The Palestine Report

...If the government does everything this report suggests, it might very nearly kill the Zionist movement or reduce it to insignificance...

...Less, surely, than in the past...

...Snell's reservations...

...What body is...

...Zionism has drawn out some of the briskest energies of the most fascinating, and one of the most gifted, of peoples...

...Snell appended to it some "reservations" which show that he was more moved by Zionist argument than were his colleagues...

...Presumably a new definition of the Balfour Declaration would be one way of doing this...

...Among the documents which have been issued from the Colonial Office since the war for freedom and self-determination, none is more attractive than this Commission's report...

...The question is one which has importance far beyond the borders of Palestine, and not least in India itself...

...The Commission had been appointed by Mr...

...It is calm, judicious, fair and comprehensive-too comprehensive, one suspects, for the comfort of the harassed politicians in Whitehall and Downing Street...

...The report will appear to them to do a measure of justice to the Arab case...

...The report is certain to be assailed with great bitterness by the Zionists, inasmuch as it supports practically none of their main contentions...

...the second looks like a mere begging of the question...

...MacDonald to determine the causes of the Arab-Jewish riots of last summer and to recommend action to prevent a recurrence of the trouble...

...Yet if there is anything in a tendency, it can be seen that only betrayal and disappointment lie in store for them...

...Who would have expected a British government's commission to admit so clearly, thirteen years after the fact, that nobody knows what the Balfour Declaration means ? Yet the Commission does admit this by urging the government, with almost plaintive eloquence, to make a new set of definitions of that famous utterance and its by-products, the mandate clauses dealing with the Jewish national home and the rights of non-Jewish peoples...

...The Commission of Inquiry consisted of Sir Walter Shaw, chairman (a Colonial Office gentleman), Sir Henry Betterton, M. P. (Conservative), Mr...

...This suggestion is strong in two vital passages of the report, and the absence of representative institutions is named as one of the chief Arab grievances...

...Like other sympathizers with Zionism, he seems to accept the nobility of the experiment as an excuse for its ignoble results...

...Another, and most important, recommendation is that the Arabs be given some voice in their own government...

...One could scarcely have expected a commission of this sort to speak of the "inherent difficulty" of the Zionist mandate, and yet the report does use that expression...

...With what exultation did these thousands of young Jews march forward ten years ago, at the dividing of the waters...

...limitation of Jewish immigration, and of the activities of the political executive of the Zionists in Palestine, would be others...

...The Arabs will be particularly glad to see that their central aim-representative government-is regarded with some favor by the Commission...

...An elan of this quality evokes the pity and terror-has the genuine aesthetic significance-of a biblical episode: it is like the crossing of the Red Sea...

...We come to Mr...

...Harry Snell, M. P. (Labor...

...Again and again in reading the document one is startled to find that truths of the most unpleasant and awkward nature are being told...

...that the land policy should not be changed, but the "Arab mind" on that question should be changed...

...The remedy for the troubles of Palestine, the Commission suggests in its set of recommendations, is to curb the Zionist policy...

...The Arabs could season their satisfaction, if they had more political experience, by two reflections: first, that this report could not possibly have been other than it is, by the plain evidence upon which it is based...

...the statement that Jewish immigration should be more carefully curbed and regulated...

...On the evidence, the Commission could have taken no other course...

...From the early stages of the inquiry in Jerusalem last October it was obvious that the causes of the conflict lay very deep, and that the Commission's work would be valueless unless it pursued these causes to their roots...

...So childlike is the Arabs' trust in the established authorities, under ordinary conditions, that they will probably take this document at its face value- forgetting that there have been other reports, other promises, other benevolent documents, and that the Arab nation is still partitioned and unenfranchised...

...Zionism would enter a new and less aggressive (but certainly also less enthusiastic) phase if these suggestions were adopted...

...But if the government does not do something to palliate the regime to which the Arabs object in Palestine, there are likely to be more outbreaks, and perhaps in time a general Arab revolt...

...Necessity is the mother of imperial benevolence...

...The causes of the riots of last summer, as listed by the Commission, can be boiled down to one: the Zionist policy...

...In this case the best move for the empire's good is obviously to pacify the Arabs...

...With their combination of persecution mania and hysterical nationalism, they are nevertheless idealists: they have risked a great deal in this enterprise, for which many of them have died...

...Nothing is easier than to define the Balfour Declaration...

...but evidence means nothing to an enthusiast...

...Still less will be left in the future as the inexorable historic tendency shown in this report continues its course...

...The Wailing Wall incidents of 1928-1929 must be regarded as a whole, but the incident among them which in our view most contributed to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on August 15...

...As it is, one is left with the assurance that Britons, at least, never will be slaves...

...and thus to lull them, for another period, into quiet...

...and second, that no other sort of report at this juncture would serve the empire's purposes so well...

