POLICY IN PALESTINE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 May 1939, Page 6

POLICY IN PALESTINE

MR MACDONALD DEFENDS WHITE PAPER AS BETWEEN JEWS AND ARABS. , MEANING OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION. (British Official Wireless.) j (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) RUGBY, May 22. The House of Commons debate on Palestine was opened 1 by Mi- Malcolm MacDonald. 1 The essence of his defence of < the. White Paper was in a declaration that the proposals were conceived in a spirit of absolute impartiality between the Jews and Arabs and were . consistent with Britain's obligations to both parties. He * traced the origin of these obligations and subjected them to a careful examination to prove that there had been no going back upon them by Britain. . , , Britain’s good name was involved and he maintained that these obligations contracted towards Jews and Arabs dtlring the last war, and as a result of which each played a certain part in the Great War and took certain risks, were debts of honour, which Could not be repaid in counterfeit change. He warmly repudiated the charges which had come in the last few days from partisans of both sides, and had been prominent in unfriendly comment abroad, that Britain had broken her promises and reviewed in detail Britain’s obligations to each party in turn. While not denying that the wording of the Balfour Declaration of 1917—carefully adhered to after the war in terms of the mandate—did not exclude the possibility of an eventual Jewish State in Palestine, Mr MacDonald suggested that the expression “National home for the Jewish people” was employed in the declaratiqn precisely because it could mean either a future Jewish State in Palestine or something very much less —it being recognised at the time that the eventual extent of the Jewish settlement in Palestine must depend on certain then incalculable factors. A contention was made that over a vast part of Arabia the Arab peoples were free, with their own kingdoms and principalities, and that surely Britain could over-ride the wishes of the Arab population in the tiny fragment of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. ■To this contention, Mr MacDonald retorted that he could see no moral justification for such a policy. Referring to charges against Britain of breach of faith in connection with Jewish immigration, Mr MacDonald said there was no provision in the League mandate for encouraging immigration up to the limit of the economic absorptive capacity of the country. OPPOSITION AMENDMENT. Mr Tom Williams moved an Opposition amendment declaring that, as the proposals were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the mandate, Parliament should not be committed to it before there had been an examination by the League Mandates Commission. Mr Williams said Mr MacDonald had destroyed what it took Allied statesmanship years to build up. The Jews would become dependent on the benevolence of the Grand Mufti’s supporters. Mr James de Rothschild (Liberal) .suggested that Mr MacDonald ask the League to make Palestine a British colony. He added that permanent British rule, under which neither Jew nor Arab need fear domination from the other, was the only satisfactory , safeguard.