80 Memorandum by the Jewish Agency 1

COPY: ISA 93:03/2268/16

New York, 28 April 1947

   SUBJECT: THE BACKGROUND OF THE PALESTINE PROBLEM

The Promise: During World War I, the Allied powers, in determining the future of the vast territories of the Ottoman Empire, gave their approval to Zionist aspirations and agreed to restore Palestine to the Jewish people.

  On 2 November 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration pledging ‘their best endeavours to facilitate’ the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.

  France and Italy adhered to the declaration early in 1918 and on 3 March 1919, President Wilson, who had previously given his approval, stated ‘ the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish commonwealth’.

The Mandate: At San Remo, on 25 April 1920, the Allied Supreme Council allotted the Balfour pledge. The fifty-one nations of the League of Nations, acting through the League Council, approved the mandate on 24 July 1922.

  The mandate recognized ‘the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine’ as one of the grounds for reconstituting their national home there. Great Britain was enjoined by the mandate to place the country’ under such political administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home’ and to ‘ facilitate Jewish immigration’ and ‘encourage…close settlement by Jews on the land’ while ‘safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion’.

  The promise was made not only to the Jews of Palestine but, as Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in 1939, ‘to the Jews outside Palestine, to that vast unhappy mass of scattered, persecuted, wandering Jews whose intense unchanging, unconquerable desire has been for a national home’.

  Accordingly, to establish an instrument through which the Jewish people could exercise their rights in Palestine, the mandate provided for the recognition of a Jewish Agency to advise and cooperate with the Palestine administration, to ‘assist and take part in the development of the country’.

1.      This memorandum was produced in Russian and English. The Russian version is printed in the corresponding Russian edition of the present volume and is on file.  Jacob Robinson, who was presumably the author of the memorandum, added by hand:” The original was mailed today by N[ahum] G[oldmann] to the Soviet delegation’.

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  The United States was not a member of the league, but on 30 June 1922, Congress adopted a resolution approving the undertaking. The mandate later was incorporated in the Anglo-American Convention of 3 December 1924.

  World statesmen envisaged the eventual re-establishment of a Jewish state or commonwealth. This was made clear in the statements of Mr.Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, President Wilson, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Herbert samuel and Mr.Churchill.

The promise to the Arabs: During the [World] War [I], commitments were made to the Arabs to further Arab independence in other parts of the Ottoman Empire. There was no conflict between the promises to the Jews and to the Arabs.

  Sir Henry McMahon, who conducted the negotiations with the Arabs, later wrote:’ I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving this pledge to King Husayn to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised. I also had every reason to believe at the time that the fact that Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood by King Husayn’.

  T .E.Lawrence, who participated in the negotiations with the Arabs, favoured Zionist colonization in Palestine, predicting that ‘the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world.’ Lawrence helped bring Jews and Arabs together at the Paris Peace Conference and Emir Feisal, the leading Arab spokesman, later King of Iraq, signed a treaty with Dr. Chain: Weizmann, agreeing to the carrying out of the Balfour Declaration. ‘We will offer the Jews a hearty welcome home’, he wrote.

  As a condition, Feisal insisted on Arab self-government in the neighbouring Arab lands. Although it was delayed, that condition has now been fulfilled. There are today seven Arab state- five of them in the United Nations-spread over 1,650,000 square miles, 160 times the area of Palestine.

  But the promise to the Jews has not been fulfilled. Palestine is today a police state. Development of the Jewish national home has been arrested by the mandatory power, although its only right to be in Palestine arises from the responsibility it assumed as trustee under the mandate to help the Jewish people rebuild their ancestral homeland.

The Palestine Development: In the last 25years, Jewish colonization transformed a sterile and neglected land into a major self-sustaining economic centre in the Middle East. Palestine’s population increased from 675,000 in 1920 to more than 1,800,000. The Jewish population rose from 67,000 to an estimated 600,000. In 1914 there were 43 Jewish settlements. Today there are 320. Industry grew rapidly in volume and diversity. The Jordan was harnessed for electric power, the Dead Sea yielded up its valuable potash and bromine, swamps were drained, terraces rebuilt, trees planted, the desert reclaimed. Schools, scientific institutions, hospitals were established. And urban Jews, drawn from trades and professions, became manual workers on the farms and in industry-integrated in a normal society.

