THE JEWISH PROBLEM.

HL Deb 10 December 1945 vol 138 cc482-518

LORD ALTRINCHAM rose to call attention to the questions raised by the present situation of the Jews in Europe and Palestine; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, there are, I believe, proverbs in almost all languages to the effect that silence is better than speech on many difficult questions that trouble the world. The usual reference is to the comparative value of silver and gold; but I have heard in Palestine that the proverb there is "If a word is worth one shekel, then silence is worth two." I am sure your Lordships will feel that those proverbs, whatever form they take, are applicable 'to the more controversial part of the Jewish question and the Palestine question, on which I have put down my Motion to-day. I would not say a single word which would arouse controversy at the present time, or seem in any way to prejudge the work of the Anglo-American inquiry, on which I shall have some comment to make later, or raise the temperature either in Palestine or elsewhere at the present time. To do so would be most irresponsible. It is not with that object, or, indeed, with any fear that what is likely to be said in your Lordships' House will produce results of that kind, that I have put down this Motion.

I have two quite definite objects. One is to give the support of Parliament, as I am sure your Lordships would wish to do, to our Services of all kinds in Palestine at the present time. They, after all, are bearing the brunt of the controversy by which the whole world is stirred. Secondly, I would commend the course which is being pursued by His Majesty's Government in providing and arranging for the inquiry which is now to take place, and I would make one or two comments upon that course of action, which I entirely commend.

First and foremost, I am sure that in all quarters of the House there will be a desire to assure our Services, civil and military, warmly and generously of the moral support of Parliament in the task which has been laid on them at the present time. The Administrative Service in Palestine has been bearing for twenty-five years the hardest of all tasks in the whole Colonial Empire. I have no doubt whatever about that, having seen a good deal of it there and elsewhere at first hand. The casualties which have been suffered even recently in Palestine afford some index of the heavy strain under which our officers of all ranks are working in the Holy Land under the conditions that prevail. A list of outrages was given at the end of last year by Colonel Stanley, then Colonial Secretary, covering 1944; and when I say that in 1944, before this question had once again become acute, the number of officers and other ranks in Government service killed was 17 and the number of wounded—most of them seriously—25, your Lordships will understand that the conditions in which our Services carry on in Palestine are very hard. They are very hard not only or principally on the men but also on the women, on the wives, who have all been out there throughout the war.

They are now facing, after six years of war strain, the exceptional difficulties which have been created by the recrudescence of the Zionist question in its present form. I should be grateful to the Government for some information as to the conditions in which the Administrative Service is carrying on at the present time. I have seen some of the conditions in the last few months. Leave has been restricted, if not impossible, for six years. Housing conditions are extremely bad; there is a great pressure for houses in Palestine, as great as there is here, and the men in our Services have great difficulty in finding houses in which to live. There has been an almost universal lack of fuel, and that is a serious matter in a country which has a climate like that of Palestine, for few people, I think, realize that the rainfall in Jerusalem is equal to the rainfall in London, with this difference, that it all falls in Jerusalem between October and May. The rations throughout the war have been short and the cost of living has been quite abnormally high—higher than in almost any other part of the Middle East, and that is saying a great deal. All that has been added to the strain and anxiety produced by the succeeding Middle Eastern crises of the war.

I was deeply shocked to find, when I first went to Palestine last year, that the salaries and allowances of the Administrative Service had not been adjusted to these conditions in any way. Lord Gort, who was then High Commissioner, was making great efforts to get those adjustments made. I have not heard what action has been taken upon the proposals which I think were put forward at that time, and I shall be very grateful to the Government if they can say whether salaries and allowances for the Administrative Service in Palestine have been adjusted during the present year.

Then take the police. If a policeman is killed on duty in this country, Parliament, the Press and the public show the keenest concern. Surely there should be an equal concern for such casualties in Palestine; but they very often pass unnoticed, as if an Englishman had not given his life in a duty of the gravest and most responsible kind. The police there are a splendid body of men, and when Sir Harold MacMichael was attacked just outside Jerusalem in August last year, he owed his life to the presence of mind of a plain-clothes officer. Since I was often served by that plain-clothes officer afterwards, I know what a remarkable and exceptional man he was. But there are many of his type in Government service in Palestine at the present time. The Tegart forts, which cover so many hillsides throughout the Holy Land, are a witness to the conditions in which the police and their families have lived for years. There are fortresses on hill after hill, fortresses recently built, which are one of the most prominent features of the scenery in the Holy Land. These fortresses are far more numerous than those left by the Crusaders.

There has been, I know, an effort to improve the terms of service of the police -and to offer new inducements to recruits. On that point also I should be glad of what information the Government can give your Lordships to-day. But my praise of the Administrative Services and of the police services is riot confined, I must emphasize, to British personnel alone. Many Arabs and many Jews are rendering efficient and loyal service to the Crown, and in the figures for casualties which I gave just now—the casualties for 1944—I notice that, of the killed, five were Arabs in Government service, and one was a Jewish constable. Of the wounded, one was an Arab, and four were Jews. That shows that Arabs and Jews in the service of the Crown are taking the same risks, and serving with the same courage, as British personnel.

Mention must also be made, of course, of the service which is being rendered at the present time by the Army and the R.A.F., particularly, in Palestine. Many of our finest troops, with a splendid war record, have been sent out there, and there is no task more distasteful to soldiers than the task which they have been called upon to perform. But they have upheld the law against bodies of people who, at first, look like unarmed civilians and then suddenly turn into an armed, fanatical force of resistance against what our Forces are ordered to do. Of course, this task is especially distasteful to our soldiers when women and children are involved. I most deeply regret, and I am sure all of your Lordships in all quarters of this House will condemn, the unscrupulous abuse which is being directed against our troops and our Services generally in Palestine at the present time. Things have been said by the underground Jewish broadcasting system, ". The Voice of Israel," which are a disgrace to Israel, and I am sorry to say that some of those things are being echoed in some organs of the Jewish Press over here. It is disgraceful that this should be so, and I think that we here, in your Lordships' House, ought to say to our people that we are convinced that they have upheld, and that they will always uphold, the high standards of the Services and of the country to which they belong.

It was the intention of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury to be here to-day and speak in this debate. He wrote to me asking me to express his regret at his inability to be present on account of having to attend the funeral at Canterbury of Lord Lang. He also asked me to make three or four points on his behalf. But since the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York is here I will leave those points to him with full confidence that they will be thoroughly covered. I should, however, like: myself, to pay my tribute to the work of the Church of England in the Holy Land. It is one of the services which has most truly represented the spirit of our people and our Empire there. It has taken no part whatever in the sectarian rivalries between Christian sects which disfigure the Holy Land. Your Lordships are probably aware how terrible these rivalries are, and you no doubt know that the outer precincts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself have been watched over for two or three centuries by a Moslem family, because the Christians could not agree. In contrast to that, the Church of England, throughout its record in Palestine, has worked wholeheartedly for harmony between races and creeds and cultures there. I think that there has been particularly good service rendered by the Christian schools which have preached unity, when in the greater part of the system of education in Palestine there has been preached the fiercest form of nationalism to be pursued by almost any means.

