Colony: The Opposition of Palestine’s Successors

The British hoped to establish self-governing institutions, as required by the mandate but their proposals for these institutions were opposed by the Arabs, so in turn, none were created. The Arabs feared that the British were handing Palestine over to the Zionists by allowing too many Jews to immigrate to Palestine. On several occasions many Arab riots and movements were put into action to protest British policies and Zionist movements. (7) In the early 1930’s many Jewish refugees arrived to Palestine from Nazi Germany and Poland. In 1939, the British began to drastically limit Jewish immigration and land purchases for the next five years and any Jewish immigration after that would depend on Arab approval. (8) Palestine’s opposing successors are the main cause of Palestine’s poor amount of misfortune throughout the history of their struggle for independence.

When World War II broke out in September of 1939, Zionist and British policies came into direct conflict. Throughout the war Zionists sought with growing urgency to increase Jewish immigration to Palestine, but the British only sought to prevent it. The British regarded it as illegal and a threat to the stability of a region essential to the war effort. Because of these opposing British efforts, Ben-Gurion declared on behalf of the Jewish Agency: “We shall fight [beside Great Britain] in this war as if there was no White Paper and we shall fight the White Paper as if there was no war.” (9) The White Paper is an agreement that the British government issued and it stated that the Jewish national home should be established within an independent Palestinian state.

During the aftermath of World War II, the Zionists used force on the British to stop them from limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine. This was because the Zionists wanted the British to allow the several hundred thousand Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to immigrate into Palestine. (10) In 1947 the UN General Assembly adopted the plan to have Palestine divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state, and for Jerusalem to be put under international control. The Jews accepted the UN’s decision but the Arabs did not and fighting broke out immediately. (11)

After about two years of fighting in the May of 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independence of the state of Israel, and the British withdrew from Palestine. But the next day, the neighboring Arab nations attacked Israel and when the fighting finally stopped in 1949, Israel held territories beyond the boundaries set by the UN. (12) But as long as the Palestinians continue to be held by back by my successful nations, they will never be able to achieve the independence they are seeking.