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

104 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
the Royal Commission should then lose no time in
proceeding to Palestine. 1 Whatever its conclusions,
or whatever the degree of their acceptance by the Government
and the Legislature may be, there are meanwhile
certain considerations bearing upon both sides of the
problem which, judging by recent declarations, appear
even now to be but imperfectly appreciated. The Arabs
base their opposition to the terms of the Mandate
upon the following arguments:
(a) It is contrary to their natural right to their country.
(b) It is contrary to British and Allied pledges given
to the Arabs.
(c) It violates the general principles of the "Mandate"
as set forth in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League.
(d) It is self-contradictory.
(e) It menaces and endangers their existence, present
and future, and stands as an unsurmountable obstacle
in the path of their national aspirations and political goal.
They will be well advised to cut out (a) and (b), and
to concentrate upon the remainder, of which the Royal
Commission is empowered to examine the force. With
regard to (b), Palestine was excluded from the promises
made to Arabs before those British operations which
gave freedom to so large a proportion of the Arab
peoples. The claim, though still credited by many, has
been so often disproved that it is no longer a bargaining
asset. As for (a), I cannot do better than quote the sober
words of Lord Milner: "If the Arabs go to the length
of claiming Palestine as one of their countries in the
same sense as Mesopotamia or Arabia proper is an
Arab country, then I think they are flying in the face of
facts, of all history, of all tradition, and of associations
1 The reader is here referred to the first two sentences of the
Postscript, p. 121, to which I have added a still briefer P.P.S.
bringing the narrative up to the Spring of 1940.