Religious bitterness has not always marked the relations, at any rate, between Christianity and Islam in Syria. It is an historical fact that in the first seventy years after the conquest of Damascus by Islam in the seventh century of our era, the great Basilica. of St. George there was shared equally between Christians and Moslems, for the purposes of worship by the adherents of those creeds. Unfortunately, that spirit of toleration has long been absent from that part of the world. But, my Lords, that breadth of spirit has always characterized and does still characterize the work of the Church of England there. The only privilege it claims amongst the holy sites, is once a year, on Christmas eve, to arrange for carols to be sung in the cloister outside the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. That simple ceremony, I think your Lordships will agree, is symbolical of its devoted service to the cause of peace and good will amongst men in the Holy Land, and throughout the world.

A little while ago I mentioned Lord Gort, who was High Commissioner in Palestine throughout the time that I was Minister Resident in the Middle East. I am sure that your Lordships would wish to express sympathy with him and with his family for the fact that he has been obliged by illness to resign his post. Lord Gort is the epitome of British staunchness and integrity. He is the epitome of the soldierly virtues and of soldierly character in every line. He has, as your Lordships know, rendered splendid war service in many hard and lonely posts. The retreat to Dunkirk has not yet been fully appreciated as a military achievement, and, indeed, the story of it has not even been fully told. His work at Gibraltar, when he placed that fortress for the first time in a state of defence, might have been important indeed, if the menace of Hitler —which is now being brought out at Nuremberg—had materialized. He served afterwards as Governor of Malta in the worst stages of the trial through which the "George Island" passed during the war.

In Palestine, his service was perhaps the greatest of all. He was accessible to everybody and he went everywhere—a new tradition I may say for High Commissioners in the past, or perhaps I should say a tradition which he renewed after an interval, and which it was difficult to carry out in the conditions of the time. He was, as your Lordships know, incapable of fear. I was taken by him for more than one walk in the narrow streets of old Jerusalem and I am bound to say that it was a highly interesting and testing experience. I felt as if we were back in the patrols of the First World War when he used to take me on patrols in No Man's Land. He himself never showed a tremor of any kind, and I cannot really overstate his steadying influence, his fairness, his indifference to risk and his cheerful and imperturbable serenity towards both races out there. His illness is a tragedy, and I only hope that he may be able to recover so as to take his place in your Lordships' House.

To summarize our debt to British Services in Palestine—and this is the point I wish to make most strongly—let me say this. They are, as we all know, not responsible for policy, yet policy has embroiled them by turn with both races at different times over the past twenty-five years. They have done, and are doing their duty with courage, efficiency and impartial minds. They most certainly deserve the support and confidence of your Lordships' House and indeed of Parliament as a whole at this most critical and exacting time. There is a sterling bloc of a moral, not a material, order formed by the men and women who serve the Crown through out the Empire at the present time. That has been one essential foundation of the loyalty and readiness to serve which has been shown by the peoples of the Colonial Empire during the war and there is certainly no finer example of it, no finer example of its sterling qualities and worth, than is presented by the British Services in Palestine.

I come now to the second object of my Motion, which is to congratulate His Majesty's Government on the inquiry which they have arranged in co-operation with the United States of America and to wish that inquiry well. Clearly the Palestine question, apart from the Jewish question as a whole, must ultimately go to the United Nations Organization, but the Jewish issue is much broader than the Palestine question. I am very glad in the first place that the terms of reference of the inquiry have been so made that they will deal with the needs and sufferings and ideals of the Jews in Europe as well as in Palestine. There is universal sympathy with the sufferings of European Jews. Heaven knows there is enough suffering in Europe everywhere, but the Jews have suffered longest of all and it is very natural that the storm of hatred and bestial cruelty which has been directed against them as a race for so long should have stimulated the Zionist ideal. I can well understand the special sympathy and feeling of the relations of European Jews now in Palestine. I can well understand, although I deplore it, the fact that youth in Palestine has been able to see only one side. Young men and women in, Palestine, so far as I could find in the: Jewish settlements, are convinced of no right but their own as deserving of the support of the civilized world. We must take a broader view of this whole issue than they possibly can. It is not their fault that they think and feel as they do, but if the magnitude of the problem of relief for dispossessed Jewry in Europe is anything like what has been suggested in various accounts, quite clearly there can be no solution to that problem in Palestine alone.

Palestine is a very small country. Its historic limits are from Dan to Beersheba and from the Jordan to the sea. From Dan to Beersheba is one hundred and forty miles and from the Jordan to the sea is an average of twenty-three miles. It is a very small country and clearly if the needs of dispossessed Jewry in Europe are as great as we have been told there cart be no solution to that problem in Palestine alone. I would add that, whatever may be thought about the possibilities of further development in Palestine (and in my opinion they are considerable), progress must depend upon cooperation with the neighbouring States. Agricultural progress, industrial progress and progress in every form must depend upon co-operation with the neighbouring States and that is another reason for taking this question out of the narrow confines in which it has been argued and clouded over by propaganda for so many years.

A joint Anglo-American inquiry on the broadest lines seems to me to be indispensable and I am glad that Anglo-American action is being taken as the first step. There is, after all, no ancient or traditional hostility between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East who, are both great branches of one Semitic race. That hostility has been created outside the Middle East; it has been imported from Europe and the West. It is due to a new factor which was born in the West and that is the strength of nationalism in its present form. We are the primary cause of that and of course it ran riot at the end of the First World War when President Wilson's doctrines kindled quite as heated a fire in the Middle East as in any other part of the world.

I think that President Wilson realized the consequences when he met both Arabs and Jews in the course of the Paris Peace Conferences and your Lordships may remember that in 1919 he recommended an inquiry such as is now to be held. There is therefore good American precedent for the inquiry which is being arranged. President Wilson sug- gested an inquiry by independent investigators—American, British, French and Italian investigators—and it was agreed to. The French Government, however, decided afterwards not to appoint any members; the Italians followed suit, and in due course we followed suit as well; with the result that President Wilson was left to send his investigators alone, but they went. Although the King-Crane Report, as it is called, was not made public for some time afterwards and never reached President Wilson while he was in full possession of his powers, yet that Report is a most valuable testimony to the conditions then obtaining in the Middle East and to the opinions held more particularly in Palestine.

There is another reason for Anglo-American co-operation. Together, though in different ways, Britain and the United States have made the Zionist achievement in Palestine up to date possible. It could not have been done without our support and help. The Jews—and I render the most willing tribute to them—have worked miracles in Palestine. Nobody could see what they have done in the course of twenty-five years without admiring the resource, the energy, the industry, the inventiveness and the refusal to shirk difficulties of any kind which have gone into all the work they have done. Unquestionably, they have transformed the face of a considerable part of the Holy Land, but they could not have done that without British support. We have given much life and treasure in helping the Zionist movement and in helping, supporting and defending the Zionist achievement.

The task especially laid upon our Services out there was most difficult, because our undertakings in written documents were equivocal. Your Lordships are on record, in a debate held in your Lordships' House in June, 1922—the debate having been initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Islington—by, a majority of 60 to 29 to the effect that the Mandate as afterwards sanctioned and approved by the League of Nations was inconsistent with the undertakings which we had given during and after the war. Your Lordships took that view despite the fact that the noble Earl, Lord Balfour, made his maiden speech and spoke with all his usual eloquence on the minority side. In the following year the noble Lord, Lord Grey of Falloden, in another debate in your Lordships' House, also expressed the strong desire that the equivocal nature of our undertakings should be more fully explored in order that the honour of this country might be cleared. The Mandate was, nevertheless, approved, and in my opinion we have lived up to that Mandate in every way. I cannot see that there is any ground why the Empire should stand in a white sheet before the world for its record in Palestine. Its achievement there is remarkable, one which I do not believe that any other race with less experience of difficulties of that kind could possibly have attained. It has done well for both the Arabs and the Jews.

