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Britain's new policy vis-a-vis Palestine on the eve of the war in Europe was clearly aimed at appeasing the Arabs. Convinced that for the Arabs, Jewish immigration formed the crux of the Palestine problem, Britain decided in 1939 to limit drastically the scope of this immigration. The 1936-39 Palestine revolt against the British Mandate was a direct outcome of the dramatic increase in Jewish immigration during the first three years of Adolf Hitler's reign. From 1933 to 1936, more than 130,000 Jews arrived in Palestine. During this period the Yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine, grew by about 80 per cent, the high point for immigration coming in 1935, when 62,000 persons entered Palestine. The decision of the Conservative Government to retreat from its support for partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states and from its support for Zionism was manifested in the White Paper of May 1939. Among other provisions, this document set an immigration quota of 75,000 Jews for five years, after which further immigration would be conditional upon Arab consent.1
At the end of the war, the Mandatory Government had remaining in its possession 10,938 immigration certificates of the 75,000 that had been allotted by the White Paper. Although the five-year period fixed in the White Paper ended in 1944, Whitehall decided to extend the date until the quota was filled. The Zionists rejected the British offer of 1,500 visas per month, to be charged against the remaining White Paper certificates, and demanded that 100,000 Jewish displaced persons (DP) be allowed to enter Palestine. Determined to preserve its standing in the Middle East, the new Labour Government, like its predecessor, the wartime coalition, attached considerable importance to mollifying the Arabs on the matter of Jewish immigration. For their part, the Zionists tried to undermine Britain's immigration policy by sending to Palestine tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, as the British called them, from different ports in Europe and by mobilizing American pressure to force London to open the gates of Palestine to the Jewish DPs. This article will examine British policy on Jewish immigration, particularly London's struggle against the illegal immigration, in light of both Arab and Zionist pressures.
After the end of the Second World War, the British Cabinet puzzled over...