Palestine: Statement of Policy. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of His Majesty May 1939 [The “MacDonald White Paper”]

The White Paper of May 1939, infamously noting: “His Majesty’s Government…now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State” (p. 4). To achieve a perceived even balance between Jewish and Arab interests in Palestine, the British Government curtailed Jewish immigration and prohibited any further transfer of Arab land to Jews. To expand the Jewish National Home indefinitely, believed the Mandatory Government, would result in “rule by force, “ and thus they declared over the subsequent five years, immigration would be limited to no more than 75,000 Jews. This on the very onset of the Holocaust of European Jewry, British immigration restrictions proposed and subsequently implemented by way of this Government White Paper resulted in the denial of refuge in Palestine to untold thousands of Jews fleeing certain destruction following the rise of Hitlerism in Germany. See: EJ, IX, cols. 343-4.