While the Jews have multiplied their population tenfold and while, as I said just now, the development which they have established is in every way wonderful, the Arabs have doubled their population. Their standard of life has risen, and, while it must be admitted that a certain number of Arab peasant proprietors have been dispossessed, we put a stop to that process when we realized what was happening. The Arabs, by and large, have not suffered by our action in Palestine; they have gained. Therefore there is no reason why at the present moment we should be attacked for failing to carry out to the best of our ability the Mandate with which we were entrusted and achieving, on the whole, very great results in the most difficult conditions by which we were faced. But the clash of two conflicting national ideals in Palestine has now reached a stage where His Majesty's Government, as it seems to me, are bound to invoke the principles of the United Nations Charter by which, after all, they are now bound. The Mandate holds until, I understand, it is replaced by some new agreement under the United Nations Charter. But, quite apart from the Mandate, we are bound now by the principles of that Charter, and we must do our utmost to observe them in every way.

Let me read to your Lordships the three principles of the United Nations Charter, which seem to me to justify, in every way, the action which His Majesty's Government have taken. In the preamble we undertook: to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to attempt to see that that policy is pursued everywhere. That declaration needs all the international influence that can be put behind it in Palestine at the present moment. We further promised: to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest …

An appeal is being made to armed force in Palestine now and, if the Charter is to mean anything, we must try to see that armed force is not used. It can never solve a question of this kind. Finally, in Article i of the Charter, we undertook to develop friendly relations among nations based upon respect for the principles of equal rights and the self-determination of peoples …

The Arabs may justly appeal to that Article, and their case must assuredly be heard.

But the first step is to establish the facts in Europe and in Palestine. The Commissioners who attempt to do so must be manifestly impartial if their report is to carry the weight required. I am sure we can count upon His Majesty's Government to see that such choices are made. It is of vital importance that after that, when the facts are established and when action is possible on the report, there should be international co-operation on which peace is bound to depend. We cannot secure it alone. And it will depend more particularly on the readiness of other Powers to bear their share of assistance to dispossessed Jewry in Europe at the present time. We must all pray, then, that this inquiry may establish confidence in its report when that is made, and that there may follow out of it a settlement which will at last bring peace to Palestine. For what will be the value of the United Nations Charter if its principles cannot be applied to secure between nations, cultures and creeds, the peace that they ought to observe, more especially in a country which is sacred to the three great monotheistic religions, in a country which cradled the faith and the code of ethics on which Western civilization has been built for nearly two thousand years.

4.39 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, let me say, in the first instance, that on this occasion I am not speaking on behalf of my noble friends who sit upon these Benches and, to prevent misunderstanding, let me add that I cannot claim to represent either the Zionists or the Jewish community of this country, or elsewhere. I am in no representative capacity for either. if I address your Lordships today, it is as one who has been for thirty years closely connected with the question of Palestine, having brought the subject before the Cabinet soon after the outbreak of the first European war when Turkey entered the war against us, having had the honour of being the first High Commissioner in Palestine at the end of the military administration there, and having kept in touch with the country in recent years, visiting it four times, twice during the course of the recent war.

The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, links together the plight of the Jewish population in Europe with the question of Palestine; and certainly that plight, that persecution, does render the Palestine question more urgent and more poignant. During the Hitler persecution and before the war, the most energetic efforts were made to find some place of refuge somewhere in the world to which the Jews of Germany, Austria and other countries might go, and the world was searched, from British Guiana to North-West Australia, without success. There was unanimity everywhere on two points: first, that the Jews should be given a place of refuge somewhere; and, secondly, that it should be somewhere else. Every where there was, and is, a reluctance to admit any large group of foreigners from Central and Eastern Europe. Not that the Jews were excluded specifically as such, but in this country, the United States, arid all the other industrialized, progressive countries of the world, there are measures of exclusion against the introduction of large homogeneous alien elements, Sidney Smith wrote: Man is by nature benevolent. A never sees B in distress without realizing that C ought to relieve him immediately. And so we have had ten years of International Conferences, Committees and Commissioners, and out of that vast reservoir of misery and murder only a tiny trickle of escape was provided. Ten years of talk with the minimum of action.

All this was apart from Palestine. There was one country to which most of the refugees were eager to go, and one country which was eager to receive them. In tact, since 1933 up to the present time, a quarter of a million of refugees have been able to find homes in Palestine—a small fraction, however, of those who wished to go. But the Palestine question is prior to, and independent of, the question of the Nazi persecution. The Balfour Declaration and the reasons that led to its promulgation were prior to Hitler, who had not yet been heard of. There has been for centuries amongst Jewish people scattered throughout the world a craving for some spot where they could live in peace, freedom and equality, cultivating the soil, engaged in productive industry; and making that land a basis for an efflorescence of literature and learning, science and art, and of the things of the spirit; and that that land should be the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, Palestine. The European situation adds fresh force, and urgency to that claim, but the case rests independently upon compelling moral, spiritual and historical claims. Therefore Palestine stands upon its own basis, and it is as such that I propose to speak about it to-day.

It is often said and widely believed that the difficulties of the Palestine problem arise, not only from conflicting interests and claims, but from conflicting promises which have been either carelessly or even, perhaps our enemies would say, cynically given by British Governments from time to time. In ancient times it was the Promised Land and now it is said it has been the twice-Promised Land —promised both to the Arabs and to the Jews. That, I would urge upon your Lordships, is quite untrue. The land was never promised to the Arabs. The claim is based upon negotiations which took place in 1915 between Sir Henry McMahon, who was authorized to act by the British Government, and Sherif (afterwards King) Hussein, who was speaking on behalf of the Arab national movement—negotiations which resulted in the Arab revolt against the Turks during the war. That was in 1915.

At that time correspondence passed, and it was asserted that Sir Henry McMahon's pledge included Palestine west of the Jordan in the territories which were to form a great extensive Arab domain. Now that is not so. It is true that Palestine, under that name, was not excluded, because Palestine was not the geographical term forming part of the Turkish Empire. There was no such place called Palestine on the Turkish map. There was North Syria and South Syria. Furthermore, we had not arrived at any agreement on the point with France, and therefore we were not authorized to make any declaration with regard to Palestine, as such. Consequently, exclusion was effected by the indirect means of saying that the Arab domain was to exclude certain districts to the west of certain other districts of the Turkish Empire. On that possible ambiguity the whole case was rested.

But Sir Henry McMahon afterwards wrote this letter to The Times, some years later when the question became acute, in 1937: I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me, in giving this pledge to King Hussein, to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised. I also had every reason to believe at the time that the fact that Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood by King Hussein. Sir Gilbert Clayton, who was with Sir Henry McMahon during all those negotiation and drafted the documents, and was with me in Palestine as Chief Secretary afterwards and High Commissioner in Iraq, made a statement, which has been published, to the same effect. Furthermore, when the fate of Palestine was being determined after the war at the Conference of Paris, an Arab delegation was there stating the Arab claims under the leadership of the Emir Feisal, the son of King Hussein and afterwards King of Iraq, and at no stage did the Arabs ever present to the Conference at Paris any claim to Palestine based upon the McMahon declarations. Trans-Jordan indeed was included in the Arab domain by the McMahon pledge. It was for that reason that the Balfour Declaration could not be made to apply to Trans-Jordan.

