You keep forgetting that the Arab powers were behind the intransigence of the Palestinian Arabs, and vowed military support for their cause, which promise they kept in '48. Those are the Arabs I am referring to. So you are creating a strawman, not answering my point.
The British Foreign Office did, in fact, limit Jewish immigration in deference to Arab concerns at a critical time in the life of European Jewry-- as they were trying to escape the Nazis, regardless of what Churchill said in 1921.
This open-ended commitment to the Zionist cause was modified by the British almost from the beginning. In 1922, the Churchill White Paper confirmed the right of Jewish immigration but stipulated that this should not exceed the economic absorptive capacity of the country. Then, in the greatest act of treachery against the Palestine Mandate, the British split the Mandate with all land east of the Jordan River going into an entity called Transjordan, constituting almost 80 percent of the original Mandate. Jewish immigration and Jewish land ownership were forbidden in Transjordan. But that didn't satisfy the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabist British. Even with the unbalanced division in their favor, the Arabs were uneasy with the Mandate's recognition of the Balfour Declaration -- they were adamantly opposed to any Jewish homeland in Palestine.
After Arab rioting in 1929, the Shaw Commission called for a re-examination of immigration policy and the establishment of a scientific inquiry into land usage and potential, the Hope-Simpson Commission. In 1936, the Arabs again staged a revolt in Palestine with stoppage of Jewish immigration as one of their principal demands. In response to the Arab unrest, the British Peel Commission recommended freezing immigration at 12,000 per year for five years and, now viewing Jewish-Arab cooperation as unworkable, also recommended partition. More Arab violence led to the White Paper of 1939 that made concessions to the Arabs on a wide range of issues. The British not only introduced severe restrictions on Jewish immigration (a total of 75,000 to be allowed over the next five years), and forbade land sales to Jews in most areas, but also put pressure on the German, Greek, Yugoslav, Bulgarian and Turkish Governments not to allow "illegal" immigrants into Palestine.
In the late 1930's, when the Jews of Germany and Austria were in great danger, Palestine was closed to them. But under the British rule, it was not closed to thousands of illegal Arab immigrants who continued to pour into Palestine from other parts of the Middle East, attracted by the superior economic conditions created by the Zionists. No wonder Churchill could point out in 1939:
Far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up (increase) the Jewish population.
The immigration restrictions were tantamount to a death sentence for countless European Jews. Even after the Holocaust became well-known, Britain's restrictive policy remained in effect in Palestine, and the British administration in Palestine attempted to enforce it, continuing until the end of the Mandate period in 1948....
...throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope-Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan. Syria and North Africa had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. At the same time that the British slammed the gates on Jews, they permitted or ignored massive illegal immigration into Western Palestine from Arab countries. As noted above, in 1939 Winston Churchill observed, "... far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied ..." How could the British claim that the Zionist settlers were the problem when Arab immigration continued unchecked?
The answer can only be that the British administration was far more sensitive to the Arab's claims than to those of the Jews. In 1939, as World War II opened in Europe, the British needed to coax the Arabs into submissiveness so that the Suez Canal could be maintained in relative tranquility.
During the Struma incident, the British did not want to allow the refugees into Palestine because they were afraid that many more such shiploads of refugees would follow. Also, some British government officials used the often cited excuse against refugees and emigrants: there could be an enemy spy among the refugees.
Then there was oil. Palestine had no oil, but neighboring Arab states were the world's newest and lowest cost suppliers. Oil was first discovered in Iran, and by 1911 a British concern, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), was producing oil from there. The British found oil in Iraq after World War I. In 1932 Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) discovered oil in commercial quantities in Bahrain. Socal then obtained a concession in Saudi Arabia in 1933 and discovered oil in commercial quantities in 1938.
A flurry of oil exploration activity occurred in the gulf in the 1930s with the United States and Britain competing with one another for oil concessions. One reason for the increased activity was that in 1932 the new Iranian government of Reza Shah Pahlavi revoked APOC's concession. Although the Shah and the British later agreed on new terms, the threat of losing Iranian oil convinced the British in particular that they must find other sources. The small states of the Persian Gulf were a natural place to look. Geological conditions were similar to those in Iran, and, because of treaties signed between 1820 and 1920, the British had substantial influence and could restrict foreign access.
Since the British relied on the Arab (or Arab-supporting) regimes of the Middle East, a pro-Arab policy in Palestine served them best to protect rights to Arab oil, the Suez canal, and British interests in India and beyond.
palestinefacts.org
Sorry, I assumed that someone supposedly as well- versed as you knew all of this...... |
