Tuesday February 17th 1948
Palestine is today a land of fear. The years of the world war turned out to be for Palestine almost the most peaceful in the history of the mandate, and the entrenchments above Jericho still testify to the British watch for a German invasion that never came. But while the British watched, Jews and Arabs were oppressed with another fear, the fear that has overlain all the years of the mandate, the fear of Arabs that they would be driven into the desert, the fear of Jews that they would be dislodged from their newly-won national home into the sea; and they both trained under British commanders and equipped themselves with British arms for another struggle. That struggle opened on 29th November 1947 when the General Assembly of the United Nations voted by a precarious majority for a scheme of partition with economic union, and "all was over", as one commentator sardonically observed "bar the shooting". The shooting has now begun in earnest and will undoubtedly intensify as the mandate draws to its end. The anxiety of each side to equip itself while it may is reflected in the market in arms, which responds with all the sensitivity of Throgmorton Street to the laws of supply and demand. When I was there a few weeks ago the price offered for new British rifles averaged £115, for a Tommy-gun £250 and for a clip of rifle-bullets 5s. It says much for the steadfastness of the soldiers and police, British and Palestinian, perhaps in the latter case for their integrity combined with an expectation of a generous gratuity, that there are relatively few desertions, despite these tempting prices; but what they cannot get in the market, both Jews and Arabs are prepared to get by force and stealth, and successful raids on British depots have been common - it is inevitable in these conditions that violence should increase, and the Administration, ever since the announcement that the mandate would terminate on 15th May, has been powerless to prevent it. "Authority forgets a dying king", said Arthur, and his words are no less applicable to a dying mandatory. The first overt sign of the inability of the Administration fully to maintain law and order was seen over the problem of the road blocks built by Arabs early in December to scrutinize traffic entering Arab areas. At first the police told them "You can't do that there 'ere " and pulled the blocks down. But on 13th December bombs were thrown into an Arab crowd outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem by Jews passing in motor-cars. The Arabs claimed with justification that, as the Administration could not guarantee security, they must look to their own protection. It was impossible to deny the validity of the argument, and henceforth armed Arab sentries at Arab road blocks have examined passes while a British policeman looks on and the Jews have also erected road blocks at the entrance to Jewish quarters. The next sign in the decay of authority was the withdrawal of all British and Arab police from the purely Jewish area of Tel-Aviv and the passing of the responsibility for security in this area to Jews; and a similar passing of responsibility to Arabs in purely Arab areas is being carried out. The growing violence has compelled the Administration to concentrate its forces on the mixed areas, but it cannot be too strongly emphasized that in these areas the police have been used to protect Jews and Arabs impartially and to maintain a normal life so far as possible. The Palestine Police, shot at from 1936 to 1939 by Arabs, and from 1945 to 1947 by Jews, are now being shot by both when they interpose themselves between the combatants; they have acquitted themselves heroically in the most thankless task which any police force has ever had to discharge, and it is remarkable that exasperation has never prevailed over discipline. The 1,500 Jews isolated in the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem would have long since perished for lack of food and kerosene if it had not been for the daily British convoys. But there is no normal life in Jerusalem today and little in the other towns, though in the fields the Arab drives his wooden plough as his fathers have done for centuries and the Jewish colonist rides his tractor. In the Old City many a man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. I saw no Jew at the Wailing Wall when I was there, though there is indeed ample cause for wailing. The drive from Tel-Aviv or Lydda to Jerusalem is now made in armoured omnibuses with narrow slits to let in air and a little light, and armoured buses take the Jewish youth to the Hebrew University when they go to their lectures; but more often they do not go, usually through fear, but sometimes because they are training under arms. This is a pity, because the Hebrew University is one of the few places where the voice of reason has made itself heard in Palestine during recent years. But Dr Magnos and Professor Bontwich are not heeded. The extremists are now in control, and it is sad to relate that among a section of the Jews there is 'a deliberate cult of extremism, the practice of a belief that if enough force is shown the Arabs will be cowed into submission. When Syrian bands first descended into the Huleh many must have asked, as I did "Why could they not at least wait until we have gone, instead of compelling us to use British troops to repel them?". But criticism became more difficult when I learnt on the spot that this was a reprisal for a deliberate massacre by Jewish terrorists in the village of Khisad. An Irish policeman who was on the spot immediately afterwards - I mention his origin to show that he would be free from any British prejudices and not too squeamish about