Palestine was not twice promised; it was not promised to the Arabs, nor was it promised to the Jews to be a Jewish country. The words of the Balfour Declaration were most carefully chosen, after long deliberation and consultation in many quarters. The Balfour Declaration did not say that Palestine was to be a Jewish State; it said that the British Government favoured, and would use their best endeavours to promote, the creation in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, "it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." That limiting condition is as integral a part of the pronouncement as the positive injunction to create a Jewish National Home. The Zionist leaders accepted the Balfour Declaration as so worded with, to use their own words, "profound pleasure and satisfaction." It is true that the Balfour Declaration contemplated that the maximum Jewish immigration into Palestine should be encouraged and it is quite true that it was foreseen by the statesmen who promoted that Declaration that if there were to be large Jewish immigration into Palestine, and if the whole enterprise were successful, in course of time the country would come to have a mainly Jewish population and would then become a Jewish State. At that time, or not long after, forecasts of that kind were made by many people, by Mr. Lloyd George, Mr, Winston Churchill and General Smuts, as he then was. Incidentally, I myself said much the same.

What was promised, so far as promises are concerned, was not a Jewish State, but the opportunity to bring about conditions which might in time make a Jewish State possible. In 1922 the position was clarified and redefined in a White Paper, in the drafting of which I had myself a considerable share. In the White Paper appeared the words: "It"—that is the Jewish National Home—" did not mean that the purpose was to create a wholly Jewish Palestine, or the disappearance or subordination of the Arab population, language or culture." Again that White Paper, as so worded, was formally accepted by the Zionist Organization. I, as High Commissioner at that time, was of course bound in the name of the Crown to administer the country in accordance with those declarations.

On that basis there was peace in Palestine for seven years. It is often thought that Palestine has been the continuous scene of unbroken disturbance. That is not so. From 1921 to 1929 the country was quite peaceful, although there was always a certain political strain. All the time the Arabs refused to admit in principle the validity of the Balfour Declaration, or indeed of the 'Mandate, but, nevertheless there was a great deal of co-operation between the two races there; there were no outbreaks, not a blow was struck in any racial riot or disturbance. Then, in 1929, unhappily, conflicts broke out afresh. I am not going those matters; it would take me too long to describe the causes and events. Afterwards various alternative solutions were attempted.

LORD STRABOLGI

May I ask the noble Viscount a question? It is very important in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, said. The troubles definitely were not instigated from Western Europe, as we were led to suppose. The troubles in 1929 were instigated from outside Palestine, within the Middle East.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

I do not want to go into those side issues, if the noble Lord will kindly excuse me.

LORD STRABOLGI

It is fundamental; it is not a side issue.

LORD ALTRINCHAM

I must at once repudiate the suggestion that I said the trouble was instigated from the West. If the noble Lord supposes I said anything of the kind, he has misunderstood me. I said the growth of nationalism was instigated from the West.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

Various alternative solutions were attempted at that time. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1937, presided over by a member of this House, Lord Peel, and it made certain proposals that proved abortive. Then a White Paper was issued in 1939, which is still in force and which is, I submit to your Lordships, the principal cause of the impasse in which we now find ourselves. In 1939 the condition in Europe was very threatening. We had, unfortunately, in this country a Government in power which history must regard as having been a weak Government. Its actions with regard to Italy, Spain and Germany proved that. In Palestine there had been a serious rebellion by the Arabs which it required two divisions of British troops to suppress. The Government here felt that another similar Arab rebellion was possible and would be very dangerous, but they felt that the Jews, on the other hand, were unlikely to cause any serious trouble. So they adopted the worst of all policies, the policy of being weak towards those who are formidable and formidable towards those who are weak. In one of his well known books the Chinese writer Lin Yutang quotes the proverb "Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is the best." That is the policy which was adopted by the Government of that day in this connexion.

The White Paper was in effect a complete surrender. It provided that after live years the doors of Palestine were to be closed to Jewish immigration unless the Arabs gave their consent to its continuance. Of course, as everyone knew, that assent was certain to be withheld. The White Paper of 1939 evoked vehement protests in many quarters. The Peel Commission of 1937 had condemned such a policy in advance; it had said: "Unquestionably the primary purpose" —I draw your Lordships' attention to the word "unquestionably"—" of the Mandate as expressed in its preamble and it; articles is to promote the establishment of a Jewish National Home." It further said: "We cannot accept the view that the Mandatory, having facilitated the establishment of a National Home, would be justified in shutting its doors." Nevertheless the doors were shut. Mr. Winston Churchill said in Parliament: I could not stand by and see solemn engagements into which Great Britain has entered before the world set aside for reason of administrative convenience or—and it would be a vain hope—for the sake of a quiet life. He described the White Paper as "an act of repudiation … a plain breach of a solemn obligation." Then the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, after prolonged investigation, in June, 1939, reported unanimously: From the first, one fact forced itself to the notice of the Commission—namely, that the policy set out in the White Paper was not in accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the Council, the Commission had always placed upon the Palestine Mandate. There we have the present position in which we meet this afternoon to discuss the question of Palestine. The essence of that position is that the White Paper of 1939 is now in force, the five years are over; and the Balfour Declaration, which has never been withdrawn by any Government, is also in force, and that the one is in direct contradiction with the whole spirit of the other. But there is this difference between these two important instruments, and it is a very fundamental difference. The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by all the Allied and Associated Powers engaged in the First World War, including the United States of America. It was embodied textually —the very words of the Balfour Declaration—in the Mandate for Palestine, conferred by those States upon Great Britain and approved by the League of Nations itself. Consequently the Balfour Declaration, embodied in the Mandate, has the validity of International Law; and if the question were ever to come before an International Court of Arbitration, they must hold that it is valid in law, whereas the White Paper, which contradicts it, is the unilateral action of the British Government alone, and therefore cannot be held to be valid when it is in conflict with the prior and more authoritative document.

You will be able to understand, therefore, the bitterness which prevails to-day among the Jewish population in Palestine, and indeed among Jewish people throughout the world, when they remember that, but for that White Paper, at the time of the effort to exterminate the Jews in Europe, tens of thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands, might have found their way into Palestine and so saved their lives, but in fact were kept where they were for the gas chambers or for death from starvation. These people are the relatives of the Palestinian Jews. There is hardly a family in Palestine but has some near or distant relatives among the victims of this persecution, which has exterminated millions of human beings. And now, if after incredible hardships the survivors make their way to some port, and then, in some overcrowded and hardly seaworthy ship, make their way across the Mediterranean, they find waiting for them British warships patrolling the coasts and British police and troops watching the beaches, in order to arrest and intern these illegal immigrants. The Jewish population of Palestine assert that in their view if the immigration is illegal under the Ordinance, the Ordinance itself is illegal under the Mandate.

There is a further complication. The British Government having taken a false step in 1939, the Zionist Organization has taken what is in my view another false step more recently, in that it has demanded the proclamation of Palestine as a Jewish State. The World Zionist Congress, meeting in London in August of this year, reaffirmed earlier resolutions, and among those resolutions were these: That the gates of Palestine he opened to Jewish immigration. That Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth, integrated in the structure of the democratic world. They then go on, very wisely, to say: The Jewish State will be based upon full equality of rights of all inhabitants, without distinction of religion or race, in the political, civic, religious and national domains, and without domination or subjection. This demand for a Jewish State has had very grave repercussions. It has aroused intense anxiety and active antagonism on the part of the Arabs generally and their friends in other countries. It has been assumed that it must involve the expulsion of the present Arab population of Palestine, or a large part of them. This is completely and authoritatively denied by the Zionists. The head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency has stated that "the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine can be achieved without the need for even one Arab to emigrate from Palestine," and he goes on to say: The suggestion that some Arabs might be transferred from Palestine to neighbouring countries is inconsistent with the Zionist programme. There have been other similar declarations.

