Palestine Problems
Crabites, Pierre
PALESTINE PROBLEMS By PIERRE CRABITES FOR centuries a Moslem soldier kept guard, day and night, at the altar which marks the birthplace of the Saviour. Another stood, with fixed bayonet, in the...
...It is not...
...If the soldier and the jurist can be kept in the background the problem can be solved...
...It would be intolerable if more Jewish lives be sacrificed...
...It has been begotten by English good-will and it is born of occidental ignorance...
...If it is not settled at an early date, the safety of the holy places will sooner or later be menaced...
...Arabs and Jews can, under an English chairman, readily elaborate the terms of a settlement if they be brought around a green table with the distinct understanding that they have before them a clean sheet, that they are not bound to accept the Balfour Declaration as a postulate and that authority is given them to evolve a substitute for it...
...With this dual objective in view the Lloyd George ministry sent to Jerusalem, as high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel and, as attorney-general, Mr...
...It was applauded by the Allies and welcomed by neutrals...
...The Star and Crescent of Islam no longer waves over the Holy City...
...They are fighting for something more precious than life...
...It carried, however, a 1919 label...
...Mohammedans protected the Jews within their midst when the West persecuted them...
...It will keep Palestine from being either an armed camp or a Jewish graveyard...
...The art of government is, to a large extent, the science of applied psychology...
...Arabs are tolerant...
...It was felt that England, in that spirit of fairness characteristic of Britain, would introduce an administration which would satisfy the overwhelming Arab majority, and at the same time enforce the principle proclaimed on November 2, 1917...
...It was the Occident's ignorance of the near East which put it in the mandate in a form foreign to its original tenor...
...Oscar DePriest...
...The present warfare has not broken out among Christians...
...And their Jewish adversaries are equally sincere in their stand...
...The situation has outgrown all considerations of personalities...
...This is but another way of saying that something of the bouquet or aroma of "selfdetermination" was maintained, but that the body or alcoholic content-the kick-was pro-Zionist...
...The battle-cry of the last months of the war was the hymn of "self-determination...
...The Briton has a revolution on his hands because he has attempted to carry out a reform without grasping the basic principle of the problem connected with it...
...The labor pangs of the mandate system were made more arduous because President Wilson heartily believed in the doctrine which the lips and lungs of his fellow-delegates loudly proclaimed...
...Christians and Jews were not persecuted in Islam during those centuries when Christendom held to principles of intolerance which Americans foolishly thought non-existent in the United States until a great political party nominated a Catholic for the Presidency...
...Southerners took their stand in respect of these three Negroes on racial grounds...
...So are American Jews...
...It was British misconception of the temper of the Levant which gave to it a wrong interpretation by various decisions among which may be cited the appointment of a Jewish high commissioner, of a Jewish attorney-general, and of a bureaucracy filled with Jews...
...The Christians and Jews of Palestine-the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the Holy Land-oppose British rule, not because they are anti-English or anti-Jew, but because they construe the orientation of Britain's policy in Palestine as tending to drive them out of their homes and as working toward placing the reins of government in the hands of a minority faction...
...Its place has been taken by the Crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew...
...It is emphasized that it evidenced a basic misconception of the Arab point of view...
...They are both of them English Jews...
...It is not inferred that this trust was misplaced...
...Islam will see to it that the spirit back of the Balfour Declaration is made a living reality if that unfortunate pronouncement be formally rescinded and if the sane policy of prewar Turkey be taken as the starting-point for a new era...
...Arabs are the most tolerant of men...
...If these three elements will but realize the common danger a way can be found to delete the Balfour Declaration from the mandate for Palestine...
...The population of Palestine in 1917 and in 1922 consisted of approximately 700,000 Arabs (625,000 Mohammedans and 75,000 Christians) and of 60,000 Jews...
...Moslems are tolerant...
...Another stood, with fixed bayonet, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre...
...These stubborn realities make of the Balfour Declaration, as now applied, the root of the present unrest...
...They inquired no more into the personal fitness of Sir Herbert Samuel or Mr...
