The Peace of Jerusalem
In what, grotesquely enough, have now come almost to be regarded as " the good old days " of British mandatory rule in Palestine, it was possible to experiment with plans and proposals for that country, in the knowledge that when experiment failed there was always the negative force of the status quo to fall back on. The removal of British authority has left a vacuum which can only be filled by the insertion of some other force, and this unpleasant truth makes a mock of all
the paper schemes—partition, trusteeship, cantonisation and so on— which are hatched at Lake Success or elsewhere. The United States is still following that will-o'-the-wisp, " a solution for the Palestine problem." There is no " solution," and never has been one in the sense of a political arrangement which combined justice with the possibility of permanence. At the present moment the only question which can suitably be discussed is whether warfare in Palestine is likely to spread, and whether, in view of this possibility, any sort of intervention from outside can usefully be arranged. In the answer to these questions there is no country more vitally interested than ourselves. We are in the last weeks of .our nominal rule in Palestine, and though we may be content, in theory, for the Arabs and Jews to fight it out among themselves after that, we cannot be indifferent to the diplomatic struggle outside Palestine which is certain to accompany the internal war. As a beginning, not of goodwill but of common sense, we might turn again to the plans which have been lying with U.N.O. for some time for the government of Jerusalem. They are not perfect, but in a modified form they could be used for the immediate protection of the city. On the separate issue of the protection of the Holy Places it might be possible to take up the American offer, which has now for the first time received concrete expression, to share with other Powers the provision of armed force for Palestine. The wider problems of the peace and politics of the rest of Palestine would have to be left until this tentative start had been made with Jerusalem.
