Palestine Bloodshed, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1947

Nineteen Killed in New Violence; British Governor Warns Both Sides

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By Associated Press

JERUSALEM, Dec. 10—The death toll in 11 days of Holy Land violence climbed to 131 tonight, and Sir Alan Cunningham, the High Commissioner, warned Jews and Arabs that unless the bloodletting ceases “severe measures” would be taken against both communities.

A British police officer and a territorial soldier died from wounds, bringing to 19 the number of deaths reported today. It was one of the worst days of scattered violence since the United Nations decision to partition Palestine.

The Jewish-Arab warfare spread to the southern desert, where 10 deaths were reported. Eighteen Arabs smashed their way out of Acre prison in the far north.

An Associated Press count of deaths in Palestine included 78 Jews, 45 Arabs, six British and two Armenians. The total for the entire Middle East was 243.

A dispatch from Aden said two Arabs were killed by local police in an attack upon a Jewish shop. This would bring casualties in that Arabian port to 114—75 Jews, 36 Arabs and three Indians—and raise the Middle East figure to 245. The dispatch added that many Jews were leaving the city in the wake of the Jew-Arab strife.

ARAB WAR COUNCIL

Representatives of the Arab League held their third session in the current meeting at Cairo for organizing their forces to oppose the U. N. decision on Palestine.

The Arab leaders were in touch with the Syrian delegate to the United Nations Security Council in New York. They made arrangements also to confer here with an Iraqi official who Arab informants said had been in consultation with American and British officials on Palestine.

In Cairo, an Arab “save Palestine Committee” set December 14 for a nation-wide day of demonstration against partition. The marchers will form at Al Azhar Mosque and march to the royal palace, then go to the headquarters of the Arab league.

Arabs in northern Acre engaged guards with gunfire after the escaping prisoners overpowered and bound the warden in the ancient prison, an official statement said. The break came after Jewish prisoners in Acre were transferred to central prison in Jerusalem. Riots between Jewish and Arab prisoners had flared after the announcement on partition.

Six Jews, one a woman, were killed in an ambush by Arab Bedouin tribesmen in the southern desert area. The Jews were from the settlement of Gevulot in the Negeb.

HOUSE BLOWN UP

At the nearby Arab village of Karatiya the Jews struck back and blew up an Arab house. Jewish informants said four Arabs died in the blast.

In the port city of Haifa a British military dispatch rider was mowed down by gunfire and two Jews were killed. A Spanish priest watching from a roof was wounded during a street battle in which a score of persons were injured.

A Jewish policeman guarding Haifa railway station shot and killed an Arab worker he said attacked him.

The bodies of two more Arabs were found in the battered “no man’s land” between all-Jewish Tel Aviv and all-Arab Jaffa, but comparative quiet prevailed there. Arab informants said Haganah, the Jewish underground army, had asked for a truce in that battleground.

Reports from Tel Aviv said Mayor Israel Rokach of that city was expected to meet this week with Mayor Yussef Heikal of Jaffa on security measures for the border area between the two cities.

Police combed the area for illegal arms and one Haganah fighter was killed. The Jews charged he was shot in the back by police after being disarmed and released. A Jewish Agency spokesman complained the police were hitting at the Jews and commented “it seems some are ready to pay off all kinds of scores.”