HIST 4339

The Palestine Mandate in the Late 1930s

1936 Arab Revolt

• Strikes, violence, with wide popular support

• Viceroy’s close attention to Indian Muslim interest in revolt

• August 1936: British declaration of martial law in Palestine, decision to send troops

Peel Commission Proposal

• 1937: Peel Commission (aka Palestine Royal Commission)

            —official recognition that Britain’s WWI promises were incompatible

            —recommendation that Britain partition Palestine into Arab state and Jewish state

• 1938: Woodhead Commission (aka Technical Commission, aka Partition Commission)

            —Peel partition plan impracticable

• 1938: British rejection of Palestine partition

• 1939: PM Neville Chamberlain: “if we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews      rather than the Arabs.”

Zionist Contacts with Gandhi

• Efforts to win Gandhi’s support for Jewish state in Palestine

• Disappointment at advice to use non-violence against Nazis

—Gandhi: “if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy”

—Judah Magnes: Violence against Jews “makes not even a ripple on the surface of German life. . . . Contrast this with one of your fasts, or with your salt march to the sea, or a visit to the Viceroy, when the whole world is permitted to hang upon your words and be witness to your acts.”

• Zionist identity: European or “Eastern”?

1939 White Paper

• Limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine

            —75,000 over the next five years

• Zionist vow to “fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and to fight the White    Paper as if there were no war.”