§ 16. The Future of Palestine
After the conquest of Palestine by General Allenby, the British Government lost no time in taking steps to fulfil the promise made by Mr. Balfour in his declaration of November 2, 1917. The declaration ran as follows:
His Majesty's Government View with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
This Declaration has since been endorsed by the Governments of France and Italy. President Wilson has also publicly expressed his sympathy with the British Government's Declaration.
The Government authorized the Zionist Organization to send out to Palestine a commission, representative of English, American, French, and Russian Jewry, to investigate and work out ways and means for the establishment of the Jewish national home. The commission went to Palestine accompanied by Major the Hon. W. Ormsby-Gore, M.P., as their liaison Officer with the British authorities of Palestine. It returned in October 1918, but Zionists have so far done little to set forth a practical scheme for the administration of Palestine under their auspices.
The Jews of Palestine divide themselves into two very distinct sections. The old inhabitants are descendants of refugees from Spain and Portugal who began to settle there early in the sixteenth century, and of successive generations of pilgrims who had gone there to study and live a life of contemplation and die in the land of their fathers. These are persons of not much initiative and largely dependent on a somewhat mischievous system, known as Halukah ('distribution') because the money collected for Palestine among the Jews of Europe and America was distributed between them. Halukah benefits correspond with the allowances made to 'remittance men' in the Colonies.
The second class, however, consists of genuine colonists, agriculturists, students, and even painters and sculptors, who have come to Palestine during recent years from Russia, Rumania, and elsewhere, some of them the victims of persecution, seeking a refuge anywhere, but others drawn to Palestine and Palestine only by the ideals of the Chovevi Zion and the Zionists. They came from love of the country, and a real desire to revive it, and make it again a land of milk and honey. To this class also a considerable number of the officers and men of the Jewish regiments which served in Palestine are likely to belong.
An interesting suggestion for the new Zionist situation is set forth in a communication to the Jewish Chronicle of November 15, 1918. The letter assumes that Palestine is to be under British suzerainty, but to be forthwith administered by a 'Jewish Commonwealth'. Inasmuch as the Jews are at present by no means a majority of the population, the principle of self-determination cannot yet apply; but it is admitted to he essential that such a Commonwealth must be acceptable to the present inhabitants, and that no landowner should be expropriated. It suggests that such a Jewish administration would be acceptable to the Arabs and would possess their confidence. The writer attaches great importance to the name of the country. He thinks it should be called 'Israel', and the inhabitants 'Israelites', whether they profess the Jewish religion or not. Hebrew is to be the language of the country, the governor a Jew, preferably one who has distinguished himself as an administrator in the British Empire. The governor is to be assisted by a State Council, partly nominated and partly elected. There is to be complete religious toleration, but Jewish law is to be the fundamental law of the land, and Jewish Sabbaths and Holy Days are to be the recognized days of rest.
This scheme seems somewhat premature, but, so far as the Arabs are concerned, the son of the King of the Hejaz, the Emir Feizul, is reported to have stated in London on December 11 that
Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews and intend to give them fair play, and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas. Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists and the local peasants; but the mutual understanding of the aims of the Arabs and the Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness.
Dr. Weizmann himself, on his return from Palestine, has reported to the Zionists in such wise as to disappoint some of the keenest nationalists among them. They fear that the future condition of Palestine, as he foreshadows it, is by no means ambitious enough. They are inclined to regard his proposals as merely colonization and 'the settling on the land of a number of peasants, presumably those who are unable to live in other countries, and who would be glad to go to Palestine on charity lines'. He is not sufficiently nationalist for them, and they fear that his Zionism is merely that of the old Chovevi Zion philanthropist. They ask whether this is not precisely the formula of the Conjoint Committee of March 3, 1916, which claimed for the Jewish population of Palestine liberty and political rights and reasonable facilities for emigration and colonization, and such municipal privileges as are shown to be necessary. And they ask, therefore, what need there has been for the acute differences of opinion which have, for the last year, divided the Anglo-Jewish community into two camps, Zionists on the one hand, and their opponents on the other. As a matter of fact, the expression of such doubts is no discouraging feature. It rather seems to show a tendency to rapprochement between the two schools. Extremists on both sides will have to give way.
Jewish opinion would prefer Palestine to be controlled for the present as a part, or at any rate a dependency, of the British Empire; but its administration should be largely entrusted to Jews of the colonist type, who have already made such notable improvements in the cultivation of the soil, notwithstanding the almost hopeless difficulties imposed upon them by their former corrupt Turkish rulers. Zionists of this way of thinking believe that, under such conditions, the Jewish population would rapidly increase until the Jew became the predominant partner in the combination.
The Hebrew language is already spoken in many parts of Palestine by thousands of inhabitants and by more people than any other language except its sister-tongue—the Arabic. For the adoption by non-Jews of a Jewish dialect Zionists can point to the instance of Salonika, where Spanish Jews form about half the population and their Ladino or Spanish Hebrew has been to some extent adopted as the language of commerce by Jew and non-Jew alike.
Outside Jewry, an overwhelming mass of public opinion would appear to favour Jewish administration in Palestine, not that it could ever provide a home for the millions of Jews in eastern Europe, but because it would satisfy their secular aspirations, raise their sense of dignity and self-respect, and relieve, to some extent at least, the pressure of the congested districts in which circumstances have forced them to congregate.