ARABS AND JEWS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21865, 19 August 1936, Page 9

ARABS AND JEWS

RACIAL CONFLICT IN PALESTINE THE UNDERLYING CAUSES [THE PRESS special reryice.J WELLINGTON, August 18. The racial clash in Palestine is due in part to Arab resentment of the Jews’ return to their own country, under the Zionist movement, and in part to causes dating back to Old Testament times, according to the Rev. J. W. Kent. Seventh Day Adventist pastor, at present at \Vellingtpn on his way back to Sydney after a world tour. In April last, said Mr Kent, he left Damascus to drive through by motorbus to Jerusalem. The bus took them through Nablus, the present-day town on the site of the ancient Scheehem. It was there that Jacob’s sons put the inhabitants to the sword in revenge for ap affront to their sister. Ever since that time the people pf Nablus had nursed a violent hatred . for the Jews, and from time to time the smouldering fire of their resentment had kindled into open flame. It was so last April, when active violence broke out there between the Arabs and the Jews. The bus in which Mr Kent was travelling was stoned by tbs townsfolk, although guarded, on either side by ranks of British soldiers standing with rifles ready. The root of the trouble, be explained, was that the Jews were taking back to Palestine the progressive modern ways of Europe and America, and the Arabs resented this. They preferred their own primitive agricultural and constructional methods, The greater industry and intelligence of the Jews would eventually give them control of Palestine, although numerically they would remain a minority. Haifa, a town of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants less than a decade ago, had been built up by the Jews to a city of 125,000, with one qf the finest harbours in the Mediterranean, and gome of the finest houses in the world. That was the sort of thing the fanatical Arabs disliked.