JEW AND ARAB IN PALESTINE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 8

JEW AND ARAB IN PALESTINE

Serious Arab unrest in Palestine is in part traceable to the collapse of authority at Geneva. The Arab strike leader at Jerusalem says as much in these words: “Had the Arabs been as strong as Japan, Italy and Germany, they would have wrested their rights from the League. However, their consolation is that the League is collapsing.” Palestine is a mandated territory. Administrative authority is vested in Great Britain, but supreme authority in the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations —actually, the League itself. Should the League collapse through the disintegration of its elements, the future of the mandated territories might become a hotly-disputed question. Palestine is one of the A Class mandates on the border-line between supervision by the mandatory Power and independent sovereignty. Independence would no doubt have been granted before now had there been no serious issue between the Jews and the Arabs. But the hostility between the two peoples, manifested in serious outbreaks and bloodshed at intervals, has made it necessary for the mandate to be continued until such time as they can furnish evidence that their differences have been composed. If the League system broke down, Great Britain might be faced with the alternative of relinquishing Palestine or converting the territory into a British protectorate. The first choice might be acceptable to the Arabs, but not to the Jews. The second might be acceptable to neither. The Arab movement seems to have assumed a definite anti-British tendency, but'if Britain’s disciplinary authority were withdrawn there would be certain bloodshed between the Arabs and the Jews. The latter, on the other hand, regard Great Britain’s promise of a Jewish home in Palestine as something more than a political flourish: as a definite assurance that the Jewish race could look forward to sovereign rights in the future.