The British Government today laid the blame for last year’s Palestine disorders chiefly upon the Jews in its report for 1936, as Mandatory Power, to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.
The Mandates Commission will met in extraordinary session in Genova tomorrow to consider the 1936 report, preparation of which had been delayed by the British Government pending completion of its Royal Commission inquiry in the Holy Land.
The report discusses at length the history of the disturbances and its causes, laying stress on acts of violence in which Jews were involved and a Jewish campaign to boycott Arab labor.
While stating that Autumn of 1935 was marked by considerable political disquiet and by demonstrations of Arab discontent over Jewish immigration and sale of land to Jews, the report emphasizes an anti-Government demonstration in Tel Aviv on April 17, 1936, when police were stoned and cries were raised: “‘We do not want this Government; we want a Jewish army.'”
The ensuing incidents, as related in the report, are:
A party of Jews started moving toward Jaffa and was stopped by the police. The funeral of Israel Chazan, a Jew killed by Arab bandits, was followed by a campaign against Arab labor in Tel Aviv, in which Jewish unemployed demonstrated outside shops employing Arabs, several Arab carters were assaulted, Arabs were stoned and Arabs employed in structural alteration in the Manshich quarter were molested.
“No case of reprisal on the part of the Arabs on the seventeenth and eighteenth of April was reported to the police.” On April 19, rumors in Jaffa that several Arabs were killed by Jews “immediately produced acts of violence by Arabs.” The report states that “despite the prolonged disorders, efforts made by the Jewish community to maintain existing activities were in large measure successful.” It also emphasizes an Arab effort for financial and commercial reorganization aimed at achieving independence from Jewish economy.
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