gunfire - told me that automatic fire must have been poured indiscriminately into the village and the sight of dying children was pitiful. It is melancholy to think that such acts are perpetrated by members of the same people who suffered at Hitler's hands, and though they are repellent to the bulk of the Yishow the extremists are out of control and the policy of Havlegah, or self-restraint, is breaking down even in the rest of the community. Not all atrocities are committed on one side, the scene in the Haifa Refinery, when Jews were literally torn to pieces by their Arab workmates, angered at the sight of their wounded comrades, shows how animal passions are rising to the surface. Perhaps the most significant pointer to the depth of communal passion in Palestine is the fact that it is not considered safe for Jewish wounded to be tended by Arab nurses or Arab wounded by Jewish nurses. Whatever may have been the case in the past, it is no longer true today that ordinary Jews and Arabs could get on well enough if the political leaders would leave them alone - the Zionist Executive on the one hand and "the Mufti and his henchmen", as the Jewish newspapers always describe them, on the other. The common people are now involved in the struggle, and hatred glares out of their eyes at the other community even when there are no rounds to spit out of their rifles. Things have now reached a pass where it is unlikely that without shedding of blood there can be a solution, I have sometimes heard it suggested that what Palestine needs is a Gandhi; but in Palestine both communities would have allowed Gandhi to fast to death with a shrug of the shoulders, the hands are already on the triggers, and one of the problems is that there are many nervous hands. It would be interesting to know how many lives have been lost, because someone fired a shot at a phantom of his imagination. In this general fear the fate of the Christians, both the immigrant communities and the 125,000 Christian Arabs, must be of special concern to the western world. I arrived in Jerusalem on the eve of the Greek Easter, and went that night to the Greek Liturgy at the Church of the Nativity. Bethlehem, normally so gay on this occasion, was like a city of the dead, and the Church, normally packed to suffocation, allowed ample space for the threefold procession and the swinging of the great lamps. It was incongruous to make the return journey from such a scene escorted by an armoured car. But the prayer "Peace on earth" was made only for "men of good will", and the evil will prevails in Palestine today. It is related that when the first Crusaders beat their way through the walls of Jerusalem and began massacring, the Christian Arabs knelt in the court of the Holy Sepulchre and chanted "Kyrie eleison", today their descendants, while sharing the political views of their Moslem brethren, make known their difference in faith by a profuse wearing of crosses. They share the general fear of the future which dominates Palestine today.
In asking what that future will be, let us give our attention in turn to the chief actors in this scene, and first to the mandatory Power.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is getting out. It astonished me, when I was in Palestine, to find how few people, despite the categorical statements on behalf of His Majesty's Government, really believe that we shall get out. Some were frankly sceptical about British intentions, others more charitably said, "I know you mean what you say, but circumstances will compel you to remain". The more mundane told me we were screwed down to Palestine and could not get out even if we wished, the more religious thought that Providence would overrule our intentions; they will be confirmed in their belief when they find that numbers of individual British nationals in business, archaeology, the British Council, religion or just fascinated by the East - are still there after 15th May. But no-one who has had any contact with His Majesty's Government over this question can have any doubt that we are getting out, bag and baggage, or as much of it as we can take. Let there be no illusions. Whatever the consequences, the mandate will be surrendered by the United Kingdom on 15th May and the last British troops in the successor states will have left by 1st August. Here we are in the realm of fact; if we come to motives we are on more debatable ground. No doubt there was an element of trying the policy which had successfully solved British relations with India. The policy of quitting India by a definite date had brought the two Indian communities face to face with realities and had enabled partitioned India to remain in the Commonwealth, a result which afore time seemed incredible. Might not a definite date for quitting Palestine bring its two communities face to face with reality in a similar way? If this was a motive behind the policy, it ignored certain considerations. The Moslems had been in India for so many centuries that it was impossible for the Hindus to deny their right to be there, but in the eyes of the Palestinian Arabs the Jews were invaders supported by foreign Powers; and Indians of both communities had had a long training in administration which meant that there were organs in both states to which responsibility could be devolved but in Palestine both Jews and Arabs had refused to co-operate in the normal process by which a British territory progresses to self-government. These differences are, however, immaterial, for a more important element in the decision was undoubtedly exasperation with the problem and a refusal to bear any longer the cost in British money and British lives which the assumption of the money had entailed. A democratic Government must keep in step with public opinion, and the revulsion of the British public at the hanging of the two British sergeants was undoubtedly a turning point in policy. The British Government are not less exasperated with the Palestinian problem than were Vespasian and Hadrian; but they have decided to follow the example, not of the Roman Emperor, but of the Roman procurator; they are washing their hands of Palestine, irrespective of the consequences
