From the commencement, the Palestine Government declined to give the Jewish representatives an opportunity of checking the evidence and the figures presented to Mr. Lewis French, the Director of Palestine Development, the Executive Committee of the Revisionist world Union says in a statement which it has issued here. Mr. French’s enquiry, it proceeds, was primarily concerned with establishing the exact number of Arabs alleged to have been displaced as a result of Jewish settlement. It was only after the enquiry had been in full swing and when it became evident that no reasonable body of men would in such circumstances accept its findings, that the Government appointed an additional authority empowered to scrutinise all the relevant data, but he was also an official of the Palestine Government.
Mr. French, the statement asserts, has now completed a report alleging 2,400 to 2,500 Arabs families as displaced in consequence of Jewish development. These figures are used in his report as a basis for recommendations calculated to arrest permanently Jewish immigration and land settlement. He foreshadows a scheme of development that takes no account whatever of Jewish needs, falling back on Sir John Hope Simpson’s argument that there are sufficient Jewish land reserves for the Jewish National Home. He even suggests that arrangements might be made for leasing land belonging to Jewish public bodies to Arabs pending the preparation of other land for Arabs under the Development Scheme. In this connection there is reason to believe that the Palestine Government’s proposal that the Jewish National Fund land at Havarith should be leased to Arabs is an attempt to create a precedent of placing at Arab disposal Jewish lands not at present cultivated. It is desired thus to create a situation in which Jews faced with the possibility of being deprived of land already in their possession will have no heart to demand that further land should be placed at their disposal in accordance with the terms of the mandate.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
