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The Jerusalem Years (1935-1939) 53

Chapter 2 The Jerusalem Years (1935-1939)

2.1 Background

Since the 29th of September 1923, Palestine had been administered by the Brit- ish government in accordance with the principles contained in Article 22 of the League of Nations and the San Remo Resolution (dating from June 28, 1919 and Apr. 25, 1920, resp.). The latter incorporated the earlier 1917 text of the Bal- four Declaration, which

viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and [that His Majesty’s Government] will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object… being clear- ly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Under its aegis, until May 15, 1948, the period was designated as Mandatory Palestine, concluding with the birth of the State of Israel. When Lachmann ar- rived in Jerusalem in May of 1935, the Mandate had almost completed its twelfth year. In the Summer of 1936, the Palestine Royal Commission, i.e. the Peel Com- mission, the most comprehensive commission until then (headed by Lord Robert Peel) to settle the Jewish-Arab dispute, “had not come to ‘study’ any- thing, [but rather] to help the government divest itself of Palestine” (T. Segev, One Palestine, complete, 401). Its four-hundred page report remained

one of the most important sources for the study of the period (ibid., 402)…. The notion of population transfer, deeply rooted in Zionist ideol- ogy, was a logical outgrowth of the principle of segregation between Jews and Arabs and a reflection of the desire to ground the Jewish state in Eu- ropean, rather than Middle Eastern, culture. The Arabs’ refusal to allow the Zionist movement to establish a state with a Jewish majority in any part of Palestine also fostered thoughts of transfer, as did the Arab terror campaign (407)… Separatism remained the dominant thrust of Zionist thinking, and in the wake of the Peel Commission the Jewish Agency es- tablished committees to begin planning for the state. The partition plan

Beirut Damascus ) E T A D N A M H S I T I R B (

LEBANON SYRIA Q A R I

Akko (FRENCH MANDATE) Haifa

Nablus MEDITERRANEANTel Aviv SEA Amman Jerusalem

Gaza

PALESTINE Beersheba TRANSJORDAN

(BRITISH MANDATE)

Ma’an EGYPT Map 5 The British Mandate (territorial Akaba boundary) (taken from M. Avi-Yona, “Boundaries”, 21

had given the Zionist dream a very practical dimension in the short and foreseeable range… But while the Zionists were busy planning, the Brit- ish reneged on their proposal. By 1938, [their] partition plan had sunk into oblivion…. and the idea of a population transfer proposal had been shelved even earlier (413)…. Inevitably the Commission reached the con- clusion that partition could not be implemented because the Jews and Arabs did not want it … From the outbreak of the Arab rebellion [Sept. 1937]1 the British no longer occupied Palestine, because they thought it was the right thing to do; [but] stayed even though they knew they should be home (414).

As early as November 1931, the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem had achieved remarkable progress due to their increased immigration and collective con- cern for urban development. Of a total Palestinian population of 1,035,82,2 Je- rusalem alone counted 90,503 inhabitants, among whom the Jews comprised 57% (i.e., 51,222 of the city’s dwellers), surpassing their Arab Muslim (19,894 = 21%) and Christian (19,335 = 21%) neighbors. Jerusalem served as Palestine’s administrative, political, religious, and educational center, whose economy ba- sically drew from these divisions. It was also the residence of the retiring High Commissioners Sir John Chancellor (serving from Dec. 6, 1928 to Nov. 1, 1931)

1 The earlier revolts began in Jaffa, in April of 1936, as terrorist attacks against the Jews, followed by intermittent general strikes in opposition to the successive waves of Jewish immigration and land purchases, and continued up to May of 1939 as a nationalist uprising against the British Mandate administration, which was brutally suppressed. 2 A. Zaiman, “Census of Palestine, 1931”, 660.