ARABS SEEK END OF MANDATE

Southland Times, Issue 23741, 13 February 1939, Page 7

ARABS SEEK END OF MANDATE

DOMINANCE CLAIMED IN PALESTINE OPPOSITION TO NATIONAL HOME FOR JEWS (British Official Wireless) (Received February 12, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, February 11. A statement on the Arab case was made at the Palestine Conference by Jamal Effendi Husseini (Palestine). He emphasized that it had nothing in common with anti-Semitism and was not inspired by any hostility to the British people or any other people, but the Arabs felt it was one of self-evident justice, resting on the natural right of a people to remain in undisturbed possession qf its country and its natural desire to safeguard its national existence and ensure that it should be secured and developed in freedom and harmony with its traditions and ideals. Jamal Effendi Husseini also made the point that up to the time of the Balfour Declaration and the British mandate the relations between the Arabs and Jews were peaceful and friendly. After arguing that the policy pursued by the mandatory in Palestine had proved ttie justice of the Arabs’ fears, and contending that the immigration of Jews and Jewish land purchases had been on a scale detrimental to the material interests of the Arab population, he declared that the Arabs had never and never would recognize .the Balfour Declaration or the mandate, but in the eyes of the Arabs the question was not primarily one of material interests, but first and foremost one of moral and political values. The Arab case was based on the fact that the policy hitherto pursued in Palestine constituted a grave injustice to the Arab people of a kind for which there was no parallel, and that until that injustice was adequately redressed there would be no peace in the Holy Land. Jamal Effendi Husseini summarized the demands of the Palestine Arabs under four heads:

(1) Recognition of the right of the Arabs to complete independence in their country. (2) Abandonment of the attempt to * establish a Jewish national home in Palestine.

(3) Abrogation of the mandate and illegalities resulting from it, and its replacement by a treaty similar to that between Britain and Iraq, creating a sovereign Arab State. (4) Immediate cessation of all Jewish immigration and sales of land to Jews.

The Arabs, he said, were prepared to negotiate in a conciliatory spirit the conditions under which reasonable British interests should be safeguarded and approve the necessary guarantees for the preservation of and right of access to all holy places and for the protection of all legitimate rights of Jewish and other minorities in Palestine. PROMISES BROKEN? Britain’s policy since the war had shown that Arab fears were far from groundless, added Jamal Effendi Husseini. The Arabs were denied the independence promised by Britain’s pledge in 1915 in return for the Arab share in the Allied victory. The terms of the mandate had proved a flagrant violation not only of promises but of the right of political independence specifically recognized by the Covenant of the League of Nations. Palestine s post-war administration had exercised an unfettered power equivalent to dictatorship, thereby depriving the Arabs, who before the war enjoyed parliamentary representation, of the elementaiy rights of self-government. The Jewish population in Palestine had increased by 22 per cent; since the war and now numbered 400,000 of the total of 1,400,000. The Jews in 1918 owned 150,000 acres and now owned 330,000 of the total of 1,950,000 acres available, driving the Arabs from the most fertile 'parts. Arab villages had been razed and mosques, homes and cemeteries had been wiped out. The real question, he said, was whether the Arabs, after continuous occupation of Palestine for more than .1300 years, should be forcibly evicted to enable the Jews to establish a national home.