As we have seen, the British govenment intends to limit the further immigration of Jews to 75,000.6 This would mean a stabilization of the Jewish population as a minority, a situation as in which there could be no question of establishing a Jewish state. The Palestine state would be an Arab state.

    No one denies the considerable achievements of Jewish colonization in Palestine. Thanks to the capital which the Jews brought in (mostly from philanthropic sources), a large part of the uncultivated land has been turned into fertile fields, marshes have been drained, the breeding-grounds for malaria have been destroyed, there has been much afforestation, health care has been improved, some industry has been developed, such as processing diamonds and extracting and treating chemical deposits from the Dead Sea, and electrification has been introduced. In 1942 the value of industrial production was &3,000,000 sterling. Apart from military supplies, Jewish industry in Palestine produces steel and iron goods, textiles, leather goods, foods, food products, chemical and pharmaceutical goods, drainage pipes, glass,essential oils and lorries. The higher wages and improved standard of living have attracted up to 500,000 Arabs from neighbouring Arab countries.

    The British government justifies the restriction of immigration on the grounds, inter alia, of the country’s inadequate economic capacity. The Jews object to this, saying that even without displacing the local population, agriculture in the plains and hilly parts of Palestine can absorb as many as three to four million colonists, and the development of agriculture will result in a further growth of industry, which will absorb another three million people. Of course, if there are such possibilities, they will require a significant input of capital. It should be noted that Jewish colonization is still a philanthropic enterprise, and can provide for itself, according to British sources, being no more than 40 per cent self-sufficient or, according to Jewish sources, no more than 60 per cent. The US alone contributes 5.5 million dollars to Palestine annually..

    The Arab population of Palestine will certainly resist further Jewish immigration with all its might, in which it will be supported by all the other Arab states and the newly formed Arab League.7 From all this it is quite clear that the disagreements between the Jews, the Arabs and the British hinge on the permission for more Jews to settle in Palestine and to acquire land there.

    There is a project for the creation of a Greater Syria, consisting of Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and the Arab areas of Palestine, leaving the rest of it as a

注释

6.Reference is to the 1939 White Paper’s provision of 75,000 immigration permits for the years 1939—44(see Doc.1,n.7)

7.See Doc.40,and n.1 there. The Government of the League of Arab states was signed in Cairo on 22 March 1945

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Jewish state;8 but there is no reason to believe that this plan will be greeted with any sympathy on the part of the independent Arab states or the Palestinian Arabs. The Labour peer Lord Strabolgl, once said that the best solution to the question would be the inclusion of Palestine in the British to Arab rule, but dominion status implies self-government, and with an Arab majority in the population, the legislative and other state institutions would inevitably be in Arab hands. There are no other plans or projects for the solution of this complex Palestine problem.

Conclusions

1. Try as the British may to argue that their present policy is compatible with the Balfour Declaration, there is no doubt whatever that they have failed to carry out the conditions on which they were given the mandate, as has been admitted by the statements of responsible British statesmen. This situation fully justifies the removal of the mandate for Palestine from British hands.
2. The Palestine question cannot be satisfactorily resolved without infringing upon the rights and wishes either of the Jews or of the Arabs, or perhaps of both. The British government is under simultaneous pressure from the Arab states and from world Jewry. That is the source of its difficulties in finding the right way to solve the Palestine problem.
3. The US government is exposed to similar influences. Whereas Arab interests bear most strongly on British policy towards Palestine, the American government feels more strongly the influence of powerful American Jewry. It should be recalled that in the last presidential elections both parties, the Democratic and the Republican, felt obliged to publish declarations on their attitude to Palestine, in which they called for unlimited immigration and unrestricted land ownership for Jews in Palestine. At the same time, the US government will hardly want to quarrel with the Arabs, when the oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia, in which they are interested, will have to pass through hundreds of miles/ kilometers of Arab territory. The American government therefore would be in almost as difficult a position as the British with regard to Palestine.
4. The solution to the Palestine problem might best be undertaken by the USSR, which is free of both Arab and Jewish influence. This gives it the right at least to put in a claim for temporary trusteeship over Palestine until a more radical solution of the problem is found.

注释

8. Projects for a Greater Syria were discussed during World War II in two basic versions—a British one proposed by the Palestine Committee of the War Cabint (20 December 1943) and an Iraqi one proposed by Nuri said (14 January 1943). The former proposed creating an Association of Levant States consisting of a Jewish state, a Jerusalem Territory and Lebanon and a Greater Syria comprising Transjordan, a small portion Lebanon and Arab Palestine. The latter envisaged Syria, Lebanon, all Palestine and Transjordan united into one state (see Cohen, Palestine and Arab Federation,p.128;Khalil, The Arab States and thr Arab League,Vol.2,p.10).

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5. Palestine, which guards the approaches to the Suez Canal, and has on its territory the outlet for Iraqi oil9, is so valuable to the British that it is unlikely that Britain will agree to the temporary transfer of Palestine into the hands of another state, especially the USSR.
6. If the Soviet claim is rejected, the question inevitably arises of the transfer of Palestine to the collective trusteeship of three states—the USSR, the US and Great Britain. Together these three powers could take the necessary decisions, without deferring to Palestinian Arab or Jewish opinion in Palestine as either the British or American government would feel obliged to do if it were acting alone.
7. The conditions of collective trusteeship must not be linked to the Balfour Declaration or to any other promises previously given by Great Britain as the mandatory power, so that the new collective administration can set about solving the Palestine problem justly in accordance with the interests of the population as a whole and the new requirements of political life and general security10.

                                                                                                                  Chairman of the Commission

                                                                                                                                     M.Litvinov

9.The terminal of the pipeline from the Mosul oil fields was in haifa

10.Copies sent to Stalin, Molotov,Manuil'skii, Lozovskii, Suritz, Litvinov