Summary
His Majesty’s Government’s 1939 statement of policy in Palestine, issued after the London conferences produced no agreement: Palestine is not to become a Jewish State, an independent Palestine State shared by Arabs and Jews is the objective within 10 years, Jewish immigration is limited to some 75,000 over five years and thereafter requires Arab acquiescence, and the High Commissioner is to hold powers to prohibit and regulate land transfers (Palestine: Statement of Policy (British White Paper of 1939), lines 27, 45, 61, 97-113).
Details
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The statement adheres generally to the proposals the Government had laid before the Arab and Jewish delegations at the London conferences, which neither delegation felt able to accept (line 27).
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Its constitutional head adheres to the 1922 description of the Jewish National Home and quotes the 1922 passage against a wholly Jewish Palestine (lines 43-51).
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Its immigration head retains Economic capacity as a criterion but expressly refuses to read it as the sole criterion for all time, adding the political effect of immigration as a limiting factor (line 91).
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Its Palestine resolution in the Alexandria Protocol of 7 October 1944 treats the pledges on cessation of Jewish immigration, preservation of Arab lands and Palestinian independence embodied in this policy as permanent Arab rights demanding prompt implementation — the protocol does not name the statement (The Alexandria Protocol (7 October 1944), line 135).
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In Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP), Chapter II.C sets out the White Paper’s immigration regime as the governing policy since 1939 — some 75,000 Jews over five years to bring the Jewish population to approximately one-third of the total, thereafter no further Jewish immigration unless the Arabs of Palestine acquiesce, illegal entrants deducted from the quota — and its land policy, put into effect by the 1940 land transfer regulations prohibiting or restricting transfers to Jews across 95 per cent of Palestine; the Permanent Mandates Commission’s 1939 findings are recorded, as are the Jewish Agency President’s letter of 31 May 1939 and the policy’s continuation, modified by the admission of 1,500 Jewish immigrants per month (Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP), lines 1180-1230).
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In the United Nations study, the White Paper of May 1939 (Cmd. 6019) disclaimed any intention to create a Jewish State, rejected Arab demands that Palestine become independent as an Arab State, and envisaged termination of the mandate by 1949 with independence for Palestine in which both Palestinians and Jews would share in government; immigration would end after 75,000 new immigrants over the first five years, and land transfers would be strictly regulated. The study quotes its declaration that it was not British policy “that Palestine should become a Jewish State” and its objective of “the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State” in treaty relations with the United Kingdom, and records its implementation: the February 1940 Land Transfer Regulations’ three zones and only 51,000 of the 75,000 immigration certificates utilised by 1944, after which legal immigration continued at 18,000 a year (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 1043-1061, 1173-1177).
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In the same study, the Permanent Mandates Commission held the White Paper policy was not in accordance with the interpretation it had always placed upon the Mandate, and the study comments that the Palestinians’ inherent rights were finally acknowledged, but to a country whose population and land patterns had been transformed under the Mandate (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 1153-1163, 1061).
Related pages
Palestine: Statement of Policy (British White Paper of 1939), Land Transfer Regulations (1940), Passfield White Paper, British White Paper of June 1922, Palestine: Statement by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom (1938), Alexandria Protocol