It is not that they are indifferent to the consequences. No British Government could disinterest itself in the strategical importance of the Middle East and the safe passage of its oil; and it may be hoped that no British Government will be indifferent to the fate of the Holy Places, which have been a matter of international concern long before the uses of oil were known. But presumably the Government felt that any strategical purpose which Palestine might play in British defensive plans could be equally well secured by treaties with the neighbouring Arab Powers. It was, indeed, unrealistic of Mr. Churchill to suggest that we could leave Palestine because we could remain in Egypt, but there was more realism in Mr Bevin's policy of a ring of treaties with the Arab States. That policy has received a check in Iraq, but it may be expected that the Iraqi Government will eventually come to see that their interest lies in ratifying; and if they do not, there are other territories that may serve the purpose which Palestine has hitherto played in British defensive plans. There is Cyrenaica, whose future is still not decided, and there is always the possibility of making East Africa the main pivot of British military effort, the distances from any conceivable major war would be immense, but the disadvantages are such as can in the last resort be accepted; and if the main British base is in East Africa, perhaps it does not matter so much whether Middle East oil comes by pipeline to the Mediterranean or by tanker from the Persian Gulf. In any case, the main British interest in the Middle East is peace and the friendship of the Arab world; and these are more likely to be secured, it can be plausibly argued, by washing our hands of Palestine than by support for a partition which is bound, even if it becomes effective, to be a constant irritant in the Middle East.
It is satisfactory for a people who have made up their mind to get out of Palestine to know that, although they may suffer inconveniences from so doing, in the last resort they can afford so to do: and it is comforting to know that, although there is in Palestine a growing realization of the value of British rule, no-one is pressing us to stay. It may safely be guessed that Mr Creech Jones, who is now submitting himself in Lake Success to the questioning of the Security Council, will be pressed, not to stay, but to alter the manner of handing over. One of the recommendations of the General Assembly was that "the Mandatory Power shall use its best endeavours to ensure that an area situated in the territory of the Jewish State, including a seaport and hinterland adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1st February 1948". It may be confidently predicted that the Mandatory Power will do no such thing, which would be tantamount to helping the Jews to establish themselves in an impregnable position for a fight in which we have decided to be neutral. Mr Creech Jones will have no difficulty in disproving charges that we are, in fact, supplying arms to the Arab States for use in Palestine, because there has been no such traffic in the relevant period; and his difficulty will rather arise when he is asked whether we are fulfilling our obligations under Article 9 2(b) of the Treaty of Alliance with TransJordan, which he signed on the 22nd March, 1946 and which provides that "His Majesty the King will provide arms, ammunition, equipment and aircraft and other war material for the forces of His Highness the Amir of TransJordan"; but perhaps it will be sufficient to answer that the object was stated in the preamble to be "the desirability of identity in training and methods between the TransJordan and British armies", not the wiping out of the Jewish national home. Another complaint at Lake Success will undoubtedly be that the Palestine Administration does not want to have the United Nations Commission of Five on its hands for more than a fortnight before the handing over of the mandate it was, indeed, a recommendation of the General Assembly that "there shall be a progressive transfer from the Mandatory Power to the Commission of the responsibility for all the functions of Government, including that of maintaining law and order in the areas from which the forces of the Mandatory Power have been withdrawn". To this there are two objections. The first is that the lives of the Commissioners will be uninsurable from the moment their aircraft touches down. Their security will be a heavy responsibility for the Administration, and this is one reason for the suggested period of a fortnight. If the Commission are willing to take the risk, or can find means to provide for their own security, there is no fundamental objection to a longer period. A greater difficulty is that the progressive handing over envisaged by the General Assembly might implicate the United Kingdom in responsibility for a policy with which our Government has determined to have nothing to do. The staff of the Commission can, of course, precede them to Palestine to familiarize themselves with the details of the present administration and be ready to take over on 15th May, and are doing so; and the Commission could come to London to discuss their problems with the Colonial Office.
