There are events that an astute student of history will ascertain as turning points. One such event is at the root of the debacle we see now in the Mideast.
In 1939, after years of Jewish-Arab fighting, the British government all but cut off immigration to the Palestinian Mandate in what was called the MacDonald White Paper.
For each of the next five years a quota of 10,000 Jewish immigrants will be allowed on the understanding that a shortage one year may be added to the quotas for subsequent years, within the five year period, if economic absorptive capacity permits.
In addition, as a contribution towards the solution of the Jewish refugee problem, 25,000 refugees will be admitted as soon as the High Commissioner is satisfied that adequate provision for their maintenance is ensured, special consideration being given to refugee children and dependents.
This was supposed to limit subsequent immigration to the Mandate to 75,000 more Jews, and then it was to stop. After that Jewish immigration stopped, and things settled down, the Jews were expected to be a one-third minority in the mandate.
The British asserted that this was viable.
His Majesty’s Government … objective is self government, and they desire to see established ultimately an independent Palestine State. It should be a State in which the two peoples in Palestine, Arabs and Jews, share authority in government in such a way that the essential interests of each are shared.
Why did the British do this?
They feared a coming war with Germany, and the last thing they wanted was for the Muslims in their empire to rise up over the issue of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. This was a real sore point, and the Arabs had already been fighting an Arab Revolt in the mandate from 1936 to 1939. The British had been thoroughly brutal in suppressing the revolt, and the locals were angry
But the real issue was that a lot of British oil came from an Iraq-to-Haifa pipeline — an oil supply the British would need if war broke out — which they did not want disrupted by Arab rebels.
The Jews would never support Hitler, but the Arabs might. So the British placated the Arabs’ demands. And it worked. For the most part, the Arabs in the Palestine mandate kept quiet during the world war.
And why not? The White Paper of 1939 gave the Arabs what they wanted: an end to Jewish immigration — and it promised the delivery of an Arab majority state in 1949.
The objective of His Majesty’s Government is the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State[.]
Of course, the Jews were furious. Ben Gurion famously said, “We must help the [British] army as if there were no White Paper, and we must fight the White Paper as if there were no war.”
While the leader of the Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, rejected the White Paper as not enough, other Arab leaders agreed to it.
In July 1940, after two weeks of meetings with the British representative, S. F. Newcombe, the leader of the Palestinian Arab delegates to the London Conference, Jamal al-Husseini and fellow delegate Musa al-Alami, agreed to the terms of the White Paper, and both signed a copy of it in the presence of the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri as-Said.
The White Paper had gotten a veneer of legality. The Palestinian Arabs thought they had won.
But for the Jews of Europe, this was a disaster. They needed a place of escape, as the Holocaust was about to start, and the British had shut them out.
And now you understand why the Irgun (Etzel) and the Lehi (Stern Gang) starting fighting the British. They saw the British as no less evil than the Nazis — at the very least, accomplices. Boats of refugees were turned back from Palestine.
Hitler’s initial plan had been to relocate the Jews, but by 1942, at the Wannsee Conference — after the Germans realized that no one would take the Jews in — the Germans planned for industrial genocide.
The Jews held the British partly responsible for this, when they cut off immigration. By 1944, some Jewish terrorists had killed Lord Moyne for his anti-Zionist stance. They also tried to kill Harold McMichael when he was high commissioner of Palestine.
Had the British not imposed the White Paper, possibly a million more Jews could have made it to the Mandate during the war. Certainly not all Jews would have been saved, but enough would have made it that the Jews could have established a working majority in the mandate.
Would the Arabs have risen up?
Probably, but as the Iraqi coup in 1941 showed, such uprisings might have been easily quashed.
After the war, the Jews in the mandate were only one third of the population, and many hated the British. The Arabs, however, appealed to the British to honor the White Paper. Right up to the last minute, the White Paper was causing problems.
Menachem Begin was so furious at the British that he tried to arm the Argentine junta during the Falklands War as revenge. And his views were not unique. A lot of Israelis hold the British to be accessories to the Holocaust by their restriction of immigration.
What can be ascertained is that had the White Paper not been implemented, probably a million more Jews might have survived WW2. These would have formed a majority in the land.
The West has forgotten this. From what I read, most Israelis have not.
Image via Raw Pixel.
Comments are closed.