Neither side compromised

The British Government hoped that the dual obligations of the Mandate could be realised through the peaceful and constructive co-operation of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine. However, neither group was willing to make any compromises in their political demands, which were unwavering throughout the Mandate. The Arabs wanted immediate independence and self-government, the Zionists wanted unlimited immigration until the Jewish population in Palestine would be in the majority, and then they could form an independent Jewish state. These respective demands were completely incompatible, and Britain had no hope of finding a settlement for Palestine acceptable to both parties if neither side was willing to soften their stance.

The Churchill White Paper of 1922

The tension which has prevailed from time to time in Palestine is mainly due to apprehensions, which are entertained both by sections of the Arab and by sections of the Jewish population. These apprehensions, so far as the Arabs are concerned are partly based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the [Balfour] Declaration favouring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, made on behalf of His Majesty’s Government on 2nd November, 1917.

Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become “as Jewish as England is English.” His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab delegation, the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.’ ...

When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection.

This, then, is the interpretation which His Majesty’s Government place upon the Declaration of 1917, and, so understood, the Secretary of State is of opinion that it does not contain or imply anything which need cause either alarm to the Arab population of Palestine or disappointment to the Jews.

For the fulfilment of this policy it is necessary that the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration. ...

With reference to the Constitution which it is now intended to establish in Palestine, the draft of which has already been published, it is desirable to make certain points clear. In the first place, it is not the case, as has been represented by the Arab Delegation, that during the war His Majesty’s Government gave an undertaking that an independent national government should be at once established in Palestine. ...

Nevertheless, it is the intention of His Majesty’s Government to foster the establishment of a full measure of self government in Palestine. But they are of the opinion that, in the special circumstances of that country, this should be accomplished by gradual stages and not suddenly. ...

The Secretary of State is of the opinion that before a further measure of self government is extended to Palestine and the Assembly placed in control over the Executive, it would be wise to allow some time to elapse. ...After a few years the situation will be again reviewed, and if the experience of the working of the constitution now to be established so warranted, a larger share of authority would then be extended to the elected representatives of the people....

The Secretary of State believes that a policy upon these lines, coupled with the maintenance of the fullest religious liberty in Palestine and with scrupulous regard for the rights of each community with reference to its Holy Places, cannot but commend itself to the various sections of the population, and that upon this basis may be built up that a spirit of cooperation upon which the future progress and prosperity of the Holy Land must largely depend.

Source :The Avalon Project.

The Churchill White Paper of June 3, 1922, officially the Palestine- Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organization, was drafted at the request of Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, partly in response to the 1921 Jaffa Riots.

The 1939 White Paper

'The Royal Commission and previous commissions of Enquiry have drawn attention to the ambiguity of certain expressions in the Mandate, such as the expression `a national home for the Jewish people', and they have found in this ambiguity and the resulting uncertainty as to the objectives of policy a fundamental cause of unrest and hostility between Arabs and Jews. His Majesty's Government are convinced that in the interests of the peace and well being of the whole people of Palestine a clear definition of policy and objectives is essential. ...

His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will. ...

His Majesty's Government are charged as the Mandatory authority "to secure the development of self governing institutions" in Palestine. Apart from this specific obligation, they would regard it as contrary to the whole spirit of the Mandate system that the population of Palestine should remain forever under Mandatory tutelage. It is proper that the people of the country should as early as possible enjoy the rights of self-government which are exercised by the people of neighbouring countries. His Majesty's Government are unable at present to foresee the exact constitutional forms which government in Palestine will eventually take, but their 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.

The objective of His Majesty's Government is the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State... The proposal for the establishment of the independent State would involve consultation with the Council of the League of Nations with a view to the termination of the Mandate.

The independent State should be one in which Arabs and Jews share government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.