The United Nations
From the Mandatory Power we turn to the United Nations. We may safely predict that the United Nations will do nothing, or rather, that it will do much, but what it does will have no impact on the course of events in Palestine.
The arrangements are that the Five-Power Commission is to go to Palestine, to establish the frontiers of the Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem, to establish in each of the Arab and Jewish States before 1st April a Provisional Council of Government, to recruit within each of these States an armed militia "sufficient in number (be it noted) to maintain internal order and to prevent frontier clashes", to hold elections to constituent assemblies, and eventually to hand over its powers to provisional Governments chosen by the constituent assemblies. It is an ambitious and supremely unrealistic programme. The Commission of Five, collected with so much difficulty, have already had the good sense to realize that they need an extra-Palestinian force to go with them, a provision which the General Assembly thought unnecessary, apparently because they did not think it possible that their decision would be challenged. They may refuse to go unless their request is granted, but as the request will certainly not be granted by 1st May it is more probable that they will be compelled to go to Palestine alone - like five mariners gingerly walking the plank which they know is going to end amid the beasts of prey. When they get there, it is possible that they will not be able to reach their destined headquarters overlooking Jerusalem, but let us assume for the sake of argument that they are not compelled to remain in Tel-Aviv. Their first task is to select Provisional Councils of Government. In the Arab State they will not find a single person willing to take on the job. In the Jewish State there will be candidates in plenty. Indeed, one of the least realistic occupations of the Hebrew newspapers in the past two months has been the choice of a name and capital for the State and the selection of its Cabinet Ministers, the Yishuv has, indeed, been a state within a state and has the apparatus of government, and a Provisional Council could be selected. But it would consist entirely of Jews, and could it be argued that such a body is in any sense a representative Government in a State which will contain 405,000 Arabs against 498,000 Jews. Similar considerations apply to the next task, the creation of a militia for the Jewish State, if it is to bear any relation to the population it will have four Arabs for every five Jews, and the result would be a civil war within a civil war; but if it is made to consist of Jews only, how can the State masquerade as a democracy?
The conclusion is inevitable that at some stage the lonely Commission of Five must throw up the sponge and report that they have been unable to discharge their mission, or at any rate to discharge only half of it in any sense. The responsibility then lies with the Security Council, to whom, indeed, the situation may already have been reported as being likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security. What will the Security Council do? It will do nothing.
