Palestine and the Arab League
The Palestinian probhm, said the New York Herald-Tribune last Saturday, is a problem for the United Nations. If that is so, the United Nations will have to realise that it is unquestionably a problem which intimately concerns the Arab communities of the Middle East, and that we cannot ride rough-shod over their interests without injustice and peril. Abdul Rahman Azzam Bey, general secretary of the Arab League, said last Sunday that to encourage the Jews in their hope of converting Palestine into a Jewish State would lead to a "holy crusade" between Ea'st and West, between Islam and Christianity. It would be unwise to minimise the extent of Arab feeling on this question, even if that feeling were unjust ; but in fact the Zionist Conference was extremely piovocative, and made demands which were not only a misinterpretation of the Balfour Declaration, but were quite impossible of fulfilment. The country is, as Mr. Anwar Nashashibi has pointed out in a letter to The Times, no larger than Wales, and has not space to receive immigrants on a scale that would solve the world Jewish problem, even if the rights of the Arab majority, assured under the Balfour Declaration, were entirely ignored. The Government is faced with a difficult and delicate situation, with risks attaching to any decision it may make. It is wisely taking time to
think. •
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