ARAB-JEWISH TREATY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 156, 17 June 1936, Page 7

ARAB-JEWISH TREATY

Lawrence’s Translation Questioned SAID TO BE FORGERY LONDON, June 16. The “News-Chronicle’s” Jerusalem correspondent says: “Propaganda in the Arab-Jewish struggle has thrown up the name of Lawrence of Arabia, who allegedly mistranslated for King Feisul the Arab-Jewlsh Treaty signed in London in 1919, which was recently published. Dr. Weizmann, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and president of the English Zionist Federation, has produced a copy of the treaty as proof that King Feisul strongly sympathised with the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine, but the Arabs declare that the document is a Jewish forgery. “This is improbable, but it is suggested, ou tho evidence of photographic copies of the treaty that Lawrence inistranslated the treaty because he realised that, uulcss King Feisul could be forced into giving the Jews their demands, Lawrence could not fulfil his drcam of a great Arab empire. “King Feisul was unable to read English, so added a protective footnote which Lawrence translated on Dr. Weizmann’s copy and King Feisul signed. It ran: ‘lf the Arabs are established as I have asked in the manifesto addressed to the British Foreign Secretary I will carry out this agreement.’ A photostatie copy of King Feisul’s Arabic copy shows that he wrote: ‘Should the Arabs obtain independence.’

“It is said that Lawrence was so faultless au Arabic scholar that he could not have made a faulty translation. It is accordingly suggested that, if he mellowed King Feisul’s footnote, he almost certainly toned down the Zionist aspirations presented to King Feisul. The Moslem Council supports this view, declaring that, when it was hinted that the treaty existed, King Feisul telegraphed denying his signature. %