THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, August 15, 1939. THE PROBLEM IN PALESTINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23887, 15 August 1939, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, August 15, 1939. THE PROBLEM IN PALESTINE

Three months have elapsed since the British Government announced, in a White Paper, its plan aiming at the establishment within ten years of an independent Palestine State in which Arabs and Jews would share the government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community should be safeguarded. The plan had no flattering reception, nor was it to be expected that it would satisfy either the Arabs or the Jews. 'The Jewish protest has been particularly vehement, because Jewish hopes respecting immigration have received- a heavy blow. The British Government has been constrained to recognise the necessity of a closer interpretation of the pledge respecting the establishment of a Jewish national home embodied in the Balfour Declaration. It has formed the conclusion that, if immigration were continued up to the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine, regardless of all other considerations, a fatal enmity between the Arabs and the Jews would be perpetuated, and the situation in Palestine might become a permanent source of friction among the peoples of the Near'and Middle East. Its decision has been that the time has come to adopt, in principle, the policy of permitting the expansion of. the National Home by immigration only if the Arabs are prepared to acquiesce in it. Its plan contemplates further that, if economic capacity permits, some 75,000 Jews shall be aflmitted to Palestine within the next five years, bringing the Jewish population up to about one-third of that of the whole country. It is now reported that a section of the Zionist organisation will at the approaching Zionist conference urge the adoption of a plan of non-co-operation in protest against these decisions. In a discussion in the House of Commons on July 20 the Government's proposals incurred a strong fire of criticism from various parts of the House, to which Mr Malcolm MacDonald replied at some length. He argued that the Government had made very considerable contribution under its scheme to the settlement of refugees from Europe in Palestine within the next five years, but pointed out that illegal immigration into that country had reached such a scale that it was keeping out those whom the Government proposed to admit under the legal quota system. He spoke strongly on this point. "What is going on," he said, " about the immigration of Polish and Rumanian Jews makes it perfectly clear that this is an organised movement to break the immigration law of Palestine for the sake of breaking it. It is an organised movement to try to smash the White Paper policy for the sake of smashing it. That is a position we cannot tolerate." Mr , MacDonald offered the pertinent reminder that those who-could have the greatest control over this illegal immigration, which was aggravating the hostility between the Arabs and the Jews, were the Jewish leaders and the Jewish people themselves. For that reason, he said, the British Government asked for their cooperation in this matter. The situation in Palestine was complex before the European pogrom was instituted. The effect of that movement upon it has been thus summed up: " Zionism became a menace to peace and roused the Palestinian Arabs to desperate resistance, chiefly because, under pressure of an extreme emergency, the Zionist leaders tried to convert a National Home into an international reservoir for fugitive Jewry." The British Government's task is to carry out the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine so far as its promises to thp Jews and the Arabs permit. Beyond this it cannot go. During the past seventeen years it has facilitated the immigration into Palestine of more than 300.000 Jews, and has helped to bring the Jewish National Home to the stage represented in an established community of 450.000 people. 11 was the British people alone. Mr MacDonald reminded the House of Commons, who had defended that Jewish National Home with mil-

lions of pounds from the pockets of the British taxpayer, and with the lives of British civil servants and soldiers. The British Government's plan for the solution of the problem in Palestine may have its weaknesses and defects, but that the Jewish organisations have reasonable cause to complain because, in justice to the Arabs, it will not permit Palestine to be swamped by Jews is not apparent. Whatever the solution of a difficult situation is to be, it is certainly not to be found in a Zionist policy of non-co-opera-tion in Palestine, for this would recoil seriously upon the Jewish community itself.