King Country Chronicle. Thursday, January 21, 1937. BRITAIN'S PROBLEM IN PALESTINE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4945, 21 January 1937, Page 4

King Country Chronicle. Thursday, January 21, 1937. BRITAIN'S PROBLEM IN PALESTINE.

The chairman of the Commission dealing with the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine states that the problem is more serious than at first imagined. The' Commission has already been 10 weeks in Palestine investigating the position, and it seems to have brought about no solution, and the outlook is not at all reassuring. The struggle is a three-cornered one. First there are the Jews, basing their claims not only on old historical records and on formal rights granted them by the Balfour Declaration that Palestine was to be a home for the Jews, but also on important economic records which helped to enrich and civilise that formerly neglected country. Second, there are the Arabs who, forming the majority of the population, claim the right for self-deter-mination and demand a stoppage to Jewish immigration, which they regard as a menace to their national interests. Third, there is the British authority, which holds a mandate under the League of Nations to rule the country and try and maintain a balance of power between the Arabs and the Jews. The Jews claim the right to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. They point to the Nazi persecutions in Germany, where there are still half a million Jews; also to the millions of Jews in other countries who are condemned to gradual starvation by economic conditions. For many of these Palestine seems the only hope. The Jews claim, and rightly so, that they have developed the country to a greater extent during the last five years than in 500 years of its previous history; they also claim that by medical science they have eliminated many of the epidemic diseases incidental, to Eastern countries. Far from driving the Arabs from the country, their enterprise has provided employment for a growing number of Arabs from adjoining countries. Colour is given to this contention by official figures which shows that the Arab population increased from 664,000 to 960,000 in fourteen years, and their general.

standard of living has been much improved. Some of the more reasonable Arab leaders agree with the contentions put forward by the Jews, but they maintain that Jewish immigration may mean their ultimate ruin. The Arabs recognise that the Jews can submerge them by their enterprise and administrative ability, and they cannot contemplate with equanimity their threatened denationalisation by Jewish penetration. There are 960,000 Arabs in Palestine and 390,000 Jews, but the Jews pay about 60 per cent, of the total taxation of the country, and they have a higher standard of living. Therefore they contend that they should have a higher proportionate representation in the government of the country. This will never be acceptable to the Arabs, who demand that Jewish immigration must end. In view of Britain's promise to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine she cannot with justice agree to such a proposal. The Arabs have taken up a firm stand to prevent any further influx of Jews. The position is a most difficult one for Britain, and it is not hard to understand the problems the Commission has to face in trying to arrange an agreement between the two factions.