The Balfour Declaration by Bernard Regan

Author:Bernard Regan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2017-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

THE PALESTINIAN DELEGATION, CHURCHILL’S WHITE PAPER AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

In August 1921, the delegation sent by the Fourth Congress met with Churchill in London. He confirmed at the meeting that the British were not prepared to change their stance and that they intended to implement the Mandate on the basis of their interpretation of the Balfour Declaration.101 In the eyes of Churchill, that had been resolved and was not open for negotiation. However, the British persuaded the delegation to remain in London on the pretext that the discussions would be beneficial.102 A series of meetings took place but no progress was made on any substantive question. At a dinner on 25 November, Churchill proposed that the delegation meet with Chaim Weizmann. Despite all of this they detected no significant change in British attitudes. In February 1922, Churchill attempted to entice the delegation into supporting his proposal for a ‘new constitution’ for Palestine, but they rejected it as another attempt to persuade them to accept the terms of the Balfour Declaration.

On 3 June 1922, whilst the delegation was still in London, Winston Churchill published his White Paper on Palestine. The paper – which was in fact drafted by Samuel and, prior to the Cabinet meeting, approved by the Zionist Organisation – reiterated the government’s commitment to the Balfour Declaration, but expanded on a number of points.103 Churchill expressed the view that the British government regarded the proposal that ‘Palestine is to become “as Jewish as England is English” … as impracticable’ and that it had ‘no such aim in view’. He asserted that ‘the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian … [and that] immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals’.104 This formula of the limit of immigration being contingent on the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine became the recurrent refrain of the British whenever they felt obliged to reassure the Palestinian community that they were not going to become a minority in the country. It explicitly eschewed the notion of Palestinian self-determination and asserted British control over immigration which became, in the eyes of the Palestinians, the litmus test of British recognition of their national rights.

Whilst the delegation was in a hotel in London, the Council of the League of Nations held a series of private and public meetings in St James’s Palace. The Council had been convened to agree the Mandates for Palestine and Syria. Delays had been caused by the Italian government’s concerns about aspects of the French Mandate in Syria. Monsignor Ceretti, the Papal Nuncio in Paris, arrived in London to make representations to Council members on behalf of the Vatican, about the management of the Holy Places in Jerusalem.105 According to Balfour, delays were also caused by the intervention of the USA, which although not a member of the League of Nations, was clearly influential in the eyes of the British.

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