The Partition of Palestine
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
In some respects, World War II produced a temporary respite in the growing conflict
among Arabs, Jews, and the British government over Palestine. The end of the war,
however, swiftly brought about the events that culminated in the establishment of the
State of Israel and led to even greater levels of conflict that continue to this day.
As a result of the recommendations in the 1939 White Paper, British policy
during the war restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, which had been a flashpoint
during the 1920s and throughout the 1930s. Regardless, Zionists, despite their
differences with the British over immigration and other issues, pragmatically sided
with Britain in its struggle against Nazi Germany. In 1939 just before the war broke
out, David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency in
Palestine, stated the Zionist position this way: “We shall fight the war against Hitler
as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were
no war.”
Thousands of Palestinian Jews served in British-backed military units in Europe
and in the Middle East, and the Jewish economy of Palestine rapidly industrialized to
produce weapons and transport gear and other material necessary for the war against
Germany. This militarization proved invaluable for the Zionist cause after the war in
terms of pressuring Britain and later when the new state of Israel found itself at war
with the Arabs. Meanwhile, some Palestinian Arab leaders, notably the exiled mufti of
Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, actively sided with Germany as a way of opposing
Britain, while a small number of Arabs aided the British war effort.
In the late stages of the war, the British government in Palestine announced long-
term economic plans that the Zionists perceived as favoring the Arabs. This led to
renewed tensions and conflict, including violence against the government by Jewish guer-
rilla groups. In August 1944, LEHI—also known as the Stern Gang, after its founder
Avraham Stern—tried but failed to assassinate Sir Harold MacMichael, the British high
commissioner in Palestine. Three months later, however, the group succeeded in assas-
sinating Lord Moyne, the senior British official in Egypt. The attack damaged residual
British support for Zionism, including that of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who
for more than two decades had been a key Zionist backer in London.
The unexpected electoral defeat of Churchill immediately after the war, in July
1945, brought a new Labor government to power in Britain, headed by Clement
Attlee, who claimed to be committed to the Zionist program in Palestine. Once again,
however, broader British concerns—maintaining access to the oil reserves that it had
developed in the region—played a more decisive role in London’s policymaking than
did loyalty to the Zionists’ enterprise. For the British, maintaining access to oil also
meant having good relations with Arabs. After carrying out a study of the Palestine
issue in late 1945, the Labor government decided on a policy of sticking with the sta-
tus quo, including admitting only a small quota of Jewish immigrants to Palestine
while deferring judgment on its political future.
56 ARABS AND ISRAELIS