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 41

41 selection. By arrangement with the authorities the Jewish Agency continued to provide teachers in the three official languages for the Jewish recruits undergoing training in the Police School. The number of Jewish policemen rose in the period under review from 290 to about 680 and their proportion to the total number of Palestinian policemen is approaching 30%. 54. Efforts were made to increase the Jewish membership of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, but these bore but meagre results. After the disturbances, the whole question of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, which had formed the subject of so many discussions in previous years, was raised afresh. The use during the disorders of the purely Arab units of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force stationed in Palestine for the protection of entirely Jewish areas had raised a number of knotty problems, psychological and political. The Government was urged to establish an independent Palestine Frontier Force so as to provide a remedy for two evils: firstly, to ensure the protection of the Palestine land frontier, the unguarded state of which had resulted in a large influx of illicit migrants from the neighbouring countries, and, during the disturbances, in an incursion of armed bands and the smuggling in of arms; secondly, to provide a framework of defence in which Jews would be able to occupy their due place, free from the disabilities imposed upon them in the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force. All that can be set down for the time being as a possible result of these representations is the enlistment in the spring of 1937 of a motorised police division for duty along the northern land frontier of Palestine in which a considerable number of Jews has been enrolled. In the recruitment of these policemen the Jewish Agency has closely cooperated. 55. It is impossible to close this section of the report, dealing with the subjects of security and defence, without referring to the behaviour of the Jewish population, which for months on end was subjected to daily provocation. Its moral standards and sense of political responsibility dictated to the Jewish community the concentration of its energies on self-defence and the abstention from any acts of revenge and retaliation. Although this line of conduct was adopted from the beginning almost instinctively and was throughout the critical period firmly supported by all responsible Jewish circles, it was inevitably exposed to an ever-growing strain as the assaults on Jews became more outrageous. Constant watch-