Palestine Arabs to Fight Nordic Or Any Troops, NY Herald Tribune, Mar. 28, 1948.

Warn They Will War on Danish and Norse Units Proposed by the Jews

The Arab Higher Committee of Palestine warned yesterday that the Arabs will fight Scandinavian troops or tropes of any other nationality sent to the Holy Land to protect the holy places of Jerusalem after the British withdraw on May 15.

Condemning a proposal Friday by the Jewish Agency for Palestine for a Jerusalem garrison of 10,000 Danes and Norwegians, Isa Nakhleh, United Nations representative of the Arab Higher Committee, said here that “the Arabs will never permit the entry of any more foreign troops to Palestine” after the British mandate ends.

In Damascus, Syria, Jamal Effendi Husseini, vice-president of the committee, said that if foreign troops are sent to the Holy Land “the Arab states will consider themselves free from promises not to interfere militarily and will send their armed troops to Palestine.”

Mr. Nakhleh, whose offices are with those of the Syrian U. N. delegation in the Empire State Building, said that Moslem and Christian Arabs will protect “the holy places of Christianity, Islam and Judaism” from destruction in any future fighting in Jerusalem.

He said that “the only danger which might come to the holy places would come from indiscriminate Jewish bombing” and he charged that the Jewish Agency was trying to prepare world opinion for a series of outrages in Jerusalem which the Jews would commit themselves and then blame the Arabs.

At the Jewish Agency, 16 East Sixty-sixth Street, it was said that “to permit Arab gangs to control the old city of Jerusalem is to surrender the shrines sacred to all faiths to the most impious and fanatical elements in Palestine.”

“Sheik Bahri, the commander of the Arab snipers in the old city,” the Agency said in a statement, “has openly boasted of firing at Jewish funerals bound for the Mount of Olives and of keeping Jews away from the Wailing Wall. His snipers take cover behind the walls of the Great Mosque to fire into the Jewish quarter.”

The Agency submitted photographs of Sheik Bahri “in action” to the U. N. Security Council two weeks ago, the Agency representative said.

In Oslo, Norway, the conservative newspaper “Morgenbladet” assailed the Jewish Agency proposal, which was made public in Jerusalem along with charges that the United Nations was completely losing interest in protecting the holy places which were to have been placed under an international regime as part of the U. N.’s plan for Palestine partition.