Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1935-08-01 · 8.1935 · p. Seite 464

and peaceful development of Jewish municipal life. It further urged that there could be no justification for placing the franchise in the municipality of Petach Tikvah on a narrower basis than it had been under the Local Council of Petach Tikvah or than it was at present in the much larger and more highly developed municipality of Tel-Aviv. The Executive explained its attitude at a meeting which it had in November, 1934, with representatives of the Local Council of Petach Tikvah who included the exponents of both the majority and minority view. A further controversy in connection with the establishment of the Municipality of Petach Tikvah arose with regard to the area of the new municipality. The Executive regarded this matter as one of purely local character and, contrary to misinformed criticism which appeared in the press, it made no representations to the Government on the subject. 11. The Executive was on occasions consulted by the Government on matters relating to the Municipality of Tel-Aviv. The Political Department always readily assisted the Municipality of Tel-Aviv whenever the latter sought its advice. V.—Legislative Council. 1. In the summer of 1934 the question of the establishment of a Legislative Council in Palestine was re-opened by the Government. In a series of conversations with the High Commissioner, the representatives of the Jewish Agency expressed their opposition to the proposed constitutional reform at the present stage of the country's development. They urged that the administration of Palestine constituted a problem sui generis, and that inasmuch as the Mandate recognised the historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, anything which tended to subject the country's destiny to the influence of the present majority of its population was contrary to the basic conception of the Mandate. The effect of the special provisions embodied in that instrument, they explained, had been to invest the Jewish people with a special status in and with regard to Palestine : if a Legislative Council were set up under existing numerical conditions that special status would implicitly be reduced and Jews be degraded in Palestine, too, to the rank of a minority. It was further pointed out that even if the competence of the proposed Legislature might, during the first phase, be of limited scope, no constitutional guarantees could offer adequate security to Jewish progress in Palestine as long as the Arab leaders maintained their uncompromising hostility to the Jewish National Home. The representatives of the Jewish Agency expressed their deep-felt apprehension that the proposed Legislative Council, so far from assisting in establishing better relations between Jews and Arabs, would merely serve as an agency for hampering the execution of the Mandate, spreading anti-Zionist propaganda and thereby intensifying racial strife. It was made clear that in view of all these considerations no Jewish participation 464