The present situation in Palestine is this. In very round figures, there are 1,000,000 Arabs and nearly 600,000 Jews. Those 1, 000,000 Arabs are not to be expelled from the country; they remain. Obviously, with only 600,000 Jews, and with 1,000,000 Arabs who are to enjoy equality of political rights, and who therefore, if there is self-government, will have a large majority in the Assembly, whatever it may be, to describe such a country as a Jewish State is a misnomer. You may call it that, but in fact it is not. Even if as time goes on the Arabs do not increase in number, while the Jews do, so that in some years' time there are 2,000,0000 or 3,000,000 Jews and still only 1,000,000 Arabs, I am not sure whether, with so large a non-Jewish minority, the country could truthfully be described as a Jewish State.

There you have the present situation. Reviewing it after twenty-five years, from the time when the British administration was established after the First World War, one finds that there have been two great changes. The first is that the Jewish National Home has developed immensely. Reference has been made to that by the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham. The Jewish population was then 60,000, and is now 600,000. The Jewish town of Tel Aviv, which when I first went to the country had a population of 8,000, now has a population of 200,000. The material progress, both agricultural and industrial, has been amazing. Culturally also there has been a great development. The Hebrew language, the language of the Bible, with all the modern additions introduced into it, has become the vernacular for that Jewish population, after being dormant for nineteen centuries. There is a splendid system of schools, and the educational system has its climax in what is now a great university, with some of the most famous scientists and other teachers from Europe established there as professors, and from the financial point of view enjoying a Budget already of about £250,000 a year.

Measured statistically, the Jewish National Home has involved an expenditure during this period of about £120,000,000 in land purchase and in the foundation of industries and in cultural and social developments. The deposits in the banks to-day, awaiting investment when normal conditions return, amount to about £ 70,000,000, about four-fifths of which has been deposited by Jewish depositors. The Zionist funds, drawn from voluntary subscriptions, large and small, including an immense number of tiny subscriptions paid in week by week by Jewish people all over the world, give the Zionist Organization a total revenue of about £5,000,000 a year, and this year nearly £ 6,000,000. As the Peel Commission said: It is impossible, we believe, for any unprejudiced observer to see the Jewish National Home and not to wish it well. It is legitimate, perhaps, to mention, in this place and at this time, that all this would have been impossible if Turkey had remained the sovereign Power there, or if the country had been transferred to become an independent Arab State; and very improbable if any other European Power than Great Britain had become the Mandatory. In spite of the bitterness that has been generated by later developments, am bound to say, and your Lordships will concur, that it is an act of ingratitude on the part of a portion, at all events, of the Jewish population of Palestine to forget that this achievement has been made possible by reason of its being conducted under the aegis of the British Crown. That increases our horror at the crimes, committed by a group of fanatical youths— and repudiated by all responsible elements of the Jewish communities in Palestine and all over the world—which culminated in the cruel and callous murder of a member of our own House, the late Lord Moyne.

It is untrue that all this development has been at the expense of the Arabs. The increase of the population has been, in very round figures, about 1,000,000 since 1920. Of that 1,000,000, 500,000 approximately have been Jews, and 500,000 Arabs. Although the ratio may have varied from year to year, the actual numbers of the increases are, roughly speaking, about the same. As Lord Altrincham has said, the Arabs in education, in health, and as regards their general standard of living, have vastly progressed. And that is as it should be. If they had not progressed it would have been a disgrace to the Jewish National Home itself. It is untrue also that the country is now full. With intensive agriculture, with better irrigation and with the development of electric power, small as it is, I am quite convinced that its present population could, within a generation, be doubled or perhaps trebled.

The second great change that has occurred since 1920 is that the Arabs have become more politically self-conscious, and they have formed a union of Arab States—the Arab League. That is a remarkable achievement for the Arab peoples. Highly individualized and sectionalized as they are, it was thought that they would find it very difficult to combine. But, nevertheless, they have achieved that union, and it is undoubtedly a sound measure. Your Lordships will forgive my saying that, first of all as long ago as 1920 I urged upon the Government of the day that Federation of these Arab States should be favoured and assisted by the British Government. I did so again in 1922, and again in 1937 in the debate in your Lordships' House on the Peel Report. Moreover, Dr. Weizmann, the leader of the Zionists, a statesman of great vision and imagination, has, on more than one occasion, welcomed the creation of an Arab union, and declared that Palestine might well be integrated with it. After all, during this time the Arabs have achieved great progress politically. This domain is a vast one, but, apart from Egypt, vast as it is in area, it has few industries and little wealth. If Palestine were to be associated with it and with a rapid Jewish development there, it would be of immense economic value to these Arab States and of great mutual advantage. After all, through the Middle Ages when Islam was in its period of greatest glory, and its Empire stretched from Delhi to Granada, Jewish statesmen, scientists and scholars contributed not a little to that achievement.

What then is the solution that may be advocated for this complex and difficult problem of Palestine? Not, I believe, any renewed attempt at geographical partition. When the Peel Report was before your Lordships I strongly opposed this suggestion and from my own experience of the country urged that it was administratively impossible. The Government, however, proceeded with the plan and sent out an expert Committee, under the Chairmanship of Sir John Woodhead to draw the actual frontiers. But the Committee reported that it was, in fact, administratively impracticable, and the Government of that day recognized, and admitted publicly, that that solution could not be adopted. I am very glad that the present Government have not been tempted to follow the apparently easy course of saying: "Let's divide the country into two and give one half to the Jews and one half to the Arabs." That is not geographically possible.

I believe that the clue to the settlement of the Palestine question, so far as the political constitution of the country is concerned, is to abandon the idea that one of the systems of democracy that we have in Europe, which embody what we think are the only forms of democracy that are possible, should be applied there in the form to which we are accustomed. We regard our own system—of having geographical constituencies for voting, Members of Parliament selected by majority, and a majority Party governing the country, with a minority Party accepting and acquiescing in their rule—as the essence of democracy. But it does not necessarily follow that that procedure should be adopted in any country where we are desirous of establishing full self-government. It does not apply where the country is not homogeneous. In England, in France, in Italy or elsewhere, you can have geographical constituencies and majority rule with a minority, but not in a country situated as Palestine is situated. The Turks realized that and they governed their Empire, not on a basis of geographical areas but on a basis of communities. That, to me, as I have said before, is the right solution.

The country must remain, at all events for some years, under a trusteeship of some kind. Complete independence must mean anarchy; and the country should not be given any Constitution which would put either the Jews or Arabs, as a minority, under the supremacy of the others. Therefore, I contend that the communities should be treated as such irrespective of their numbers at any particular time. They should, as communities, be organized with representative institutions, with adequate revenues, and they should have charge of their own educational and religious affairs and other matters. There should be three communities, the Moslem Arabs, the Jews and the Christian Arabs, who are a not insignificant body. Local government areas which are homogeneous, like Tel Aviv on the one hand and Nablus and the surrounding area on the other, would have their own elected local government bodies and the management of their own affairs in their own hands. Similarly, where there are mixed communities they would be governed, as now, by mixed municipalities using both languages. Then there should be a central council under a British president and consisting of representatives of the three communities as such and dealing with any matters of general interest. That should be, to my mind, the political constitution of the country for the time being, to be developed possibly in a later generation into something closer to the ordinary democratic pattern. Trans-Jordan should be actively developed, with the assistance of a considerable loan guaranteed by the British Treasury, and that development should be for the benefit of half the Arab and half the Jewish settlers.