The Security Council now consists of the United Kingdom, the United States, the U.S.S.R., France, China, Belgium, Columbia, Syria, Canada, Ukraine and Argentina. Of these the United States, the U.S.S.R., France, Belgium, Canada and the Ukraine voted for partition in the General Assembly, Syria opposed, and the United Kingdom, China, Columbia and Argentina abstained. Action by the Security Council requires the positive vote of seven members and the absence of a negative vote by one of the five permanent members. There are only six members of the Security Council today who voted for partition on 29th November, and the prospects of securing enforcement action are, therefore, far from assured. Of these six France and Belgium are wobblers; they had abstained in the ad hoc Committee, and the arguments which made them change their minds are not impressive. The U.S.S.R. and Ukraine will, of course, vote for enforcement as they voted for partition, because thereby they further the general object of Soviet foreign policy, to create the maximum confusion in the non-Soviet world. But the United States, to whose indefatigable exertions the affirmative vote of 29th November is mainly due, has since been having second thoughts; or rather, whereas on 29th November it had the thoughts of the White House, it has since been having the thoughts of the State Department. It is true that this is the presidential election year, and the Jewish vote is a determining factor in the key state of New York, and Jewish voters will certainly put a harassed President on the rack, and his would-be opponents may have even less will to resist the temptation of angling for the Jewish vote. Nevertheless it is remarkable that the United States, even when most lavish with money and moral support, has not yet shown any inclination to send a single Western Momma's son to mingle his bones with the dust of Palestine's centuries. Her line in the General Assembly was that the Mandatory Power should pull her chestnuts out of the fire. She was mainly instrumental in turning down the proposal of the Soviet Union that the Security Council should be the instrument of enforcement and the proposal of Guatemala that there should be an international force. The White House would need to be driven very hard in the election campaign to vote for sending American troops to Palestine; and if many of them lost their lives, it might not look so good even from the electoral point of view in November. It may, therefore be suspected that the United States is a doubtful starter where enforcement is concerned. The United Kingdom will certainly not deviate from her declared policy not to take part in collective enforcement. This is a grave decision to take, but it is in the interests of the United Nations that it should be taken. For the United Nations has far more to lose from the enforcement of its policy than from its abandonment. The light-hearted manner in which the calamitous decision of 29th November was taken, and the methods by which sufficient delegations were persuaded to change their votes, have thrown sufficient discredit on the high purpose of the United Nations; but it would be nothing to the discredit into which the organisation would fall if it should seek to press its policy by force on a hostile Arab world. The United Kingdom may yet save the United Nations from the worst consequences of its own folly. If neither the United Kingdom nor the United States votes for enforcement, Canada will certainly not do so.
It may therefore be that there will not be sufficient votes in the Security Council for enforcement action. But, even if there is the requisite total, one of the five permanent members may impose her veto by an adverse vote. The United Kingdom, steadfastly adhering to the policy so far pursued, will certainly not veto collective action, though she will refuse to take part in it. But if the Soviet Union asks for collective action, or nobly volunteers to provide all the needed forces herself, it may be guessed that in the present state of Russo-American relations the United States will not hesitate to interpose her veto. To do so she would need to placate her Jewish voters by an alternative proposal, and this would no doubt be an international force collected from the small Powers. But while Panama and Liberia are gathering together their dread panoply of power, events in Palestlne will probably have moved to a crisis. The United Nations will take no action, or at any rate no action that can be effective in time.
Arabs and Jews
The Arabs and Jews in Palestine will not have been talking all this time. There are many divisions among both Arabs and Jews. Party, religious and family ties, personal and factious and dynastic ambitions, create a bewildering pattern to the outside observer. But these divisions are immaterial in the first stage, when it will be the almost universal desire of Arabs in and around Palestine to kill as many Jews as possible and the almost universal desire of Jews in Palestine to kill as many Arabs as possible.
Behind the Jews of Palestine stands the main body of Jewry and its supporters in all countries of the world. Behind the Arabs of Palestine stand a ring of Arab countries. Pedants may allege that the Jews are not really Jews and the Arabs are not really Arabs, but they will certainly be treated as such. Before a military appreciation can be drawn up it is necessary, however, to make certain assumptions. I shall assume that the outside world, conscious at last of the grave dangers in a Middle Eastern war, will endeavour to localize it as much as possible and will generally forbid supplies and volunteers to either side. Those who compare the situation in Palestine with the situation in Spain in 1936-39, and chide His Majesty's Government for non-intervention, do not realize the accuracy of their comparison or the dangers to world peace that lie in general intervention. I think the Powers will be wiser, and will endeavour to prevent Palestine from being the starting point of the Third World War.
