Palestinian Rain | 227serve to be achieved but also in the long run would in fact fail to be achieved. Brit
Shalom understood that under its program Zionism would have to dissent from
the prevailing system of nation-states. As Hugo Bergmann put it in December 1929:
[We demand that] in Palestine such a regime be constructed which a priori
shall take all national questions out of the sphere of majority versus minority
decisions so as to eliminate in advance any possibility of the majority ruling
over the minority in its national affairs. In Palestine there is no room for “the
people of the state” or for any “national sovereignty.”^94Bergmann believed that the goal of Zionism was to draw on the experience of the
Jews as “a classical minority people” and to “break up that majority spirit in the
life of the nations, to set up a new national and political morality in the world.”^95
This was the basis of Brit Shalom’s willingness to compromise on the rate and
scale of Jewish immigration. Other Zionists, however, saw this position as not
only a forfeiture of the goals of Zionism but also naïve, as the Arabs would never
consent to share power.^96
These positions on land acquisition, economic segregation, and immigra-
tion were accompanied by a unique attitude toward the British role in Palestine.
While Labor Zionists looked to Britain to protect Jewish interests, and Revision-
ists accused Britain of failing to meet its obligations to Zionism, Brit Shalom saw
the alliance with Britain as a moral blemish on Jewish renewal. As Aharon Kedar
puts it:
Brit Shalom demanded that the Zionist movement disassociate itself com-
pletely from the Balfour Declaration, and replace it with an Arab declaration
recognizing Zionist rights. The Balfour Declaration should be rejected even
before any Arab declaration was made.... [It] was nothing but part of an im-
perialist transaction of dividing the spoils of World War I.^97Judah Magnes agreed that “the mandate has no sanction but that of the last
wa r.”^98 For Labor and Revisionist Zionists, however, the Balfour Declaration was
that Great Power guarantee of Jewish success that Herzl had long sought from the
sultans and czars. The idea of rejecting the Balfour Declaration dismayed even
the Brit Shalom moderates, who saw it as insurance in the absence of an Arab
agreement. Thus there was once again a gap between those who saw an Arab
agreement merely as a practical goal and those for whom it was a moral necessity.
Brit Shalom faced a severe test four years after its founding. The mufti of
Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, head of the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC),
spent much of the 1920s promoting the importance of the haram ash-Sharif as
a symbol of Islam (the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims; to Jews, har habayit, the
Temple Mount; site of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque).^99 In 1928,
the question of Jewish worship at the Western Wall sparked fears that the Zi-
onists desired to conquer the Temple Mount. These fears were not speculation:
Zionist figures had tried to purchase the land around the site, and in the context