Jewish immigration into Palestine should be reopened on a large scale. That I think it quite essential; and Palestine as a whole should be integrally connected with the States of the Arab League. The whole of that scheme is one which might quite legitimately be accepted by the. Arabs. After all they have had great gains after the two wars. Egypt has got her complete independence; new independent kingdoms have been created in Hejaz and Iraq; there is the Emirate in the Trans-Jordan, and new Republics in Syria and the Lebanon. They could well concede with a good grace, freedom of immigration into this one little corner. And it would be a stroke of wise statesmanship on their part, for by enlisting in the interest of the Arab League the enterprise of the Jewish population in Palestine, they would enrich the whole area and would help the general pacification of the Middle East.

Now we are at a deadlock, and it is essential to make a fresh start with fresh minds and fresh authority. We regret that one mind is withdrawn from this enterprise—Lord Gort, who has been mentioned here already to-day, and who made so deep an impression on all sections of the community in Palestine and whose grave illness is a great disadvantage to the treatment of this question. The Government plan of procedure seems to me to be quite sound. It has four points. The first is that the matter must be settled by discussion and conciliation and not by force, and that violence from any quarter cannot be tolerated; secondly. that the matter must be pressed forward with all speed; thirdly, that the partnership of the United States should be invited (and that invitation has been accepted); and fourthly, that ultimately the whole matter should be referred to the decision of the United Nations Organization. That is right, because after all this is not only a British question but a world problem. In the ordinary course the United Nations Organization would have appointed their own Committee, but since that body is not yet in existence and it would involve much delay, the Anglo-American Committee has been appointed. There is no reason why, if the Anglo-American Committee produces an agreed report on some such lines as has been suggested to-day, or on other lines equitable to both parties, effecting, not the whole claims, but the substance of the wishes of both parties. and if such a report is approved by both Governments and insisted upon by the United Nations Organization, both parties would not be bound to agree.

My Lords, you are not interested in either Arab nationalism or Jewish nationalism as such for its own sake. You have a feeling of common humanity that every attempt should be made for the rescue and rehabilitation of those who have suffered such terrible persecution even to a point of physical extermination unheard of in the modern world. You are perhaps thinking primarily of yesterday and to-day, but to-morrow and all the future is at stake. Sir Richard Livingstone, one of our greatest living humanists, has said: The only reasoned views of life that Europe knows come from Greece and Palestine. For a thousand years Palestine has been materially derelict and spiritually barren until this recent awakening; and our modern age, as we all know, for all its science and mechanical achievements, is perishing for lack of an effective moral impulse. I believe that from the land of Palestine, with its traditions and its atmosphere, there may yet emerge, for the third time in human history, some mighty impulse of the spirit, and it is for that reason that I plead its cause to-day.

5.26 p.m.

THE LORD ARCIIBISHOP OF YORK

My Lords, I shall detain the House for only a very few minutes. I have not got the personal knowledge of the problem which is possessed, I suppose, in a unique degree, by the two noble Lords who have just addressed you. I have read various Blue Books and While Papers, and I have visited Palestine on two occasions and on one occasion I had the opportunity of meeting the leading representatives. I rise really for one purpose only and that is to say that I welcome this Committee which is to be appointed. I welcome it because I believe that it will help to clear up difficulties which stand in the way of many of us reaching any fair decisions on this matter. There is a number who are perfectly fair in their views; they believe that a State should be established in Palestine for the Jews. Among the Jews there are many who are opposed to that. They are afraid that the establishment of such a State may eventually, although not at first, prejudice the position of Jews who are now domiciled in other countries. Others hesitate about the creation of another small State in these days of great and mighty Powers. But between these two sections there is a vast body of opinion which is quite uncertain and which wants to know more about the sub- ject before it can decide one way or another.

Difficulties have been mentioned. The difficulty has been mentioned by the noble Viscount who has just spoken of the claims of the Jews and the claims of the Arabs. The Balfour Declaration undoubtedly stated that there was to be a home for the Jews in Palestine and the British Government has already recognized that and has enabled that home to be established. I was greatly struck by what I saw some years ago at the university and in the settlements, by the vigour of Jewish life in various directions. For tens of thousands of Jews to-day Palestine is not only their spiritual home but it is already their physical home. On the other hand, there are the Arabs who have had over one thousand years of uninterrupted occupation of that country. Their farms may have often seemed somewhat inadequate to the more modern settlements of the Jews, but these farms are their homes and this country is their home and they would feel a sense of bitter resentment if they found that in the country which they had occupied for so long they became a minority, as they would if immigration went on unchecked. That is one of the matters upon which we hope this Anglo-American Committee may throw clear light.

There is a second problem which always weighs on me in this connexion and which has again been touched on quite lightly. It is, how many people can this small country economically receive? I fully recognize all that the Jews have lone. The figures given by the noble Viscount who has just sat down would not be disputed for one moment by anyone who knows the conditions there. But how many more can Palestine hold? I asked this question again and again when I was out there. I asked how many more people could find work there. Ten years ago there was unemployment in Tel Aviv and, although it is easy to point to the map and to say, "Here are these vast spaces uncultivated and Uninhabited," and although some of that land can be cultivated in the future, no irrigation schemes, however extensive, will bring all this land under cultivation. Therefore, many of us are anxious to know how many tens of thousands more Jews can come into that land. If there is unlimited immigration, there is the danger that you may have a State or a nation on the" dole"; you may have a squalid slum occupied by millions of unemployed. I hope that will not be so; and I am not saying it will be so. But that is one of the questions which a Committee of this kind will have to investigate. The questions and problems already raised in this debate are the kind which must be considered by the Committee.

I am very glad this Committee is to be an Anglo-American one. The Americans have always shown very great interest in this subject. When I was in the United States last year, there was hardly any subject on which I was questioned more frequently and more eagerly than about conditions in Palestine and the relationship of the British Government to the problems there. I am bound to add that though my questioners very often and very freely said we had broken our pledges, when I" read to them the Balfour Declaration, they expressed considerable surprise and asked me what actually was the Declaration. A number of the most critical had never actually read the Declaration themselves, so it will be of great value that the Americans, who are deeply concerned in this matter, should be represented on this Committee. By a Joint Committee of this kind new light may be thrown on this most difficult and baffling problem.

There are two observations which I want to make quite briefly. Sometimes when we discuss this question in debate, it is discussed as if it were a problem which concerns only the Jews and the Moslems. But, of course, the Christians are concerned quite as much. There would be an outcry throughout Christen dom if the right of access to the sacred places was barred or if the sacred places were once again put under the control either of a Jewish or a Mahomedan State. I very much hope this Committee will see that the Christian standpoint is put very fully by competent people. There are plenty who know the position through and through. I am very grateful to the noble Lord who opened the debate for the reference he made to the position occupied by the Anglican Church in Palestine. When I was there I was struck by the way the late Bishop was in touch with all the various Churches, was trusted by them, and was held in high respect by both Jews and Arabs. When I wished to meet representatives of the Jews and the Arabs, they agreed to meet me, separately, and they met me in his house, and preferred to meet me there rather than anywhere else. I am quite certain that our Church of England has got a real contribution to make towards the solution of this problem.

