THE PALESTINE TRAGEDY
BEFORE this week is out we shall have entered on the month of May. Before May has run half its course Great Britain will have relinquished the Palestine Mandate. The formight imme- diately ensuing will be the most critical of all the critical fortnights through which that unhappy land has passed in the last three years. Two alternatives, so unevenly balanced that they can hardly be compared, present themselves. Theoretically it is still conceivable that some temporary and provisional agreement between the contending parties may be achieved ; the possibility cannot be ruled out. But all the indications are that a desperate conflict, which has already begun in areas from which British troops have been withdrawn, will grow to a hitherto unexperienced intensity, with results both internal and external that lie far beyond pre- diction. There is every reason why that should happen. For the moment the opposing forces are unequal. The Jews have perhaps too,000 men under arms, the Arabs nothing like half that number. But the cause of the Arabs in Palestine is the cause of Arabs everywhere, in Syria, in Transjordania, in Iraq, in Egypt. As those countries join in the Palestine fight the balance will be more than redressed. Hence the efforts the Jews are manifestly making to get their blows in first, and in particular to seize such ports as Acre, Haifa and Jaffa, to secure communications, especially as a means of military reinforcement, with the outside world. While the fate of Palestine is argued out at Lake Success it may be in process of decision on the plains and hills of Galilee and Samaria and Judaea, though to speak of decision with any implication of permanence would be a misuse of language.
' The tragic evolution of events from the issue of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 till now cannot with any benefit be retraced here. Nor is there profit in exposing the mistakes and deploring the missed opportunities that have made Palestine a political and racial battleground from the day of the assumption of the mandate by this country in 1922 to its abandonment in 1948. Partition, approved by the United Nations. Assembly in 1947, was recom- mended by the Peel Commission in 1937. Eleven years ago it was a policy that might have worked ; last year it was plain that it could form no basis for a settlement, and the means by which it was carried through the Assembly formed a fit part of the whole unhappy controversy. The recommendations of the Anglo- American Commission two years ago might have shown the way to a settlement. but for the incorporation in them of President Truman's fatal proposal for the immediate admission of too,000 Jewish immigrants. Now there are no proposals that justify the smallest hope of agreement. Three organs of the United Nations —the Assembly, the Security Council and the Trusteeship Council —are concerning themselves in varying degree with the future of Palestine. But the time is long past when practical steps of any value could be taken. The United Nations, faced with its sharpest challenge, has failed more calamitously than over anything else that it has so far attempted. Informed twelve months ago that Great Britain had decided to relinquish the charge it assumed in 1922, U.N.O., its Member States hopelessly divided in their support of Jews and Arabs, gave no sign of capacity, or even of intention, to grasp the situation as its gravity so imperiously demanded. Partition, which the Jews desired and the Arabs rejected, was carried by the Assembly, but no steps have at any time been taken to create in Palestine conditions that would make the execution of the par- tition project possible.
The partition policy still stands, in spite of the endeavour of the American delegation to secure a breathing-space by sub- stituting temporarily for a British trusteeship a Unit& Nations trusteeship. Theoretically that proposal is quite sound. Such an expedient might well be the only means of averting explosion in Palestine, provided the new trustee commanded the necessary authority for the enforcement of order. No moral authority suffices in Palestine today. It is a case of police and military, with tanks and aeroplanes and guns, to replace the troops and weapons which Great Britain is withdrawing. U.N.O. should have been in a position to supply all that. The provisions of the Charter regard- ing the creation of an International General Staff and the obligation on Member States to supply military contingents and in particular air contingents held immediately ready, in case of need, are explicit. But that part of the Charter is a dead letter, a dereliction for which this country Cannot be held entirely blameless, for its representatives appear to have taken no steps, as they might and should have done, to get the provisions so much as seriously discussed. Failure may have been probable, in face of Russia's attitude, but the attempt should certainly have been made. Now, apart from a vague and tentative suggestion that the United States might be willing to send some troops to Palestine if other nations would do the same—a proposal that comes far too late to be practical in view of the diffictilty of organising and co-ordinating such a force—the only expedient under discussion is the recruit- ment of a volunteer police force to ensure the safety at least of Jerusalem and the Holy Places. Here, at least, something may be achieved if the agreement reached with Jews and Arabs at Lake Success for a truce within the walled city of Jerusalem is endorsed by Jews and Arabs in Palestine itself. But Palestine does not commonly accept what Lake Success proposes.
Where still, if anywhere, lies hope ? At Lake Success, it must be admitted, very little. The only concrete proposals are for an appeal to both antagonists to observe a general truce. About the former there can be little optimism. It is one thing to accept the principle of a truce2 quite another to agree about its terms when both sides are manoeuvring for position and determined to relinquish no strategic advantage. Meanwhile, as M. Gromyko pertinently pointed out on Tuesday, the partition decision stands till it is revoked by the Assembly. Till that happens no trusteeship scheme can be adopted even if the discussions regarding that had made far more favourable progress than in fact they have. In Palestine itself events have taken charge. The evacuation is in full progress, and it would appear that half the British occupation troops have left the country. The remainder must be more and more concentrated as the withdrawal continues, and over the greater part of Palestine Jewish forces—Hagana and Irgun Zvai Leumi have made common cause—will be facing Arabs who are today inferior in numbers but will not long remain so if the Arab League takes action. It is here that the procrastinations of U.N.O. promise such tragic consequences. To save a situation is always far easier than to restore it, and the time for saving the situation in Palestine is plainly past. Civil war has begun, and nothing can prevent it from spreading. Bloodshed and destruction on an alarming scale are in prospect, and complications that may cause serious trouble outside Palestine itself are probable. One concerns the Transjordanian Arab Legion, largely officered and subsidised by this country. Mr. Bevin stated on Wednesday that after the abandonment of Palestine by Britain this force would be kept within the borders of Transjordania ; it is of the first importance that that provision should be scrupulously honoured. In a larger setting, if the Jews should concentrate within the areas defined as Jewish under the partition scheme any Arab attack on them would technically be an attack on the United Nations. But niceties of this kind are hardly worth more than mentioning in the situation that now exists. If there is any shaft of light to pierce the universal gloom it lies in the possibility that both sides may realise at the eleventh hour what price each of them must inevitably pay for the refusal to accept even a temporary truce. The Jews have persisted to the last in the belief that Britain would not really relinquish the mandate in May. On that at least they are disillusioned. They must know, moreover, that while they can no doubt for the moment hold the Arabs in check, in spite of the latter's mastery of guerilla warfare, the threats from the Arab States are serious, and not only Jewish lives, but all the material achievement of the Jews in Palestine will be put in jeopardy. It is conceivable still that such considerations, combined with the Arabs' fears of what may befall them before help can come from the Arab lands, may check both sides on the edge of the precipice. However that may be, and whatever may happen in Palestine, it is imperative that any semblance of a breach between Britain and the United States be avoided. In an election year in America, with the Jewish vote possibly decisive in some States, that will be no easy task. It is reassuring that Mr. Marshall should have returned from Bogota to take charge at the State Department. If any man can achieve the impossible it is he. And it is still not utterly impossible that he may.
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