News Brief

Further particulars of the report of the Permanent Mandates Commission on Palestine are revealed by the special correspondent of the London “Daily Mail.” The correspondent states that apart from Britain’s being accused of having broken her pledge to encourage the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine and of having failed to provide police and military protection for the Jewish population, D. Van Rees, member of the commission, stated that the Arabs in Palestine felt they owned the country and that Britain disposed of territory which did not belong to her when she made provisions for a Jewish National Home.

The Grand Mufti, president of the Arab Executive and of the Moslem Supreme Council, is severely blamed for not having controlled the agitation before the riots of last August. The agitation, the report is said to state, was conducted “in the name of religion.”

Reference is made in the commission’s report, it is stated, to the fact that in 1920 the Grand Mufti was condemned by a military court to several years’ imprisonment, which the report states, “He evaded by discreetly retiring to Syria.” The Commission asks why the Mufti is receiving £720 annually from the Government, was pardoned for his offense against Britain and immediately elected president of the Moslem Council. The report refers to the fact that the Mufti was on the black-list of the Palestine police, a fact of which the commission was niotified anonymously, which the British authorities greatly regretted according to the correspondent of the “Daily Mail.” The Palestine native police, according to the report, are also criticized by the commission as “not to be relied upon entirely in inter-racial conflicts, especially when fighting at close quarters.”