Arab Unrest Behind Land Act, Macdonald Tells Commons; Zionist Slanders Charged

Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald tonight urged the House of Commons to reject the Labor Party motion censuring the Government for issuing the Palestine land-sale restrictions. In a strongly worded statement, he declared that the ordinance was motivated by fear of serious Arab unrest, held it “incumbent” upon the League Council to support Britain and accused Zionists of “slanderous misinterpretations.”

While asserting that failure to issue the ordinance “might have set the whole country ablaze again,” MacDonald denied that the land transfer restrictions were introduced as a concession to political pressure by the Arabs.

“If we were concerned with making concessions to Arab political claims,” he said, “we would have gone much further than we have gone. We would have done things about emigration and constitutional proposals. As regards the land problem, the Arab demand was that there should be complete stoppage of transfers from Arabs to Jews for all time. These regulations are very far from meeting the political demands of the Arabs in Palestine.”

Thus the Colonial Secretary explained the “delicate situation in Palestine,” as he had termed it last Wednesday in announcing the ordinance, which motivated the Government to implement a part of the controversial Palestine White Paper of May, 1939, and risk the denunciation of Jews all over the world at a time when Britain was engaged in war.

MacDonald spoke after debate had been opened on the following Labor motion offered by Philip J. Noel-Baker: “The House regrets that, disregarding the expressed opinion of the Permanent Mandates Commission that the policy contained in the White Paper on Palestine was not consistent with the form of the mandate, and without authority from the Council of the League of Nations, His Majesty’s Government have authorized the issue of regulations controlling transfer of land and which discriminate unjustly against one section of the inhabitants of Palestine.”

Opening the debate, Noel-Baker charged that the Government had not yet shown that the number of Arabs dispossessed from their land had increased signally since 1933. He was followed by Sir Archibald Sinclair, Liberal leader, who supported the attack on the Government.

Noel-Baker declared the Opposition had offered the motion not because they were pro-Jewish or anti-Arab but because they were pro-mandate.

“The Jews have not decreased the land available for the Arabs, but have increased and expanded Palestine for Arabs and Jews alike and have enormously increased the potential wealth of the Arabs, as well as of the Jews,” the Laborite said. “The Jews added 5,000,000 dunams to the potential Arab area. The regulations allow the Jews free purchase in only 2.6 per cent of Palestine, where most of the land is already purchased.”

He went on to say: “MacDonald has adopted Goebbels’ watchword ‘judenrein’ for the greater part of Palestine…MacDonald has made himself a modern prophet and says the desert shall not bloom like a rose.”

Noel-Baker then criticized the regulations from the political point of view. Outlining the Jewish Agency’s case, he challenged the regulations and the White Paper policy on moral grounds.

“Today the Jews are a weak and hunted race,” he said. “Their property has been stolen and destroyed, and it was because their influence had gone that the Government dared to do a shameful act and repudiate the moral contract we made with them when the last great war was going on. The Colonial Secretary cares nothing for solemn international obligations. He is trying to bluff through regardless of the Mandates Commission and the Council.”

The Colonial Secretary, taking the floor, said both Noel-Baker and Sir Archibald “have urged that these land regulations represent unjust discrimination against the Jews in Palestine and also that they represent a breach of the mandate. I contest that. On the contrary it seems to me that control of land sales in Palestine has become essential if we are to carry out the obligations put upon us by the terms of the Mandate itself.”

MacDonald praised the “miraculous” work accomplished by the Jews in the Holy Land in the last 20 years, a work whose consequences, both direct and indirect, he said gave the Arab population a well-being they had never previously known. But the central fact, he said, is that 350,000 Jews in the past 20 years “found happy settlement in their national home in Palestine.”

The Government’s policy, he went on, does not consist of stopping this process. There is plenty of room, he argued, for the settlement of more Jews on land already purchased, room for thousands more farmers. MacDonald stressed that despite the new regulations land transfers still can be made without restriction not only in the municipal zones but also in the larger part of the best agricultural zone in Palestine, along almost the whole maritime plain.

Asserting that purchase of land by Jewish interests had continued since publication of the White Paper on Palestine in May, 1939, and that negotiations to this end were still going on, MacDonald declared:

“The Government has to intension. It has this duty toward the Arab community as a whole and toward law and order to Palestine itself.”

The British Government, he said, “are administering the most difficult mandate in existence and, incidentally, we have the essential job of government of the country. I agree that the last word in this matter must rest with the Council of the League of Nations, but I think it is incumbent upon members of the Council, in view of that fact, to pay some heed to our judgment in this matter, even to give us some discretion in carrying out the difficult mandate placed upon us.”

