Retreat From Palestine

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 441, 5 December 1947, Page 5

Retreat From Palestine

J )RITAIN’S decision to withdraw from Palestine may or _ may not mean another war. It will not if those nations which have been criticising Britain, misrepresenting her, and making all her tasks more delicate and more difficult, accept their responsibilities and act promptly. It very likely will if they dither about passing resolutions and doing nothing else. If war comes it will be another sad sign of the remoteness of,the rule of reason and justice: but it will not be Britain’s responsibility. Britain has failed to pacify Palestine, and by getting out confesses her failure. But she has not failed in patience and fairness. She has much to regret and deplore, but little of which to be ashamed except persistence,in the fantastic belief that sooner or later her good intentions would be ‘recognised by both sides. Progress of that kind has been made with individuals, both Arab and Jew; but it should long ago have been plain that no progress was being made, or would be made, with the fanatics on both sides whose influence has always been decisive: and it has been her failure to face. that fact, and to act on it, that has dragged Britain through two or three years of international obloquy. For that she is deeply to blame if she does not deserve what the world is now saying about her, and will go on saying till the United Nations take over her task and her legacy of ingratitude. What will happen then it would be folly to try to forecast, but the obvious alternatives are war, with the control of Palestine passing to the strongest battalions, or peace at the point of a sharper sword than either Jews or Arabs possess. An enforced settlement is still possible if the forcing is done soon enough. But it will be a settlement without legal validity on one side or moral justice on the other.