1930s: The British Mandate over Palestine
1931: There are 174,610 Jews living in Palestine in 1931.
Mohmsen Mohammed Saleh: 483,000 Jews migrated to Palestine during the British Mandate period and by 1948 they were 646,000 (31.7% of the population) and controlled 6% of the land, holding 291 settlements.
All the land the Jews purchased was sold by Arabs or Ottomans. Every large landowner knew he was making his tenants, the long-term clients of his family, landless. The fellaheen had already been steadily losing "their" land due to debt, drought and poor farming practices. The patron-tenant relationship was an exploitative, one-way power relationship. It was profitable for the effendi class to sell land to the Zionists at inflated prices and use the funds to finance their lavish urban lifestyles, pay off existing debt and invest in more productive assets, investments that generated more wealth than could be gouged out of the peasants. Landless peasants also supplied cheap wage labour for commercial agriculture such as orange groves.
The notables encouraged mobs or riots or 'uprisings' attacks on Jews through their control of the ulema but provided no real support. The violence caused the British to respond with commissions of investigation but curtailing of immigration or landsales was not implemented due to Zionist political lobbying.
The British government responded to the massacres of 1929 with a Commission of Enquiry.
1930 Hope-Simpson Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development
London dispatched a delegation to investigate. Released in October 1930, the Hope Simpson report stated there was scarcely any land left for Jews to buy and without improvements in Arab farming methods, further Jewish purchases could create a serious landlessness crisis in the Arab peasantry. The British Government issued the Passfield White Paper on October 20, 1930. It severely restricted Jewish immigration and blamed Jewish land purchases for Arab landlessness and the Histradut "Jewish-only" labor policy for poor Arab economic development. The report stated the land could not support a larger population. There are now 15 million people living in "Palestine." Lord Passfield was the (in)famous Socialist Sidney Webb.
The Ramsey MacDonald Black Letter of 13th February 1931
The White Paper was issued by the Colonial Office. Intense Jewish lobbying of British politicians - who actually make the decisions that the Colonial Office has to obey - using influential figures like Churchill, Herbert Samuel, and Lloyd George pressured Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's politically vulnerable first Labour prime minister. In February 1931 MacDonald released the text of the "Black Letter" to Weizmann. The government did not intend to prohibit further land sales and large-scale immigration could continue. The Mandate's commitments were "solemn international obligations," and Jewish settlement was the Mandate's "primary purpose."
Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope was appointed and Commander-in-Chief for Palestine and TransJordan on November 20, 1931. He was a member of the British upper class, born to bear the White Man's Burden, a duty he took on willingly and with the best of intentions. He appeared to have no prejudices against Jews, took the Balfour Declaration as a binding commitment and was dedicated to improving the lot of the Arab peasants, the fellaheen. A commitment and dedication like those could destroy a lesser man and, indeed, his health suffered. He retired in 1938.
On January 30, 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. On March 31 the Mufti arranged a meeting in the German Consulate:
"Today the mufti told me that Muslims inside and outside of Palestine greet the new regime in Germany, and hope for the spread of Fascist and anti-democratic state authority to other lands," the consul cabled Berlin, and Amin was ready to promote any anti-Jewish boycotts the Nazis may lead.
Several weeks later the consul again met the mufti and other Palestinian notables, this time at the desert shrine at Nebi Musa. They proclaimed their admiration for the new Germany and sympathy for Hitler's anti-Jewish measures. They asked one thing: that the government do all it could to keep Jews from Palestine. - PALESTINE 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict - Oren Kessler
In 1933 30,000 legal immigrant Jews arrived with another 22,000 illegally. In October, the notables called for a rally and a strike. The wrath of the Palestinian Arab Nation unexpectably struck the British, not the Jews. Protesters swinging clubs and throwing stones discovered that the British would not tolerate such actions against themselves. The strike lasted a week and 26 Arabs were killed and 200 wounded. This time, there was no Commission of Enquiry.
