A plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab cantons, proposed in the House of Commons as an alternative to the representative legislative council, aroused interest in Jewish and Parliamentary circles today.
Culminating several weeks of newspaper and public discussion since first announcement of the scheme, A. C. Crossley, a Conservative, interrupted a series of attacks on the council project to place the plan before the members as a means of giving Arabs self-government without undermining Jewish interests.
He proposed that Arab areas in the Holy Land be combined with Transjordan into Arab cantons and that Jewish cantons be formed from districts settled by Jews.
Since the canton plan was proposed by Lionel G. Archer Cust, former Assistant Secretary of the Palestine Government, it has met with reactions ranging from approval to outright condemnation.
Colonel Stewart F. Newcombe declared to a meeting of the Royal Asia Society that the idea was attractive and proposed that a Royal Commission be named to consider it.
The plan was criticized by Prof. Norman Bentwich, former Palestine Attorney General, on the ground that despite political and economic differences the interests of the Jews and Arabs were bound together and the Arabs could prosper only through Jewish settlement.
As outlined by Mr. Cust in the Spectator, influential Conservative weekly, the plan would provide for creating Arab cantons with Nablus as a capital and Jewish cantons with Tel Aviv their capital. The cantons would have autonomy but would be combined into a federal council controlled by the Mandatory Power.
The Jewish cantons would include the four plains of Sharon, Emek, Acre and Huleh, while the Arab cantons would comprise the hill territories of Galilee, Samaria and Judea, as well as Transjordan with the Jordan boundary removed. Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the port and oil areas of Haifa would be reserved for direct British administration.
“The main purpose,” Mr. Cust states, “would be, while safeguarding essential British interests, to replace the present system of direct administration, which fosters Nationalist excesses, by a relationship of inspection and supervision, thus opening to the people of the country the opportunities for responsible office, which they rightly seek and which they should undertake.”
He holds that the scheme would settle the problem of Jewish immigration, since each canton could determine for itself the number of immigrants it could absorb.
The plan, he contends, would fulfill a number of promises made in the League of Nations mandate, including the obligations to aid creation of a Jewish national home, set up autonomous government and safeguard Arab rights.
He added that “Palestine is in effect cantonized already,” pointing out that the Jews were settling in the plains and the Arabs in the hill country.
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