British Halt Arms Shipments to Arabs, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 1948.

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LONDON, June 3 (AP)-Britain today suspended arms shipments to Egypt, Trans-Jordan and Iraq. At the same time she banned the travel to Palestine of fit Jews of military age from territories she controls.

Both actions were taken under the U. N. resolution for a four week truce.

The Sims ban in effect temporarily supersedes Britains’ treaties with the three Arab countries under which she was obligated to supply their armed forces with equipment of all kinds.

Britain already had stopped arms shipments to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. Syria and Yemen, the other four Arab states. This was in accordance with an earlier U. N. resolution for an arms embargo. She was not committed by treaty to supply them.

The amount of arms stopped from shipment is a military secret.

The foreign office spokesman announced the ban on transport of Jewish refugees for the period of the truce About 24,000 Jews at Cyprus were affected. They were deported upon interception of their immigration ships. About 500 already had left the island for Palestine.

The ban also affected 400 Jewish deportees in camps in Kenya. East Africa, and the spokesman said the freeze would apply to all fit Jews of military age in other territories under British control, including the British zone of Germany.

A foreign office spokesman said the ban was the result of Britain’s own interpretation of the U. N. truce which calls for a stand-still in the introduction of “fighting personnel” into the Holy Land by either side during the truce.

“We interpret the term ‘fighting personnel’ as something broader than ‘armed offices,” said the spokesman. He added that many Jews on Cyprus had received some military training.

In Washington an official of the Israeli government declared the British action “a flagrant and unwarranted violation of the Security Council cease-fire order,” He said it would make more difficult the work of the U. N. mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte.

A Jewish spokesman here said the British Interpretation was not in harmony with the U. N. resolution, which he said was specifically amended to allow immigration to Palestine to go on. He pointed out the resolution provided no immigrants were to be trained or mobilized during the truce period, and that Israel’s acceptance of the trust was on the assumption immigration would be allowed to continue.

(United Press reported from Tel Avid that leaders of the 24,000 Jews interned in Cyprus protested bitterly to Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok against the British ban on immigration of men of military age.

(“We demand that we be immediately set free and transferred to Israel,” the cablegram to Shertok said.)

The Foreign Office spokesman said older men, women and children among Cyrus Jews would be allowed to leave, but men between the ages of 18 and 45 would not.

A Board of Tarde order tonight barred export of all war materials, including explosives even if designed for industrial use, to Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.