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The Arabs Prospered: Zionist colonization raised living standards for all. The Arabs were not displaced. On the contrary, while the Arab population in Transjordan remained at a standstill, the Arab population in Palestine rose from 515,000 in 1919 to 1,064,000 in 1944, partly because of immigration, but mostly, as Cfolonial Secretary malcolm MacDonald told Parliament on 24 November 1938, ‘It is because the Jewish people who have come to Palestine bring modern health services and other advantages that Arab men and women who would have been dead are alive today, that Arab children who would never have drawn breath have been born and grown strong’.

  The rate of natural increase in Palestine is the highest recorded in any country.

The Obstacles:The dynamic development of Palestine was hindered by unsympathetic colonial administrators who, trained to deal with subject peoples and interested in preserving the status quo, made little positive contribution to the undertaking. Instead, they showed great solicitude for its opponents.

  Early in 1920, anti-Zionist riots were organized in Jerusalem. Hajj Amin al-Husayni, convicted for his part in these murderous disturbances, never served his sentence, but was pardoned and appointed by the British administration to the influential post of grand mufti of Jerusalem. In 1929 and 1936, clothed in the immunity of the positition thus conferred on him, he organized further anti-Jewish disturbances. (Later he was to foment a pro-Axis putsch in Iraq, whence he fled to Berlin to become a Hitler collaborator.)Time and again a vacillating colonial government failed to act decisively in fulfillment of a policy clearly laid down and internation and the Arabs of Palestine were led to believe that violent resistance [to] the Zionist program would be rewarded. A major British act of appeasement was the partitioning of Palestine in 1921. Transjordan, with its 37,400 square miles of territory, was cut away, leaving only 10,400 square miles in the area west of the Jordan.

The Retreat: Severance of Transjordan from Palestine was the first breach of the Balfour promise, which had been understood to include all of historic Plaestine. It was the beginning of a series of retreats which encouraged new Arab aggression and which culminated finally in the present illegal policy.

  The mandate had obligated Great Britain to facilitate the Jewish national home. In the 1922 White Paper, the government proposed merely to permit the basic development, if the Jews supplied the means, not only for their own but also for Arab development. The 1930 (Passfield) White Paper attempted to subordinate Jewish to Arab development but was withdraw by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1931. In 1937, the Royal Commission recommended a new partition of Palestine, though this time it was proposed to establish the partitioned arer, one-fifth of the country west of the Jordan, as a Jewish state. The government accepted the report in principle but subsequently reareated again, and the Woodhead Commission, working out the details in 1938, reduced it to an absurdity.

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   Meanwhile, the propaganda of Mussolini and Hitler was being beamed to the Middle East. Arab leaders became Axis agitators. Competing with Germany and Italy for the favour of the Arabs, the British yielded to Arab terror and, following the discredited tactics of Munich appeasement, issued the MacDonald White Paper in 1939.

The Breach:The new policy, in flagrant violation of the mandate, limited Jewish immigration for a five-year period to 75,000 and made it dependent, thereafter, or Arab consent. Purchase of land by Jews was sharply restricted. (Under the subsequent 1940 land regulations, Jews were virtually debarred from acquiring land in 95 per cent of Palestine.) The Jews were to be reduced to a ghettoized minority in what was to become an Arab state in 10years.

  The 1939 White Paper was bitterly condemned in [the House of] Commons as a breach and a repudiation of Britain’s pledges by Mr. Churchill, Leopold Amery, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Mr.Herbert Morrison and many others.

The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations ruled that the White Paper was inconsistent with Britain’s obligations under the mandate, but the league never acted. It ceased to function as war began.

The war years: The White Paper went into effect but failed in its purpose to buy Arab support. Until Allied victory was assured, the Arabs remained openly pro-Axis. Egypt, also invaded, and Saudi Arabia, remained neutral. Syria and Lebanon were hotbeds of Axis intrigue. In Iraq,Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Kilani, headed an abortive Axis-inspired revolt. It was not until February 1945, when the fighting was all but over, that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon dutifully declared war on Germany, thus to qualify for seats in the United Nations before the March 1 deadline for admission.

  In contrast, Jewish Palestine fought the Axis throughout the war. At the outbreak 136,200 Jewish men and women registered for war service. About 26,000 were enrolled in the armed forces and 7,000 more in local defence. Palestine was an important base for Allied operations and supply.

  Meanwhile, in Europe, the White Paper proved a death warrant for tens of thousands of Jews who, denied a refuge in Palestine, were counted in the Nazi gas chamber census of 6,000,000 Jews. How many might have escaped if Palestine had been open will never be known.

Disillusionment: All through the war, the Jews appealed in vain for a relaxation of the White Paper policy. When war ended, it was believed that relief would come quickly for the homeless survivours of Hitler’s concentration camps. The British Labour Party, in December 1944 and in April 1945, had vigorously attacked the white Paper. It was now called to power.