On this assumption the Jewish defence will mainly consist of the Haganah, at present reliably estimated to consist of 80,000 men and women trained in the use of infantry weapons and well supplied with these weapons and ammunition for them. They are skilful in signalling, as is shown by the success of their broadcasting station in eluding detection. The Jews will have also the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, numbering perhaps 6,000, and the Stern Gang, to be counted in hundreds - though the wiser of them will say, Non tali auxilio. On the other side Azzam Pasha has announced that regular Arab armies would intervene inside Palestine only if other foreign armies invaded the country and tried to impose partition by force. But as he has also said that the Arab States were giving, and, of course, would give Palestinian Arabs every assistance, it will be wiser to assume that the Palestinian Arabs will get substantial help from outside. Several thousand Arabs from outside have already infiltrated into Palestine, and it is impossible to prevent such incursions over the long land frontier. The aggregate strength of the Armies of the Arab States may be put at 100,000 to 120,000 men equipped not only with infantry weapons but with armoured cars, light and medium tanks, field artillery, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, and some 100 serviceable aircraft. To say this is, however, rather like adding together elephants and marmalade as the forces vary greatly in quality. Two of them are worthy of special note. The TransJordan Frontier Force, now being disbanded, consists of some 2,000 Palestinian Arabs trained by British officers in the use of all arms. The Arab Legion, also trained by British officers, is a TransJordan force though hitherto employed in Palestine; it consists of a mechanized brigade, an infantry brigade, a desert patrol and ancillary units, and is about 8,000 strong. I have recently seen both these forces, and formed a high opinion of them. They are, I should guess, the most effective striking forces in the Middle East, though it is rather difficult to compare them with Haganah on account of its formal illegality.
It is, however, idle to assess relative strengths. This will be a war of peoples, and, as the terrible events at the Haifa Refinery show, anything will serve for a weapon, even hands and feet, when the occasion demands. The Arabs will start with the initiative, as the Jews will be defending a state. It will not be, at any rate in its first stages, a war with a definite front. Palestine lends itself to guerrilla warfare, and so does the Arab character, and if the Arabs are wise they will confine themselves to guerrilla tactics as long as possible. The isolated Jewish settlements in the Huleh are bound to fall almost immediately, they are placed there mainly for reasons of prestige, in order that there might be Jewish settlements from Dan to Beersheba, they are overlooked by the Syrian hills, no Jewish help can come to them, and they are bound to fall quickly; indeed, they would have fallen already if it had not been for the protecting hand of a British unit. It is hardly to be expected that the Jewish settlements in the Hebron area will be able to hold out much longer. It is at this stage that the highly developed economy of the Jews on the coast and in the plains will show its vulnerability. To a large extent that economy depends on water conveyed by pipes and electricity conveyed by cable. A large part of the economic life of the Jewish areas depends on current derived from the energy of the River Jordan and the cutting of a few cables would paralyse that section. As the fighting develops both Jews and Arabs may find it necessary to pitch their forces in the region of Megiddo. Here Thutmose lll met the Assyrian in 1500 BC, here Josiah sallied forth to meet his death at the hands of Pharaoh-Necho in 608 B.C. Its position in the Plain of Esdraelon makes it one of the inevitable battle-places of the world, and it would be surprising if the Jews do not assemble here to defend Haifa and the Arabs to capture it. On this battle, if it takes place, will depend the fate of the port, and I should expect the Arabs to win. Another action would then develop, to pin the Jews in Tel-Aviv and eventually drive them into the sea. This may be regarded as a symbol of the whole problem, for if we understand why the Jew regards Tel-Aviv as the pride of the Mediterranean and the Arab regards it as a blot on the landscape we shall understand the clash of civilisations today in Palestine. But here the Arabs will come up against a different problem. Nearly one-half of the Jewish population of Palestine is concentrated in Tel-Aviv and its suburbs. To take a large town street by street, house by house, is one of the most difficult operations of war and probably beyond the capacity of the Arabs. The Jews can hope to get food, even though not arms, by sea and cannot be starved out, they derive part of their electricity from the 30,000 KW station at the mouth of the River Auja. Moreover the naturally indolent character of the Arab may have begun to assert itself when he is flushed with his initial successes and finds himself against this formidable obstacle. Some may be tempted from the hard profession of soldiering to the more agreeable pursuit of loot. It is possible, of course, that airmen from neighbouring states, breaking regulations, may try to bomb Tel-Aviv, and few cities would be more vulnerable to bombing. But on the whole it looks as though the result of this action would be stalemate, and the possibility of an accommodation that now seems impossible may arise.
