Palestine’s Capacity

Emanuel Neumann, former member of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, on his return from Palestine said, among other things, that “Palestine Itself has by no means reached the maximum of her absorptive capacity,” that the Jews “have no begun to exploit all of the possibilities,” that “there is room in Palestine for another million Jews.” And he expressed the opinion that the real job of the Jewish people is to bend every effort to attain that goal within the next fifteen years.

All honest and intelligent observers who have visited Palestine in recent years know that the Jews have now transformed the land neglected for centuries by the Arabs into a living land throbbing with energy, with productive toil, with cultural activity, with economic prosperity brought about with the aid of Jewish initiative and enterprise, of Jewish idealism and self-sacrifice. And these observers know that the Jews who have resettled in the land of their forefathers are rebuilding it so that all the inhabitants of the land are being benefited, for the Jews go there to live and work in peace, to build and not to destroy.

It is inconceivable that Great Britain, with its fine traditions of justice and fairness, will persist in pursuing the shortsighted Colonial policy affecting Jewish immigration to Palestine at this crucial moment. This is, indeed, tha acid test of the mandatory power’s sincerity with regard to the Balfour Declaration. The actual fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration would not only save the victimes of Nazi persecutions but would also make Palestine one of the greatest factors for peace and stability in that sensitive danger zone. The delay in the actual fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration has unfortunately served to intensify friction between Arabs and Jews, for the deluded or mercenary Arab agitators endeavored to convince the Arab masses that Great Britain had never fully intended to make good its promise to the Jewish people.

It is to be hoped that the negotiations of the Jewish Agency with the mandatory power will soon result in a new policy truly sympathetic to the Jewish settlement in Palestine, in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration as in terpreted by Lord Balfour himself.