ABSTRACT
The Soviet-Arab alignment at the juncture did not mean that Moscow shared the Arab desire to precipitate the establishment of an independent Palestine before the Jewish population became unduly large. The differences apparently resulted largely from the Soviet conception of the role of a major power as placing restrictions on the USSR that were not incumbent on the People's Democracies. The East European states sometimes qualified their utterances lest they appear to be committing the Soviet Union in instances where the latter's policy had not yet been resolved or announced. Soviet caution and ambivalence regarding Palestine's political future were especially marked in the USSR's relations with the Arabs both in its propaganda—notably in its Arabic broadcasts—and on the diplomatic level in the Arab capitals. Soviet reasoning was that of a major world power, without the limitations occasionally imposed on the Western powers by domestic or foreign public opinion.
