PALESTINE MANDATE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 22 July 1937, Page 2

PALESTINE MANDATE

A CHANGE DEFENDED. WOULD LEAD TO PEACE. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.-—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received July 22. 1.55 p.m. RUGBY, July 21. Continuing his speech in the House of Commons on the Palestine situation, Mr Onnsby Gore stated that the question of minorities in both tire Arab and the Jewish States would have to he. gone into' very carefully add lie had no doubt tha.t the League would require special machinery to ensure the exercise of minority rights. The Government was asking the House to say whether it accepted the general thesis and agreed with the Government that a case had been made out for a fundamental change in the mandate, i Mr Or ms by Gore said tha.t the Government of Transjordan had expressed itself as strongly in favour of the report, and other parts of the Arab world were by no means unfavourable to it.. 1 Under the mandate the Government of Palestine had become a matter of arithmetic and the British Government i was convinced that its continuance held out -no hope to the Jews of finding a home there for the largely increased mini her of Jews, which was their main objects of the Zionists, and no hope that Palestine as a whole could evolve into a Jewish State, which was the subject of the Zionists, and no hope for tlie Arabs of the realisation of their aspiration of self-government. The Commission had come irresistibly to the belief that the intolerable burden of government could only be resolved by giving the Jews and the Arabs their sovereign independence and free selfgovernment, nut for the whole of Palestine. hut each for u part of it. “With that conclusion, we agree,’* ho said. “Only by a partition can the hopes of both he realised uiid peace established arid thus will they he able in the future to help each other without fear of domination by the other.” The continuance of the presence of the British in Palestine was vital to tlie nriiicabl* settling down of Jew and Arab, lie added. There would he minorities in both States pud it would he only by the presence of a neutral Power friendly to both that these minorities could feel that they had somebody to watch their interests. The question of minorities would have to b» gone into very carefully. Mr Onnsby Gore said .lie wished to make it clear that the House -was not being invited to tie itself any more than w.as the Government to the specific proposals enumerated in the last chapter of the Commission’s report. The House was asked to say if it accepted the general thesis and agreed with the Government that a case had been made out for a fundamental change in the mandate so that they might go to the League for leave to begin the work upon the new scheme. He concluded by appealing to the House, the Jews and the Arabs to cooperate with goodwill in a constructive effort to bring peace to the Holy Land. The Government believed that the Royal Commission pointed the road to peace and that the obligations of Britain to the League as well .as to the Jews and the Arabs could best be fulfilled by the creation of two sovereign independent States. The earlier part of Air Onnsby Gore’s speech appears on page 9.