The Struggle for Independence 159

rison, and entrust internal security to the R.A.F., to disband the
British gendarmerie, and cut down the police. By 1928 the Jewish
population had risen to 150,000, about two and a half rimes what it
had been at the end of the War, and now amounted to 16 per cent,
of the population. Jewish agricultural settlement had made marked
progress, thanks to the boundless enthusiasm and devotion of the
Pioneers; but funds for development were scarce, the economic
situation difficult, unemployment rife, and in 1927 Jewish emigra-
tion exceeded immigration by 2,300. The Arab population also
had rapidly increased in numbers, thanks to the very high birth-
rate, the cessation of the Turkish conscription which had taken
many young men never to return, the lowering of the high deathrate
for which the Public Health Department of the Government may
claim at least some credit, and to some illegal immigration from
neighbouring Arab countries. Beneath the superficial order and
progress, however, ea conflict had been created between two
national ideals, and under the system imposed by the Mandate it
could only be solved if one or both of these ideals were aban-
doned'.1

The lands east of the Jordan, which had been little more than
nominally administered by the Ottoman government, were ad-
ministered from 1918 by Faisal's Arab government at Damascus.
However, at the San Remo Conference of April 1920 this region
was assigned to Britain as part of the mandate for Palestine, with
the proviso^ however, that *in the territories between the Jordan and
the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the
mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the
League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such
provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the
existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the ad-
ministration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those
conditions*.2 Soon after the collapse of the Damascus Arab
government before the French in July 1920, therefore, the High
Commissioner for Palestine convened the local Arab notables at
as-Salt, then the principal town of the region, and informed them
1 Royal Commission Report (1937), 61.
2 Mandate, Art. 25,