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London Times Urges Federation of Arab States

January 24, 1939
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The Times, which sometimes reflects official views, declared today in an editorial on the forthcoming Palestine conferences that a federation of Arab states would offer the broadest solution of the question, but it was impossible to contemplate the surrendering of power in the Holy Land to the exiled ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, leader of the Arab extremists. The ex-Mufti, the editorial recalled, never publicly condemned the massacre of Jews in Tiberias and was not willing to prevent murders of his political rivals.

It is clear, The Times asserted, that a successful outcome of the conferences would be jeopardized if the British Government reversed its policy of strictly limiting the annual immigration quota during the negotiations. It added, however, that the fact must be faced that Jewish immigration to undeveloped territories, as proposed, must be a slow affair.

The question of refugee settlement in other territories in connection with the Palestine issue was also discussed by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, in a letter to The Times. Stating that any settlement other than in Palestine would not satisfy the needs of German Jewry, Dr. Weizmann declared that the success of Palestine colonization and the failure of projects elsewhere occurred because no other country offered such chances for success as were inherent in the return to a homeland.

“Are the Jews to be kept out of the one land of their acknowledged right, where, with adequate means, 100,000 could be settled immediately on an economically well-established basis, or must they risk all for uncertain experiments incapable of giving immediate relief and unsupported by the nation idea?” the world Zionist leader asked.

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