THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1937 THE FUTURE OF PALESTINE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22789, 24 July 1937, Page 14

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1937 THE FUTURE OF PALESTINE

Palestine, its future and its problems, is to come before another tribunal before anything is done with the recommendations of- the Boyal Commission which reported recently. The whole question is to be laid before the League of Nations. It is a reasonable move, since Great Britain, being no more than holder of the mandate, should not be made wholly responsible for decisions on which may depend the prospect of peace or further turmoil, on which, in any event, the future of the country must turn. Meantime, the debate in the House of Commons 'was useful in that it gave the Secretary of State for the Colonies a chance to recall some facts which the parties to the dispute should not forget. He reminded them that 10,000 British dead lie buried in Palestine ; and in saying no more than this he merely glossed over a battery of argument from which he might have fired many broadsides, all heavy metal. He might have reminded the contending parties that these dead included men of British stock from the uttermost ends of the earth as well as from almost every quarter of the British Isles. He might have asked —and it would have been more than a rhetorical question —how much acknowledgment of, much less gratitude for, the sacrifices of these dead was being shown now. He could have told the Empire, and the disputing parties, that an appeal is now being made in Great Britain for funds to save the war cemetery at Jerusalem from the close encroachment of the speculator and the builder, which would spoil its setting beyond repair. These are some of the plain facts of a case. Mr. Ormsby-Gore would have been more than justified in pressing far further than he did. But at least he said enough to answer assertions or innuendoes from many parts of the world about Britain's breach of faith or betrayal of a trusting people. As has previously been remarked, both the Jewish and Arab communities have shown an absolutely unyielding attitude in face of the difficulties and sharp dissensions which the investigating commission had to dissect. Answering suggestions on this point, Mr. OrnisbyGore laid the blame on political feeling, fanned by intense nationalism. This is, no doubt, the predominant force behind the declared policies of both parties, but there arc economic issues as well. In the Arabs, national feeling has been encouraged in its growth by recent happenings. The success of Irak in graduating from the status of a country under mandate to a position of independence, with an Arab king, naturally gave impetus to the aspirations of the Palestine Arabs. The more recent example of Syria, where French tutelage is being largely discarded, intensified the feeling, as it was bound to do, while the advance in status Egypt has made under the treaty with Britain is a further instance of a kindred people just over the border gaining ground as the Arabs would like to do. On the Jewish side, the persecution people of their blood have recently suffered has deepened national feeling. In addition, the need for Palestine as a place of refuge has seemed to them far greater than ever before. Impatience with any restriction on immigration has grown, and there has been an increased tendency to demand, not a national home in Palestine, but all Palestine as a national home. To the Arabs it means little that Britain is pledged to allow the Jews facilities for their home. The Jews are not always mindful of the condition that in keeping the pledge Britain is also bound to safeguard the interests of those already established in the country. Nationalism encourages both to forget such factors.

Though nationalism may come first, the economic difficulty is not so far in the background. With the Arabs it is largely bound up with the land question. There has never been any suggestion of their being arbitrarily dispossessed of their property. Where they have parted with land it has been by sale, sometimes at more than economic prices. Yet it is nothing new for a landowning people to have sold, and then to have repented on finding themselves landless. New Zealand knows that. The Jewish community, on the other hand, regarding themselves as far better qualified to develop the country than the Arab, have not been able to curb their impatience at finding their desire to expand checked by outside authority. So national feeling and economic issues have combined to bring about the situation which the Royal Commission and the British Government agreed could be met only by partition, a way out which nobody considers ideal. It is advocated only as a policy of virtual despair. Yet even at this stage Britain has obliquely offered the contending parties another chance — if they can agree on something to take its place. Whether removing the whole issue to the League of Nations will help remains to be seen, but no harm would be done if Britain seized the opportunity to demonstrate that, while keeping the ring in Palestine, she has had little gratitude for the work done then, or for previous sacrifices in making the land available for Jewish and Arab aspirations to develop,.