Jerusalem and its environs
But before we consider this possibility we must turn to Jerusalem and its environs, which the United Nations has decided to place under the trusteeship of the Trusteeship Council, which body is at this very time studying a Statute for the Holy City drawn up by a working committee. This is surely a different problem from the rest of Palestine. There is indeed no part of Palestine which is not holy ground, but Jerusalem, the dearest spot on earth to two world religions, and the third dearest to another, is in a class by itself; and hardly less sacred to Christians is Bethlehem where Justinian's Church and Constantine's mosaics mark the blrthplace of our Saviour, and Bethany, where He escaped to sleep, and Gethsemane, where He suffered agony, and the Mount of Olives, where He ascended into Heaven. What a sight it was to see all these places from the house of the last British procurator, and to think that when his protecting hand was removed they might become scarred and pitted with battle. This must not be so. Whatever happens in the rest of Palestine, we cannot be indifferent to the fate of Jerusalem; and we may rejoice that His Majesty's Government has not been indifferent. Our representative on the Trusteeship Council, Sir Alan Burns, a man of wide experience as a governor and of personal piety, has not only been permitted to take a share in shaping the Statute for Jerusalem but has been Chairman of the working committee.
The Trusteeship Council works, of course, under the general limitations of the General Assembly, The boundaries are fairly satisfactory, and there have been needless anxieties in England on this score as it has never been proposed to confine the state to the Old City. The real problem is security, and here the directions of the General Assembly do not help much. The General Assembly proposed to de-militarize the State and to rely on a police force recruited from outside Palestine. If by police force they had in mind the excellent man in blue whom we see directing our traffic, they might just as well have relied on mixing the entrails of a goat in the blood of a bull. But I shall do them the credit of supposing that they wished the police force to be armed as adequately as the present Palestine Force.
Nevertheless more will be needed. The suggestion has been made in the Economist that the United Kingdom should modify its attitude to the extent of being willing to keep its forces in Jerusalem even when they are withdrawn from the rest of Palestine. The proposal seems to be based on a misunderstanding, for I think it is not the intention of the Trusteeship Council that there shall be a hiatus of two months between the evacuation of Palestine and the inauguration of the Jerusalem State but that the Jerusalem State, like the Arab and Jewish States, shall come into existence not later than 1st October. The real objection to such a policy from the point of view of His Majesty's Government is, however, that it would throw doubts on the reality of the policy of quitting Palestine and confirm the prophecies of those who have said that we never meant to leave. The security of Jerusalem must be an international responsibility; and no city is more fitted to be the subject of an international regime. Mr Tom Wintrlngham has suggested in the Times that an international Brigade should be recruited as for Spain. The parallel disturbs me. At all costs we must prevent Jerusalem being made a battle-ground for conflicting ideologies. There would be many crusaders among such recruits, but many who would have other ideas than the security of the Holy Places.
The most practical plan appears to be one which was much discussed when I was in Palestine, that is, that each country represented in Jerusalem should provide a force for the protection of its own consulate. This idea was originally mooted for the simple protection of the consular staff and property, but if each country represented in Jerusalem produced rather more troops than were needed for this purpose, say one or two companies each, then an adequate force of trained troops could quickly be brought into existence.
The scheme has the advantage that the Arab League has declared itself to have no objection to each consulate providing sufficient force to protect itself; and although it has objected to the provision of larger forces, perhaps the objection would not be sustained too violently. Jerusalem is, after all, an object of veneration to Moslems hardly less than to Christians and Jews, and in all that lovely city there is nothing lovelier to the eye than the dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Aksa.
