H Wilson Harris PALESTINE AND ST. STEPHEN'S 26 June 1922

THE WIDER WORLD. PALESTINE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. by H. WILSON HARRIS, Daily News (London) 26 June 1922

 

Last Wednesday Lord Balfour made his first speech in the House of Lords in defence of the Palestine mandate. On a division the Government was defeated by a vote of over two to one. On Thursday the Palestine mandate was to have been discussed in the House of Commons. If the House had not been adjourned is consequence of the tragedy of an hour earlier the Government might have been hard put to it there too for a majority.

 

As it is the discussion in the Commons still lies ahead, and when it comes the opponents of the Government's Palestine policy will gather all their forces for the attack. Who are those opponents? They are first and foremost the bigoted Anti- Semites. whom no argument can move and no reasoning affect if it is designed to justify any policy by which Jews may benefit. They will be there in strength.

 

Then there are the patriot protectionists, who hold the view of colonies by which the Court party of George III. compassed the loss of America. For them victories are merely means of promoting British trade, and the fact that Palestine happens not to be a colony at all but a mandate territory administered by this country under responsibility to the League of Nations in no way diminishes the ardour of their demand that is the matter of contracts for the development of Palestine British business shall enjoy not merely a preference but a monopoly. They will muster all their battalions to press that indefeasible demand.

 

A Matter of Pledges.

 

Such critics matter little. But there are others who will raise a question calling for more serious argument. Is it to be desired that Palestine, a predominantly Arab country, should be systematically colonised by an alien and more highly-developed race such as the Jews? And in particular is such a policy of colonisation in strict accordance with the mandate condition that the wellbeing and development of the inhabitants form a sacred trust or civilisation?

 

The real problem here is whether the British Government is to repudiate the pledge given on its behalf by the then Foreign Secretary, Mr. Balfour, in November 1917, that there should be established in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. On the wisdom of such a pledge there is obviously room for argument. But it may be observed that of the various parties who might have raised objection to it none have disapproved it at any time. The Allied Powers at Paris, in 1919 endorsed it. America has always favoured the course taken by the British Government. The League of Nations Council, representing such nations as France, Italy. and Catholic Spain, have accepted the main principles of the mandate without reserve

 

Behind everything lies the astonishing phenomenon of Jewish nationality. That is a fact that stands by itself. There is no analogy to it. Call it good or call it bad, there it is. The Jew may be a Briton or a German, or a Pole, a Russian or a Frenchman, but under and behind it all he is a Jew first, and in whatever alien hands Palestine may be at any moment Palestine remains the Jew's home still. That in itself would in no way justify the expulsion of the present inhabitants of Palestine to make room for the return of the Jew. It would not justify the imposing on them of any curtailment of their civil or religious or political rights, and the mandate expressly stipulates that no such disabilities shall in be imposed.

 

How to Develope.

 

But Palestine is a land worth developing. Merely as an agricultural country it is much under-populated. When its industrial possibilities are realised there will be room for immigration on a considerable scale for a generation to come. But who is to develop Palestine? Quite certainly the Arabs will not. Where has the Arab race ever thrown itself into the expansion of modern industry? Manifestly this country cannot. We grudge the two millions the policing of the country is still costing us, and we have no money to sink in the development of Palestine. Still less will the investors of America be attracted on a purely business basis by such opportunities as Palestine offers. Why should they? They have far better fields of investment near home.

 

What that means is that without the Jewish settlement Palestine will remain the undeveloped pastoral country it is to-day. It may be quite true that contractors of various countries have applied for concessions to dam rivers and instal hydro-electric machinery and other works, but all that is on the assumption that the Jews are to be in the country to develop it industrially. An Arab Palestine offers no encouragement to such undertakings.

 

Now what the Jews are doing is to come into Palestine from different countries of the world, from America in particular, bringing with them, or attracting to them, large sums of Americas money. They are coming in, no great numbers—about 1,000 a month—and they are given entry only after satisfying stringent conditions. They come as idealists, and they set about developing the country on something other than a business basis.

 

Business and Ideals.

 

That is why Jewish university graduates are at present labouring with their hands at making roads in the country to which they have returned out of exile. That is the truth that lies behind the grossly misrepresented Rutenberg concession. Mr. Rutenberg has not dashed suddenly in to clutch at a lucrative contract. He has been in Palestine for some three years working out a scheme for developing the water power of the country. And now that his scheme has been approved by the Colonial Office experts he is in America raising funds from American Zionists to carry through an undertaking which no one believes will give shareholders more than the most modest of dividends.

 

Those are the considerations that must in equity determine the decision on the mandate. Not that in reality there can be any fresh decision to take, for to the mandate substantially as it stands there is no alternative visible. The Arabs cannot stand alone We cannot abandon Palestine to its fate, be that fate Turkish or French. We cannot annex it outright in the face of the world. And if there is to be a mandate it must be in substance what the present mandate is, unless both the British pledge to the Jews and the welfare of Palestine itself are to be jettisoned together. Criticism of details there may and should be. In particular it is essential that the balance should be held between Jews and Arabs in Palestine with the same impartiality with which Sir Herbert Samuel is holding it today. Bat on the main issue the House of Commons ought to give the Government overwhelming support against the Die-Hard school of critics, for it is of the first moment that the mandate should be finally approved by the League without further delay. Till that is done a completely permanent regime cannot be established, and so long uncertainty and instability will prevail. It is fully time controversy was ended and construction begun.

 

Image: Photo of Henry Wilson Harris, circa 1917, by James Russell & Sons, print held by National Portrait Gallery.

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