DEBATE ON PALESTINE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 22 July 1937, Page 9

DEBATE ON PALESTINE

RISE OF NATIONALISM. REAL REASONS FOR STRIFE. THREE CREEDS CONCERNED. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph,—Copyright.) . (Britisli Official Wireless.) Received July 22, 11.55 a.m. RUGBY, July 21. A motion asking the approval oi the House of Commons for tie Palestine Royal Commission’s proposals was debated in the House. The Labour Party moved an amendment proposing a close examination of the proposals by a joint select committee before Parliament should be committed. The Colonial Secretary (Mr Ormsby Gore) after paying a tribute to the work of the Commission, said in relerence to the criticism that the Commission had failed to give the necessary weight to the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, that the British Government had never and could not admit the part of Palestine west of the Jordan was included in the pledge given to the Slieref of Mecca and the Government had always had in mind the fact that special consideration must obtain concerning the government of the Holy Land. Palestine was not purely Jewish nor purely Christian territory, but all three creeds had interests in it and no settlement of the question was possible unless the interests of Moslem, Jew find Christian were recognised. Speaking of the pledge given to the Arabs to turther their independence, Mr Ormsby Gore observed: — “I think it fair to remind the Arabs that the independence they enjoy throughout the peninsula of Arabia, in Iraq, which they about enjoy fully in Syria and which,- if this goes through, they will enjoy throughout . Transjordan and the greater part of Palestine, could not and would not have been achieved but for the fact that there are 10,0UU •British graves in Palestine and a great many more also in Iraq.”

Mr Ormsby Gore criticised the provisions of the mandate as to education and the promotion of self-governing institutions, and maintained that it had been shown to be unworkable and had deepened the breach between the Arabs and the Jews. Answering assertions that the trouble in Palestine was economic or due to weak or mistaken administration, Mr Ormsby Gore said: “You do not recognise the elements of the problem in Palestine unless you recognise that there is the keenest Jewish nationalism and, again, vivid Arab nationalism. The trouble in Palestine is political, not economic.” Nationalism was a force of growing power everywhere in the world to-day and it was natural that Arab nationalism should have been stimulated by the FrancoSyrian treaty, while the fires of antiSemitic persecution had transformed the Jewish version of Palestine from a cultural centre into a rctugo.

The McMahon-Hussein correspondence was not cabled to New Zealand when the Commission’s report was issued.

BALFOUR DECLARATION. REVELATION IN HOUSE. Received July '22, 10.35 a.m. LONDON, July 21. Moving that the House of Commons approve the Government’s policy regarding Palestine, the Colonial Secretary (Mr Ormsby Gore) disclosed that the final draft of the Balfour Declaration was the work of Lord Milner, which differed from the original Balfour draft. The pledge in it was not that Palestine should be a home for the Jews but that there should be a Jewish national home in Palestine. It was tragic that, after all Britain had done for the Arabs, there should be this running sore -in Palestine.