...This point of view may be erroneous...
...Good faith is fighting good faith and ignorance is keeping guard...
...The latter is an able jurist who, at the time of his designation, thoroughly understood conditions in Palestine and who is too big a man, morally and intellectually, to let par-tizanship cross his threshold...
...It has arisen between Jews and Arabs...
...The Arabs of Palestine pitch their case in this instance upon somewhat similar motives...
...It was not until July 24, 1922, that these details were whipped into final shape and the mandate signed and promulgated...
...The recall of the Balfour Declaration will be in the best interests of the Jews...
...Britain has failed in Palestine because her appreciation of Moslem and Arab reactions was wofully wrong...
...Strife has been engendered by this change of supremacy...
...The Balfour Declaration is under a severe fire...
...Such a state of affairs is most serious...
...The former is a Liberal statesman whose broadness of vision knows neither creed nor race...
...It was a war measure...
...Rightfully or wrongfully the Arabs of the Holy Land see in the Balfour Declaration and more particularly in the interpretation placed upon it, not a step toward "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" but a determination to convert that country into a Zionist theocracy and to make it a national home for the Jewish people...
...The resignation of the courageous and high-minded Bentwich would serve no useful purpose...
...Norman Bentwich...
...So are American Protestants...
...This cannot go on indefinitely...
...It would, however, be a mistake to say that racial antipathy is the outstanding cause of the present revolution in Palestine...
...It would be monstrous to continue to drive Arabs to desperation...
...The discussions of the Peace Conference were attuned to the music of autonomy...
...The Council of the League of Nations, examining near-East problems through western spectacles, probably thought that if the mandate had "self-determination" as its driving force it would be impossible to establish in Palestine that national home for the Jewish people contemplated by the Balfour Declaration and applauded by the world...
...And London has honestly endeavored to do this...
...Sir Herbert Samuel is no longer in office...
...It is not suggested that any spirit of unfairness prompted the making of this blend...
...Until it goes peace will be an illusion...
...It thus came to pass that Versailles, on June 28, 1919, wrote the principle of "self-determination" into the mandate for Palestine, but left to the Council of the League of Nations the duty of working out the modalities of the mandate...
...The purity of the motives which inspired the Balfour Declaration, the high standards of right and wrong which prompted the Council of the League of Nations in enlarging the scope of that Declaration when the terms of the mandate for Palestine were drafted, and the laudable intentions which lay back of the choice of an irreproachable Jewish high commissioner and of an unattackable Jewish attorney-general meant nothing to the Arabs of Palestine...
...If the Holy Land is not today a bloody quagmire it is merely because British bayonets are saving the Jewish minority from Arab knives, bullets and clubs...
...These conditions do not create a purely Palestinian or even an English question...
...In other words, the Turk kept order because he did not seek to innovate and because he understood the problems with which he had to deal...
...Crum, or Walter Cohen or of Mrs...
...The American Congress sang its praise...
...One must take facts as they are and not as they should be...
...Norman Bentwich than did the people of the South into that of Dr...
...American Catholics are interested in the preservation of the holy places...
...These Christians and Moslems are not bloodthirsty...
...They interest, in a vital manner, American Jews and American Catholics and Protestants...
...Whether it is or not is foreign to the issue...
...It will make possible the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...
...Here is the exact text of the message which met with such general commendation: His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the right and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country...
...That pronouncement was made on November 2, 1917...
...The British Colonial Office was convinced that the patriotism of these two representatives, their grasp of conditions and their unflinching sense of fair play would hold an even balance between Jew and Arab...
...And, to the average man, this is what really counts...
...The Turks knew that if the Christian sects were left to themselves they would fight to obtain control of those sanctuaries thus dedicated to peace among men...
...It is, however, insisted that it betrayed a fundamental ignorance of Moslem mentality...
...Mohammedanism yields to no religion in its essential liberalism...
...It was of 1922 vintage...
...It is, in a word, a question of psychology...
...The keynote of this British reform is what is known to history as the Balfour Declaration...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 13
