PALESTINE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 17780, 31 January 1920, Page 3

PALESTINE.

PROSPECTS OF REVIVAL. LAND OF THE PAST AND FUTURE. WHAT MODERN METHODS CAN DO. The future of Palestine is of great interest to all Christendom, to the numerous communities of Jews scattered all over the world, and. from the sentimental point of view at least, perhaps above all to the members of the forces of the British Empire, including the many Australians and New Zealanders who during the last two years of the war, wrested the country from the dead hand of the Turks. These men. knowing the country, will appreciate the conviction of Dr Weizmann, president of the English Zionists, that Palestine could support several million more people without injury to the present inhabitants if scientific methods of development were adopted. The Palestine the soldier saw was a land of the past-—a land of the ruins of former greatness, a waste and a solitude created by centuries of Turkish misrule and oppression. At one time it must have carried several millions of inhabitants over a period of some two thousand years—a thousand years before and a thousand years after the time of Christ. From the days of Solomon to the days of the Crusaders it was a great and prosperous country. in spite of all its vicissitudes, its conquests by different alien invaders, and its scenes of almost continual warfare. Under first the Jews and then the Greeks, and then as part, of the Roman Empire, and finally under the Saracens and the Sultans of Egypt, it flourished. It was not until the Turks came that it commenced its period of decay. The other conquerors left nuxnuirjjnts throughout the land, which persist to-day; the Turks left nothing but ruin. FERTILITY OF PLAINS. What. then, are the prospects of a revival of something like Palestine’s ancient greatness and prosperity? To the horsemen of the Dominions, most of them farmers, the fertility of many parts of Palestine was a revelation. Coming off the desert to the south of Gaza, they swept through the plains of Philistia—the land of the Philistines—and here there was soil, rich, dark loam, many feet thick, extending all the way up the coast between the fringe of sand dunes and the Judaean hills to the Jaffa-.lrusalem road. It was dry at Ihe time of the advance from Beersheba. but the winter rains soon covered it with a carpet of grass. The miserable Arab villagers do little but scratch the surface with their wooden ploughs; under what Dr Weizmann calls scientific methods of development such soil would grow prodigious crops, worthy of the virgin prairie of Manitoba in the earlier days. Orange groves flourilshed along the coast wherever there were wells to supply water for irrigation, and round Ramlieh, Risbon, and Jaffa there were acres of vineyards. All that the country wants is irrigation during the dry months of the summer and autumn, from the end of March, say, till the end of October. This irrigation could be furnished by damming up some of the narrow valiej'S in the Judaean hills and creating reservoirs of the winter rains for use in the summer. Artsian water exists almost everywhere. and power-driven pumps, in some cases already installed by the Germans, would give au additional supply. » NEED FOR IRRIGATION. North of the Jaffa-Jerusalem line comes first the great plain of Sharon. which might be compared to the Manawatu plain, with Carmel corresponding to the hills around Wellington. From the plain open up fertile valleys into the heart of the main Judaean tableland, with its centre at Nablus—the ancient chechem. The limestone uplands of the Central Judaean plateau are naturally adapted in their conformation for the construction of vast irrigation reservoirs, from which the whole of the coastal plain and the greater plain of Esdraelon to the north could be fertilised in the dry season. The Jordan Valley itself—at present a dreadful wilderness for the most part—could be irrigated from its upper end in the Sea of Galilee, which is some 600 feet above the level of the Dead Sea, by parallel canals down each side of the valley draining into the River Jordan itself. Given water in season, practically the whole of the plains of Palestine could be utilised for the most intensive culture, while th<e uplapds could grow vines and pasture flocks on a far greater scale than exists today. The Jewish colonies established in various parts of the country show already what can be done by the marked contrast of their cultured areas in the midst of the primitive till age and slovenly pasturage of the degenerate Arab villagers. WHAT THE BRITISH DID. Palestine has many plagues and pests, from locusts to malaria, but most of these would disappear if the land were only properly cultivated and the dwellings and habits of the people made reasonably sanitary. One of the most malarious spots of former days was Mulebbis, to the north of Jaffa on the plain of Sharon, but the methods of drainage, the planting of eucalyptus tres, and the cleaning of the soil by the Jewish colonists has made it quite reasonably healthy. What can be done was shown also during the British occupation of Southern Palestine in the interval between the taking of Jerusalem and the final advance which swept the Turks, out of Palestine and Syria altogether. Wells were cleaned out and pumps set to work, watercourses, blocked with tangled undergrowth and perfect breeding places for the deadly mala-

ria carrying mosquito, were cleared. Jerusalem was given a pure water supply, roads and railways were built, end the health and cond’tion of the people improved extraordinarily. There is no reason why the substitution of decent government for the abomination of the Turks, and reasonable political stability, under whatever regime may be adopted, should not be the beginning of a new life for the wretched inhabitants of a long-oppressed coun-L-y of the greatest natural resources. It is in depopulated countries of the Near East that room may best be found for the starving multitudes of war-worn Europe. The Jewish farmer and vine-grower of Palestine is a very , different creature from the Jew of the Ghetto and the Russian pogrom, and, if the development forecasted by Dr Weizmann takes place, the world may yet see a revival of the great race with its former manly virtues in the land of its origin.