”

Rabbi Max Nussbaum read a resolution, in effect, asking the State Department to reverse the reversal and go back to the partition plan.