POLI 347 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Passfield White Paper, Shaw Commission, Jewish Agency For Israel
8 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
From Mandate to Independence/Naqba Part 1 – Sept. 20, 2018
Into the 1920s
• 1922 Churchill White Paper specified that "a Jewish national home in Palestine" did not
encompass control over all the Palestine, but rather, the "further development of the existing
Jewish community" of 80 000
o the British realized there would be a violent conflict between the two communities and
they would have a difficult time managing the land and communities
o they also realized they may have promised too much
o they realized they needed to do something so they came up with the White Paper
o the White Paper was intended to be a clarification of the commitments made in the
Balfour Agreement
▪ to give the Jewish a national home - but this did not mean a state so the British
had wiggle room
• To assuage Arab fears, UK govt. pledges to "foster the establishment of a full measure of self-
government in Palestine"
o provision made to address Arab fears of a growing Jewish community
• Episodes of inter-communal violence continued throughout 1920s
o in Jaffa, which was targeted as an extension of the anger of the growing Jewish
community
• Zionist leadership pressed ahead with immigration, land purchase, and military preparedness
o their military was weak but this changed by the 1930s & this contributed to the inevitable
outbreak of war
• Zionists argued that they were helping to develop the land, bringing benefits to all its inhabitants;
Arabs rejected this notion
o Zionists argued they were bringing economic resources, agricultural resources
o They wanted to "Make the desert bloom" by bringing in technology, know how,
resources, a passion that would help all inhabitants, not just the Jews
o Arabs didn't care, they liked the desert, and this was an unwelcomed development
Rising Arab-Jewish Tensions, 1929
• Disputes escalated over Jews praying the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, adjacent to the Al-Aqsa
mosque
o killing more people than ever before
o the best predictor for future conflict is past conflict
▪ these episodes of violence, the more broke out, the more likely future conflicts
were likely
• Fear and loathing between Jews and Arabs was exacerbated by inflammatory statements and
publications on both sides
• This culminated in violence of August 1929: Arab rioters attacked Jewish neighbourhoods and
settlements across Palestine; Jews retaliated; British police intervened, mainly on Jews' behalf
o Jews were outnumbered and not well equipped to protect themselves
• 67 Jews killed in Hebron (ending the Jewish population there); 18 in Safed; Arab neighbours
rescued hundreds more Jews
o But it was their Arab neighbours that did a much better job protecting the Jews than the
British
• In all, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed; hundreds more were injured
o the vast majorities of Jews were killed by Arabs
o the vast majorities of Arabs that were killed was by the British police who opened fire-
they weren't necessarily the attackers
Document Summary
From mandate to independence/naqba part 1 sept. 20, 2018. Into the 1920s: 1922 churchill white paper specified that "a jewish national home in palestine" did not encompass control over all the palestine, but rather, the "further development of the existing. "the fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot, is the arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the. Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future. The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the arabs that by. The passfield white paper (1930: as a result of the 1929 violence, the british government issued a "white" (policy) paper limiting. Jewish immigration to palestine: this was a policy to manage the communities not to create a state solution.
