188 A Short History of the Middle East
supporting. They therefore suggested a scheme of economic
federalism, by which the Mandatory would determine the fiscal
policy for Arab and Jewish areas which would be otherwise
autonomous. The British government then invited representatives
of the Jewish and Arab communities and of the neighbouring Arab
states, who had shown themselves increasingly concerned in the
Palestine question in the past two years, to a Round-Table Con-
ference in London early in 1939. Both parties rejected new British
proposals, and the government was eventually left to announce a
new policy in May 193 9, when Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia
and the war-clouds were visible even to the most complacent eye.
The 1939 White Paper proposed to create an independent Pales-
tinian state in treaty relations with Britain at the end often years.
75,000 Jewish immigrants were to be admitted in the first five
years, after which further immigration was to be dependent on
Arab consent. The High Commissioner would have powers to
regulate or prohibit the transfer of land. The Paper 'declared un-
equivocally that it was not part of Government's policy that
Palestine should become a Jewish State, regarding it as contrary to
their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate'.
The Zionists furiously condemned the White Paper as an out-
rageous breach of faith, claiming that it denied them the right to
reconstitute their National Home in Palestine. Since its publication
their vituperation of the Paper has never lessened.1 They have
never acknowledged how essential it was for Britain at this time to
end the conflict with the Arabs of Palestine, and avert one with
those of the neighbouring countries, in view of the impending
World War.
The British parliament received the White Paper with little
enthusiasm. The Labour opposition naturally opposed it whole-
heartedly, and it was also strongly attacked by such strong im-
perialists as Churchill and Amery, presumably because they re-
garded a strong Jewish community as a better ally than the fickle
Arabs.
In June the seven members of the Permanent Mandates Com-
mission reported unanimously to the League Council that the
1 Gershon Agronsky, the so-called moderate editor of the Palestine Post
expressed the hope that the report of the Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry of 1946 would 'roll away the perfidy of the monstrous White Paper, a
creature of funk spawned by a government dominated by a passion for appease-
ment*, (Palestine Post, 2 May, 1946),