  But days rolled into weeks and weeks into months. In August 1945, following Earl G. Harrison’s report on the shocking conditions in the DP camps, President Truman appealed to the British to admit 100,000 Jews to Palestine Great Britain countered with a proposal for an Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry. The United States agreed. The committee began hearings in January 1946. it toured the camps in Europe, it visited Palestine

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and the Arab countries. In May 1946, it submitted unanimous recommendations. The connittee urged immediate admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine and it recommended that the White Paper restrictions be set aside. But it made no positive proposals for a long-term political settlement.

Tactics of Delay: President Truman urged the British government to act without delay and offered United States cooperation, Prime Minister Attlee interposed new objections. He contended that additional troops would be required if more Jews were to be admitted.paradoxically, he sought,as a condition precedent to further Jewish immigration, the disarmament of the Jewish selfdefence force. Members of the committee recalling that Foreign Secreatary Ernest Bevin had promised to carry out the committee’s recommendations if the committee were unanimous, charged Mr. Bevin with a new breach of faith.

  Negotiations dragged on. The British came forward with a new plan (Grady-Morrison). As a price for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine, the Jewss were asked to give up their rights under the mandate. Palestine was to be divided into Arab and Jewish provinces, under strict centralized British control. Immigration was to be a matter for British jurisdiction. This was the old ‘federalization’ plan in a new dress. It was wholly unacceptable to all the parties.

The Victims of Delay: Meanwhile, the plight of [the] Jewish survivours in Europe became critical. It was now clear that hundreds of thousands would be unable to regain status and possessions on soil poisoned by Hitlerite antisemitism. The number of displaced Jews swelled from 70,000 in 1945 to more than 250,000. Thousands set out for Palestine to reach it as best they could. Re-enacting one of the most tragic dramas of the war, they took to frail and unseaworthy craft to cross the Mediterranean. During the war Jews had sought escape from the Nazis; now they were running the blockade of their ‘liberators’. They refused to accept the stigma of ‘ illegal immigrant’, for they insisted that the White Paper, which walled them off from their homeland, was itself illegal.

  Oblivious to their jmisery, the British mechanically limited Jewish i8mmigration to a mere 1,500 a month. Their warships hunted down the refugees, who were at first herded into internment camps in Palestine and later deported to Cyprus.

  The lawless British policy had inevitable consequences. Sporadic violence flared up in Palestine. The great majority of Jews deplored violence, but were powerless to stop it as the British poured 100,000 troops into Palestine and provocatively imposed the harshest restrictions on personal freedom, abrogating fundamental civil liberties, disrupting economic life and transforming Palestine into a police state. The situation steadily deteriorated.

  On 4 October 1946, President Truman sought to end the impasse. He reiterated his plea for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine and he commended for British consideration a plan for the partition of Palestine into two sovereign states; which the Jewish Agency for Palestine was prepared to discuss with the British government. But the British rejected President

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Truman’s counsel. On 27 January 1947, the British and Arab states held new conferences in London. Mr. Bevin offered new concessions to the Arabs.

  He proposed a five-year trusteeship for Palestine. His new plan was neither federalization nor partition. It provided, instead, for the fragmentation of the country into a number of local Jewish or Arab administrative areas. It limited Jewish immigration for the first two years to 4,000 a month, the question then to be referred to the high commissioner. Discrimininatory anti-Jewish land regulations would continue. The Jews would be a permanent minority and an Arab state would eventually be established. The Arab states, demanding immediate stoppage of Jewish  immigration, rejected Mr. Bevin’s newest plan; the Jewish Agency informed Mr. Bevin that the plan was incompatible with the basic purposes of the mandate.

Having failed again, Mr.Bevin announced on 14 February 1947 that he would transfer the question to the United Nations.

The issue now comes before the UN two years after the defeat of Hitler. The Jews, who were Hitler’s first victims , are about to begin the third year of waiting. The majority of the 1,500,000 Jews of Europe are determined to leave a continent which is little more than a graveyard for their 6,000,000 dead. They are resolved to begin life anew in a homeland of their own, where they will never again be the targets of intolerance and bigotry and where, as a free people, they may have a voice in their own future.

And the Jews of Palestine who had faith in the ideals for which the United Nations fought, wait for the day when the four freedoms 2 will repay their debt to the Ten Commandments.

2.On 6 January 1941, in the first State of the Union address to Congress of his third term in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt closed his speech with a description of four essential human freedoms---freedom of speech and expression_r; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.