The Arab Rulers and Palestine, 1936: The British Reaction

Abstract

At what point did the Palestine question under the British mandate step out of its limited geographical confines and become the concern of the Arab world as a whole? For the Zionists, and this must be stated categorically, the fate of the Jewish National Home was never considered as the sole responsibility of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) but rather that of the Jewish people as a whole. This was an essential, a consistent argument employed by the Zionists throughout their negotiations with successive British governments.' To the outside observer this was not at first sight apparent, for all Zionist claims on behalf of world Jewry had to be channeled through the Jewish Agency, a body officially recognized by the mandate for all negotiations with the government.2 The Palestinian Arabs had no such equivalent.3 And during the first period of the mandate, the surrounding Arab countries were too preoccupied with their own problems, especially that of achieving a more than nominal independence from the mandatory powers, to do more than throw occasional sympathetic glances in the direction of their Palestinian