Zion Trusteeship Plan Faces Tough Battle, NY Post, Mar. 21, 1948.

By JOHN HOHENBERG Chief United Nations Correspondent

Lake Success, Mar. 20- The age-old fight for a Jewish state in Palestine forged onward today without the support of the U. S. once its greatest champion.

In the dishonored tradition at the British White Paper of 1939, which bid for Arab loyalty at the expense of the Jews during a time of world crisis, the American Black Paper of 1948 ditched the United Nations partition of the Holy Land.

And yet the leaders of the 600,000 Jews of Palestine called on them to march unfalteringly toward their historic goal, even though the great and powerful of the earth were against them, even though they marched alone.

“The force of law and right will be on our side if we go on to create our Jewish state,” said a Jewish leader who refused to be dismayed. He counted on the youth of Palestine, the survivors of the 6,000,000 who died in Hitler’s terrible massacre, to play their part in the trials to come, and to the strength of their arms it was always possible to add the indomitable spirit of civil disobedience.London, Mar, 20 (AP)-Government sources predicted today that Britain will stick to her target date for quitting Palestine despite U. S. withdrawal of support for partition. Final decision on the matter is up to the Cabinet.

Difficult Road Ahead

An enormously difficult road lay ahead for the Jews of Palestine.

They had been forsaken by the Americans and they were surrounded by hostile Arabs whose violence intimidated a world organization devoted to peace and security.

They faced the possibility that Great Britain’s soldiers would stay on to try to keep them in check even after the mandate ends May 15.

It was only too tragically true that the U. S. was urging Britain to remain in control of the Hoiy Land until such time as the U. S. plan for a U. N. trusteeship could be acted on be a special session of the General Assembly, to be conveyed in April.

That move was implicit in the U. S. abandonment of partition, which was decided on by President Truman and his Cabinet level advisers, and which relieved them of the necessity of co-operating with Russia in a strategic area controlling the oil of the Middle East.

But for all the frantic U. S. retreat from the cause of partition, which this country led in adopting before the Assembly last Nov. 29, there was no real certainty of the success of the new trusteeship plan.

Council Meets Wednesday

When the Security Council meets Wednesday, it will be confronted with three U. S. resolutions to carry out the proposal-

1. A call for the convening of a special Assembly of the 57 nations at Flushing Meadow within 15 days.

2. A program for a corporate U. N. trusteeship of Palestine, to be kept on until, as one official put it, the Jews and Arabs prove themselves capable of self-government. (Partition could emerge from this trust, but more likely a canonization plan is intended.)

3. An order to the U. N. Palestine Commission to cease its ineffective efforts to implement the partition plan.

The proposals are, of course, open to a Soviet veto but even if the veto is applied the U. S. can and will ask Secretary General Lie to poll the membership for a special session anyway.

Under U. S. pressure, the necessary majority for such a meeting could be obtained quickly and the Assembly could convene by mid-April at the latest.

Meanwhile the Americans, in hope of the co-operation of the British and Frebe, would be trying get agreement on the setup of a separate corporate body under the Trusteeship Council to be known as the Government of Palestine.

But the continued presence of the British would remain a necessity in the Holy Land in order to enforce a trusteeship, characterized by the Americans as temporary. And the Jews and Arabs would have to give it some measure of co-operation or it wouldn’t work.

None of these conditions are at all certainties, least of all Jewish and Arab co-operation.

As another possible roadblock, there remains the difficulty of getting a two-thirds majority of the Assembly to vote for a trusteeship plan set upon the abandoned ruins of Partition. That is also in doubt.

Moreover, even though Russia until now has boycotted the Trusteeship Council, it as likely as not to make an exemption of the Palestine case, take its seat and demand to be considered a power directly concerned in the holy land. And that, too, would be inconvenient to the State Dept. in its rush to dodge the Russians at the expense of he cause of a Jewish homeland.

Finally, there is he carefully chosen admonition of Lie who, in a direct warning to Warren R. Austin of the U.S. delegation, declared that the U. N. Special Palestine Commission last summer “found a trusteeship for Palestine would be fought by two parties instead of one ad that it would require more military help to restore peace and security than partition.”

The U. S. still doesn’t want to send its troops into Palestine, but neither does anyone else among America’s allies, and it may take some still more extraordinary circumstances to keep the British there indefinitely.

So trusteeship, as even the Americans admit, has little more chance now of succeeding than partition and there is more than a suspicion that some officials are counting on the move to force the Jews and Arabs to make an agreement among themselves. That hope, as always, remains vain.

Literally months of legal brawling, diplomatic complications and almost complete confusion are ahead, and the greatest sufferers by far will not be the Jews of Palestine but the UN itself.

The American shift, with its consequent weakening of the UN, has dismayed even top delegates faithful to the wishes of the U. S., and they have not scrupled to voice their fears that a U. N. that trembles before the weak Arabs will literally fall to pieces in the face of any Russian threats.

The situation was summed up in a mournful comment made to a Palestine Commission member by Lie, in announcing the American reversal on the partition plan.

“The first-born of the UN died today,” said Lie.

And the Commission member replied gravely, “I fear for the mother, as well.”