30 OCTOBER 1936, Page 2

Tranquillity in Palestine The condition of Palestine is now such

as to encourage the hope that the Royal Commission appointed to investi- gate the execution of the mandate will be in a position to leave for the scene of its labours some time next week, the Colonial Secretary having very properly laid it down that the members should not start till order had been restored. Not only -has that been achieved but open fraternisation seems in many localities to have taken the place of open antagonisms, and it is at least possible that the atmosphere created by reaction from a conflict tragically costly in life, to say nothing of money, may be definitely favourable to the Commission's deliberations. The most valuable military operation of the week has been a strategic move designed to enable the free-lance Arab leader Fawzi Kawakji to escape across the frontier into Transjordania. He is not a Palestinian Arab and his presence in Palestine could not be tolerated, but an escape was a better solution than an arrest—as Kawakji himself seems to hive decided. With the Commission about to begin its work, it is the manifest duty of all who hold strong views on Palestine one way or the other to refrain from exacerbating feeling by any unduly vehement expression of them.

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