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 96

96 2. The repeated attempts made by the Mandatory Government to give restrictive interpretations to its obligations towards the Jews as well as the efforts of the Administration of Palestine to placate the opponents of the Mandate by political concessions at the expense of the Jewish National Home, only served as a further spur on the Arab circles opposed to the Mandate. The riots of 1921 and 1929 were followed, respectively, by the White Papers of 1922 and 1930. Each of these outbreaks, moreover, led to the suspension of Jewish immigration. These developments , could not but implement the belief among the Arabs that on the issue of the Mandate and the Jewish National Home, Great Britain was bound ultimately to give way to violence. 3. Government has allowed Palestine to develop into a centre of Pan-Islamic and Pan-Arab propaganda. It gave permission to settle in Palestine to a number of Syrian and other emigres who were banished from their respective countries, and did not restrain them from openly engaging in political activities hostile to the Mandatory regime. It authorised the holding in Jerusalem, m 1931, of a Pan-Islamic conference which was used as an instrument for mobilising Moslem feeling throughout the world against the Palestine Mandate and the Jewish National Home. Direct racial and religious incitement against the Jews was conducted from the platform of that Congress without the Government taking steps to check it. 4. The present Mufti of Jerusalem, appointed to the Presidency of the Supreme Moslem Council over the head of two candidates who had received a larger number of votes, and apparently enjoying a life tenure of office, was allowed to conncentrate large powers in his hands and to wield them in a direction subversive to the Mandatory regime. Government has tolerated his activities in fomenting religious incitement against the Jews and in focussing the attention of the Islamic world on the alleged danger threatening the Moslem Holy Places in Palestine. Neither the repeated protests on the part of the Jewish authorities, nor the strong opposition to the Mufti which grew up from time in the strong opposition to the Mufti which grew up from time to time in the previous and in the last disturbances could induce the Government to reform the Supreme Moslem Council or effectively to check the political activities of its President. 5. The general conclusion at which the Jewish Agency must reluctantly arrive is that Article 2 of the Mandate, making the Mandatory responsible "for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home," has not been adequately implemented. It is mainly on this Article of the Mandate that the following summary of grievances and claims is based,