Will the present pacts being entered into between Ibn Saud, King of Saudieh-Arabia, and Imam Yechya of Yemen, and also by Ibn Saud with Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, affect the Jews of Palestine, and what will be their position in the new general Arabian entente? These questions were discussed at length by M. Beilinson, editorial writer in Davar, Hebrew labor daily, in a recent issue.
The peace of Arabia now being cemented between Yemen and Saudieh is one of the brilliant victories of British policy in the Arabian East, he declared, while noting that Ibn Saud will reach Akaba, on the Red Sea Gulf, and part of Trans-Jordan, in a British gunboat at the end of this month in order to meet the Emir Abdullah at a formal peace parley.
DANGER FROM DESERT
The conclusion of this inter-Arabian truce is of tremendous said, since it shows the danger from the desert lands. While the “Pax Britannica” is a sure enough bulwark guarding the Jews from desert menaces, nevertheless one significance to the Jews, Beilinson cannot be entirely tranquil, he argued, until the position of Palestine Jewry is made clear. British poliey has been to ensure the tranquility of the wildernesses on the Haifa-Baghdad overland route, so as to establish the strategic value of naval, land and aerial commumi-cations; and the writer questioned whether the “Jewish National Home” is of more intrinsic value to the British Government than the importance of a naval base at Haifa.
It is, he said, a new political framework in which the Jews have no place, since they were not consulted in the course of the long political negotiations with the parties to the present Arabian entente; and, therefore, the Jews cannot tell whether or not their interests have been safeguarded. For undoubtedly this concord will bring the Arabian Unity project a step nearer: an inevitable stage in the development of Eastrern politics
SEMBLANCE OF UNITY
Even the present pacts, he declared, are a semblance of unity which, superficial though it may be, is the nucleus of a stronger federation in the future. It has become, indeed, a political fact, and it is not entirely undesirable to England, he declared. Beilinson went on to aite historical parallels of inter-state unity and pointed out that while the present may be a pact between prices, it will later become an amalgamation among peoples in the Arabian world.
But Jews must view developments on the Arabian peninsula with anxiety because they are not simple settlers or newcomers to Palestine, to whom a British-sponsored Arabian Federation means nothing; they are people with a strong political conception, almost a revolutionary and iconoclastie conception; the independence of Israel in the Land of Israel. And its effect on the environment of Arabia must be studied by thinking Zionists Beilinson concluded.
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