Political report of the Executive of the Jewish Agency submitted to the ... Zionist Congress and the ... session of the Council of the Jewish Agency · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 15

15 scheme. The controversy which had taken place between the Jewish Agency and the Government on the subject of the Legislative Council was summarised in the covering letter to the Annual Memorandum to the League of Nations for 1935 (Appendix II). LAND SALE RESTRICTION. 15. While the issue of the Legislative Council still continued to agitate the minds of the community, the Executive found itself engaged in a further serious controversy with Government affecting most vitally the future of the Jewish National Home. The memorandum submitted by the Palestine Arab leaders to Government in November 1935 included the demand for the prohibition by law of all sales of land by Arabs to Jews. Early in 1936 it became evident that Government was considering the enactment of a measure prohibiting the sale of land below a certain area which, under existing agricultural conditions, would be considered the necessary minimum for a peasant. In a conversation which the Political Representative of the Jewish Agency had with the High Commissioner in mid-January he voiced the fundamental objections of the Jewish Agency to any scheme which would restrict the op portunities of land purchase for Jewish settlement and pointed out that such a scheme as was contemplated would, moreover, not promote but retard agricultural development in general. The arguments against the proposed restriction were subsequently set forth in writing in considerable detail. 16, It was pointed out that all that had been done by Government so far by way of placing land at the disposal of Jewish settlement — in accordance with the obligation imposed upon it by the Mandate — was the lease of Kabbara swamps and of some areas of sand dunes and the assent given to the acquisition of the Huleh concession at fairly onerous terms. At the same time, legislative restrictions and some serious defects in the administrative and judicial systems of the country — apart from political obstruction by Arab agitators — had rendered land purchase in the open market increasingly difficult in recent years. The restrictive legislation now proposed would place a further serious obstacle in the way of Jewish land settlement and would be tantamount to a direct inversion of a fundamental provision of the Mandate. Under the