21 JUNE 1946, Page 13

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DILEMMA IN PALESTINE

Sm,—In discussions of the Palestine situation, a basic fact which is some- times forgotten but which is of great importance to the Arab world is that Great Britain, who made the Balfour Declaration, and those member states of the League of Nations who assented to the "National Home for the Jews " clauses in the Mandate, had no legal or moral right to assent to any measure of alienation of the Palestine territories without Arab consent. Not even the right of conquest, Alice the Arab peoples were our Allies in ousting their Turkish overlords. The fact that some of our, inevitably mixed, motives were good could not justify us in giving away what was not ours to give. However, the milk is spilt, There are large Jewish settlements in Palestine which it would be unjust and, even for the Arabs, inexpedient to try to abolish or to restrain from at least some expansion ; there is the overwhelming problem of the displaced Jews of Europe ; and feelings on both sides are bitter. If there is to be even the most tenuous hope of a peaceful solution, a major gesture of repent- ance and conciliation must be made. This gesture should come not from Britain alone—though, as the party responsible for the Balfour Declaration and the confusions and betrayals exemplified in Abe McMahon letters and the Sykes-Picot agreement and as the Mandatory Power, she must take a leading place—but, ideally, also from the survivors of the Western Powers who acquiesced in the Mandate and from the U.S.A., who has given a deal of support to Zionist aspirations. I suggest that it might take the form of a joint approach to the Arab League (not merely to the Palestine Arab Committee), and that three points should be made, viz.: (i) We, Britain and the other Christian Powers, recognise that we have sinned against the Arabs in negotiating about Arab territory and in making promises to the Jews which could be fulfilled only at Arab expense. (2) But the Jew:, are there, and we have a moral obligation to them, too. Not only have we encouraged them to go to Palestine (to which country their religious traditions reinforced by persecution give them a special attachment), but it is the so-called Christian countries which have" persecuted them or have acquiesced in their persecution, so that the number wishing to go to Palestine has been enormously increased. We cannot go back to the situation as it was after the 1914-18 war, but must deal with it as it is at present. (3) We invite the Arab League to assent, as an act of grace and mercy, to the immigration of the loo,000 Jews and to the formation of a Judaeo-Arab state on some such lines as indicated in the Anglo-American Committee's report. In return, and as an earnest of the sincerity of our repentance, we would undertake to finance and, where necessary, to supply technical direction for, some scheme of development in the Arab world—for example, a scheme of irrigation in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Such a scheme to be quite additional to any schemes in Palestine itself which might be held to be, part of the duty of the Mandatory Power (or United Nations trustee). Further, we will arrange for the immigration to the U.S.A. and to the British Empire of such Jews as wish to leave Europe and do not wish to go to Palestine. Such an approach, with its admission of guilt and its consequent abandonment of moral superiority, its appeal to mercy and religious feeling and its offer of material reparation, might possibly seem to the Arab world as a whole more attractive than the prospect of pro- longed and devastating warfare in the Middle East which is the only too likely alternative to settlement —I am, Sir, your obedient servant, The Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall, S.W. r. P. B. HOME.