ARAB AND JEW.

Evening Star, Issue 20586, 11 September 1930, Page 10

ARAB AND JEW.

Thu Council of the League of Nations has received the report of its Mandates Commission on Britain’s administration in Palestine in a very different spirit from that which characterised the report itself. The report was sharply critical, taking the least account of the abnormal difficulties of the mandatory Power. The Finnish representative who presented it, and members of the Council who spoke on it, pronounced the fullest appreciation of those, and confidence was expressed that it would not 'bo the mandatory’s fault if the best was not done for both Jews and Arabs in Palestine. The Council will know more of the difficulties when it receives the report of another commission specially appointed by it “to study, define, and determine finally the rights and claims of Jews and Moslems at the Western or Wailing Wall at Jerusalem,” which has long been one of the chief causes of trouble between the races. The problem is hero to balance one party’s 3,000-year-old religious attachment to a relic of the ancient Jewish Temple against another party’s claim to absolute ownership of the site concerned. The Moslems do not admit that the site is less holy to them than’to the Jews, and they insist that Jewish attempts to mane use of it for their own religions rites have as their motive challenge, and not religion. What the Jews want, they declare, is to establish a claim to control not only of the Wall itself, but of the sacred area and mosque behind it. The Zionists reply that the Islamic sanctity attributed to tho Wall is an invention dating back no more than two years, and that their alleged designs on the further area, revered by Moslems, are a lie deliberately forged to rouse racial passions. There is no softening of words in this controversy. To assist tho commission in its task, a long memorandum has been compiled on the authority of world Jewry, which goes back to the building of Solomon’s Temple, and ranges through all the ages, to show how the site has always been sacred to Jews. The memorandum deals at length with tho “ Buraq ” tradition which Moslems have urged during the last, two or three .years as the basis for their veneration for the Western Wall. “Buraq” was “a white beast, between a mule and an ass in size, with two wings on its thighs, digging its hind legs in and placing its fore legs as far as it can see.” On this beast the Prophet journeyed in a single night from Mecca to Jerusalem. Arab geographers vary in their accounts of where “ Buraq ” was tied up during the Prophet’s sojourn in tho Mosque at Jerusalem, but the name “ 01-Buraq ” is the name given by tho local Moslems to the quarter near tho Western Walk It would be a pity if duo importance was not given to this imposing legend. The memorandum concludes with tho following appeal to the commission:—“What do you behold? A narrow lane, 3.6 metres wide and twenty-eight metres long, serving also as tho entrance to a series of almshouses and hovels through which men, donkeys, and sometimes even camels pass at any time of the day—such is the approach to a historic monument 3,000 years old. Upon this ground, in the first instance, we submit that your honourable body should request the mandatory to sCo to it that the approaches to this Wall are decent and respectable, and that the site in front of tho Wall itself should cease to bo a thoroughfare such as it is now claimed to be.” After spending a month in Jerusalem, failing entirely in strenuous attempts which it made to bring the paiTies to a reasonable compromise, the commission announced that its report would remain open till September 1 for proposals from cither party, having that for their object, to be received. Tho latest indications were that they were unlikely to come to hand.