The history of the Middle East has been rife with bloodshed. In ancient times, the Amelkites and Jebusites "fought" the stragglers of the Hebrews, i.e. the old, frail and weak, and the children. Sound familiar.
The British wrestled with the problem of creating a modicum of justice for both Jews and Arabs. The New York Times article below, from the November 13, 1938 issue
(link, PM me for PDF if you can't get it and want full article) highlights the dilemna. Excerpts below:
New York Times November 13, 1938 New York Times November 13, 1938:
PALESTINE CASE IS REOPENED
British Have a Difficult Task to Adjust the Rival Claims of the Jews and Arabs
LONDON, Nov. 12.-While the Nazis this week were staging the most furious of a long series of pogroms, which will add tens of thousands to the stream of dispossessed refugees that Germany is casting upon other countries, publication in London of the latest report on Palestine showed the whole question of a Jewish national home there was again in the melting pot.
One elaborate blue book has canceled out another. The Woodhead commission has killed the partition scheme of the Peel commission. The British Government, which had adopted the plan for separate States in Palestine, now rejects it, purposing to administer the mandate of the whole territory pending a general conference of Jews, Arabs and British. Thus the whole issue is back where it was before the Royal Commission studied it last year. Jews driven from Germany do not yet know to what extent they will be permitted to live in Palestine, where the Arabs forcibly are resisting their influx.
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Work of the Jews
In Palestine Jews have created a modern community in a backward land, thus raising the standard of life for themselves as well as for Arabs, who now live far better than their fathers did.
But some Arabs bitterly resent this achievement, which hurts their .. pride, so they rebel all the more furiously because it is against what seems a more competent and more advanced race, particularly since it is backed by foreign capital provided by Jews in Europe and America.
To enforce fair play amid such racial bitterness, to permit Jewish immigration, according to the meaning of the Balfour declaration in favor of a Jewish national home in Palestine while safeguarding the Arabs' interests-as she is obliged to do-is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task for Britain. She assumed it chiefly because, for speaking the same language-even strategic reasons, she desired keep a grip on Palestine.
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