ARABS OF 1930 ARE FAR BEHIND TIMES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19258, 20 December 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

ARABS OF 1930 ARE FAR BEHIND TIMES.

Resort To 10th Century Tricks.

Mr Strickland, a retired member ©? the Indian Civil Service, has recently made a study of certain phases of Arab village life for the Palestine Government. In the following article he gives liis conclusions.

W HILE the protests of the Jewsj against the recent British statement of policy in Palestine are sounding in our ears, we should not forget to study the other person in the picture, the Palestinian Arab. In comparison with the modern and progressive Jew, he is a man of the Middle Ages. Proud and quarrelsome, upright and dignified, he dwells in his close-packed villages along the central range of hills, or at the edge of the plains below, wherever a spring of fresh water or a well makes a settlement possible. By temperament he is a “ gentleman ” above all things, for good or for evil. Hospitality comes first, and if no time remains for business to-day, it can be done to-morrow. A visitor is cordially welcomed, and no serious question may be touched before coffee has been made and the lumps of sugar have been passed up from hand to hand, becoming warmer and dirtier as they go. The sheep is slain on the arrival of friends—a sick sheep by preference, since the Arab is poor—and if it is fresh and tough, Arab teeth are strong and digestions good. But a friend is never turned away. The nomad Bedouin, who wander in the desert from Beersheba southward to Sinai and the Red Sea, are even more primitive, though in no sense are they savages. Their little black tents, their children, rolls of bedding and scanty cooking pots are borne on lines of camels as they move from one sandy camping ground to another. The sheiks wear flowing robes and carry richly engraved swords. The ordinary laws of Palestine concern them little, and though they are subject to the authority of the mandatory government, the feuds of tribe and tribe about women or cattle raids are settled by interminable conferences in the presence of a British officer. As a tall sheik appears with his retinue of men and innumerable animals, the spirit of Abraham is present in the flesh.

The Bedouin are gradually adopting a new mode of life. Many grow barley on the Beersheba sand slopes, some have built storehouses for their grain, one chieftain has even an orange grove and a fine brick and stone dwelling. But, like all his fellows, he lives out- i side it in a black tent, admiring from a distance the evidence of his own prosperity. The village Arab is less happy. The impact of the twentieth century and the example of Jew and Christian have raised his standard of living without increasing the produce of his farm. If is agriculture is antediluvian, and his fields are scattered in tiny patches all round the village, intermingled with those of his neighbour, so that he loses much time and temper in moving from one remote plot to another. Whenever, during a recent inquiry in such villages, I urged the Arabs to bring the whole of each man’s holding together in one or two places, they would answer: “You know we cannot do this. We quarrel with one another, and no man will trust in the fairness of the exchange. But let the government do it by compulsion. We know that it ought really to be done; we should then all grumble against government, and in our hearts we should be content! ”

No one will be surprised, then, if an Arab who farms on these principles is in debt. His debt is very heavy for

his slender means, and the Simpson report shows that it is growing heavier. The cost of living for an average Arab peasant has been reckoned at about £65 per annum, and his income is less than £SO. Add to this that he spends extravagantly on weddings, and his fate would seem to be certain. A fairly intelligent farmer, whom I questioned as to his reason for selling to a Jew some land worth £650, replied that £SOO was used to pay off old debts, and the other £l5O was spent on the marriage of his daughter. And instances of this kind are not rare. The money lender is naturally tightening his grip on the villages, and the villagers are becoming desperate. “ The waves,” they say, “ are closing over our heads.” It is for this reason that the Palestine Government has resolved to introduce the system of co-operative credit unions, which has proved so successful in India, and has recently been spreading in America. When examining this question during the last summer, I found the Arab intelligent by nature, though for the most part uninstructed. If he is given guidance he will be capable of building up his own credit societies and of shaking off the yoke of the usurer. Shylock in Palestine is not a Jew, he is an Arab merchant, who often also deals in grain, and since all usury is forbidden by Mohammedan law, no rate of interest is entered in the bond, which is merely executed for a larger sum than that which is actually advanced. Ingenious ways of justifying this false entry are followed. One well known lender, who was also a manufacturer of soap, had a trained cat, on the back of which he would place two small soap tablets. “Do you,” he would ask, “ buy from me for £lO the load of soap borne by this animal?” “I do,” replied the hapless borrower, and the sum of £lO was duly added to the bond. Whatever the manner of the fraud, the borrower is hooked, and not only does his burden of debt continuously grow, but he is forced to sell his crops to his creditor at the latter’s price. A credit union will enable him to free himself from this slavery. Cultivating his land lightly and “ extensively,” the Arab peasant needs a farm of at least thirty acres to maintain himself and his family even at a low level. If he developed his land, growing oranges and other fruit as the Jewisn settler does, and keeping Holstein cows which yield 1500 gallons of milk a year, he would live better on ten acres than he now lives on thirty. But capital can only he had from the usurer on cruel terms, and the illiterate peasant cannot be trusted to make wise use of a mortgage loan unless he is strictly controlled. Sir John Hope Simpson, who was appointed at the request of the League of Nations to investigate the condition of Palestine, has proposed a plan of agricultural development which will bring much of this land under “intensive” cultivation, enabling three families to live well where one now barely exists. The British statement of policy makes very little mention of this constructive part of the Simpson report, and while announcing that the transfer of land in Palestine is to be restricted and immigration is to be temporarily stopped, merely promises to carry out agricultural development in order _to settle landless Arabs and Jewish immigrants, but gives no details of the time or manner of fulfilling the promise. A clearer statement on this point would have allayed many fears. The Arab has far to travel before he overtakes the modern world. He is not a fool, but is conservative and distrustful. All Government is to him an object of fear and the tax collector may fairly be cheated. The grain of the ancient village of Samaria is all threshed out by hand on a rocky threshing floor, common to the village. The rocks are full of deep holes, and so long as the land tax was collected in kind, each Arab would pile his produce on top of the best hole he could discover, letting fthe grain run down into it in order to diminish the size of his heap. When the tax collector had taken his share and passed on, the cunning peasant would dig up his hidden treasures. He has still one foot in the tenth century, but fate is hurrying him forward and he is changing rapidly under our eyes.