ARAB PROTEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 February 1939, Page 8

ARAB PROTEST

v PRINCE HUSSEIN’S SPEECH AT CONFERENCE DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS SINCE WAR. FEARS OF FORCIBLE EVICTION. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. (Received This Day, L 0 p.m.) LONDON, February 10. In his statement of the Arab case, Prince Hussein said that Biitains policy since the Great War had shown that Arab fears were far from groundless. The Arabs had been denied the independence promised by Eritains pledge in 1915, in return for the Arab share in the Allied victory. The terms of the mandate had proved to' be a . flagrant violation, not only of promises, but of the right of political inpendence specifically recognised by the Covenant of the League of Nations. Palestine’s post-war administration exercised unfettered power, equivalent to a dictatorship, thereby depriving the Arabs, who before the war enjoyed Parliamentary representation, of the elementary rights of selfgovernment. The Jewish population in Palestine had increased by 22 per cent since the war and now numbered 400,000 of a total of 1,400,000. Jews in 1918 owned 150,000 acres, but now owned 330,000 acres of the total of 1.950,000 acres available and were driving Arabs from the most fertile parts. Arab villages had been razed and mosques, homes and cemeteries wiped out. The real issue was whether the Arabs, after a continuous occupation of Palestine of over 1,300 years, should be forcibly evicted, in order to enable the Jews to establish a national home.