The problem of the Jewish state and the pres-
sure of would-be Jewish settlers appeared to be
easing in the 1920s. After an initial influx of Jews,
immigration slackened. In 1927 more Jews actu-
ally left Palestine than entered, and in 1928 the
net increase was only ten. However, Zionists and
Arabs still wanted assurance about the future. The
British Labour government elected in 1929, buf-
feted by Zionist demands for a coherently defined
policy, did not follow a steady course: in 1930
promises were made to halt Jewish immigration
altogether; then, in 1931, it was allowed to con-
tinue. This tendency to veer first one way and
then the other only encouraged more violence in
Palestine and increased the pressure on London
from both sides in the struggle to influence
British policy.
It was Hitler’s persecution of the Jews in
Germany, and the rest of the world’s rejection of
large-scale Jewish immigration, however, that
more than anything transformed the Palestine
question in the 1930s and after the Second World
War. All of a sudden there were hundreds of
thousands of Jews who wished to escape the
Reich in addition to those leaving Poland and
central Europe. The fate of the Jews of contin-
ental Europe appeared to prove the Zionist case
that the Jews would always be maltreated and so
had to possess a country of their own. Before
1933 only a minority of German Jews had sup-
ported Zionism though prominent men were
among them. The great migratory wave of Jews
from the late nineteenth century onwards moved
out of Russia and Romania west to Germany,
France, Britain and, above all, the US. Hitler’s
violent persecution converted more Jews in the
1930s than Herzl had done. But from 1936
onwards conversion to Zionism was less import-
ant a factor in the pressure to enter Palestine than
the closing of the doors of the European coun-
tries and the US to large-scale immigration of the
increasingly desperate German and, later,
Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews who had fallen
under Nazi German rule, in addition to the con-
tinued emigration from central Europe. Their
fellow Jews in Palestine were willing to provide
refuge and to share their possessions; Jews in
other countries were willing to provide financial
aid to enable their persecuted co-religionists to
emigrate; the Germans wanted to force them out
of the expanding Reich, yet the British manda-
tory authority in Palestine, fearing Arab reactions,
barred the way to any but controlled immigra-
tion. Nevertheless, between 1932 and 1936 the
quotas were sufficiently large for the Jews who
wished to leave Germany and to settle in Palestine
to be able to do so, encouraged by the National
Socialists, who for a time agreed to the transfer
of a proportion of Jewish property. Emigration
from Germany soared, reaching a peak of 62,000
in 1935 alone.
The surge of Jews lay at the root of Arab fears.
If the Jews gained a majority in Palestine they
would not be satisfied with a Jewish Home in
Palestine, but would demand a sovereign Jewish
state, to which the Arabs, still in a majority,
would be subjected. In just two decades from
1919 to 1939, the Jewish population of Palestine
had increased sevenfold, while the Arab popula-
tion had not quite doubled. The trend was all too
clear. With financial help from abroad, the Jews
purchased land from absentee Arab landlords and
found work for their co-religionists. The dis-
placed Arab tenants and workers were aroused to
religious fanaticism and hatred of the Jews by
Arab politicians led by the Mufti of Jerusalem,
Haj Amin. Haj Amin, a nationalist, was corrupt
and totally unscrupulous in dealing with Arab op-
position to his leadership; murder of Arab oppo-
nents and terror became an unstated part of his
political programme. Yet he also enjoyed genu-
ine large-scale backing from Palestinian Arabs
fearful of the spectre of a Zionist-dominated
Palestine.
The Arab nationalist movement was implacably
hostile to any Jewish development or to Jewish–
Arab collaboration. The Mufti mobilised the
1
THE MIDDLE EAST BETWEEN TWO WORLD WARS, 1919–45 429
Population of Palestine, 1880–1939
Jews Arabs
1880 24,000 475,000
1919 60,000 640,000
1931 177,000 859,000
1939 429,000 1,010,000