For these reasons I venture to place great hope also on an appeal for the peace of Jerusalem by the heads of the religious communities. It is, of course, difficult to get them to sign a common document, though each might be willing to make his appeal in his own way. Even within the three main religions there are many divisions. The Sephardic and Ashkenazi have their own chief Rabbis and there are many Christian communities. It would be a shameful thing if the heads of the Christian communities in Jerusalem - the Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts and Anglicans - could not either allow the Greek Patriarch to speak on their behalf or put their names to a common appeal. I am happy to say that the Anglican bishop is one of those who have been working hardest on this scheme; so has Dr Magnos among the Jews; and so has the Administration. The value of a joint appeal of this nature would be profound.
Let us turn back to the situation in the rest of Palestine where we have envisaged the Arabs in vain trying to subdue Tel-Aviv and the Jews in vain trying to beat off the attack. At this point the divisions in the Arab and Jewish ranks may manifest themselves. It may be that King Abdullah, who is credited with a readiness to recognize a Jewish state provided he can incorporate the rest of Palestine in what we call TransJordan, and what he significantly calls the Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan, may be prepared to make a private arrangement with the Jews which the United Nations will be only too glad to accept; it would be a notable advance towards his project of a Greater Syria under Hashemite rule. It may be that the Mufti, whose leading position among the Arabs of Palestine has been disguised by the necessities of British propaganda, may also come to the conclusion that he had better come to terms, before either King Abdullah or Pawzi does so; and, indeed, a slight recession in his popularity recently, perhaps encouraged by his enforced absence, may incline his mind in that direction. Perhaps Fawzi may not be content with the role of a commander but may aspire to political direction. On the other side, may not the Jews, especially those who lived in amity with the Arabs both under the Turks and under the British, develop a growing resentment with the leadership which has produced so many troubles for them? May not they seek to consign political Zionism where good Orangemen consign the Pope? It is difficult to see the details so far ahead, but the general pattern seems inevitable. There will come a time when the lesson which ought never to have been necessary will be thoroughly learnt, the lesson which one of the principal architects of the National Home, Lord Samuel, has tried so wisely and so vainly to impress upon his fellow-Jews, the lesson that the sine qua non of a Jewish National Home is the goodwill of its Arab neighbours. I have elsewhere expressed the view that immigration is the root of the problem, and that a Jewish National Home, if it is to survive, must reach agreement with its Arab neighbours on its immigration policy; and there was a time when the Arab countries, in return for such a concession, might have been expected to concede the title of a Jewish State. It is now likely that the Jewish State will never be born, or, if born, will be strangled at birth; but when the fighting is over and passions have died down, a Jewish National Home in Palestine may yet become a reality. But it can never accommodate all the Jewish displaced persons of Europe. Their accommodation throughout the world would be an easy matter if there were no politics. Zionists using every form of inducement to get them to go to Palestine, and if all nations were willing to receive their quota; and one of the sorriest aspects of a sorry business has been the unwillingness of the Powers, including some of the strongest supporters of partition, to take their share of this burden. It will be a blow to the prestige of the United Nations, but, as I have said, enforcement of the United Nations would be an even greater blow. The light-heartedness of the United Nations in voting for partition, not only for partition but for the worst scheme of partition ever devised other than those drawn with a ruler and pencil, is only one of the many chickens coming home to roost in Palestine today. The air of Palestine is thick with the wings of chickens coming home to roost. The error of Mr Lloyd George's Sunday school teachers in teaching him the Jewish connection with Palestine without telling him that the descendants of the Jebusites were still there, Zionist resolutions passed at the tail-end of British party conferences, the election addresses of American politicians, are now all coming home to roost. Because Palestine cannot exist as a bi-national state, it is to be divided into two bi-national states; in the name of the ancient Jewish connection with Palestine, the Middle East is to be plunged into war to establish the Jews in the one part of Palestine with which they had no historic connection. The tragic record would not be believed if it had not actually happened; and not far from the frontiers of Palestine the Soviet Union sits smiling. Who would have thought that American Capitalism could have been the instrument of a policy which can benefit no-one except those who spin schemes of world revolution in the Kremlin. Thus does history mock us. For wise men there can now be only one aim. When his house is on fire, he does not throw the furniture on the flames. Let us see to the safety of the Holy Places, and let us limit the inevitable conflict in Palestine as much as possible and be ready with our good offices the moment that an accommodation becomes possible.