The “plain words” which Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, British Colonial Secretary, addressed to the people of Palestine yesterday on the occasion of the opening of the enlarged Haifa harbor, were received with satisfaction by the Jews of the Holy Land who have been greatly perturbed in recent months by the policies of the British government, holder of the Palestine mandate, in regard to Jewish immigration.
Sir Philip’s positive statement that the British government will discharge “without fear or favor” the “clear duties to the Jews and the Arabs” implicit in the mandate, may serve to reassure the Jews of Palestine of the British government’s intentions with regard to immigration, and dismiss misapprehensions on this score.
Recent action of the Palestine government in disregarding the plea of the Jewish Agency for Palestine for labor schedules permitting the entry of 25,000 Jewish workers, and allotting approximately only 3,000 certificates for workers, had greatly disturbed the Jewish population which saw all the work of building up a Jewish national home in Palestine threatened by the refusal of the government to allow Jewish workers into the country to continue this work.
As an instance of this feeling, recent comment by Haaretz, liberal Hebrew daily of Tel Aviv, is noteworthy.
The paper guardedly inferred that the Palestine government might not be seriously opposed to Arab demonstrations because of the opportunity presented to indicate the intensity of Arab opposition to Jewish immigration.
“The Arab propaganda imposes a special function on the Jewish Agency,” the paper points out. It expresses its belief that the Agency will “gather all its forces now, both here and abroad, to counteract the incitement arising from the immigration question, explaining to all what is clear to us here, and opening the eyes of all factors concerned as to the actual motives and true intentions of the new ferment.”
The articles concludes with an appeal for the preservation of peace and a plea for guarantee of the future of Palestine.
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.