There is another matter on which I wish to make one observation. I dread anything like Anti-Semitism. I believe Anti-Semitism is un-Christian and irrational, but I notice with anxiety some signs of it—not yet very serious, but quite unmistakable—in this country. I cannot say too strongly that it is the duty of every Christian and of every freedom-loving citizen to do all in his power to resist and rebuke Anti-Semitism where-ever it shows itself. But the leaders of Jewish opinion have also a great responsibility. They can do much to restrain the persistent attacks against this country made by Jewish speakers and writers and by the Jewish Press on both sides of the Atlantic. Great Britain is being vehemently accused day by day of bad faith, of breaking its promises, of callous indifference to the sufferings of the Jews, and even of responsibility for the deaths of many thousands of them. These charges are not true, and are causing the greatest resentment among many who are conscious that this country has done more than any other to help the Jews. This resentment may very easily turn into indignant hostility. I dread what the result would be on public opinion at home if many of our soldiers in Palestine lose their lives at the hands of Jews. It is because I hate Anti-Semitism —we have seen sufficiently what it has meant on the Continent — that I appeal to Jewish leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to check this violent, and sometimes almost hysterical, anti-British propaganda which may easily lead to a most dangerous reaction.

We have every sympathy with the Jews and the really appalling sufferings through which they have passed. No greater crime in history has ever been committed than the deliberate attempt to exterminate a whole nation and the massacre of millions cold-bloodedly during the last few years. We are not surprised that the Jews feel deeply about their relatives, about their persecutors, and about their future. With all our hearts we sympathize with them; we wish the Jews to have a home of their own in which they can develop their culture and in which they can feel free from all danger, persecution and intimidation. Above all, we want to see in Palestine—the country from which there came the first proclamation of universal peace—the three great religions who occupy that land engaged in building up a community in which there are order, justice, and prosperity.

5.38 p.m.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, it behoves every noble Lord taking part in this debate to choose his words with great care, arid I shall endeavour to follow the excellent examples already set. May I, with great diffidence, re-echo part of the speech of the most reverend Primate when he spoke of Anti-Semitism? I was glad to hear the cheers from all quarters of this House, and Anti-Semitism will always be condemned in all quarters of this House. There is a growth of Anti-Semitism in this country and elsewhere, and it is the duty of your Lordships and all of us, irrespective of Party and creed, to do all we can to discourage and suppress it. It is a cowardly and savage instinct which, unfortunately, has existed for 2,000 years, and even longer.

The Motion moved by the noble Lord refers to the Jews in Europe as well as to those in Palestine, though most of the debate has, naturally perhaps, pivoted round the future of Palestine. May I briefly make one reference to a very alarming state of affairs reported in Europe to-day? I am sorry I did not give notice of this to my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, but I only had it brought to my attention yesterday, though it has been widely reported in the newspapers. It is that there is an outbreak of very violent. Anti-Semitism in Poland which, apparently, the Polish Government, with the best will in the world, are unable to check. It seems to he the work of some irregular Polish armed force—some underground army. Full details are given in many reputable newspapers. The Jews who have been returned or repatriated as displaced persons to Poland are flying back into Germany for refuge.

We hear a good deal of the influence of the Great Allies and the causes for which we fought the war. If the persecutions of the Jews, perpetrated by the Nazis are going to be repeated by these irregular forces in Poland, are we to retrain again silent? Is nothing to be done about it? If the Polish Government, who I understand are doing their best in the matter, are unable to suppress this movement of these irregular armies, we ought to assist them. I would beg my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, as a member of the Cabinet, to take urgent action here and bring this matter to the notice of the Departments concerned. This Motion deals with the Jews in Europe, and if this account of an outburst of murderous Anti-Semitism in Poland is true, then the body of Hitler may be dead but his soul still marches on. I suggest that the responsibility lies with His Majesty's Government to take the initiative in preventing this disgraceful state of affairs.

May I congratulate the noble Viscount opposite, Lord Samuel, on his speech? He and I do not always see eye to eye. We have sat in both Houses for many years. I congratulate him on the really masterly survey he managed to compress into a remarkably short speech. I suggest that his speech should be reproduced and widely circulated, and l do most heartily congratulate him upon it. I understand that the names of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry have been announced in another place, and although I have not a complete list of them I understand that my noble friend Lord Morrison is to be a member. As one who has served for a very long time with him in Parliamentary life, I am sure I am echoing the views of all my noble friends on this side of the House and, indeed, of others who know him in other parts of the House, in congratulating him and also congratulating His Majesty's Government on having obtained his services. I understand two members of another place are also on this Commission, and their names give confidence too.

Now the most reverend Primate spoke of the attacks made upon this country, which in effect mean attacks upon His Majesty's Government. Ever since His Majesty's present advisers took office I have sought to defend them on every count where they have been attacked—they have not been attacked on many counts yet—and since the declaration on the 13th of last month with regard to the policy on Palestine, I have also sought to defend them, and shall go on defending them, against the very attacks to which the most reverend Primate has referred. Undoubtedly the Cabinet found themselves in a very difficult position with regard to Palestine. The whole situation has been bedevilled there by a certain factor which has not been mentioned yet, and that is the discovery of new oilfields in the interior of the Arabian peninsula. That, I am sorry to say, has had an effect, through American sources, on the political handling of this situation, and His Majesty's Government found themselves faced with the results of those machinations.

Now I have heard it said that there are three forces in the world with which it is impossible to compromise: the Vatican, the Communist Party, and the oil companies. The first two, at any rate, have worthy motives or ultimately idealistic motives. With the oil companies it is not quite so. There is, I am afraid, only too much evidence that the influence of the oil interests since the discovery of the new oilfields in Arabia, has not been conducive to a happy settlement of the present troubles in Palestine or the brilliant future which was described and hoped and prayed for by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel. But that was not the fault of His Majesty's Government; it was one of the complications with which they found themselves faced.

In addition, there was the violent propaganda that has been carried on against the whole conception of the Balfour Declaration and the National Home, and which has borne fruit through the Middle East. Following on a long and exhaustive war, with many commitments which were not of our seeking in other parts of the world, any Government would have hesitated to stimulate or encourage fresh disorders, especially in that very delicate region of the world. Therefore it seems to me that the Cabinet were faced with only three chokes. They could have maintained the policy of the White Paper, which all their leading members have heavily condemned, including the Lord Chancellor himself, the present Prime Minister and the whole of the Labour Party, and which I think has been indicted most thoroughly to-day by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, with no protest from any part of the House. The facts he gave were, I think, beyond argument. This would have been another fatal confession of weakness.

LORD ALTRINCHAM

I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but he really must not take silence for consent for everything that has been said.

LORD STRABOLGI

I certainly do not take either silence or verbiage from the noble Lord as consent for anything I say. Listening to his speech, there was only one part with which I agreed, and that comprised his eulogies of the British Armed Forces.

That choice fortunately was not taken. In effect it would have meant the gradual but eventual extermination of those Jewish settlers who had gone to Palestine on their belief in the faith and honour of the British people. It really was unthinkable. The second choice was to tear up the White Paper and return to the policy of the Mandate, to act very boldly and to declare what we intended to do. We have very large forces in the country. I believe by so doing we should have done much to re-establish our position as the moral leaders of the world. That would have been a very bold and courageous policy, but no doubt there were considerations before the Cabinet of which I am not aware, which made this policy impracticable.

