The British Mandate in Palestine: The Strange Case of the 1930 White Paper

Abstract

After the “Wailing Wall” riots and pogroms that swept Palestine in August 1929, a British Commission of Inquiry reported that the Zionist project in Palestine could not proceed without encroaching upon the rights of the Palestinians, creating a class of landless Arabs. The minority Labour government endorsed these conclusions, in its White Paper of October 1930. But in a period of severe economic crisis, with Britain fearful of the Zionist lobby in the United States, and dependent upon Zionist finance to maintain its rule over Palestine, the government retreated from its own policy, in unique constitutional circumstances.