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The Baltimore Sun · Baltimore, Maryland · 25 December 1927

CP-1927-015

Holy Land

Holy Land — The Baltimore Sun, 25 December 1927
The Baltimore Sun · Baltimore, Maryland · 25 December 1927

Transcribed from the clipping

“BUT THE ROAD has not been one glorious triumphal march, even with the zeal of the pioneers and the support of the Jews of the world and the British Government… TAKE, for example, the matter of the Arabs. Seven hundred thousand Arabs, resident in Palestine as landowners or workers, did not take kindly to the Jewish immigrations. Their fears were understandable. The Arabs were, they imagined, to be supplanted. But through diplomacy on the part of Great Britain and humanity on the part of the Jewish settlers, the situation is not only hardly acute; it is almost definitely solved, at least for the present. Jewish landowners are getting their land, not by confiscation from Arab owners, but at a purchase price far in excess of anything the Arab ever hoped for. Jewish farmers are taking the Arab peasants out of a practical serfdom and are giving them good wages, fair hours of labor and living conditions such as they never before received from their fellow-Arabs. Jews and Arabs are entering upon business partnerships.… In fact, so far has the bugbear of hostility been dispelled that the Manchester Guardian, conservative in any estimate of international relations, has the following to say: ‘The Arabs — not distant kinsmen of the Jews — are showing themselves not unresponsive to the stimulus of Jewish example of progressiveness and patriotism; and it may be that history will vindicate the judgment of those who see the future of Palestine as the home of two nations living side by side, preserving each its own culture and distinctive way of life and thought, and sharing equally in the privileges and duties of citizenship.’… THE CHARGE of unjust taxation seems very sound. Due to Zionist work in Palestine, the value of land has increased greatly. The Arabs now holding land, under some old agreement, do not pay any increase in taxes, but as soon as poor Jewish settler buys or receives a piece of land, the greatly advanced revised tax rate is asked of him at a time when, at best, success is a hard struggle.… The extreme opposition, capitalizing the facts of an unemployment situation embracing 8,000, and the general attendant unrest, advocates vigorous action… these indicate the trend of the demands of this Revisionist group headed by a Russian Jew named Jabotinsky… Dr. Weizman feels that the opening of the Dead Sea mineral project will end all unemployment in six months… Sir Herbert Samuel, first High Commissioner, recounts them in concise and forceful fashion: ‘Palestine severed from the Turkish Empire and become a separate state; Great Britain charged with its guardianship; the Jewish population multiplied threefold; almost all the great Valley of Esdraelon and large tracts of land elsewhere settled with Jewish villages; the little Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv become a town as big as ancient Jaffa, its neighbor… some eight to ten million pounds contributed or invested from all over the world for the purchase of land… All this accomplished with a due regard for the legitimate interests of the Arab population, with a simultaneous increase in their prosperity also and with a growing reconciliation as a consequence with Arab sentiment — all in a single decade.’… Today, on Mount Scopus outside Jerusalem, at a university of the most ancient of these faiths, there is, in addition to all other branches of learning, a school of religion where Christian, Mohammedan and Jew, side by side, are studying the fundamental unities of faith and origin.”

Photograph caption

“TEN YEARS AGO IN JERUSALEM’S STREETS — Troops of the victorious Allenby expedition listen to the reading of the proclamation to the civilian population, some of whom can be discerned peering down from nearby rooftops.”

Context added by this archive

A Christmas Day essay that states the population and then dissolves it. Seven hundred thousand Arabs are named in one sentence as landowners or workers; in the next their fear of being supplanted is something they imagined; in the third the matter is almost definitely solved. The specific mechanism it does report is the tax: land already held by Arabs was assessed under an old agreement and not revalued, while a Jewish settler buying a piece of it was charged the new rate at once. The photograph shows Allenby’s troops in 1917 hearing the proclamation read, with the civilian population visible on the rooftops above them.

Cite this item

"Holy Land," The Baltimore Sun, 25 December 1927. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1927-015. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1927-015

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1927-015.

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