Woman Gives Her Opinion on the Palestine Question

"The Woman's Voice" in Palestine has sounded out the opinions of some of our women writers there on this grave question.

The Palestine question — indeed, the question of the Arabs — is a question of land and immigration, in every one of the Arab countries. If the Arabs could halt it, or at least halt the selling, the Jews would find themselves facing a problem hard to solve, a problem that would curb their activity and scatter the greater part of their dreams.

And what is said of the responsibilities of men is said of the duties of women. The danger is too great to be met with the theory that would banish woman from the fields of public work.

Arabism is passing through a bitter struggle, a struggle of life or death. The duty of the Arabs today is to rise up, men and women, to defend their existence. Each group has its field, and each group has its requirements. We women in Palestine issued a call for the holding of a "Day of the Land," and this call of ours found an echo. Then considerations appeared, here and there, delaying the work and putting it off.

I, and many others with me, ask: How many tracts of land, between the ebb and flow of hesitation, are passing into Jewish hands? How many colonies are being raised on those tracts? How many thousands of immigrants are arriving to inhabit them? How many factories and caches of arms are being set up in their depths? How much, and how much more??

To waste time on anything other than stopping immigration and the sale of lands, and boycotting Zionist goods, is a crime that carries us away from the aim and the goal. And the responsibility for it falls on the shoulders of men and women alike.

He errs who says that the right of the Arabs in Palestine rests on McMahon's promises to Hussein ibn Ali, or on the degree of legality of Balfour's promise to the Jews.

Our right is a natural right that admits of no interpretation or construction. Accordingly, our cause leaves no room for studies and inquiries; and the intolerable condition we have come to is due to a hateful mandate imposed upon us, and to a brute force set over our heads.

Perhaps the stage we are passing through is the one that divides between life and death, glory and abasement, dignity and humiliation. What then, in this state of things, is our duty, we the women of Palestine?

I think I am not mistaken if I say that the greatest reliance rests on women for the rearing of a new generation that understands its responsibility. Our problem is not a problem of land, nor is it a problem of the evacuation of foreign armies from the country or their remaining. It is the problem of a soul over which colonialism has run roughshod and which it has tried to weaken. It is for us, then, to remove that rust from the souls of our young men, and to revive those qualities that make the good citizen — namely, duty, order, freedom, and strength.

It is for us women to plant in the souls of our sons the knowledge that their equipment in the struggle is striving before arms. And the will to strive exists only in a soul from which freedom wells up, which understands the meaning of duty, and which works in a spirit of order. Only then can our sons be strong, and shake off the hateful colonialism.

It is for us women to free the souls of our sons from the tyranny of appetite, from the spirit of submission and servility, and from selfishness and envy, so that they come forth good citizens who work for their homeland and their nation before they work for themselves.

The distant aim toward which world Zionism is driving, behind the creation of the state, is to spread its economic and political influence over the entire Arab world — a thing that threatens its existence with the worst of consequences. And Palestine is but the front line in this battle.

Enough of protesting, and enough of thinking and laying plans for the future. The situation is one for work and struggle. The Arab nations hold sound views on the policy pursued in Palestine; so let us set to work as one to adopt practical means for the success of our cause and the deliverance of Palestine.

I believe this can be realized by the following:

First — preventing the leakage of lands to the Jews. Every span of ground the Jews take possession of is nothing but a building stone in the Jewish structure and a demolition in the Arab structure. The Arab states must contribute materially to help the Arab people of Palestine keep their lands.

Second — preventing legal and illegal immigration through the diplomatic pressure of the Arab states, and, if that avails nothing, through the use of force.

The Palestinian shore receives thousands of legal and illegal immigrants without check or penalty. Their sweeping flood is submerging the country and bringing Zionism nearer to producing a Jewish majority in the country, cloaked in humanitarian sympathy.

This work is a flagrant assault on the rights of the country's original people. Can Palestine absorb the millions of Jews scattered over the regions of the world?

Of course not. The eyes of the Zionists look beyond Palestine; so let the Arabs beware, and let them work to smother the Zionist conspiracy in its cradle.

Third — raising the level of education and treating our social problems, not with those pampered pens... but with work.

In the depths of the misery and the difficulties that surround us, it behooves woman to rise to the struggle in work and reform, side by side with man.

For his cause is her cause. And it is not just that he should bear the burden of the struggle alone, especially as she has begun to understand well her responsibility as man's partner in his "duties."

And if conditions forbid the Arab woman to occupy herself with politics, before her lies the field of society, for which by her very nature she is better fitted than man; so let her contribute as far as she is able to the fulfilling of her particular mission. The aim is one and the goal is shared, though the roads be many and the means diverse.

The Palestine question is not the question of the Arabs of Palestine alone; it is the question of every Arab country that shelters under the banner of the League.

For Zionism's ambitions are not confined to Palestine; rather, it may well hold to Palestine as a point of support from which to crawl over the neighboring lands of the Arabs, weaving conspiracies around them and claiming in them historical and religious rights it knows well how to fabricate.

Faced with this, nothing remains for us Arabs but to close ranks to ward off the impending danger, and to lay down a decisive plan that will prevent the leakage of Arab lands to the Jews; for every piece of our land that is sold — however small — adds to the weight of brute colonialism and makes the feet of Zionism the more firmly planted.

It is likewise the duty of the Arab governments and parties to press the government of Britain to stop immigration, or at least the illegal immigration that goes on constantly, in organized fashion, and swiftly, before the government's very eyes and ears!...

And there is another matter to which we must give its due of full and comprehensive care, namely: propaganda. For the picture of the Arabs drawn by base, tendentious propaganda is atrocious and shameful.

Strong propaganda, and the refutation of Zionism's claims, give world public opinion the chance to grasp the justice of our cause and to believe in our right to our country without dispute.

Patriotism likewise obliges us to carry out the boycott resolution with complete exactness.

For it is the one weapon we can turn upon their economy.

As for the duties of woman in this regard, they are without doubt the very same duties as man's.