...there are only "recommendations" and "suggestions...

...and that Zionism is a noble experiment...

...The Commission insists that steps should be taken to improve agriculture in Palestine if any additional population is to be supported in that country...

...Evidence of a very comprehensive nature was therefore taken, and the report now published appears (to the astonishment of all) to be based on the evidence...

...and then where would be England's legal excuse for the occupation of Palestine ? Nowadays, as is well-known, empires cannot exist without such excuses...

...On the Arab side, the probability is that there will be a good deal of ill-advised rejoicing: most of the Arabs are likely to accept trustingly the benevolence of this document as constituting some sort of gage for the future...

...Snell at work in Palestine thought, long ago, that for him it was the crux of the matter...

...The question is, how much support will Zionism receive from the Jews of the world when its activities are so circumscribed...

...Having betrayed the Arabs with great consistency and acumen since 1915, is the government now going to betray the Jews...

...The whole report presents the MacDonald government with a problem which is, practically speaking, insoluble...

...What may irritate them more, at the moment, than the larger and more serious implications of the document, is the fact that it exonerates the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the government of Palestine from a number of hysterical accusations made last summer and autumn...

...a revised land policy, and a representative legislature in the country, would complete the work...

...All of these signed the report, but Mr...

...the surprising thing is that it should be stated so frankly...

...All of this is the natural outcome of the evidence...

...Snell) do not believe the Zionist policy in its present form to be feasible...

...These include the hint that a garrison should be maintained in the country...

...The Arab world has been in an exceedingly dangerous mood since the riots of last August in Palestine-more dangerous since than during those disturbances...

...On the contrary, the report seems to me so honest as to be very embarrassing to the government which is saddled with it...

...Naturally there are no definite pledges or promises in the report...

...It is suggested by this report that the gentlemen who made it (always excepting Mr...

...Scarcely anybody-least of all the MacDonald government-can have expected the report to go quite so far in candor as it does...

...The general cause of last summer's outbreak is found to be The Arab feeling of animosity and hostility toward the Jews, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future...

...Mac-Donald and his cabinet to make still another definition, the Commission is only asking that the Zionist policy be pushed into another phase, to be changed again the next time a definition becomes necessary...

...certainly no other official pronouncement has gone so far toward recognizing the fundamental rights of seven-eighths of the population of Palestine...

...It is pleasant to reflect that in this case the imperial responsibility has directed these gentlemen into the narrow path of justice...

...The immediate causes of the outbreak are six, most of them related to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the long controversy over it, with the activities of both Arab and Jewish bodies in connection therewith...

...Hopkin Morris, K. C., M. P. (Liberal) and Mr...

...and the third would appear, at first glance, to be irrelevant...

...But there does exist a sort of subconscious telepathy between Englishmen which tells them how to make the best move for the empire's good...

...The first of these reservations is perfectly valid if one begins by granting the gift of prophecy to the Palestine government and the grand mufti...

...Further] The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchase they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews...

...One can regard the Zionist experiment as a profound and disastrous mistake, as I do, and still feel very sorry for the Zionists at this juncture...

...The clear tendency ever since the war-and most clearly expressed, in a sort of climax, by this Commission's report-is to limit and circumscribe and diminish the Zionist pretensions, a bit here and a bit there, so that of the original resounding claims which caused the synagogues of the world to hold the ancient service of triumph in 1918, very little now is left...

...Yet those who saw Mr...

...Divested of their embroideries, they appear to be three: that the government of Palestine and the grand mufti of Jerusalem should be blamed for not having foreseen and controlled events...

...In asking Mr...

...The inhabitants of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq have not yet learned, after long experience, what an empire's pledges are worth...

...On the side of the Arabs there is likely to be a good deal of premature satisfaction over the Commission's findings...

...to recognize the most important of their demands to some degree...

...and the strong recommendation that the land policy be reviewed in order to correct injustices involved in the eviction of Arab tenant farmers whose lands are sold to the Zionists...

...the difficult thing is to find a definition which can be called permanent...

...Even a race whose history is one long disappointment can hardly be expected to go on forever putting its money on such a doped horse...

...Or will it prefer to keep part faith with the Jews and betray the Arabs once again ? It is probable that in this, as in everything else, the parties to the affair will do just what they are obliged to do and no more...

...Under such conditions the duty of this Commission was clear: it had to make a very forthright report, and it has done so...

...If one had never seen any other documents of the sort-if one had not inspected their fruits on the bloody doorsteps of Jerusalem, or gone to bed for many nights with the cries of their victims still ringing in one's ears-the paternal godliness of this report might be more convincing...

...These alternatives are not pretty...

...It is no secret that the Labor Cabinet is not united on the Palestine question...

...I do not mean to suggest that the Shaw Commission has been politically influenced...