PALESTINE REPORT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23192, 11 November 1938, Page 8

PALESTINE REPORT

A little more than 15 months ago a Royal Commission, reporting on the position in Palestine, recommended partition of the country between Jews and Arabs, with Britain, as mandatory Power, continuing to administer a small area inclusive of Jerusalem itself. This solution of the difficulties which had been accumulating for years was offered, frankly, as little more than a policy of despair. A second commission, sent to grapple with the technical problems of partition, and to devise practical means of giving effect to it, has reported in complete despair. It finds the difficulties, financial and administrative, of dividing the country between the two hostile races so great that it is not able to make any recommendations. Therefore Britain has issued an official statement which means in effect that partition is now dead and finally buried. While continuing to bear the responsibility conferred by the mandate, Britain hopes to begin afresh seeking some new issue from the deadlock created by ArabJewish enmity. To that end an immediate round-table conference in London is suggested. Since the partition proposals were welcomed by neither Jews nor Arabs, the jettisoning of them might have been expected to create a disposition to negotiate in the hope of reaching peace by compromise. Unfortunately neither party shows any softening of the original attitude of standing by its own demands and refusing to consider any modification. British policy in Palestine may not have been faultless. Indeed British criticism of it has been as trenchant as any. At the same time the task there has never been made easier by either of the factions. .Unless they modify their present attitude it is' impossible to see how peace can be restored or prosperity be assured in Palestine.,