In the view of the Royal Commission the association of the policy of the Balfour Declaration with the Mandate system implied the belief that Arab hostility to the former would sooner or later be overcome. It has been the hope of British Governments ever since the Balfour Declaration was issued that in time the Arab population, recognizing the advantages to be derived from Jewish settlement and development in Palestine, would become reconciled to the further growth of the Jewish National Home. This hope has not been fulfilled. The alternatives before His Majesty's Government are either (i) to seek to expand the Jewish National Home indefinitely by immigration, against the strongly expressed will of the Arab people of the country; or (ii) to permit further expansion of the Jewish National Home by immigration only if the Arabs are prepared to acquiesce in it. The former policy means rule by force. Apart from other considerations, such a policy seems to His Majesty's Government to be contrary to the whole spirit of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, as well as to their specific obligations to the Arabs in the Palestine Mandate. Moreover, the relations between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine must be based sooner or later on mutual tolerance and goodwill; the peace, security and progress of the Jewish National Home itself requires this. Therefore His Majesty's Government,...have decided that the time has come to adopt in principle the second of the alternatives referred to above.

Jewish immigration during the next five years will be at a rate which, if economic absorptive capacity permits, will bring the Jewish population up to approximately one third of the total population of the country. Taking into account the expected natural increase of the Arab and Jewish populations, and the number of illegal Jewish immigrants now in the country, this would allow of the admission, as from the beginning of April this year, of some 75,000 immigrants over the next five years. ...

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 anddependents.

After the period of five years, no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it.

His Majesty's Government cannot hope to satisfy the partisans of one party or the other in such controversy as the Mandate has aroused. Their purpose is to be just as between the two people in Palestine whose destinies in that country have been affected by the great events of recent years, and who, since they live side by side, must learn to practice mutual tolerance, goodwill and cooperation. In looking to the future, His Majesty's Government are not blind to the fact that some events of the past make the task of creating these relations difficult; but they are encouraged by the knowledge that as many times and in many places in Palestine during recent years the Arab and Jewish inhabitants have lived in friendship together. ... The responsibility which falls on them, no less than upon His Majesty's Government, to cooperate together to ensure peace is all the more solemn because their country is revered by many millions of Moslems, Jews and Christians throughout the world who pray for peace in Palestine and for the happiness of her people.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/british-white-paper-of-1939

Extracts from the Reply of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine to the White Paper issued by the British Government on May 17 1939

'The British Government, who governed the country for more than twenty years ignoring its right to independence and self-government, now admit their past mistake, but do not seriously attempt to correct it. They mention the neighbouring countries as an example but fail to give Palestine anything like the regime operative in those countries during their transitional period.

The Arabs of Palestine insist upon the immediate establishment, within a reasonable transitional period, of a national government that would assume power, that would have a constitution formulated by an elected National Assembly, and that would enter into treaty relations with Great Britain with the object of ending the Mandate. Participation in the said government would be proportionate to the number of Palestinian citizens in the respective populations....

The Arabs do not recognise the Jewish National Home which they consider as a clear trespass upon their most sacred natural rights and one which can only be maintained by force. The people have never lost sight of this conviction since they first heard of the National Home.

The National Home has always been the fundamental cause of the calamities, rebellions, bloodshed and general destruction which Palestine has suffered for the last twenty years. No Arab in Palestine will ever be prepared to recognise, in the Constitution or the Treaty, the existence of a Jewish Home as a national entity....

In summing up it may be concluded that the policy outlined in the White Paper does not satisfy Arab demands; and ... it is at once apparent that the British Government have surrounded their policy with ambiguity and indefiniteness in matters which inevitably call for clarity and definition....'

https://www.loc.gov/collections/eltaher-collection/?fa=location%3Apalestine&st=list&c=150

Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, April 1946

' The Peel Commission declared in one of the final chapters of its Report: "Neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State . . . The conflict is primarily political, though the fear of economic subjection to the Jews is also in Arab minds . . . The conflict, indeed, is as much about the future as about the present. Every intelligent Arab and Jew is forced to ask the question, 'Who in the end will govern Palestine ?' . . . for internal and external reasons it seems probable that the situation, bad as it now is, will grow worse. The conflict will go on, the gulf between Arabs and Jews will widen." The Report concluded with a reference to "strife and bloodshed in a thrice hallowed land."...

It is nine years since the Peel Commission made its report. The recommendations were unfulfilled, but the analysis of political conditions remains valid and impressive. The gulf between the Arabs of Palestine and the Arab world on the one side, and the Jews of Palestine and elsewhere on the other has widened still further. Neither side seems at all disposed at the present to make any sincere effort to reconcile either their superficial or their fundamental differences. The Arabs view the Mandatory Government with misgivings and anger. It is not only condemned verbally, but attacked with bombs and firearms by organized bands of Jewish terrorists. The Palestine Administration appears to be powerless to keep the situation under control except by the use of very large forces. ...

