Palestine

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THERE have been eighteen official inquiries into the problem of Palestine. So far the most impartial and intelligent attempt to outline a compromise solution to the conflict of Arab, Jewish, and British interests in Palestine is contained in the recommendations of the twelve-man Anglo-American Committee Report. The Committee proposed that Palestine be neither a Jewish nor an Arab state, and envisaged a unified state of Arabs and Jews advancing under UN trusteeship toward ultimate self-government.

The Report implicitly recognized Britain’s strategic interest in Palestine and stressed (1) the urgency of admitting 100,000 Jews to Palestine; (2) the desirability of resolute efforts both to raise the Arab standard of living and to “foster proper development” of the Jewish national home; (3) the need to bring Arabs and Jews “to a full appreciation of their common interests ... in the land where both belong.”

On the other hand, the subsequent partition or “federation” plan recommended by the Anglo-American Cabinet representatives — a proposal drafted by the British and endorsed by our State Department’s representatives, but not satisfactory to President Truman — appears in some of its implications to be a backward step. The conflict between the Arabs and Jews would be resolved not by rapprochement but by segregation, the Jews getting an area slightly larger than Rhode Island.

Under this latest proposal the desert area in the south would be held by Britain, clearly for military installations to take the place of those abandoned under nationalist pressure in Egypt. The oftrepeated recommendation that self-governing institutions be encouraged is answered with the promise that a system of tight federal control will gradually give way to increasing autonomy.

The prospect of a large American loan is dangled before the Arabs as a bribe to purchase their acquiescence. And the admission of the 100,000 Jews in Europe’s displaced persons camps to the small canton assigned to the Jews is made conditional on acceptance of the Cabinet group’s “solution” — an act resembling blackmail, quite out of keeping with British tradition, which makes political hostages of the wretched survivors of Hitler’s pogroms.

Palestine indivisible

The Woodhead Commission in 1938 rejected partition as unworkable. The area in which the Jews are most heavily concentrated includes an Arab minority of more than 200,000 persons. Tel Aviv (Jewish) and Jaffa (Arab) are really one town; and in the other main cities, Jerusalem and Haifa, the population is fairly evenly mixed. Furthermore, partition, by excluding Jewish enterprise from Arab areas, would cramp, if it did not stifle, the ambitious Zionist schemes for a Jordan Valley Authority to irrigate Palestine, and for exploitation of the mineral resources of the Dead Sea — projects which will raise the standard of living of both Arabs and Jews and quicken the economic development of the whole Middle East.

The essential facts can be simply stated. To the Jews, access to Palestine is a crucial necessity since the Zionist “experiment” is a going concern. To the Arabs, Palestine is the country they have inhabited for centuries, a country eager for independence, and a frontier of Islam which they wish to hold. To the British, Palestine represents a last strategic bastion in the oil-rich lands which stand athwart the lifelines of empire and converge with Soviet Russia in the northeast.

In 1939 the British Cabinet headed by Neville Chamberlain, after three years of bloody Arab riots, issued a White Paper which set a limit to Jewish immigration, restricted land sales to the Jews, and announced that Palestine was eventually to become a self-governing Arab state. The White Paper — a gesture of appeasement to the Arabs on the eve of war — was ruled “not in conformity with the Mandate” by the League of Nations Mandates Commission. It was termed by Winston Churchill “a plain breach of a solemn obligation” and was repudiated by the British Labor Party at its 1939 and subsequent Conferences.

Until recently the White Paper remained the last word on British policy, and Jewish nationalists, convinced that Arab violence had paid off, resorted to violence themselves. Largest of the illegal forces is the Haganah, created back in the days of Ottoman rule to protect settlers from Bedouin attacks and formerly accorded semi-legal status by the British, who allowed Captain (later Major General) Orde Wingate to lead Haganah squads during the Arab riots.

When Rommel threatened the Suez Canal, Haganah volunteers were enrolled in the British Army, and some, trained in commando schools, undertook special missions in the Western Desert, the Balkans, and the Syrian campaign. As soon as the danger to the Middle East subsided, the Haganah was ordered to surrender its arms. It went underground.

When it became clear that the Labor Government had forgotten its pre-election Palestine resolutions, the Haganah took aggressive action for the first time in support of illegal immigrants. Since the beginning of 1946 a so-called “Resistance Movement,” whose purpose is to advertise the determination and despair of Palestine Jewry, has conducted a systematic campaign of violence.

Today the Haganah is a closely knit citizen army numbering some 60,000 men and women and well equipped with light weapons — automatic rifles, submachine guns, grenades, and a few trench mortars. Of the 26,000 members of the Haganah who served in the British Army, 6000 constitute the Palmach, a mobile elite corps which boasts a number of Palestine-made armored cars.

