"We Will Fight"

In Palestine, as at Flushing Meadow, there was joy among Jews. In the early morning hours, when news of the U.N. vote reached Tel Aviv, cheering crowds danced the traditional hora. In Jerusalem and Haifa, jubilant thousands paraded the streets waving the blue & white Zionist flag. Even British Tommies joined in the fun. Jews began debating the name for their promised state. Most likely choice: New Judea, although ironically the tentative borders (see map) exclude from Jewish control most of ancient Judea.

Mobilization. But would there ever really be a state for the Jews to name? Could U.N. make its decision stick? While city crowds celebrated, Arabs ambushed two buses in an orange grove southeast of Tel Aviv, sprayed them with gunfire. Five Jews died, 14 were wounded. Arab prisoners attacked Jews in Acre prison. In Damascus, Syria, Moslem youths stoned the U.S. Legation, tore down the U.S. flag, and then looted the Russian-Syrian Cultural Center.

In Cairo, Arab League Secretary Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha joined other Arab leaders in promising warfare on the Jews: "I cannot say where and when I will place my troops. I can only say we will fight and are preparing for victory." Azzam Pasha had just returned from a flying visit to Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud. In Azzam Pasha's pocket, said aides, was Ibn Saud's promise to use most of his U.S. oil royalties (about $20,000,000 a year) to modernize his Bedouin army and to arm Palestinian Arabs for the war on Zionism.

The Arab Higher Committee for Palestine pushed a recruiting drive for Arab soldiers, setting a quota for each Arab village: a minimum of 30 men from each, up to 120 in the larger ones.

The Arabs planned uprisings, an economic blockade, concentrated attacks on outlying Jewish settlements and pinpoint attacks against the long exposed borders of the crazy-quilt Jewish state. The Arabs seemed resigned to the prospect of an armed struggle. They regarded partition in its present form as so outrageous that there was no alternative.

War Next Summer? So far U.N. has made little provision to deal with armed disturbances. The U.N. plan calls for withdrawal of British troops by Aug. 1, 1948 (London said this week that they would probably leave sooner). After that the plan entrusts the policing of Palestine to Jews and Arabs themselves, in their assigned areas.

At best, there will be guerrilla attacks on Jews. At worst (unless U.N., having decided partition, enforces it), there may be general Arab-Jewish warfare as soon as the British leave. In Jerusalem last week a Christian Arab housewife looked down from her balcony on cheering Jews. "Let them celebrate today," she muttered. "Soon they'll all be dead."

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