The Committee heard the Jewish case, presented at full length and with voluminous written evidence, in three series of public hearings-in Washington by the American Zionists, in London by the British Zionists, and finally and most massively by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. The basic policy advocated was always the same, the so called Biltmore Program of 1942, with the additional demand that 100,000 certificates for immigration into Palestine should be issued immediately to relieve the distress in Europe. This policy can be summed up in three points: (1) that the Mandatory should hand over control of immigration to the Jewish Agency; (I) that it should abolish restrictions on the sale of land; and (3) that it should proclaim as its ultimate aim the establishment of a Jewish State as soon as a Jewish majority has been achieved. It should be noted that the demand for a Jewish State goes beyond the obligations of either the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate, and was expressly disowned by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as late 1932....

Stopped to the bare essentials, the Arab case is based upon the fact that Palestine is a country which the Arabs have occupied for more than a thousand years, and a denial of the Jewish historical claims to Palestine. In issuing the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs maintain, the British Government were giving away something that did not belong to Britain, and they have consistently argued that the Mandate conflicted with the Covenant of the League of Nations from which it derived its authority. The Arabs deny that the part played by the British in freeing them from the Turks gave Great Britain a right to dispose of their country.* Indeed, they assert that Turkish was preferable to British rule, if the latter involves their eventual subjection to the Jews. They consider the Mandate a violation of their right of self-determination since it is forcing upon them an immigration which they do not desire and will not tolerate-an invasion of Palestine by the Jews....

 The position of Great Britain as Mandatory is not a happy one. The Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency said that, in the event of the withdrawal of the British troops, the Jews would take care of themselves. Jamal Effendi Husseini, replying to a question, said that it was the wish of the Arabs of Palestine that British forces and police should be withdrawn forthwith. ...We are clear in our minds that if British forces were withdrawn there would be immediate and prolonged bloodshed the end of which it is impossible to predict....'

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/angtoc.asp

Notes:

The Peel Commission, formally the Palestine Royal Commission, was a British Commission of  Inquiry headed by Lord Peel appointed in 1936 to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine. The Commission report of 1937 stated that the Mandate was unworkable and recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This proposal was considered by the British government, but was eventually rejected as unworkable.

The Biltmore Program was the outcome of an international Zionist conference held in New York in 1942. The Program renewed demands for unrestricted  Jewish immigration to Palestine, and that Palestine should become a Jewish Commonwealth.

The Biltmore Programme 1942

Extracts from the Declaration Adopted by the Biltmore Conference:

'The Conference calls for the fulfillment of the original purpose of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate which recognizing the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' was to afford them the opportunity, as stated by President Wilson, to found there a Jewish Commonwealth. The Conference affirms its unalterable rejection of the White Paper of May 1939 and denies its moral or legal validity. The White Paper seeks to limit, and in fact to nullify Jewish rights to immigration and settlement in Palestine, and, as stated by Mr. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons in May 1939, constitutes `a breach and repudiation of the Balfour Declaration'. The policy of the White Paper is cruel and indefensible in its denial of sanctuary to Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution; and at a time when Palestine has become a focal point in the war front of the United Nations, and Palestine Jewry must provide all available manpower for farm and factory and camp, it is in direct conflict with the interests of the allied war effort....

The Conference declares that the new world order that will follow victory cannot be established on foundations of peace, justice and equality, unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved. The Conference urges that the gates of Palestine be opened; that the Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority for upbuilding the country, including the development of its unoccupied and uncultivated lands; and that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world....'

Notes:

The Biltmore Conference was held in May 1942 in New York.

Participants from a wide variety of Zionist organizations were represented at the Conference. The joint statement issued at the end of the session was known as the Biltmore Program.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-biltmore-conference-1942

Extracts from 'Palestine Postcript. A short record of the last days of the Mandate,' by Sir Henry Gurney.

