The papers of Tuesday published an " Interim Report "
from Sir Herbert Samuel on his administration in Palestine. Funds, it appears, are not available for a rapid expansion of the Zionist movement. It is a relief to know this, although Sir Herbert Samuel• expresses his own conviction that it would be possible to carry out the programme of Zionism and at the same time to satisfy (in the words of Mr. Balfour's declaration of 1917) the " civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities." The alarm of the non-Jewish• inhabitants of Palestine is natural, and indeed only too well founded. The population of Palestine is barely three-quarters of a million, and as Sir Herbert Samuel says, the Jewish race throughout the world. numbers 14,000,000. If a small percentage of these 14,000,000 attached itself to Palestinian Zionism it would soon swamp the non-Jewish population. The Jews actually in
Palestine number about 76,000, whereas there are 77,000 Christians, the rest of the population—about half a million—
being, of course, chiefly Moslems.
Previous page
