Palestine's Future
The debate on Palestine in the House of Commons on Wednesday' revealed unbroken agreement on the one vital issue, the surrender, by Great Britain of the mandate for that country. The loss of British lives in Palestine every week confirms that resolution increasingly. But the problem of Palestine remains, whether Britain is the Man- datory Power or not, and there is room for the gravest misgivings about the situation after the surrender of the mandate on May 15th. The United Nations has no precedents to guide it in regard to the juridical position. The Organisation itself will be virtually in the position of Mandatory till some permanent regime is established. But the attitude of the British Government is by no means wholly satisfactory. There is an exaggerated ostentation in the way Britain is washing its hands of Palestine in the eyes of the world. We have, it is true, divested ourselves of any special responsibility for Palestine by our surrender of the mandate, but we have not divested ourselves of a shred of the general responsibility which rests on us as a Member State for the settlement of Palestine or any other department of the United Nations work. And after failing for decades to get Jew and Arab to agree in Palestine, we cannot, without a cynical display of indifference, declare that we will have no part in any Palestine settlement which does not rest on agreement between Arab and Jew. A position has almost been created in which Palestine is recognised as the concern of every member of the United Nations except Great Britain. Unless we desire to abdicate completely our position as one of the three principal members of the Organisation, it becomes us to adopt a much more positive and less detached attitude in this matter.
