Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

ZIONISM AND PALESTINE 103
situation in which Great Britain found herself contemplated
by the ironic amusement of the Nations.
Moderate Arab leaders, unencouraged by any prospect
of association with the Government of their country,
and so with no motive for assisting it, were reluctantly
compelled to stand in with extremists. Arab violence,
resulting largely from the manner of the Commons'
and still more of the Lords' rejection of the Legislative
Council, was now claimed by the Zionists as the immediate
justification thereof. Arms for the insurgents,
as well as money, poured in from neighbouring countries,
perhaps also from a more distant Power. It was, therefore,
still possible though highly disingenuous to argue
that the insurrection was not spontaneous, but engineered
from abroad. The appointment of a Royal Commission 1
failed to stop what was becoming a small war; though it
succeeded in alarming the Zionists, who feared that its
recommendations could tend, however slightly, in
but one direction. 2 Both they and other thinking people
revolted at the suggestion of yielding to violence—a
Danegeld to which especially in the East there is no
limit; some seeming to forget that this general violence
bad followed, and was in great part the result of, five
peaceful and unsuccessful delegations to Whitehall and
six special but often unimplemented Commissions to
Palestine. It cannot be questioned that violence on
this occasion succeeded to the extent of bringing about
the appointment of the Royal Commission, and in the
increased interest and numbers of the "Arab" committee
in the House of Commons. AH parties in England
were agreed that violence must unquestionably and
unconditionally cease or be made to cease: and that
1 Advocated by The Times in a leading article entitled Political
Zionism on II April 1922.
1 Palestine ingenuously supported Lord Lytton's previous proposal
for a Royal Commission to examine (and to modify or
prevent) the Legislative Council, as being "intelligible". "But
... a Commission of this kind . . . alarming. ..."