Opposition in Britain

In Britain the House of Lords opposed the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration in the Mandate. The truth was the British Government did not possess the power any more than the League of Nations to dispose of Palestine.

The justification for Britain to continue occupation of Palestine after World War 1 was by right of possession of a Mandate endorsed by the League of Nations. The Mandate gave the British enterprise the appearance of legality but it is not one that stood the test of examination as debates in the House of Lords indicated.

As it happened neither the Balfour Declaration nor the Mandate were approved. The policy was never endorsed by the British people, who in fact had no knowledge of what had been done and was being done in their name.

Balfour said himself on the 11th August 1919:

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs and future hopes of far profounder import than the desire, prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."

British attempts to placate Arab feelings

To reduce the prospect of violent Arab challenge to the occupation of Palestine and its predominant influence in the region as a whole, Britain had to mend its fences with the Hashemites, whose leader, Hussein, it had betrayed. The fence mending was to be in the form of a reward to Hussein's two sons, Faisal and Abdullah,

Faisal was to be King of Iraq and Abdullah to be king of a part of Palestine to be called Trans Jordan.

The sons were well rewarded but because of the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia it was still necessary for Britain to have Hussein's good will. The man most likely to obtain Hussein's co-operation was T. H. Lawrence. On behalf of the British Government he travelled to Jeddah in July.

Hussein however refused to sign the treaty because it required him to accept the British Mandate of Palestine and thus the creation there of a Jewish homeland.

On the 3rd October 1924 Hussein abdicated and went into exile in Cyprus. Initial Palestinian resistance to the Mandate took the form of non-cooperation with the occupying British but as Britain allowed more and more Jews into Palestine non- cooperation turned into demonstration.

The first Palestine riots under British rule took place some time before they had the Mandate. They were sparked by the arrival in 1919 and 1920 of more than 10,000 Jewish immigrants from Russia.

1929 saw the first big explosion of anti-Jewish Palestinian rage

It is certain that without the British presence the Jews could not have entrenched themselves in Palestine. On their own the Palestinians could have pushed them out.

The continued immigration of Jews into Palestine served to convince the Arabs that Britain was secretly committed to the creation of a Jewish state.

A full scale strike in 1936 was the beginning of rebellion by the Palestinians. Britain's first response was to appoint a Royal Commission. Her next response was to declare war on the Palestinians.

By early 1939, preoccupied with the task of appeasing Hitler, Neville Chamberlain's government was ready to talk to the Arabs about what was needed to be done to end the confrontation.

As first priority the conference set up a Committee, whose members included the Lord Chancellor, Vincent Caldecot, to examine the Hussein /McMahon correspondence of 1915/1916, the Lord Chancellor, probably appalled by the British duplicity, admitted that the Arab point of view proved to have greater force than had appeared heretofore.

When the Committee finished its work, it unanimously reported in 1939 that His Majesty's Government was not free to dispose of Palestine without regard to the wishes of the inhabitants of Palestine.

White Paper

Six weeks later on the 17th May 1939, the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, unveiled a White Paper setting out Britain's new policy for Palestine. A policy that the Zionists regarded as, and proclaimed to be, a betrayal of Britain's promise to them.

The 1939 White Paper said:

"His Majesty's Government now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish state."

The Jews rejected the White Paper and accused Britain of betraying them, although they were no doubt pleased to note that, when the House of Commons approved the White Paper and the new policy, Churchill was amongst those who opposed it.

As a concession to the Zionists the White Paper also stated that Britain would permit a total of 25,000 more Jews to enter Palestine over the next five years.