The 3000 fanatics of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, which perpetrated the King David Hotel bomb outrage in July, are the Sinn Feiners of Palestine. First organized to fight Arab marauders in 1936, the Irgun preaches the doctrine that statehood can be achieved only by violence, and specializes in blowing up government buildings, police offices in particular.

When the Irgun decided to coöperate with the British during the war, a few hundred of its members, led by Abraham Stern, seceded and pursued a campaign of sporadic assassination. There is little doubt that the Haganah, which in the past denounced the Irgun and the Stern gang, has recently accepted their collaboration. The British government has accused the Jewish Agency of collusion with all three underground groups.

The Jewish position

Jewish enterprise has broken the thousand-year-old stagnation in the Middle East. In a twenty-fiveyear span, the number of Jewish industrial concerns in Palestine has more than trebled and the value of their annual output has multiplied from $2,000,000 to $125,000,000. Today Palestine has metalworks, machine shops, chemical plants, stone and cement factories. It produces leather goods, optical instruments, clothing, textiles, and many varieties of processed foodstuffs. It has a large diamond-cutting industry, and Tel Aviv is the fashion center of the Middle East.

The Jews own 61/2 per cent of Palestine’s 6,600,000 acres. Under modern methods of soil reclamation, much of what was wilderness has again become arable. The average Jewish colonist supports a family on 61/4 acres of irrigated land. He and his wife work from dawn to dusk and they live frugally — the profits of Jewish agriculture are reinvested in the soil.

Even so, they live in a stone house with modern plumbing and neat furniture, and a modest contribution to the community’s social services ensures every family medical care, education, and economic security from the cradle to the grave. Something far closer to genuine socialism than the Russian brand is operating successfully in Palestine.

How great is Palestine’s economic capacity to absorb further immigration? If the policy outlined in the Anglo-American Committee’s Report prevails, there will be room for substantial expansion. At present only 361/2 per cent of the land is cultivated; only 11/2 per cent is fully irrigated and it provides 40 per cent of the country’s food output. Walter Clay Lowdermilk, Assistant Chief of the Soil Conservation Service of the United States, argues in Palestine, Land of Promise that a Jordan Valley Authority, organized along the lines of TVA, would make possible the eventual settlement of an additional 4,000,000 immigrants. Much depends on the ability of Palestine industry to hold its own in the competitive post-war market — an imponderable on which expert opinion is divided.

Arabs and Jews

There is much justice in the Arab complaint of Jewish exclusiveness and Jewish reluctance to hire Arab labor, but little in the charge that the “invaders” are “displacing” the native inhabitants. The 1937 Royal Commission found the wages for unskilled Arab labor in Palestine several times as high as in the neighboring countries.

The Arabs, by the sale of land at handsome prices to the Jews, had liquidated the crushing burden of debt that enslaved the small cultivator to the village moneylender. The big landowners were investing their receipts in Arab industry, whose capital value has quadrupled since 1920. Palestine’s 550,000 Jews — half of the Arab population of 1,200,000 — foot two thirds of the tax bill.

The increase in government revenue since the beginning of the Zionist colonization is largely responsible for improved health services which have led to a doubling of the Arab population. Jewish welfare work among Arab mothers has cut the infant mortality rate to one in ten as against one in five in Trans-Jordan, and it is a common sight to see an Arab peasant arriving on his donkey for treatment at a Jewish settlement clinic. The transition from mud huts to stone houses is conspicuous in the Arab villages adjoining Jewish settlements, and the powerful Jewish trade-union movement has encouraged trade-unionism among Arab workers.

The Arab position

Privately, moderate Arabs concede these benefits, but even they insist that the Arab cherishes his freedom more dearly than Western ideas of progress. In fact, the impact of Western ideas is precisely what the reactionary Arab ruling classes fear most. Exploited by feudally-minded landlords, millions of starving, illiterate, disease-ridden fellahin in the Arab countries still live under conditions more animal than human.

Arab political leadership in Palestine is in the hands of a small group of families prominent since Ottoman times, of which the Husseinis are the most powerful. The acknowledged leader of the Palestine Arabs is Haj Amin el Husseini, former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Axis collaborator, who recently escaped with suspicious ease from protective custody near Paris to Egypt, where his presence has hardened extremist opinion throughout the Middle East. His cousin, Jamal el Husseini, — until recently exiled by the British for troublemaking, — is the acting chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, and a relative, Musa el Alami, is the Palestinian delegate to the Arab League.

