Bad for Business

Holy Land for three religions and battleground for 4.000 years, Palestine was last week ravaged by new violence. Combatants were Palestine's 770.000 Arabs and 375,000 Jews, with British High Commissioner Lieut. General Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope (pronounced "walk-up") the harassed umpire.

With good reason, Arabs are afraid that Jews will take Palestine away from them. Britain's mandate over Palestine guarantees Jews the right to immigrate, indefinitely. In 13 years moneyed Jews have turned Palestine from a dead land of herders to a hustling, well-irrigated, industrial nation with a $31,000,000 Government surplus, an important business in oranges and a good supply of cheap Arab labor. Britain's mandate is also supposed to protect Arab rights, but two years ago young Arabs took matters into their own hands, organized terrorist gangs, began robbing and killing Jews. Fortnight ago one such gang held up a Jewish motorcade on a highway outside Jerusalem, killed a Jew. At the victim's funeral, orthodox and passionate, rioting Jews clashed with British police.

Jews attributed the killing to a camp of Arab workmen. Two days later two of the campers were mysteriously murdered. Confusion was increased when one of these victims turned out to be an Egyptian Jew. The Arabs cried "Reprisal!" The Arab funeral, also orthodox and passionate, led last week to the lynching of seven Jews, the killing of two rioting Arabs by police.

The Arab leaders, heretofore hopelessly disunited, proceeded to join forces under Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini and declare a general strike.

Meantime, the warring races continued to bedevil one another. In the preponderantly Arab city of Jaffa, Arabs set fire to a few Jewish shops. Thereupon the fire, backed by a strong wind, turned and burned a number of Arab homes. Jews from the Arab towns of Hebron, Acre and Beisan were evacuated to nearby Jewish communities. All-Jewish Tel Aviv was ringed with barbed wire to keep out bloodthirsty Arabs. In terrorist murders and police fire, the Jewish dead last week reached 18; the Arab, twelve.

Everybody expected that the crisis would be reached during the noonday Friday (Moslem Sunday) service in Jerusalem's Mosque of Omar. The orthodox extremist Rabbi Moses Blau asked the Government to keep Arab villagers out of Jerusalem on that day, was told that the Government could not interfere in the religious affairs of the Arabs. Said the Rabbi: "That is the same reply I received on Aug. 23, 1929, just one hour before the big massacre of Jews began" (TIME, Sept. 2, 1929).

High Commissioner Wauchope, however, had taken his own precautions. For four hours he stopped long-distance telephone service to prevent the spread of false rumors. He disseminated counter-rumors of his own. The police machine guns would fire, not into the air, but into the mob at any future Arab disturbance. Thus the Friday services were attended, not by the expected tens of thousands of Arabs, but by 500. When the Arabs came out of the Mosque, detachments of police fell in before and behind them, led nonresidents quietly out of the city.

What made last week's Palestine disorders entirely pointless was the fact that Britain will never give Palestine wholly to either Arabs or Jews. There is nothing for either race to do but compromise with the other. A possible basis of compromise was proposed by High Commissioner Wauchope last December when he offered to establish a Legislative Council of 13 Arabs, eight Jews and five Britons. This plan was spiked by the Jews, despite the fact that it would have given them more representation than their proportion of population warrants. Since they run the country's business and pay its taxes, the Jews of Palestine feel they should be offered nothing less than virtually the whole show. Businesslike, responsible Jews last week quietly passed the word around that rioting and news of rioting must end. Reason: Tel Aviv's great Levant Fair is due to open this week and rioting is bad for business.

This week the New York Times blossomed with a full-page advertisement featuring a cablegram from Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine: "We appeal to American Jewry to share the undaunted but calm courage of the Jewish community of Palestine and to strengthen their efforts by contributing generously to the funds of the United Palestine Appeal. . . . The Jewish community is behaving admirably despite the trying provocation."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.