MacDonald acknowledged that there had been a remarkable appeasement in the Palestine situation since the war began, both Arabs and Jews showing “Loyal friendship and support in our war against the common enemy, Nazi Germany.” But the continual increase of landless Arabs, he said, had brought about a restlessness among the Arab population and a growing bitterness.

“We have had the most stern warnings from Palestine in recent weeks,” he declared “that despite appearances in Palestine there was, beneath the surface a growing unrest among the Arabs, a growing suspicion that His Majesty’s Government were not sincere in professions that they would protect the interests of the Arab cultivator and laborer, and that they had become once more critical and hostile to the mandatory power.”

If the British Government were to destroy the confidence built up, he went on, “then the whole mood of the Arab population in Palestine might well change. We might find that the troops in Palestine who are just completing their work of restoring law and order would have to remain in Palestine and start all over again their painful work and we might even find that the troops recently taken away would have to come back to lend a hand.”

Even before the war started–two months after publication of the White Paper in May–MacDonald said, it had been possible to withdraw three battalions from the Holy Land and send them to other garrisons. “But the question of withdrawing troops from Palestine is today a far more important one.”

He warned that any disturbances in Palestine would have repercussions throughout the Moslem world, in the Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India.

The Colonial Secretary said that the British Government took its decision because of the evidence of various royal commissions of inquiry, “because this great weight of evidence, of impartial and authoritative opinion, was that unless we do something like this in the near future we should be defeating the purpose of the mandate itself.”

MacDonald pointed out that Palestine is covered in the recent Government announcement regarding the development and welfare of the Colonial Empire.

“It is the policy of the Government,” he said, “to spend money as far as may be desirable in order to improve the methods of cultivation in Palestine.”

He indicated it would be possible, in the event of such development and improvement of cultivation, to modify to some extent the “frontiers” between the zones set in the land transfer restrictions.

Speaking more generally, he continued, “it is generally true that the situation in Palestine which 12 months ago was exceedingly grave and fraught with danger to this country and other people, has very greatly improved.

“In fact Palestine is enjoying greater quietness than for four years. Hitler had hoped that Palestine would be an ally of his. He has been profoundly disappointed.”

The Colonial Secretary acknowledged that the war itself had had a pacifying effect in Palestine. The Arabs, he said, “recognized that Nazi domination of Europe would be a great threat to their prospects of freedom and the freedom of the Arab kingdoms in the rest of Arabia. They have abated their hostility and expressed their complete friendship with us and have offered their hope in the prosecution of the war, which we are accepting in many ways.”

As for the Jews, he said, “without qualifying their hostility towards the White Paper policy, they offered unconditionally their support to Great Britain and France. I should like, on behalf of the Government, to express our thanks to both the Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine for their loyal friendship and support in our war against the common enemy, Nazi Germany.”

But, he added, “if we had not introduced these land regulations, that harmony would certainly have been disturbed before long, and these regulations are essential if over a long period this harmony is to be maintained.”

If the Government had followed the procedure of forwarding its proposals on land restrictions to the League before putting them into effect, the delay might have led to intensification of land purchases by Jews, MacDonald said.

“There might well have been such resentment at these forced sales on the part of the Arab population that they would have tried to stop these sales and you might have had a single incident in Palestine which would have set the whole country ablaze again. If we were ready to take a risk like that in peace time, I do not believe we would ever have been justified in Wartime…

“I know the firm faith and idealism of Zionist Jews, but I say it is a weak case that has to indulge in slanderous misinterpretations.

“The Jewish National home established in Palestine under the surveillance and powerful protection of Great Britain will remain there, will develop there and will prosper there,” he declared,”but the rights of Arabs as well as Jews must be protected.

“There can only be peace and progress in Palestine on the basis of mutual recognition of the rights of both communities inhabiting that country. It is because these land regulations are based on that principle that I ask the House of Commons to reject the vote of censure which has been moved.”

Sir Archibald Sinclair said he regarded the Government regulations as equivalent to treason against the Jewish people, “who trusted us and who rendered services during the last war indispensable to us and to the Arabs who profited by our victory.” He recalled that Prime Minister Chamberlain said the Allies entered the war, among other things, to ensure in the future a guarantee of international obligations. The Palestine Mandate, he declared, is an international obligation and should be treated as such.

The “normal and honorable” thing to do, Sir Archibald concluded, would be to submit the land transfer regulations to the League Council and ask the Council to refer to the World Court at the Hague the question of whether the Government’s Palestine policy was in contradiction to the Mandate terms.