"Even More Disrupted"

Amid the whine of bullets and whoompf of mortar shells, Jerusalem took brief hope last week from the arrival of the storks. Each year the birds winter in Africa; it is a good omen when they stop in Palestine on their return to Europe in the spring. But this year, instead of staying several days, they left quickly. Arabs and Jews shook their heads.

In the hills outside Jerusalem, British troops stopped a battle between Jews and Arabs. There the Jews were trying to dislodge Arab snipers who have almost cut off communications between Jerusalem and the coast. The British military commander, Brigadier Charles Phibbs Jones, made a quiet point: "Prolonged firing between Arabs and Jews within Jerusalem makes life intolerable for its inhabitants."

Not only in Jerusalem, but in much of Palestine, legal quibbles at Lake Success seemed very remote; the immediate question was whether or not people would continue to get their daily bread, fuel, water, government services of any kind after the British leave May 15.

The British, who have been importing 13,000 tons of flour a month, served notice that they would not import food for civilians after May 15. And how would Jerusalem's 100,000 Jews get their fuel oil (which comes by pipeline across Arab lands) or water (which is pumped from .the wells of Ras el Ain in Jewish Palestine through Arab territory)? Who would run and maintain railroads, the postal system, telegraphs and ports, or patrol the borders against cholera-carriers?

In Jerusalem, the advance party of the Palestine Commission were prisoners of hate. They dared not stir out of the British security zone, encircled with barbed wire and gun emplacements, except in bulletproof cars. No Arab leader would speak to them; Jews had to talk to them mostly over the telephone.

The British last week repeated their determination to take no responsibility for ruling Palestine, or even for protecting the U.N. Commission members, after mid-May. Last week Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones warned the Security Council that after that date Palestine will probably be "disorganized, disintegrated, and even more violent and disrupted."

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