Peel Commission Report 1937 on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development
In secret testimony to the Peel Commission in 1937, the former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George strongly defended the Mandate policy:
'The Palestinian Arabs fought for Turkish rule,' he emphasised, disregarding the 2,000 who had joined the British-sponsored anti-Ottoman revolt led by Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, and his son Feisal. Through Mark Sykes (of Sykes-Picot fame) and T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia'), he said, Britain informed Hussein and Feisal of the planned Declaration.[11]
'We could not get in touch with the Palestinian Arabs as they were fighting against us. The Arab leaders did not offer any objections, so long as the rights of the Arabs were respected,' Lloyd George explained. 'There was a twofold undertaking given to them, that the establishment of a Jewish National Home would not in any way, firstly, affect the civil or religious rights of the general population of Palestine; secondly, would not diminish the general prosperity of that population. Those were the only pledges we gave to the Arabs.'
The ex-premier challenged any critic of Britain's Palestine policy to point to an instance in which non-Jewish civil or religious rights had been compromised, and he marshalled statistics on revenue, exports, wages, land prices, public health and a half-dozen other indicators of the land's newfound prosperity. 'There can be no doubt that the Arab population of Palestine has profited enormously by the Zionist enterprise.'[12]
At the end of the British Mandate period only 25% of the land was registered for private ownership
- 12% of the land was owned by Palestinian Arabs
- 7.5% of the land was owned by Jews
Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times - Lorenzo Kemal
Arab nationalists express their utmost gratitude to Your Excellency [Adolf Hitler] for having brought up the issue of Palestine on many occasions. […] I take this opportunity to delegate my Private Secretary to the German Government in order that, in the name of the largest and strongest Arab organization and in my name, he can begin the negotiations required for sincere, loyal cooperation in all fields.3
The connivance of Hajj Amin with Nazism should be read in an anti-Zionist perspective, infused with anti-Semitic prejudices (he did not hesitate to cite on several occasions The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and anti-British stands. His intransigence towards Jews had deep roots.
3. Al-Husayni to Hitler, 20 Jan. 1941. The following year the Mufti congratulated the 'Führer' for his victories in North Africa, speaking on behalf of the entire Arab world: 'Das arabische Volk wird daher an Ihrer Seite gegen den gemeinsamen Feind bis [zum] endgültigen Sieg weiterka¨mpfen [The Arab people will continue to fight by his side against the common enemy until the final victory]." CZA L35/59-4. Berlin, 4 July 1942. The position of Amin al-Husayni is particularly problematic considering that he wrote in his private diary the intentions outlined by Hitler during a meeting that they held on 21 November 1941: 'The objectives of my fight', Hitler explained, 'are clear. Primarily, I am fighting the Jews without respite […] I am resolved to find a solution for the Jewish problem, progressing step by step without cessation.' JMA - Box 7005 - Mishpacha Husayni ('Husayni Family').
A History of the Arab Peoples - Albert Hourani
By the middle 1930s, it was becoming more difficult for Britain to maintain a balance. The coming to power of the Nazis in Germany increased pressure from the Jewish community and their supporters in England to permit larger immigration; and immigration in its turn was changing the balance of population and power in Palestine. In 1936 the opposition of the Arabs began to take the form of armed insurrection. Political leadership lay with an association of urban notables, with Amin al-Husayni, mufti of Jerusalem, as the dominant figure, but a popular military leadership was beginning to appear, and the movement was having repercussions in surrounding Arab countries, at a moment when the threat to British interests from Italy and Germany made it desirable for Britain to have good relations with the Arab states. Faced with this situation, the British government made two attempts to resolve it. In 1937 a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states was put forward after an inquiry by a Royal Commission (the Peel Commission); this was acceptable to the Zionists in principle, but not to the Arabs. In 1939, a White Paper provided for the ultimate establishment of a government with an Arab majority, and limitations on Jewish immigration and purchase of land. This would have been acceptable to the Arabs with some changes ….
George Rendel was a two-decade veteran of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service. In 1937 he and his wife journeyed through Palestine and into Saudi Arabia where he was particularly impressed by Ibn Saud who showed Rendel and his wife great courtesy. A devout Roman Catholic anti-semite, Rendel believed that Britain's future lay with the king and with the Arab and Islamic civilization he embodied. Its endorsement of Zionism had been a profound blunder.65