The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, May 20, 1947. WILL ARABS MOVE?

Grey River Argus, 20 May 1947, Page 4

The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, May 20, 1947. WILL ARABS MOVE?

JT might be short-lived elation for the Zionists were tliey left by U.N.O. with Palestine to govern. They may appear to desire no more, but they actually would admit the favourable hearing of U.N.O. Assembly last week in" New York, denoted by an inquiry decision against the views of the Arabs, is simply ‘the first of manv more helps desired from some at least, of the Powers. Mr Churchill has just remarked: “We are making fools of ourselves by keeping 100,000 soldiers in Palestine in the most dismal of all quarrels into which we have blundered”. But were the 30-year-old British policy of providing a home for the Jews to be left now for the Jews to carry out, with no British forces provided, the Arabs could “clean up” the. Zionists in no time. Thus no less importance must 'be attributed to the latest indication of Arab than of Jewish feeling. The Zionists say that if the British now allow them their own way, the terrorism will be dropped, whereas the ruler of Saudi Arabia makes the grim comment that words no longer avail the Arabs of Palestine, and it is time for action. .What the Zionists themselves can do has been shown by their terroristic, migratory and propaganda activities, which admittedly have been considerable. The cost of it all for Britain has been no less so. The value for Britain has been intangible, even if it be that Jewish goodwill hitherto has had its value. It - was the price of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish home—which declaration rendered useless for the Arabs the British guarantee of two years before that all of the region then in Arab occupation (except a tiny space west of certain Semitic cities like Damascus and Homs, but excluding Palestine) would be secured to them in return for their important help in the 191418 warfare. At present the British attitude is that the U.N.O. Assembly Commission of Inquiry shall be nowise influenced, and be left to bring down impartial .recommendations. it being claimed that, while the terms of reference do not debar the Commission from recommending independence for Palestine, there may be alternatives more advisable. The United States sides rather with the Zionists, while tlie Soviet, meantime neutral, may later lean rather to the Arabs than otherwise. The real point to be borne in mind is that a Palestine under Jewish control would be one which other Powers, say Britain and the United States, would require to maintain so. The Jews could not do it. Hence a first step towards it i.s one entailing no end of additional steps. The Soviet has suggested a dual State, which meantime would mean one with a large Arab majority. There is a presumption that immig’rationjinght yet afford a Jewish majority, which is open to doubt. Not a fifth or perhaps a tenth of the Jews want to go there. The idea, while it is now fostered especially in America ami Britain, originated with the. Jews of Eastern Europe, when they were several times more numerous than they now are. It is from that quarter that the migrants arc coming-, and, according- to the latest report, are beginning’ to evade the British Navy by using aircraft to gain entry instead of little ships that are overcrowded and the passengers of which mostly have gone into internment on the island of Cyprus. Obviously continuance of the migration, de spite the blockade, is based on the expectation that ultimately the British —and now the United Nations —will allow all of the migrants to enter Palestine on masse. No other people to-day are expected by U.N.O. or anybody, except by the Zionists, to

tolerate such an inrush of outsiders into their century old country, except the Palestine Arabs. The Zionist claim has no foundation cither in law or ethics, .and represents simply a resort to force, and a calculation that it would be maintained in future decades by the same means from foreign sources. Thus the leading Zionist apologists claim that if a Jewish Commonwealth were set up, the frontiers qf Palestine must be protected by international forces. Hence the appeal to U.N.O. suits Zionists to the degree that it nonsuits Islam, providing it evokes U.N.O. .backing for a Zionist regime, The Americans, though for reasons, political and perhaps financial, they favour an immediate influx of 100,000. Jews and doubtless a Jewish Commonwealth also, are not in the same position as Britain. They are losing no money upon a garrison in Palestine now, and they intend to lose none in that way at any time. They cannot ignore the fact that more Jews will continue to live under the Stars and Stripes than ever will be domiciled under a Zionist flag in Palestine. A “home” with only a small fraction of the race in it would be one only in name, whether in Palestine, New York, oi’ anywhere else. Moreover, a home which would. remain subject to such action, as now is indicated by the Saudi ruler as Islam’s mouthpiece, would be precarious for the inmates, and so far as its protection by Western Powers entailed use of troops, would be a provocation to the whole Moslem world from the African littoral on the Atlantic across the world to the Asiatic shores of the Pacific. The Moslems of India have just proven their stability or tenacity by obliging Britain and the Hindus to legislate for partition, and with the whole Moslem world stacked against Zion, it might have a shorter existence than it had as a Kingdom ere the Arabs had occupied it in the days of The Prophet. The dispersion of Israel is not going- to be ended by the present project in Palestine, and it must rather be on the basis of the dispersion that Jewish migration must still go on.