Jabotinsky's parity plan for Palestine

Abstract

One of the various solutions which had been repeatedly proposed for the Palestine problem during Mandatory times was that of political parity. Parity meant that irrespective of the relative numerical strength of the two nations, the Jews and the Arabs, the government of the country (Cabinet, Parliament, Administration, etc.) should be run on a fifty-fifty basis. The earliest published parity proposal for Palestine was made at a Conference of the Achdut Ha'Avoda party at Ein-Charod in 1924 by Shlomo Kaplansky.' Kaplansky proposed the setting up of a house of representatives which would be based on proportional representation, and a senate in which the principle of parity would be established. The idea went through various metamorphoses. It was advocated by Dr. Chaim Weizmann in the years 1930-37 and half heartedly supported by the Mapai party in the same years. The British Colonial Office seriously considered it in connection with the proposed Legislative Council in the years 1931-35. However, when it was raised at the London Round Table Conference in February-March 1939 as one of six proposals made by the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, it was rejected out of hand by the Arab delegation. After the Round Table Conference parity remained a proposal which was raised only by the stubborn bi-nationalists within the Jewish community of Palestine.2 This paper proposes to discuss a hitherto unpublished parity plan for Palestine which was suggested by Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky at the end of 1922. One might wonder how the most extreme Zionist, as far as national claims went, he who had called for the conquest of Palestine by the Jews during the First World War and was later expelled from it by the British Administration, should have advocated an idea which was commonly associated with the bi-nationalists the most moderate Zionists. Neither Jabotinsky's own autobiography3 nor his elaborate biography by Joseph B. Schechtman4 mentions this plan and the events which led to it. All the published accounts of Zionist development during this period tell us of Jabotinsky's disenchantment with both Sir Herbert Samuel, the Jewish High Commissioner to Palestine, and to a lesser extent with Dr. Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organisation. The former he accused of being the initiator of the Churchill White Paper of June 1922, which was seen by most Zionists as a whittling down of the