The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1948. THE BRITISH AND PALESTINE

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 May 1948, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1948. THE BRITISH AND PALESTINE

VY/’HEN Britain determined to lay down her mandate, from the League of Nations and return it to that body’s successor, the United Nations Organisation, responsibility which had rested upon British shoulders for thirty years fell immediately upon the members of the U.N.O. This responsibility has not been accepted. It has been left to lay where it fell. The result, foretold time and time again, has been widespread bloodshed. Now Britain is being accused of helping the Arab against the Jew. It is as well to remember that both Arab and Jew desired that the mandate should be terminated. There can be no complaint on the score that Britain retired from the scene.

Having proclaimed Palestine to be a new Jewish State named Israel the Jews concerned now demand that they shall be regarded as a nation without regard to the wishes of the other residents of the country. Recognition would result in the Jewish Government being legally entitled to import arms and munitions for the purpose of ejecting the rest of the population that did not accept the Jewish State as a fait accompli. This can hftrdly be regarded as the operation of international law. That the Jews were wise to have organised themselves against the present contingency goes without saying. But that does not give them the right to dictate what shall be Britain’s conduct towards the Arab States that are contiguous to the Holy Land. Britain’s interests in this world are as much her concern as are the interests of the Jews their concern. Britain’s interests require that she shall have treaty arrangements with the Arab States and these include the officering and financing of the Arab Legion. These treaty arrangements have resulted in the Middle East becoming a comparatively peaceful area where crime has over a period of three decades been diminishing. Arab and Jew have benefited by this improvement in the general atmosphere in the Middle East and foreign travellers have been able to traverse with comparative safety what formerly was a Valley of Assassins. This could not have been achieved in any other way than by enlisting the Arabs in the task of policing their own country. To have sent garrisons to the Arab States would have increased the difficulties, not diminished them. The British maintained garrisons inside Palestine, but the termination of the mandate which the Jews demanded meant the withdrawal of these garrisons. That did not imply that British interests and arrangements with the Arab States would or should also cease. The Middle East is part of the economy of Europe and particularly so of the United Kingdom and the British have yet to learn that they must go to Tel Aviv to be told how they shall live in London. Those who proclaimed the Jewish State of Israel knew of the risks they were running with the Arab States, they knew that the United Nations Organisation was taking no appropriate steps to assume the mandate, they knew, too, that American interest in Palestine was of a dual kind, to preserve their oil interests and to play for the Jewish vote for the American Presidential election. America can now volunteer to take up the task Britain has laid down and can engage in the policy which it deems to be best in the interests of its President or of his opponents at the forthcoming elections. It can also decide to allay the Jewish concern for their coreligionists in Palestine, but in so doing the American Administration must recognise that it cannot also continue to enjoy concessions to explore for oil and to extract it when found in the territory which is governed by the Arab States. America cannot have it both ways, it can have its Jews but not its Middle East oil. Seemingly Jewry is prepared to sacrifice American oil concessions in the interests of the Jews in Palestine. American Jewry demands that the wider considerations in respect to the Middle East shall be jettisoned in favour of their own idea of how the Jews shall be settled in Palestine. The Jews and the Jews only are to determine seemingly not only Britain’s policy but America’s as well. This is coming very close to what Hitler used to allege of them, that they sought te dominate the way of living of the nations of the earth. This effort to fulfil the role assigned to Jewry by Hitler and his rabble cannot be described as the height of statecraft.

The latest decision of one of the Jewish organisations is that all British officers captured with the Arab Legion are to be executed. _ This decision is a throwing away of the code of war between civilised nations. The Germans had many crimes to their discredit, but wherever the British met them, in France, in Greece, in Crete, and in North Africa the German Army maintained stnetly the laws and usages of war of today. The army's soldierly code was inviolate. In taking this terrible step backward the Jews are discarding yet another pretension that they are to be regarded as a superior people fit to be entrusted with the destinies of Palestine. They are proving that they are not yet to bo entrusted with the formation of a community of their own. As these things become more apparent to themselves their own deficiencies of character will make them the more embittered against Jewry’s best friend, the United Kingdom. It is the, way of such so to act Britain can only regret that it has paid out so much in blood and treasure to establish a community where assassination conies so easily to the inhabitants. ,