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 76

76 tion of those certificates or by some other suitable measure of large-scale registration, provide a solution for a problem which continues to cause grave anxiety to the Jewish community, and must give rise to serious difficulty for the Administration itself. 6. On December 24, 1935, Your Excellency informed representatives of the Jewish Agency and of the Jewish Community of Palestine that the Government intended to set up a Legislative Council consisting of official and non-official—elected and nominated—'members, and invested with considerable legislative powers; In reply, the Jewish representatives stated that, in accordance with the attitude of which they had numerous opportunities of informing Your Excellency previously, they found themselves regretfully compelled to declare their inability to cooperate in the proposed Legislative Council, and that they did not regard the provision included in the scheme for safeguarding the inviolability of the terms of the Mandate as a sufficient ground for changing their attitude. I had an opportunity on that occasion of placing before Your Excellency the resolution adopted on the subject by the Zionist Congress and the Council of the Jewish Agency, at their meetings in Lucerne in August 1935, which I would beg leave to quote here in full: "The Fourth Session of the Council of the Jewish Agency has learnt with grave concern of the intention of the Mandatory Government to proceed with the establishment of a Legislative Council in Palestine. The Council regards such a step as contrary to the spirit of the Mandate, in which is inherent the recognition that the future of Palestine is the concern not of the Jewish population of Palestine alone, but of the Jewish people as a whole. Any legislative body established on the basis of the present composition of the population of Palestine, and therefore relegating the Jews of Palestine to the position of a minority, violates this fundamental right of the Jewish people. The grant of legislative power to those who openly repudiate the Mandate and oppose the Jewish National Home, cannot but be regarded as an infringement of the Mandate. In the absence of an express recognition of the Mandate by the representatives of the non-Jewish community, and of a real mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs, any institution of the kind proposed by the Government is likely to imperil the continued development of the Jewish National Home, and to check the present process of economic development which is benefiting both Jews and Arabs. It is, moreover, liable to become a source of dissension and strife between the two sections of the population and to jeopardise the chances of cooperation between the population and the Government, and is particularly ill-advised in view of the backward condition of municipal self-government.