PERMANENT MANDATE COMMISSION REPORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 201, 25 August 1937, Page 7

PERMANENT MANDATE COMMISSION REPORT.

PALESTINE PROBLEM. I Proposed Partition Plan Not Endorsed. ;, WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION. 1 c British Official Wireless. 11 (Received 1.30 p.m.) j ] RUGBY, August 24. j 1 Full reports of the Permanent Man- ' ( dates Commission of the League. Council on the Royal Commission's! proposals for Palestine have now 1 been sent to members of the Council, ] and a summary of the report has. been made public. ( Regarding tlie 193G disturbances, the ' i Mandates Commission fully recognises ] the difficulties of preventing them, but ; is not convinced that it would not have j been possible to adopt more decisive' ] measures at an earlier date with a view < to putting down armed resistance. j In a preliminary opinion on the status 1 of Palestine, the possibility of main-; taining the existing mandate is discussed. The commission states that inevitable antagonism between the i aspirations of the two races was fur- ' ther accentuated and exasperated by 1 circumstances which could not have been 1 foreseen 20 years ago. . ] The present mandate became almost unworkable, the commission considers, when it was publicly declared to be so ' by the Royal Commission and the man- ' datory Government itself. The com- i 1 mission, therefore, considers that it is l ' worth continuing examination of the | advantages and drawbacks of a new | territorial solution. j ' Position of Holy Places. | j As regards the proposal to withdraw holy places from domination by Arabs , and Jews, and place them under a j special regime, the commission thinks . that such a step could not but be of; ; advantage to general peace, provided , this regime is based on an article of; ( the present mandate safeguarding in i , perpetuity the rights of the various j religions. i While declaring itself favourable, in j principle, to examination of a solution j involving partition, the Commission does not thereby endorse the idea of the immediate creation of two new independent States. The report concludes: "As for the mandatory Power itself, the concern with which it has, for nearly twenty | years, sought to appease antagonistic feelings prevailing in Palestine must awaken in any man of goodwill a degree \ of admiration of the higher justice exercised in a world in which brutal violence often stills the voice of j humanity. | "Let the Jews, who have all too often I and without justification, shown ' impatience at the delay and hesitation which the mandatory Power has felt compelled to bring to the building up of their national home, ask themselves where there is any other nation by which they have been so little persecuted, and to which for generations past they owe so' many benefits. j "Let the Arabs—whose opposition to | what is nevertheless a measure of higher I justice, which cannot be carried out with- j out sacrifice from their side, can be readily understood—remember the origin of their national emancipation. Without | British efforts certainly there would! have been no Jewish national home, buti also there would have been, on the threshold of the twentieth century, no independent Arab State."