The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. TUESDAY, JULY 6, 1937. DIVIDING PALESTINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

TUESDAY, JULY 6, 1937. DIVIDING PALESTINE.

For the cause that iacks assistance, For the tcrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Fearing possible disturbances when the report of the Royal Commission on Palestine Is published, the British Government has sent a battle-cruiser to Haifa. There is also reported the expectation that the Commission will recommend the partition of Palestine. Whether the Government fears trouble whatever the nature of the report may be, or whether it thinks that trouble is especially likely if partition is recommended, is not clear; but, whatever may be the fact, the prospect is unhappy. If partition—which obviously is not an ideal arrangement in a country less than, one-tenth the size of New Zealand —is recommended, it will only be because the Commission has despaired of devising , any other workable proposal.

The problem is an exceptionally difficult oiip, and it has other sides in addition to that presented by the strife between Jews and Arabs. All Christendom is deeply interested in the present and future welfare of Palestine. Strategically, it is "the key to the Eastern Mediterranean and of the route to India by the Suez Canal." There is a British naval base at Haifa, which is the terminus of the oil pipe-line from Iraq. The British Government therefore has to have regard to Imperial interests as well as to its obligation to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration, and to the Arabs, who wish the Mandate abolished. One suggestion published in England is that the Commission will recommend giving to the Arabs the hills and all Samaria, to the Mandatory Power Jerusalem and Haifa, and to the Jews the coastal region, the Negeb in the South, the Plain of Bsdraelon, and the greater part of Galilee. Such a division, in which, to mention only one feature, Zionism would be separated from Zion, would seem likely to create more problems than it would solve.

But the present problems are great and menacing. The Jews have grown in number from 84,000 in a total population of 752,048 in 1922 to about 370,483 in 1,336,518 in 1936. A new, virile nation is spreading out farther across the country. To its spread the Arabi are implacably opposed; they want Jewish immigration completely and finally stopped. As the president of the Commission remarked, there is no such word as "compromise" in the East.