News Brief

The establishment of free zones in the Beirut harbor last week for Iraq and Persian goods indicates the importance that is attached to the new harbor at Haifa, Palestine, which was officially dedicated last October.

The Comte de Martel, High Commissioner for Syria, is quoted in today’s issue of the Times as saying that plans are being formulated for the enlargement of the harbor at Beirut at the cost of forty million francs, equivalent to about $2,500,000, allocated from the accumulated customs revenue. This, and a number of other improvements, will be undertaken by the French mandated territory in order to keep pace with the changes in Palestine. Pre-occupation with the future of Syrian ports is serious.

The High Commissioner is reported by the Times as saying that new railways are to be built in the north in order to encourage trade with Turkey and Persia. Arrangements for construction were completed last December. Work will begin shortly. The desert route between Damascus and Bagdad is to be improved to make it fit for motor traffic at all seasons.

There has been a great deal of competition between Haifa and Beirut over the laying to the Iraq Oil Pipe lines which are to be bifurcated, with one fork debouching at Haifa and the other at Beirut.

“I am unable to say when the pipelines will be ready for operation,” Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, British Colonial Secretary, told the House of Commons a year ago, “but the agreement between the Iraq government and the Iraq Petroleum Company is that the pipe line system, both branches included, will be finished by December 31, 1935.” According to the agreement, if both branches are not completed simultaneously, the Haifa branch will be completed not later than six months following that at Beirut.

The French High Commissioner for Syria visited Palestine last month. He visited Haifa and was entertained at luncheon by the Haifa District Commissioner.

Haifa has become the economic rival of Beirut and officials of the latter city are aware of the fact. Previously most of the freight destined for the Lebanons and through them to the romantic city of Damascus, were obtained by virtue of Beirut’s superior trade facilities. Haifa’s improved transit facilities make the Palestinian city all important to international trade.

To Great Britain the Palestinian harbor city means a trade route to the Orient, and when the Haifa-Bagdad railway is completed it will mean that the Suez Canal loses its supremacy as the only and safest route. British policy in the Middle East demands a powerful Iraq. The development of air transport has restored Bagdad to its old position, that of dominating the routes between East and West, and the future must see a relative decline in the importance of the Suez Canal if only because the new oil supplies from the Northern Iraq lands will be made available to Europe without the burden of Canal dues.