TOO-MUCH-PROMISED LAND

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 85, 4 January 1930, Page 9

TOO-MUCH-PROMISED LAND

REALITIES IN PALESTINE AN IMPARTIAL STUDY HOW BOTH SIDES SEE IT The true explanation of all the recent trouble in Palestine is that during the war the British Government, or its accredited respesentatives, promised the same cake to two different peoples (writes a special correspondent of the London “Observer”). The Jews, in retrn for the financial aid rendered to the Allies, were under the famous Balfour Declaration; promised a National Home in Palestine; while the Arabs, for the active assistance they rendered against the Turk, were promised self-government—and, incidentally, in the least advanced of the Arab countries, the Hedjaz, this is an accomplished fact, whilst Trans-Jordania and Iraq enjoy something much more approaching independence that Palestine. The Arabs are now demanding the independence they were promised in 1917, and the Jews are just as firmly insisting upon the carrying out of the Balfour Declaration and the National Home. Palestine is only about 10,000 square miles in extent, and for an agricultural country-—of which at least one-third is desert—-is already densely populated. There is obviously no room to carry out the two ideals in Palestone, and it will require someone considerably wiser than Solomon to solve the difficulty, as the old panacea of fifty-fifty will not be accepted by either party. The Arab Case. Generally speaking, the Arabs of Palestine are not anti-British, and the recent rising was directed solely against the Jews, whom formerly they treated as a weak and unassuming race, but who they now find are fast becoming a power in the country. The Arab plea -is that they were promised independence which is not forthcoming—though incidentally this plea has on]y recently been brought forward with any insistence to strengthen their protest against the Jewish invasion —and that no public statement has ever been made as to what actually was intended’ 1 by the Balfour Declaration. If there were some attempt on the part of the British Government to be more explicit the Arabs might possibly attempt to reconcile the situation with their aspirations, but in the absence of any explanation they understand that it means the handing over of their country to the Jews. The appoinement of Sir Herbert Samuel as first High Commissioner lent colour to this belief, though Sir Herbert was most scrupulously fair, and if anything more sympathetic to Arab aspirations than to Jewish; but the Oriental finds it extremely difficult to believe that a man can be just and fair to the detriment of his own race.

The. Arab argument that the country is theirs by continuous occupation cannot be denied. They maintain that previous to the Jewish invasion, in the days of Joshua and Judah, they were the original inhabitants of the country; that it was only during the most virile periods of the Jewish Kingdom that the Hebrew race ruled all Palestine, and that their normal occupation of the country from the days of Joshua and the breakup of the kingdom during Roman times was only Jerusalem and a few hill towns—the whole of the remainder of Palestine being governed and occupied by the Philistines and other tribes, ancestors of the existing inhabitants. And that except for a very short break during the First Crusade they have held and occupied the country ever since. The Land Question. The minor points in the Arab case are • (a) The acquisition of land by the Jews. (b) Preponderance of Jewish officials in the Government. (c) Indiscriminate immigration of Jews; and (d) The official use of the Hebrew language. With regard to the acquisition of land, this was bought at a fair market price with money subscribed by Jewish societies, and a certain proportion was advantageously purchased when the country was suffering from a period of financial . depression. The majority of the land when the Jews bought it was practically unexploited and produced indifferent corn crops only. The Arabs see the land they sold as second-rate corn land now thoroughly irrigated and cultivated and producing valuable orange crops. This is a very irritating state of affairs, but the Arabs have no real cause for complaint, as the same thing is happening every day in every country in the world. They sold the land ten years or more ago at its market value, and they have only themselves to blame if the present owners are making a better profit out of it than they did. According to Arab propaganda the financial depression was deliberately engineered to force them to sell, but there is no truth in this accusation—it was the ordinary financial stringency that afflicted every country after the war. > Jewish Immigrants. The accusation that Jewish officials are given preference in Government employ is both true and untrue. Taking into consideration the police and all services, the number of Arabs employed is largely in excess of the Jews; but it is a fact that in the higher and more responsible positions the Jews preponderate. The reason for this is obvious—there are few Arabs who possesse the necessary qualifications to fill important and highly technical posts, whereas Jewry has an inexhaustible supply of educated and talented men. The complaint that Palestine has been flooded with Jewish immigrants of a bad tvpe is more or less true. A considerable number of penniless immigrants, some of them ' undesirable, have been brought into the country, thereby causing unemployment and incidentally the raising of wages. Through them the Palestinian employer of labour has been introduced to that higher form of civilisation which Great Britain is trying to discard—the strike. The Government, being responsible for the introduction or these immigrants, had to find them work and at the same time had to take steps to bring the scale of wages up to an European standard. This lias benefited neither the employer nor the employee; the employer has to pay a higher rate to his labourers, who do not work as well as they did in pre-war days, and the employee, though he receives higher wages when employed, experiences difficulty in obtaining work. The Use of Hebrew. The compulsory use of the Hebrew language in addition to Arabic and English in all Government and municipal offices is a great expense to a poor country like Palestine. The Arabs maintain that Hebrew is a dead language, and is not recognised in any other country,; and that all the Jews who come to Palestine should use either Arabic or English. The maintenance of Jewish, clerks and interpretters in every office in the country is an expense that is not justified in a country that has difficulty in balancing its Budget. This briefly is the situation in Palestine. The Wailing Wall episode, fomented by religious fanaticism, on either side, was merely the head of an abscess which had been forming since 1919. The Jews had used the old wall of Solomon's Temple for their lamentations during centuries of Turkish occupation without any serious trouble arising, and but for the feeling aroused by the Balfour Declaration might have continued to do so indefinitely. Bv taking the law into their own hands the Arabs would, in any case, have lost much sympathy from the civilised world, but through accompanying their rising against the Jews with savage murders

of old men, women and children, and the indiscriminate looting of Jewish shops and property, they have effectively put themselves out of court. There can be no question of granting self-government to a nation so far z removed from civilisation that a sense of grievance coupled with religious fanaticism takes the form of wholesale murder and loot. A Too-much Promised Land. That the Palestinian Arab has a grievance cannot be denied, but their method of calling attention to it has been too savage and too primitive to enlist much sympathy on their behalf. To grant them anv concessions and in any way to deflect from the path the British Government have taken —however misguided it mav have been—would be fatal at the present time. An Oriental nation cannot understand leniency, and any immediate change in policy would be construed by the Palestinian and every other Eastern nation as a concession to force; but ultimately the grievances of the Arab must be recognised and treated with sympathetic consideration. The situation is fraught with difficulties —a peaceful and prosperous Palestine is essential if our reputation as a Mandatory Power is to be maintained, but it would appear that the enigma is insoluble. Palestine is indeed a too much Promised Land.