After Six Months

World War II brought peace to Palestine. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem quit having Jews mobbed at the Wailing Wall. Arab and Jewish youths joined the British Near Eastern Army. Jews entered Arab districts without risk of being blown to pieces, and vice versa. Jewish and Arab citrus fruit growers talked of forming cooperatives and Arabs in Jerusalem went to Jewish nightclubs. Problems like further Jewish immigration and smaller Arab land ownership were put by for the duration.

Last week the British Government deliberately chose to muddy these waters. Before the House of Commons Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald announced that the British had decided to solve the land problem right now and in favor of the Arabs.

Hereafter, said Mr. MacDonald, Jews will be prohibited from buying more land in all the hill country and in the southern districts of Beersheba and Gaza. This is more than half the country. Furthermore, Jews will be allowed land purchases only "by special permission" in other large restricted areas around Haifa, Lake Tiberias and Ramleh. Jews can still buy land in municipal areas, in the Haifa industrial zone and in a 50-mile stretch of the Maritime Plain between Tantura and Ramleh, practically all owned by them already.

What that meant was that Jewish settlement of Palestine was to be brought to a close and that the "Jewish national homeland" promised by Great Britain in 1917 was squelched. In Arab Jaffa there was singing and dancing in the streets. In Jewish Tel Aviv there were prayers and parades through the streets with banners reading "WE WON'T SUBMIT!" and "DOWN WITH MACDONALD!" Meanwhile, the Palestine Jewish Agency called the restrictions a "concession to Arab political claims," said that the Jewish people "will not submit to the conversion of the Jewish national home into a ghetto." In the U. S., Zionists were going to kick to President Roosevelt.

The Agency has friends in high places. Labor Leader Clement R. Attlee and Liberal Leader Sir Archibald Sinclair objected on the ground that Britain had no right to put into effect its last year's White Paper zonings in Palestine without first obtaining the consent of the League of Nations, under which the country is held as a mandate. Mr. Attlee forced the Government to agree on a general debate this week, and introduced a motion of censure which will amount to the first vote of confidence in the Government to be held since the war's start. Even Government backers thought that this was a poor time to offend world Jewry.

Among the Conservative objectors was young, wealthy Victor Cazalet, M. P. from Chippenham, brother of Thelma Cazalet, M. P. Victor Cazalet has cottoned to Americans ever since his undergraduate days at Oxford. Often a visitor to the U. S., he has good neighbors from Wall Street and Park Avenue to Hollywood. Probably no M. P. has ever taken so many Americans to tea at the House of Commons. Young Mr. Cazalet was also a champion tennis and racquets player in his student days, is one of the only Britons who can give Egyptian Amr Bey a run for his money in squash racquets, can still give a tennis game to Helen Wills. He has spoken many times on that question so important to the U. S., the Jewish refugee problem, and last week, while stanch Government supporters cheered and cried, "Hear! Hear!" and the Opposition yelled, "Oh!" and "Shame!", Mr. Cazalet asked this pointed question about Palestine:

"Why does the Government choose this particular moment, after six months of war and six months of peace in Palestine for the first time in the last six years . . . to introduce a measure which will exacerbate Jewish opinion not only in Palestine but through the world?"

This week Colonial Secretary MacDonald will be called upon to answer that question more fully. It was suspected that unreported Arab dissatisfaction was responsible for this sop to the Arabs, without whose sympathy a successful war in the East would be hard to wage. Meanwhile, Government whips got busy to line up the Conservatives for the important vote. Last time the House of Commons counted votes on Palestine, the Government had a majority of only 88, as compared to the usual Conservative margin of more than 130.

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