West Bank

“ Caravans and single travellers going from the east to the west bank, or vice versa, usually pass by one of these fords, and sometimes a large party may be seen here. It is not safe to venture on the other side without a strong guard, as the Arabs are far worse than those between here and Jerusalem, probably because they are not under so much restraint by the government. ”

“ The Israeli Government, citing security concerns, has continued since 2002 to construct a barrier to separate most of the West Bank from Israel, East Jerusalem, and Israeli settlement blocks. Construction of the barrier has involved confiscation of property owned by Palestinians, displacement of Christian and Muslim residents, and tightening of restrictions on movement for non-Jewish communities. ”

“ Political pressure groups and leaders: Israeli nationalists advocating Jewish settlement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Peace Now supports territorial concessions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Yesha (settler) Council promotes settler interests and opposes territorial compromise ”

“ The poor and less intelligent portion of the community, lured by terms which had never before tempted them, took their spare cash and invested it in the West Middlesex. Rich men were not less dazzled by the golden promises; and one, disposed to sink a large sum in so profitable a concern, desired his solicitor to inquire about its solidity. The solicitor went to the manager, and questioned him as to the directors and the capital. ”

“ A railway sees its capital spent, and is obliged to make farther calls upon its proprietors. An unsuccessful canal company has only the certainty of having fed and demoralised some thousands of stalwart navigators in exchange for the ruin of its shareholders, while the failure of a mine is the melancholy close of many a bright hope. But it is not so bad with a life assurance company. The insured—except in offices originated with a fraudulent design, such as the West Middlesex—has never yet been deceived by the failure of a policy. ”

“ No one who studies even superficially the history of average Oriental governments, from Morocco or Bokhara to Oudh, can be surprised or sorry that they have been superseded by the better governments of the West. The peoples of the East themselves have gained by Western penetration; nay, more, they are conscious of their need of the West. But they have had too much [Pg 73] of it; they resent it, and they are frightened of it. The Moslem nations have lost their independence one after another. At the beginning of the Great War only one Moslem Power remained free and powerful—the Turkish Empire. ”

“ And it was this reflection, arising out of the mere pleasure of the eye in the parti-coloured crowd before me, that brought back my mind to the chief problem and peril of our position in Palestine, on which I touched earlier in this chapter; the peril which is largely at the back both of the just and of the unjust objections to Zionism. It is the fear that the West, in its modern mercantile mood, will send not its best but its worst. The artisan way of putting it, from the point of view of the Arab, is that it will mean not so much the English merchant as the Jewish money-lender. ”

“ In later years we have sent you in person the greatest living messenger of the East, Abdul Baha, who warned the world years before the beginning of the war of the great cataclysm toward which humanity was headed and who preached unity and oneness as the only salvation. What good did it do? The West has always coveted the East for the possession of the Holy Land—forgetting that Palestine is an Eastern Land. Up to the last century the West has always coveted the riches of the East, forgetting that after all if the East had all these riches it was because it had worked for them. ”

“ A wealthy Christian man once lost all his money by the breaking of a bank, and a friend meeting him after, said, 'I am sorry to hear you have lost everything.' He replied, 'It is a mistake; I have not lost everything. ”

“ Require more frequent and thorough examination of banks Further limit the amount of funds to be loaned to any one person, firm, or corporation Require banks doing both a commercial and savings business to conduct the same as two distinct departments. Require banks to confine themselves to a banking business Provide that in even of failure of a bank its affairs be wound up by the State Bank Examiner under the direction of the courts and not by a receiver appointed by the courts. ”

“ Weizmann for the common good of both peoples.
The Jew and the Arab are necessary to each other in the Near East, and if England wishes to retain her Empire it is vital to her interests to keep friendly with both. I am afraid that at the moment we are at a discount to the East of Suez. During the stress of war certain promises were made to the Arabs which appear difficult to redeem, mainly due to the policy of France in Syria. I admire France immensely, and that is why I so much deplore her imperialistic aims beyond the Lebanons. ”

“ Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence. ”

“ Regarding Israel, as I said a while ago--of course this is further to my talk with him--we, as I said a while ago, believe that the problem in Lebanon is connected with the Arab nation and therefore, is an internal Arab problem. Israel, even in the event of its being a state with an old history in the area--that is if we make such a supposition, which is absurd--Israel has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Arab nation. Israel is a foreign presence as far as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan are concerned. ”

“ Colonel Conder insists that the Arabs are entirely distinct from the Fellahin of the Syrian villages; yet he and other writers call attention to the borderland east of Jordan where the boundaries of the rival races swing to and fro with the varying successes or failures of the years. In places where the land lies open, as at the Plain of Esdraelon, the east invades the west. ”

“ Yet when he arrived in London, he could declare "The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one another, and I hope that, as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play, and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they, too, have fair play in their respective areas. ”