The third choice was the present policy, which has been described by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and the mover of this Motion. And the present policy certainly has advantages, in addition to those already mentioned by Lord Samuel. Obviously the members who man this Anglo-American Commission are men of integrity and honesty, and we shall get, I am sure, an exposure of the real facts in Palestine, which we have not had. People talk about the iron curtain which separates Russian control in Europe from the West. It is nothing to the iron curtain there has been round Palestine for the last six years. It has been almost impossible to get the facts through, and the treble censorship which prevails now is of the fiercest description. Perhaps it is necessary—I do not know—but it has been going on for a long time. Anyway, we shall now get an exposure of the real facts. And we are bound in this matter, provided there is agreement, to get the moral and, if necessary, the material support of the United States of America. I used to say, before this policy was adumbrated on November 13 by my right honourable friend Mr. Ernest Bevin, that all I wanted in Palestine was too American soldiers under an American captain, and to let them once a week march under the Stars and Stripes to their religious duties. That was all that was required. If the captain's name were Cohen, so much the better.

As we have brought the United States into this matter, as the United States Government have accepted our invitation to take some of the responsibility for the inquiry, I would like to suggest that it might have been a good plan to have taken the opportunity of inviting the Russians also. May I very briefly explain why? One of the complaints we apparently receive from our Russian Allies is that there is a great deal of working together by the British and American Governments hut they are inclined to be brought in only at the second remove. I would have thought there were solid reasons for inviting the Russians. The Orthodox Church has an interest in Jerusalem, and the holy places are, therefore, a matter of interest to the Russian Government. As a Black Sea Power, the Russians must have an interest in the strategical importance of Palestine. We are interested in the Mediterranean sea routes, and have taken great steps to safeguard what we consider to be our position in Greece because of that. From the purely strategical point of view Palestine is far more important to the future defence of the British Commonwealth. The same arguments could equally well be brought forward by the Russians. As a Black Sea Power, they are as interested as we are in the freedom of passage at all times in the Mediterranean, and in the Eastern Mediterranean in particular. I should have thought it would have strengthened our position if we had invited the Russians to contribute members to the mixed Committee which has been set up to ascertain the facts and to make recommendations. I only throw that suggestion out in passing, although I suggest that it is of some importance.

I am also hound to say that I believe the facts which this Commission of Inquiry will find will include the following—and they are rather contrary to what we have heard from Lord Altrincham. From the time that we assumed the Mandate there has been a weighting of the scales by many of the officials who are members of the Colonial Service against a full realization of the policy of the Mandate. I repeat, there has been a weighting of the scales. That may have been by direction of Whitehall; no doubt the Government of the day will always take responsibility, I am not suggesting otherwise. However, there has been a whittling away, if you like, of the full implications of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the Mandate. I also suggest that this fact will be found. Left to themselves, the Jews and Arabs in Palestine can work together and live together quite happily. There are many evidences of that. At the present. time Arab and Jewish workmen are working side by side in Government factories arid have been doing so right through the war without any friction. Further than that, I am assured by people who have worked in those factories that Arab and Jewish workmen go out of their way to be particularly courteous and considerate to each other. They know there is tension, they know an explosive situation exists, and therefore they particularly want to make clear to each other that they are comrades in the same factories and that there is going to be no trouble between them.

Another fact which will be found, I think, will be that the Arab gunmen who came down to Palestine from Syria and Iraq to stir up the trouble, referred to by Lord Samuel, in the years immediately before the war, with Italian and German money and support, murdered more Arabs than Jews. They were terrorising the Arab population into siding with them and were coercing an unwilling peasantry into supporting the nationalism which they were attempting to stimulate. Another fact found, I think, will be that those troubles were not ended by the two divisions of British infantry. It has been well said that in the daytime the British soldier controlled Palestine and at night the gunman controlled it. Those disorders were put down by a mixed force under a certain Colonel Wingate, whose death in Burma afterwards was such a loss to the British Army and to the British nation.

Wingate raised a mixed forced of young Arab and Jewish villagers and he trained them to work at night. 'After six weeks he had beaten the gunmen from Syria and Iraq at their own game and had cleared the whole of the troubled northern part of the country. He was only allowed to raise that force after much opposition and much friction. There was a case of the Arabs themselves following a lead and being only too anxious to put down the mischief makers and the murderers who were stirring up trouble in their country. Wingate had his reward. He was sent home and an order came from the highest quarters that never again was he to be employed in Palestine; he was too popular with the Jews.

The point was made by Lord Samuel far more effectively than I can make it, but it is a fact that Anti-Semitism began long before Hitler, and I am afraid it will survive Hitler and the Nazis. The only country in which the Jews have been able to succeed on the land and generally has been Palestine. Lord Samuel referred to the attempts made to find a place of refuge. There were those colonies in the Argentine, with good land, conducted with great enthusiasm and great industry, where they just managed to hold their own. Whatever the reason may be, Palestine has been the only country where the Jews in modern times have been able to thrive and prosper and form their own communities. I would like to make this point again, if I may. The efforts of the Jews in Palestine in modern methods of agriculture, afforestation, irrigation, soil conservation and the treatment of local animal and plant diseases, in which they have already achieved extraordinary success, are bound to have beneficial effects on the whole of the still impoverished Middle East.

Like others of your Lordships, I wish this Commission of Inquiry well. It seems to me that they will make one of a number of possible recommendations. It is possible to accede to the demands of the leaders of the Arab League, who do not speak for the working masses in Palestine, on this matter at any rate, and that will result in the gradual elimination of the Jews and give no relief to the Jewish survivors in Europe. They can repeat the proposals of the Peel Commission for partition. I do not think that was referred to by Lord Samuel on this occasion. I hope it will be realized that partition would be economically disastrous in Palestine. You cannot have great schemes of electrification and irrigation and development if you cut up that already too small country by partitioning it. If you have the head waters of the Jordan in one part of the country, and a different Government over the other part of the country, which needs the water and electricity generated from the Jordan, the whole thing becomes farcical and impossible.

There is the other solution of the Jewish Commonwealth, which the late Earl Lloyd-George visualized would be the result, butt I see that already President Truman has recognized publicly the impracticability of an independent Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, and I think that the arguments brought forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, were also very weighty indeed. I think it is most improbable that that could be brought about.

Then there is the policy which was associated with the late Lord Wedgwood, and a number of other members of both Houses of Parliament, including the present Duke of Devonshire (when he sat with me in the House of Commons), Sir Robert Hamilton and others, when we tried to argue the case for making Palestine first into a Clown Colony and then into a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire. I still believe that this last may be found to be the most practical solution. I have reason to believe that: it would satisfy the moderate Arabs, who form the great majority of the real working Arab population in Palestine, not including the agitators. It would also satisfy our strategic requirements, which will remain. After all, the United Nations Organization will not take official shape until the 7th of next month, and we do not know how it is going to develop. We shall have strategic interests in the Mediterranean for many generations to come, and these could be satisfied by cur being certain of a friendly population in this vitally important country.

A self-governing Dominion in Palestine would have the great advantage of the only system of collective security which so far has worked, the British Commonwealth, and the Dominion solution has been successful in two other countries where there are racial differences. It has worked well in Canada. It succeeded in South Africa after a very devastating and exhausting war. There you have the conflicting; races living in harmony, and the Dominion is a great success. I believe for those and many other reasons that this is the solution which would be most practical and which would give the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number of the people most concerned, and those who are now living in Palestine or who hope to live there. I congratulate the Cabinet on the proposals put forward by the Foreign Secretary, and by my noble friend the Dominions Secretary in this House, on November 13. I congratulate them on enlisting the assistance of the United States in this very difficult problem, and I trust that the results will be satisfactory, and that the blessing of God may rest on their deliberations.

House adjourned during pleasure at four minutes past six o'clock.

House resumed.