The Arabs' Demands The Grand Mufti might be expected to
put the Arab ease to the Royal Commission on Palestine at its highest, but the case which he actually did put is little calculated to advance the Arab cause. The official claim that the Arabs of Palestine were better off under Turkey than they are under Britain can be nothing but a subject for inconclusive argument. It is quite another matter when the Grand Mufti demands that the policy of the National Home for the Jews should be abandoned, that Jewish immigration and the sale of Arab land to Jews should be prohibited immediately, and that the Mandate should be terminated and replaced by a treaty of alliance like that now existing between Britain and Iraq. There is tech- nically, of course, no difficulty about the termination of a mandate, as the cases of Iraq and Syria have shown, but the abandonment of the National Home for the Jews principle lies outside all discussion. The National Home is a policy to which Britain is definitely committed, and in spite of the difficulties to which it gives rise the best will have to be made of it. To the question of what - would happen to the 400,000 Jews now in Palestine if the Arabs were given home-rule the Grand Mufti had nothing to reply beyond the vague statement that Moslems were known for their tolerance. If the decision of the Arabs to abandon the boycott produces no pro- posals more practical than this, it might as well not have been taken.
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