File 756/1917 Pt 1 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 1 to 65’ [‎446r] (896/1240)

ignorant, surly, and fanatical. They will not eat or drink with
an infidel (the Sunni as bad as the Christian), follow their own
priests and notables, speak Arabic but disown in every way the
people, not their co-sectarians, who live about them. Across the
hills are villages of Christians, yeomen, living at peace with their
Sunni neighbours, as though they had never heard the grumbles
of their fellows in the Lebanon. East of them are semi-nomad
Arab peasantry.
Take a section a degree lower down, near Acre. There are
first, Sunni Arabs, then Druses, then Metawala to the Jordan
valley, near which are many bitterly-suspicious Algerian colomes,
mixed in with villages of aboriginal Palestinian Jews Ihe
latter are an interesting race. They speak Arabic and good
Hebrew : have developed a standard and style of living suitable
to the country, and yet much better than the manner of the
Arabs. They cultivate the land, and hide their lights rather
under bushels, since their example would be a great one for the
foreign (German inspired) colonies of agricultural Jews, w 10
introduce strange manners of cultivation and crops, and European
houses (erected out of pious subscriptions), to a country like
Palestine, at once too small and too poor to repay efforts on such
a scale The Jewish colonies of North Palestine pay their way
perhaps but give no proportionate return on their capital
expenditure. They are, however, honest in their attempts at
colonization, and dLrve honour, in comparison with the l^er
settlements of sentimental remittance-men m South Palest .
Locallv they are more than tolerated ; one does not find round
Galilee ’the deep-seated antipathy to Jewish colonists and a^ms
that is such an unlovely feature of the Jeru^lem area Across
the Eastern plain (Arabs), you come to the Leja, a ^byrinth
crackled lava, where all the loose and broken men of |y™Jury
foregathered for unnumbered generations. Lheir descendant .
live^there in rich lawless villages, secure from the Government an
Bedouins and working out their own internecine feuds at leisure.
Sonth'of’ them (s thf Hauran, peopled by Arabs and Druse .
The latter are
who revere a mad and dead Dinn n y py Ottoman
ItV, » hatred which, when encouraged by the Uttoman
with a hatred wm , fanatics of Damascus, finds
Government and th( : .... None the i ess the Druses
^EdesDised' 1 by 6 thpMoh'ammedan Arabs, and dislike them in
si ’ n-y!»«*. ms&si
a «'..y M '» «■* L *“"- ,h *
of the great Emirs.
A -tion a
fnSX ^an the jf Jhe^ Rom^
agriculturists, ^most oTthem slop-keepers, the most foreign, most