JERUSALEM

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3446, 22 March 1932, Page 7

JERUSALEM

WORLD CENTRE. WILL TAKE PLACE OF GENEVA. The solution of the national problems must be sought in an understanding between Jews and Arabs and the recognition of the principle, which is an axiom, that the prosperity of one section is bound up with the prosperity of the other, says Mr. Bentwich, after an exhaustive survey of Palestine during the war and since this country took over the Mandate as laid down in the Peace Treaty, in his book "England in Palestine." The Jews bring to Palestine a new energy, capital, civilisation, devotion, and ideals. The Arabs have the hinterland, their great traditions, and the possession of the greater part of the soil. But they need the Jewish contribution for the happy development of the country and the neighbouring countries.

What the Jew Must Prove. It is the task of the British Gov* ernment while it holds the mandate to maintain peace and order so that the Jew may have the opportunity of proving to the Arab that his settlement may bring to the whole land a new prosperity. The Jew, on his side, will have to be mindful of the maxim which Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, left as his testament to his followers, "to make your home such that the stranger shall feel at home It is this constructive period which is the most difficult and critical, when the national spirit of the two people is most intense, when the idea of human brotherhood has hardly begun to be understood by the Arabs,

and when the Jews are learning that equality and fraternity are principles of the rights as well as of individuals. In the next generation the Arabs, on the one hand, will be more educated, more able to understand the moral ideas of nationality, while the Jews, on the other, will be more Oriented, and to that extent more like —and more likeable—to then neighbours, able to speak with them, to exchange thought, and co-operate in building up a new Semitic culture. Meantime it will be the function of the Mandatory Government to train the communities to rule themselves.

Jerusalem as Centre of World Order.

What will be the future of the country when the mandate is terminated it is also impossible to foresee. There are those who propose that Palestine shall become the Seventh Dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations. And that would be possible if her two people were of one mind. Others think that she should be an independent State in alliance with Great Britain, and at the same time a member of an Arab federation in which the fact of the Jewish National Home will be accepted.

What is more certain is that the international destiny of the country must be more and more developed. Jerusalem is designed by its history as well as by geography, far more than either Geneva or The Hague, to be a centre of the League of Nations. And it is remarkable in this connection that the late Sir Mark Sykes proposed that an international Police Force, which was to assure the peace of the world, should have its headquarters in Palestine because it was the centre of the world.

We may expect then that Jerusalem will become not only the symbol, as it has been for centuries, of universal peace and brotherhood, but also a centre of those organisations of the international society which are working to realise the ideals of humanity that were orginally given to man from Palestine. Mr. Bentwich has told a fascinating story which the historian of the future will find of inestimable service. His chapter on the enforcement of the law, coming from the man who as Attorney-General really created the system in force, is by no means at a dull legal document, for it also concerns many interesting Side issues not generally known.

The Sheikhs as Judges.

Here is a case in point. Mr. Bentwich says: "Yet another variety of court which is recognised in the kaleidoscopic society of Palestine is the tribal court composed of Sheikhs. The Bedouin, particularly in the Beersheba district of Southern Palestine, knew not the Ottoman codes and had little respect of the Ottoman judges; they recognised their tribal customs and their own chieftains. Making a virtue of necessity, the British Administration sanctioned and adopted this tribal justice. "Every week the Sheikhs of the tribes, in their flowing robes, are assembled at Beersheba and Auja-Hafir —another meeting place of the wandering Arabs in the northern part of Sinai—and judge according to their usages the charges and claims which have been previously submitted to the district officer and referred by him to their tribunals.

"They are not bound by the formal rules of evidence, and many use tribal methods of proof as, for example, the proof by ordeal. Their decisions are subject to appeal to the District Court, which, however ,in dealing with these cases, takes account of the tribal customs."