Scrutator, influential commentator of The Times, declared today any partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews would harm Great Britain’s reputation and constitute resignation of part of her responsibility in the Holy Land.
In a long article discussing proposals for dividing Palestine, which, reports say, are under consideration by the Royal Commission on Palestine, the noted observer expressed doubts as to the expediency of the idea.
“If partition is to help,” he said, “it must imply giving to Jews and Arabs, each in his own area, exceptional powers amounting to sovereignty, full rights of self-government, perhaps with powers of expropriating lands, with their own defence forces, and with divided control over immigration.”
Stating that both Jewish and Arab opinion in Palestine seem to be setting against partition, he said any such plan might split the Zionist movement with resultant injury to British reputation abroad among the people who have looked to Britain as their savior.
Considering the strategic aspects of partition, Scrutator declared Palestine was worth more than a dozen Abyssinias and meant as much in the eastern Mediterranean as Spain in the western.
Partition, he asserted, would be at least a partial confession of failure and an admission that “we could not do in Palestine what the world expected of us, but must divide and resign a large part of our responsibility.”
“Without the Jew Palestine cannot become a nation,” the commentator held. “Unless the Arab can fuse into a nation with the Jew, he will always be at the mercy of the Turk.
“As a permanent settlement, partition cannot but injure British interests in the purely physical sense, but as a temporary measure something may be said in its favor. Temporary separation might so exaggerate the contrast between the progress of one part and the backwardness of the other as to concert the Arab for cooperation and subsequent union.” He added, however, that a similar hope in Ireland did not bring about union.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
