A Cairo dispatch to the New York Times by Joseph M. Levy said today that Palestine “is the one country in the near East hard hit economically through the war.”
Citing virtual stoppage of immigration, cessation of building, increase in Jewish unemployed to between 30,000 and 40,000, Levy warned that there was little prospect of improvement and that “conditions may become grave” unless the British Government bought the entire orange crop for troops and there were “substantial money donations” from abroad.
On the political side, Levy declared, there was “an excellent chance now for Arab-Jewish rapprochement. The Arabs perhaps more than the Jews have suffered economically in the last three years and are anxious for a return to normal life, asking no more than a modest livelihood. Arab extremist leaders no longer find ready ears among the Arab masses for their ant-Jewish propaganda, which was hitherto financed by Nazis. To cite a leading Arab merchant, We are fed up, tired and, what is more, practically starving.”
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