'It is true to say that, in spite of all their efforts to find a bridge by which agreement could be reached, the British Government never had a Palestine policy of their own. There were White Papers, there were adjustments and re-alignments and declarations on the meaning of the Mandate, but so long as there was any hope of the two parties agreeing on anything, it was left to them to propound a basis of reconciliation. The alternative was to impose a solution by force on one side or the other; and this meant fighting not merely the Jews or Arabs of Palestine, but the Jews of America, Poland, France, Britain, South Africa and all those countries where Jewish influence is powerful, or the Arab and even the Moslem world with all its implications of breaking traditional friendships, impeding strategic communications and endangering supplies of oil.' p.4

'Finally, it should not be forgotten that the undertaking given by Britain to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine represents the only attempt made by any nation in history to help the Jews. It ended in ingratitude, bitterness and tragedy only because the Zionists wanted more than they had given and turned against Britain in their determination to achieve their object. Meanwhile, those who have served in Palestine and have some acquaintance with its story are well content to leave their actions, their successes and their failures, to the judgment of history.' p.16

Notes:

Sir Henry Gurney was a British colonial administrator who served in various posts throughout the British Empire. In 1946, he was appointed Chief Secretary to Palestine, serving until the end of British rule there in 1948. Gurney wrote Palestine Postscript during the final months of the Mandate.

Copy in the archives of the former British Empire & Commonwealth Museum.

Extracts from the Shaw Commission Report, 1930

'Mr. Sacher, in evidence before the Commission, expressed in the following statement his views as to the policy of the Zionist movement in the matter of Jewish immigration to Palestine :— " I say that what we are concerned with is the establishment of the Jewish National Home 'What we are concerned with is that we shall have, as I said before, immigration to which there shall be no artificial restrictions, that .we shall be enabled as a Jewish people to put all our energies into making what is to be made of this country so as to enable Jews to came here and create this civilisation. We expect and demand under the Mandate of the Government that it shall do its part in facilitating that Work. It may be, and I say frankly hope that one day as a result of this process there will be a Jewish majority in this country " ... In answer to questions put to him Mr Sacher stated that in his view the regulation of immigration ought to be a matter between the Government of Palestine and the Jews and that the Palestine Administration is perfectly capable of ensuring that, as is required by Article 6 of the Mandate, the rights and position of other sections of the population of Palestine are not prejudiced by Jewish immigration. '...'

Conclusions of the report:

'It is also true that, had there not been persistent refusal by the Arab political leaders to co-operate in the development of self-government in Palestine along the lines laid down in 1922, the affairs of that country might to-day have been controlled in a large measure by a Legislative Council a majority of whose members would have been elected representatives of the people. But the Arab political leaders urge that, even if they bad accepted and given full effect to the Constitution of 1922, it is improbable that the elected representatives of the people could by now have obtained a share of authority in the Government that they would regard as the equivalent of that measure of self-government which they possessed under the Turkish regime. ...

It is our very definite impression, after hearing the evidence of leading representatives of both Arabs and Jews, that neither side appreciates the dual nature of the policy which the Palestine Government have to administer. On both sides the political leaders are pursuing different aims with single-minded vigour. Their activities are directed to one aspect of the question only and obstacles which bar the way to the fulfilment of their aims either are totally ignored or are brushed aside as being of no account. The idea of compromise scarcely exists. In the atmosphere which thus prevails all sight is lost of the difficulties of the Administration and every important decision of the Government is hailed by one side or the other as a failure to carry out the principles of the Mandate. ... We recognize that this position is to some extent the inevitable result of the dual nature of the task with which His Majesty's Government have charged themselves in Palestine but its ill-effects would at least be mitigated if, among the leaders of both peoples in Palestine, there were a better appreciation of the difficulties of that task and in consequence a greater readiness to compromise. ...

In any analysis of the factors that have brought about this change of relationship between the two races some regard must be had to the meaning which from the beginning has been attached by various persons to the promises made, on the one hand, in the Balfour Declaration and, on the other hand, to the Sherif Hussein during the War. Many of the leaders at either race placed the widest possible construction upon these promises. A National Home for the Jews, in the sense in which it was widely understood, was inconsistent with the demands of Arab national while the claims of Arab nationalism, if admitted, would have rendered impossible the fulfilment of the pledge to the Jews. ...'

Notes:

The Shaw Commission, led by Sir Walter Shaw, was  a British Commission of Inquiry appointed to investigate the 1929 Palestine riots and their origins. The Commission report was published in 1930.

Harry Sacher was a British-born  businessman, journalist and a member of the Executive of the World Zionist Organisation.