Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/35

Rh

away to Constantinople. A local police force was built up, schools and law courts reopened and the country benefited largely not only by the roads and bridges built by the army, but from the wages paid locally by the army for labour and the transport system established by the army for the use of civilians. In the absence of the ordinary pilgrims the army furnished excellent substitutes, and Jerusalem began once more to flourish on the money freely spent by military visitors.

In April 1918 the Royal Engineers undertook a work of permanent utility to Jerusalem by way of compensating the inhabitants for the use made by the army of their carefully stored water supply. At that time the city depended upon an aqueduct yielding 1,650 gal. per hour and upon rain-water storage of about 360,000,000 gal. A new reservoir containing 200,000 gal. was built above the town and fed from the Wadi 'Arrub springs 12 m. S. (used for the same purpose in the days of Herod and Pontius Pilate by the Romans) at the rate of 12,500 gal. per hour. This system, opened on June 18, was subsequently improved by the British administration.

The visit of the Zionist commission under Dr. Chaim Weisz- mann and the careful abstention from controversial topics of the only Palestine newspaper did much to abate the alarm of the Moslem population caused by Mr. Balfour's declaration. A further useful function was performed by the army in its sales of young camels and cast army beasts by public auction at Ramleh. According to local standards a " cast " army animal was in more than the prime of life and buyers came from the Hejaz and other parts of Arabia to buy the baby camels which had been born of unusually well-fed and healthy parents and had them- selves been nourished on a scale of efficiency entirely unknown to native camel masters.

Later in the year when the Sept. advance had finally driven the Turks out of Palestine the O.E.T.A. was divided into three sectors South (Jerusalem) East (Damascus) and North (Bei- rut). A little later, after the Armistice of Nov. n 1918 and the subsequent occupation of Cilicia, O.E.T.A. North became O.E.T.A. West, and a new north sector was formed at Adana. In O.E.T.A. South, of which Gen. Money continued as chief administrator, British military governors were established at Nablus with a deputy at Hable; Jenin with a deputy at Beisan; Tul Keram; Haifa, with deputies at the Jewish colony of Zimmarin and Acre; and Nazareth with deputies at Tiberias and Safed. On August 15 1920 the system of governorships for Palestine was revised, Hebron was added to Jerusalem, Tul Keram was added to Jaffa, Nazareth and Tiberias were amalgamated to form Galilee, Haifa district became Phoenicia, and Nablus and Jenin were amalgamated to form Samaria. Thus Palestine is now administered by five district governors at Ei,2oo a year each, with the help of assistant governors and by two district governors at 850 each (Gaza and Beersheba).

In the spring of 1919 Sir Arthur Money was succeeded as chief administrator of O.E.T.A. South by Maj.-Gen. Sir Louis Bols, formerly General Allenby's chief of staff, who had to con- tend with a difficult situation. As no peace settlement had been arrived at, he still had to administer the country on Turkish lines in conformity with the " Laws and Usages of War," while on the one hand eager Zionists complained that nothing was being done to carry out the Balfour declaration as interpreted by its most extreme partisans, and on the other the Moslems protested against what they considered to be Jewish aggression, and various foreign powers sought to establish or revive their influence among the various Christian communities in the coun- try. The Arab tribes beyond Jordan were not under proper con- trol, as the Sherifian government in Damascus was not strong, and parties of desert freebooters revived the time-honoured custom of raiding the settled lands. This combined with the anti-foreign agitation which arose out of the difficulties and delays caused by the contradictory assurances given at one time and another on behalf of the British Government to the French and the Arabs led to serious trouble which was brought to a head soon after the Emir Faisal had been declared King of Syria in Damascus (March 10 1920). In Jerusalem the Moslem pro- cession at the Nebi Musa celebrations was exploited as a mani- festation of Arab Nationalist sentiment against the Zionist Jews, many of whom had excited the animosity of the Moslems

