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Arab Politicians, Land Owners Scored by London Times Correspondent

May 18, 1936
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The Times publishes today a bitter attack on Arab politicians and land owners by its special correspondent in Jerusalem, both of which groups, he declares, are losing ground in the estimation of the British.

“Much of their propaganda is unfair,” he writes, “and much is incredibly mendacious. The real cause of their hostility to Zionism is jealousy.”

The correspondent offers as a solution to the difficulties in Palestine, the suggestion that the British Government definitely fix the eventual limit for Jewish immigration.

“Whether that limit is to be fixed at seventy-five per cent of the Arab population or at equality,” he writes, “wouldn’t really much matter.”

But some limit, he contends, is necessary in order to detach some of the forces aligned against the Government, especially the Arab peasantry who “deserve some reassurance against being crowded out or reduced to economic vassalage by an ever increasing Jewish invasion.”

The correspondent concludes that the riots have proved the impossibility of establishing genuine parliamentary institutions in Palestine. “The sham parliament proposed by the Colonial Office,” he says, “seems equally unnecessary.”

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