There are seven Arab political parties in Palestine. All are united in demanding immediate stoppage of Jewish immigration, prohibition of land sales to the Jews, and independence for an Arab Palestine. In this program they have the passionate backing of Arabs everywhere — Zionist assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Even the Christians of the Lebanon, fearful of absorption in a Moslem Greater Syria, put on a great show of solidarity with the Arab League.

The Great Powers

Fear of Soviet penetration is the determining force behind Britain’s entire Middle East policy. The British believe that they cannot afford to antagonize the Arabs. Anglo-American economic rivalry in the Middle East is a second motivating factor in Britain’s persistent wooing of Islam.

Britain’s pro-Arab policy would be justified to the hilt on a Realpolitik basis were there evidence that a quid pro quo can be expected from the Arabs. The Foreign Office, guided by Middle Eastern officials with a Lawrence of Arabia complex and antiquated notions of imperial strategy, has consistently overestimated the military importance and the loyalty of the Arabs.

The balance sheet to date shows heavy entries in red ink. Before the war Ibn Saud, long a recipient of British subsidies, sold the oil concession in Saudi Arabia to the highest bidder, the Arabian-American Oil Company. In Palestine, despite the White Paper, the Mufti’s entourage was a hothed of pro-Axis intrigue. In Iraq a powerful pro-Axis minority staged a full-dress revolt. Egypt reneged on its treaty obligation to come to Britain’s aid. Now it is forcing Britain to surrender its treaty rights to bases in the Suez Canal Zone.

British imperial interests have taken a beating at the hands of the Arabs. Richard Crossman, M.P., a member of the Anglo-American Committee, said recently, “Having created the Arab League solely in order to provide strategic defenses for the Empire, we find that the League is constantly ... in need of appeasement.”

After publication of the Anglo-American Committee Report, the Arab League threatened that it would turn to Soviet Russia if “betrayed” by the Western democracies. Zionism provides a single point of common interest between the Soviet and the Arab League. The Soviet denounces Zionism as “British imperialism,” and the Arabs reciprocate by making trouble for Britain in the Middle East.

But nothing could threaten the interests of the Arab ruling classes more than the penetration of Communism. In fact, last July most of the Arab states suppressed leftist elements and Communist publications. The veiled threat that oil contracts might be cancelled in favor of the Soviet is pure bluff.

Right vs. right

The Arab claim to self-determination and the Jewish claim to a national home under the Balfour Declaration constitute, in the words of a British royal commission, “fundamentally a conflict of right with right.” Any Palestine settlement must therefore look to a workable compromise between the needs and passions of Arab and Jew. It would be neither just nor realistic to impose on the Arabs a Jewish state which they could eventually stifle by economic boycott. The future of the Jews in Palestine depends on coöperation between them and the Arabs, their logical customers.

PALESTINE (continued)

On the other hand, access to the Holy Land — less than 1 per cent of the sparsely populated 1,200,000 square miles inhabited by the Arabs — is a lifeand-death need for the Jews. But the question of the survival of European Jewry and the question of Jewish immigration to Palestine, though interrelated, must be treated as two separate issues.

Virtually all the 98,000 Jews still in displaced persons camps in Europe, when polled by the Committee as to where they wished to emigrate, said, “Palestine.” (Several hundred listed as their second choice “the crematorium.”) British and American military authorities in Europe have stressed the urgency of shipping these wretched people to Palestine without delay.

Of the remaining 1,200,000 Jews in Europe (excluding Great Britain and the Soviet Union) the Anglo-American Committee conservatively estimated that 500,000 desire to leave Europe, and it underscored the importance of finding places of refuge for a portion of these Jews in countries other than Palestine. Zionist extremists have been unwilling to accept this proposal. They maintain that there can be no future for the Jews except in Palestine. It is now up to the Western powers to answer the irrefutable Arab contention that all of European Jewry cannot be shipped into a country the size of Vermont.

The recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee Report have been bitterly criticized by both Arabs and Jews, but could be implemented without serious unrest. The Haganah would be prepared to liquidate the extremists if the government were to grant it Home Guard status to ensure the security of new immigrants.

The Palestine Arabs, though many are equipped with rifles smuggled in from Syria and Transjordan, have no organized military formations. The threat of intervention by the other Arab states can be discounted. Egypt alone has a standing army of any consequence, and all have their hands full keeping unruly elements in check within their own boundaries.

The Committee’s plan, which envisages an eventually self-governing state of Arabs and Jews under UN trusteeship, a state in which “Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew,” represents a genuine and constructive compromise.