Posted on 08/06/2008 5:48:42 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The writer learns that under new plans being formulated the proposed Jewish State as outlined in the Peel Report will be considerably reduced. The new proposal would confine the Jewish State to the maritime plain, or what is known as Sharon Valley. It would start at Tel Aviv and end at Athlit, making the State about forty miles long and ten miles wide.
[In its report of July, 1937, recommending the partition of Palestine (which would be enlarged to include Trans-Jordan) into Arab and Jewish States, the British Royal Commission headed by Earl Peel proposed for the Jewish territory an area of 2,500 square miles – most of the coastal plain, the Valley of Esdraelon, Galilee and the upper waters of the Jordan. The population of this region was put at 600,000 persons, 225,000 of them Arabs.]
The number of Arabs in the proposed reduced Jewish State is small and hence their transfer to other parts of Palestine should not be hard, it is asserted. Important British personages who have much to say as to the future policy in Palestine believe that the Arabs will be appeased if the Jewish State is reduced to an area that already has a 95-per-cent Jewish population.
It is but natural to expect the Zionists, who have considered the Jewish State as proposed by the Peel Commission as too small, to protest vehemently and refuse to accept the reduced territory, which is already densely populated and could not, it is asserted, absorb any new Jewish immigrants.
But that is not all. The Arabs are expected to be just as much disappointed as the Jews. According to the new project, there is not going to be an Arab state. It is said that the highest British authorities here believe that the Arabs are not yet fit for self-government and that therefore all Palestine outside the proposed Jewish state should be administered by the British under a revised mandate.
One of the chief demands of the Arabs is the establishment of a national government in Palestine in which they will have an overwhelming majority, but “allowing” for autonomous rule in the purely Jewish parts and the purely Arab parts of the country under the supervision of the central government in Jerusalem. Moreover, it is recalled that only recently the Grand Mufti asserted that the Arabs would not concede an independent Jewish state, even in such a region as the 100-per-cent Jewish city of Tel Aviv.
Hence, it is held certain that neither Arabs nor Jews will be satisfied and that consequently strife between them is bound to continue. Even if the Jews should be forced by the British Government and the League of Nations to accept the reduced State, one can say with virtual certainty that the Arab leaders will never agree to accept rule under a revised mandate nor admit the formation of a Jewish State, no matter how small.
To contend that once a definite policy has been decided by the British Government it will be enforced by any means is held to be absurd. Very little can be done against Arab guerrilla methods. Army and police officers here acknowledge that they find it most difficult to cope with the guerrilla tactics, which as a rule consist of sniping from ambush, placing land mines on roads and attacking isolated groups of Jews. For thirty years, it is pointed out, the British Army has been trying to wipe out guerrilla fighting among the tribes of the north-western frontier of India and has not succeeded yet.
In today’s incidents, three armed men were killed and seven wounded in a fight with policemen who were patrolling the Acre-Safed road, and a supernumerary constable was killed in a clash between policemen and an armed band near the scene of yesterday’s explosion.
RT+70 ping.
Important British personages who have much to say as to the future policy in Palestine believe that the Arabs will be appeased .............
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