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

78 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
III
Semper ego auditor tantum! Nunquamne reponam? 1
JUVENALI.
I have attempted to describe, I hope not without sympathy
and justice, the aspirations of Zionism formulated
in the Balfour Declaration, endorsed by the League of
Nations, and interpreted by the Zionist Commission,
together with their repercussion upon the indigenous
Arabs of Palestine. Grappling with this situation was a
British Military Administration, the third, and ostensibly
directing party, confronted with a problem unique in
history ; by some interpreted as the problem of how A
should "restore" the property of B to C without deprivation
of B. The mistakes and misfortunes in the handling
of this experiment were by no means confined to any
one, or any two, of these three suddenly assembled and
ill-assorted partners; nor can they be dissociated from
the Managing Directors in Downing Street or the fifty
apathetic shareholders meeting in Geneva. All concerned
manifested with a frequency that seemed not
to decrease with years the "blank misgivings of a creature
moving about in worlds not realized". Almost from
the beginning O.E.T.A. incurred a critical Zionist
Press which soon developed into Pan-Jewish hostility.
We were inefficient, ill-educated; those with official
experience strongly pro-Arab, violently anti-Zionist, 2
even anti-Jewish. Governing and governed had each
one clear advantage over the other, for if O.E.T.A.
officials could not be removed by Press agitation, they
were by a proper British convention precluded from
defending themselves in public ; with the result that the
1 " Always the auditor, and nothing more !" Gifford.
2 "I attended an infinitely tedious Arab version of Hamlet
(title role addressed throughout as Shaikh Hamlik) concluding
with friendly references to Great Britain for having delivered the
Arabs from Turkish domination and total repression of the Arab