ARAB-JEWISH TREATY.

Wairarapa Age, 17 June 1936, Page 5

ARAB-JEWISH TREATY.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’S ROLE RECALLED. MISTRANSLATION ALLEGED. TO SATISFY ZIONIST DEMANDS.

(Received Tuesday, 11.10 p.m.) LONDON, June 16. The “News-ChrOniele’s” Jerusalem correspondent says propaganda in the Arab-Jewish struggle has thrown up the name of Lawrence of Arabia, who allegedly mistranslated for King Feisul the Arab-Jewish Treaty signed in London in 1919, .which was recently , published. Dr. Weizmann has produced a copy’of the treaty, which is proof that King Feisul strongly sympathised with the Jewish national home in Palestine but the Arabs declare that the document is a Jewish forgery. This is improbable but it is suggested that on the photostatic copies of the treaty that Lawrence mistranslated the treaty because he realised that unless King Feisul could be forced into giving the Jews their demands he could not fulfil his dream of a great Arab empire. King Feisul was unable to read English and added a protective footnote, which Lawrence translated on Dr. Weizmann’s copy and King Feisul signed thus: “If the Arabs , are established as I asked in the manifesto addressed to the British Foreign Secretary I carry out this agreement.” A photostatie copy of King Feisul’s Arabic shows that he wrote: “Should the Arabs obtain independence etc.” It is said that Lawrence, as a faultless Arabic scholar, could not have made a faulty translation and accordingly it is suggested that if he mellowed King Feisul’s footnote it would almost certainly have toned down the Zionist aspirations presented to King Feisul. The Moslem Council supports this view, declaring that when it was hinted that a treaty existed King Feisul telegraphed denying his signature. This telegram is now in possession of Hadi Bey, a signatory to the treaty at present interned in connection with the disorders.

DEFIANT ARABS.

MORE ACTS OF TERRORISM. JERUSALEM, June 15. Terrorists continue to defy the death penalty, setting fire to buildings and throwing bombs, mostly duds. Snipers wounded two Gordon Highlanders. The damage to Jewish property is estimated at £150,000. The Arabs assert that they are losing £1,000,000 a month in trade wages, but they have not suffered much in property damage. ANALYSIS OF CAUSES. MATTER FOR INVESTIGATION. RUGBY, June 15. The Colonial Secretary declined to make a statement in the House of Commons this afternoon oh the causes of the: recent unrest in Palestine, on the ground that they would be among matters for investigation by the proposed Royal Commission, and in these circumstances it would be most improper for him to attempt to. analyse them at this moment.

Replying to a supplementary question, Mr. Ormsby-Gore declared emphatically that the Commission would only be set up when law and order had been fully restored in Palestine. There were other supplementary questions which went unanswered, but the Colonial Secretary intervened to contradict "clearly and definitely’’ an incidental suggestion that the Grand Mufti was paid a salary by the British Government.—(British Official ’Wireless).