by unwise and tactless propaganda. Public statements had been made which Moslems could easily misunderstand and represent as threats against their own undisturbed possession of their ancestral properties and sacred sites, and a counter-propaganda directed towards a general agreement of Moslem land-owners to refuse to sell or lease land to non-Moslems had played its part in inflaming the crowd against Jewish immigrants. Riots took place on April 4 and 5, and, as the Moslem police in many cases preferred to yield to religious enthusiasm instead of doing their duty impartially, order had to be restored by British and Indian troops. The casualties were 5 Jews and 4 Moslems killed, 211 Jews, 22 Moslems and 2 Christians wounded. A number of persons were arrested and among the Jews sentenced for " pos- sessing firearms, instigation to disobedience by arming the populace, conspiracy and preparing means to carry out acts of riot " was Mr. Vladimir Jabotinsky who had played a dis- tinguished part in helping to raise a Jewish battalion for the British army. Several Moslems were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for rape or for possessing firearms. Mr. Ja- botinsky's sentence was shortly afterwards reduced and he was released on July 8 under the amnesty which followed the intro- duction of civil government. Later in April, the Ghazzawiye Arabs raided Beisan on several occasions and carried off 119 head of cattle and 259 sheep and goats, and on April 24, 2,000 Arabs attacked the British garrison at Semakh, but had to retreat leaving 100 casualties behind them. Raids were also made further down the Jordan valley, and in the N. some 2,700 refugees, Christians and Jews, fled into Palestine in May to avoid the Metawali who were massacring in the hills above Tyre.

On July i 1920 the Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Samuel became first high commissioner of Palestine under the mandate which was in principle accorded to Great Britain at the San Remo conference in April, although the text of the document was not drafted until 1921 and its precise terms had not yet actually been confirmed by the council of the League of Nations. Civil Government was introduced, and for the first time, the British flag was hoisted over Jerusalem. An amnesty was granted (July 8), the censor- ship was abolished (July 19), and on August 31 an advisory council composed of seven Moslems and Christians and three Jews was created to sit with the high commissioner. At the same time Hebrew was declared an official language together with English and Arabic, and made obligatory for public notices in areas inhabited by 20% or more of Jews (Jerusalem City, and the kazas of Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Ramleh and Haifa). Drinking-bars were suppressed throughout Palestine, and the use of stucco and corrugated iron for new buildings or repairs within the walls of Jerusalem was prohibited.

At the end of 1920 the payments of various dues to the ac- count, of Ottoman Regie and the prohibition against the culti- vation of tobacco in Palestine came to an end.

Frontier. On Dec. 23 1920 the frontiers of Palestine towards French Syria were fixed in such a way as to include a small additional area, comprising Kades, Metulla and Dan, in Palestine, but retain- ing the whole of the Litani-Leontes watershed for Syria. In April 1921 the visit of Mr. Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Jerusalem, afforded an opportunity for interview with the Emir 'Abdalla, brother of the Emir Faisal, which resulted in the recogni- tion of Arab authority over the territories to the east of Jordan (see TRANSJORDANIA), thus fixing that river as the eastern bound- ary of Palestine except at Semakh on the Sea of Galilee.

Immigration. During 1920, as transport became available, a number of expatriated Jews began to return to Palestine, as well as new Jew immigrants, many of whom (Halutzim) were employed by the Zionists in the work of opening up and reconstructing waste lands, for additions to which the Jewish National Fund raised 160,000 during the year. On Oct. 22 1920 the deported German colonists, chiefly from the Haifa district, were allowed to return.

Some of the new immigrants seem to have adopted communistic views before leaving Russia, and on May I 1921 a party of these disturbed a Jewish labour meeting at Tell Aviv ('AM), near Jaffa. A struggle ensued in which Moslems became involved, and this developed into a racial riot of so formidable a nature that the local police were unable to suppress it, and British troops had to be called in. Although the riot was stopped that evening, there was further trouble for two or three days. At no time, however, did the troops have to open fire in Jaffa, but the rioters killed 30 Jews and 10 Arabs and injured 170 Jews and 57 Arabs, before order was restored.