Palestine, the Arabs and Israel: search for justics

t has become customary to regard the Middle East as an area where trouble is endemic. It is less common to examine the difficulties dis passionately in order to arrive at an informed opinion. In particular, the basis of the objec tions by the Arab states against Israel and against Zionism is hardly understood outside the Arab World'

This book is the first of its kind. Henry Cattan. a Palestinian by birth and an established inter national lawyer, states the Arab case histori cally, legally, and in its present situation.

Henry Cattan argues that the United Nations had no right, in law or in equity, to give the land of Palestine for the establishment of the new state of Israel. He shows that, even were this right admitted, the present State of Israel has developed in a manner very far removed from the terms of its establishment, and that the development has always been at the expense of the original people of Palestine, of whom at least one and a half million are now refugees.

The author has no quarrel with the Jews. He looks back to the days when Arab and Jew lived in mutual tolerance and amity in Palestine, and the solution which he advocates is a return to this situation. But he maintains that only a radical change in the policies of the United Nations, of the United States, and of Britain can produce the peace and the justice which he seeks. He warns us of what many of us already uneasily recognise that the alternative may be disaster involving us all.

This is a controversial book. Lawyers and lay men alike may argue Mr. Cattan's conclusions. But no one can ignore his case, which is presented with the fullest documentation from official and authoritative sources extending from the resolutions of the United Nations to the works of eminent Jewish writers. The book is not a propagandist pamphlet nor a tirade. It is a presentation of a case which affects us all. No fair-minded person can speak of the future of the Middle East until he has studied this case and understood it.