Complicated Tangle To Unravel

Northern Advocate, 23 March 1939, Page 12

Complicated Tangle To Unravel

| The cables recently stated that the ; Jews and Arabs h.ad rejected the ! British, proposals for a settlement of the Palestine problem, i _..st month a writer in the London

"Daily Sketch” said: There opens today a conference in London at which Jews and Arabs will see if they c,an agree to settle their difficulties in Palestine. It will be remembered that two years ago a very strong Commission under Lord Peel went out to Palestine, and after an exhaustive inquiry reported in favour of partition. > It would have been the second partition of Palestine, for Mr Churchill, sixteen years ago had partitioned Palestine in liquidation of promises' supposed to have been made to the Arabs, and given the half that was across the Jordan as a separate Principality under Abdullah. The British Government hastily accepted Lord Peel’s proposals, and so did the Jews, though, under reserves, but Parliament and the League of Nations wanted further and better particulars of the partition, and the Arabs would not hear of it, and continued their rebellion. The Government then sent out what was described as a technical committee to draw the boundaries. But this committee reported against partition, and the conference is meeting to see if it can succeed where two British commissions failed.

Did Not Know Own Mind. If the conference cannot reach an agreement the Government is to produce a plan of its own and impose it on the country. It is a pity it did not know its own mind fifteen years ago, and stick to it. Before the war Palestine was part of the Empire of Turkey, and was made the basis of operations by the Turks against the Suez Canal. We were all strategists in those days, and very early in 1915 I made up my own mind that the possession of the hills of’Judea was necessary to the security of the canal, and would be an invaluable support to the British position in the Near East.

And (I argued), while you are about it,' why not reconstitute the whole of Palestine as a Jewish homeland, ultimately to become a seventh Dominion of the British Commonwealth?

I wrote voluminously on these lines and, as it happened, events seconded the argument. Balfour made his celebrated promise of ,a National Home for the Jews, Allenby made it possible of fulfilment by his great victgry, and in due course the League of Nations constituted us as the mandatory for the Jewish Home. At first Arabs raised no objection. We did not forget their claims but tried to obtain for Feisal the Kingship of Syria, and when the French wouldn’t have him we consoled him with Mesopotamia, which had been conquered, like Palestine, by British troops. Too well For Own Comfort, But the Jews did too well in Palestine for their own comfort. This small country became the most prosperous part of the whole southern portion of the old Ottoman Empire. The vacillation, and in certain respects the incompetence, of the Palestine Government encouraged the Arabs in their ambition of adding

this little Naboth vineyard to their vast domain. Two nationalities, Jewish and Arab, came into collision, and it is this conflict th,at the Conference hopes to re- i concile. | Not only the Arabs of Palestine are j represented at the Conference, but j deputies from all the neighbouring Arab States, including Egypt, and the ! hope of agreement at the Conference I ) rests on the moderating influences of j these neighbours. Their policy has not been clearly j defined and it is doubtful whether I they all think alike, but Egypt is un- j derstood to favour the project of fed- | eration between the Arab and Jewish j parts of a partitioned Palestine. ; Whether the Jews would accept such a scheme would depend on whether what was left to them had the makings of a real State; whether the Palestine Arabs would accept would depend largely on whether such a Palestine would satisfy the personal ambitions of the dominant faction of the Arab squirearchy, for the Arabs are by no means united, and the chief failure of the Government in Palestine has lain in its neglect to form a moderate Arab party and to- protect it. A Note of Warning;, j Behind the project of a Federated j Palestine is the much more ambitious I idea of ,a Federation of all the Arab j States and here a note of warning j should be sounded. A Federated j Pan-Arabia, supposing it were pos- \ sible, would inevitably come into col- I lisicn with Turkey, which despises j the political and military capacity of j the Arabs. 1 If we were committed to such a project the alliance with Turkey, j I which some of us think is a necesI sary insurance against German expan- ! sion towards the South-east, would | become impossible, and Turkey might drift, as she did in the last war, into the arms of Germany. Was there ever such a complicated tangle to unravel? j LABOURER, Mr Luka Yulavicti, single, aged 42, of Bay View Road, Takapuna, suffered internal injuries j from which he later died when he was struck by a fall of earth at Smale’s quarry, Takapuna, yesterday after-