“ If you raid Palestine, the local Arabs will all rise to your assistance. The throat of every Zionist from the Lebanon to Beersheba will be cut. There will be plunder beyond reckoning. And you will help Feisul by holding back the British army from marching to the assistance of the French. The question is, are you men?—are you Arabs?—are you true Moslems? —or do you like to look down from these heights of El-Kerak over the home of your ancestors in the hands of so-called Zionists who are nothing but Jews, under a new name? ”

“ On the eastern side the Jordan Valley, extending to the south of the Dead Sea, forms the eastern frontier separating Palestine from Trans-jordania. In the south the boundary between Egypt and Palestine demarcated before the War runs from Rafa south-east to the Gulf of Akaba. From the earliest ages in history the people inhabiting Palestine have acted as the middlemen of the East. ”

“ The continued aid to Israel from the West—particularly from the United States—the festering wound of the nine hundred thousand Palestinian refugees, the policy of France in North Africa, an increase in border clashes with Turkey intensified hostility to the West as it accelerated rapprochement to the East. ”

“ Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east ”

“ Moreover, the Jews in the West do not seem so much concerned to ask, as I have done however tentatively here, whether a larger and less local colonial development might really transfer the bulk of Israel to a more independent basis, as simply to demand that Jews shall continue to control other nations as well as their own. It might be worth while for England to take risks to settle the Jewish problem; but not to take risks merely to unsettle the Arab problem, and leave the Jewish problem unsolved. ”

“ Zionism will continue to chase the deposits and investments in the West or in any country where Zionism plays an influential role even if the Arabs concerned comply with all Zionism's wishes and turn away from the very spirit of their nation and its rights. ”

“ The Middle East being what it is, a cross roads of the Earth, the whole world has a stake in the solution of the Palestine Question. The Question is almost as old as recorded history. The Land which cradled three great religions — Christian, Jewish & Mohomedan — has been ruled by Egyptian and Jew, Assyrian and Persian, Green and Roman, Arab and Turk. A kingdon of Israel which flourished there died many Centuries ago. ”

“ International Jews, the controllers of the world’s governmental and financial power, may meet anywhere, at any time, in war time or peace time, and by giving out that they are only considering the ways and means of opening up Palestine to the Jews, they easily escape the suspicion of being together on any other business. The Allies and enemies of the Gentile nations at war thus met and were not molested. ”

“ Pride and greed, as well as fanaticism, drove the Arabs forward on their conquering career. Long before Mohammed's time Arabia had been in a state of unrest. Its warlike tribes, feeling a sense of their superiority to other peoples, were eager to overrun the rich districts of western Asia, much as the Germans had overrun western Europe. Islam strengthened the racial pride of the Arabs, united them into one nation, and gave them an effective organization for world-wide rule. ”

“ And in this, as in so much else connected with Palestine, it is not only the peoples of that country that have to be considered. The Jewish Problem is not the least of the many problems which are disturbing international relations at this critical time and obstructing the path to peace and prosperity. If the Arabs at some sacrifice could help to solve that problem, they would earn the gratitude not of the Jews alone but of all the Western World. ”

“ All Arabs must subject themselves to the German government, with all their relatives and possessions, and hoist the German flag as a sign of their loyalty. They will be allowed to select their own governor, who shall be approved by the German government and be paid by it. The property rights of the Arabs and the practice of their religion shall be recognized by it. The governor shall maintain order and furnish German expeditions with supplies. ”

“ In the event of Palestine coming within the spheres of influence of Great Britain or France at the close of the war, the Governments of those Powers will not fail to take account of the historic interest that country possesses for the Jewish community. The Jewish population will be secured in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, equal political rights with the rest of the population, reasonable facilities for immigration and colonization, and such municipal privileges in the towns and colonies inhabited by them as may be shown to be necessary. ”

“ Throughout all its history the east-Jordan land has witnessed the constant transition of Arab tribes from the nomadic life of the desert to the more settled civilization, of agricultural Palestine. Here on the eastern heights that overlook the Jordan valley and the land of Canaan the traveller still finds the Arab tents and flocks of the nomads beside the plowed fields of the village-dwellers. ”

“ But though English political action appears only likely indirectly to affect the fate of the country in the great crisis of the downfall of Turkish supremacy, it cannot be doubted that a very keen interest in the future of the land is felt among all the religious classes of our own country. We have had many schemes presented to us for the amelioration of the condition of Palestine, for colonisation, for railways, for the promotion of agriculture, and for the acceleration of the return of the Jews. ”

“ Syria and Palestine, in a word, must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration. It must ultimately come to this. What a great advantage it would be, nay, how indispensably necessary, when at length the Eastern Question comes to be argued and debated with this new ray of light thrown around it, for the Jews to be ready and prepared to say: "Behold us here all waiting, burning to return to that land which you seek to remould and regenerate. Already we feel ourselves a people. ”