The Manchester Guardian offered yesterday a number of reasons for acceptance of a plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states in view of what the paper called the hopelessness of the present situation. The Royal Commission on Palestine has been reported considering such a plan as a solution to Arab-Jewish difficulties.
“The real question is whether under partition, however, great the practical difficulties, Arab and Jew might not break away from the unpromising past and make a fresh start from which eventually mutual confidence might grow,” the Liberal daily declared in a long editorial.
“There is, at least, every reason why, if the plan is formally proposed, it should be examined with good will and without prejudice,” the editorial said.
The Guardian held that the recent policy of the British Government in Palestine had failed. If, therefore, the Government is unable to make “a good job” of the Jewish national home idea, the editorial said, the difficulties of partition would be much less.
An irritant to Jewish penetration would be removed, the Guardian asserted, and the difficulties of alien minorities left behind in the Jewish and Arab states would not be insuperable. The Arab and Jew would be free to work out their destinies without friction, jealousy and fear, the paper maintained.
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