The Royal Institute of International Affairs, in a survey entitled “Britain and Palestine,” expressed the opinion today that the British Government’s proposals for future policy in Palestine were not final but merely the outline of a new policy which, like its predecessors, would be modified by the development of ideas and event both within and without Palestine.
The survey criticized “Zionist exclusiveness, both economic and cultural,” for preventing the Arabs from appreciating the advantages of Palestine’s greater prosperity. “Prosperity alone does not appeal to the Arabs as a final argument in favor of Jewish immigration,” it said.
Regarding the effect of further immigration on the economic position, the survey stated: “As far as depressing the country is concerned, recent immigrants stimulated its economic life to an unprecedented extent, and the reason for this was clearly the large volume of capital they had brought through trade and other sources of foreign exchange, to pay for the larger imports of the growing population.”
Whether Palestine can stand the rapid economic development to which it has been subjected in recent years, the survey warned, depends on a very considerable expansion of the market for citrus and other exports.
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