Palestine]
took place as the result of the demand of the Jewish population itself, rather than from any desire or even encouragement from the British authorities. The campaign in Palestine is regarded by the Jews as a campaign for the liberation of the country from the thraldom of Turkish misrule, and the return of even Turkish suzerainty would be regarded by them as a betrayal.
The essence of the Zionist ideal is the desire to found upon the soil of Palestine a revived Hebrew nation based upon an agricultural life and the use of the Hebrew language. Just before the war, a struggle took place between the Zionists in Palestine and a body called the "Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden," over an attempt by the German Jews to introduce the German language into certain Jewish schools in Palestine. The whole secret of British popularity in Palestine depends upon our willingness to give the people freedom to develop their own national consciousness in their own way.
The desires of the Zionists, as formulated in the document quoted in Zionism (No. 162 of this series, p. 39), are very moderate in themselves and by no means inconsistent with the interests and ideals of either the Arab movement or of the Moslem inhabitants of Palestine. Jewish national development, cultural, agricultural, and economic, is inevitable and natural in Palestine after the war. There is so much unoccupied and uncultivated land in Palestine that there is plenty of room for Zionist development without ousting the existing Moslem population. The Jews have already shown that land, hitherto regarded as barren, can be converted in a very short space of time into rich vineyards, or into fruit and almond plantations. With the Arab movement centred at Damascus, Zionism in Palestine would be a help rather than a hindrance to it; for that movement would only suffer from the attempt to absorb a district ethnologically and otherwise so different from countries in which the Arab element stands alone or is distinctly predominant.
