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 21

21 of unprecedented anxiety and exertion. All that can be attempted is an outline of the principal problems with which the Political Department had to cope and the main lines on which it took action. 24. One outstanding political feature of this period was the growing conflict with the Palestine Administration. It had tended throughout to regard Arab antagonism to the Mandate essentially as something which could not be overcome but had to be placated; that attitude inevitably was not conducive to determined action in dealing with the disorders. At the very beginning of the disturbances the President of the Jewish Agency, who was then in Palestine, received an assurance that there could be no question of the established mandatory policy being changed under the pressure of violence. Very soon, however, the Executive found itself compelled to join issue with the Government over its policy of handling the emergency situation. A considerable amount of argument ensued in regard to the failure of the authorities to control the situation at Jaffa after the riots had started; their helpless submission to the defiant closing of the port of Jaffa; the lack of effective action to prevent the spread of disorders to other parts of the country; the inadequacy of the measures devised to suppress incitement to violence; the inadequate protection given to the peaceful Arab population against the pressure of terrorists and strike agitators; the hesitation and delay whicn characterised the arming of Jews for their self-defence; and the almost complete breakdown of the machinery for the detection and prosecution of crime. As the disorders spread and assumed a more daring character, and as the morale and loyalty of the Arab personnel of the Administration deteriorated, the Jewish Agency had repeatedly to point to the pernicious results of the indecision and vacillations of the Government and to the ruinous effect of its failure to translate its occasional strongly worded declarations into action. 25. More particularly the Jewish Agency had to take exception to what it regarded as the fatal defect of official policy: the attittude of the Government to the Arab strike movement and to the official Arab leadership. It could not but view with growing alarm the course adopted by Government of differentiating between