Mandates Commission Head Says Building of Palestine Will Be Work of Peace

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The upbuilding of Palestine as a Jewish national home, under the provisions of the Mandate, will be a work of peace, is the view expressed by F. W. van Rees, vice-chairman of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, in a new edition of his book on the Mandates System.

The book contains a special chapter devoted to the questions of Palestine. The author points out that the issuance of the Balfour Declaration has made it necessary to adopt for Palestine a system of administration different than that which is applied in other territories belonging to the former Turkish Empire. Not only the interests of the native Arab population, but also the interests of the Jewish people, which, because of the Balfour Declaration, constitute in a sense a part of the Palestine population, had to be taken into account. This dualism of necessity resulted in certain difficulties. In drafting the mandate for Palestine it was therefore found necessary to endow the Mandatory Power not only with the functions of advising and assisting, as is declared in Paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the League Covenant, but also with the powers of legislation end of administration.

Ever mindful of the provisions of the Mandate concerning the creation in Palestine of a Jewish national home, it is necessary that the Palestine administration, no less than the Jews, to be guided by a cautious, tactful and fair attitude in order to create such conditions in which the task of building Palestine be performed in a peaceful manner in a country which is almost totally Arab. It is for this difficult and interesting situation that the Palestine problem assumes the significance of a question in which the world as a whole is interested.

“If there were in the beginning grounds for doubt, it is only fair that it be admitted that thanks to the impartial and successful guidance of the administration and thanks to the peaceful attitude and the admirable self-sacrifice of the Jews, it became possible, notwithstanding all difficulties, to develop an activity which is one of the most remarkable and will permit, at some future date, of arrival at a peaceful and final solution of a great political and social problem, the importance of which cannot be underestimated by anyone who is acquainted with what is being done in Palestine,” Mr. van Rees writes.