But the British withdrew the idea in 1938. The winds of war were blowing in Europe and there was a need to placate the Arabs. The Arabs were a much more useful ally for the British than the Jews, who only had their problems to offer. In early 1939, with no agreement in sight between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine, and as the Arab rebellion was grinding to an end, the British convened a conference in London at the Palace of St. James, and therefore known as the St. James Conference, in which the Jews and the Arabs deliberated for weeks on end with no conclusion. At the end of which, the British issued a white paper of their own, that is, a British statement of policy. And essentially, this British statement of policy from May 1939, the White Paper of May 1939, was the final British abandonment of support for the Zionist idea. The White Paper included three main points. One was that Jewish immigration to Palestine would be restricted to 75,000 in the five years ahead, 15,000 a year. Jewish immigration would only be able to continue thereafter, that is, from 1944 onwards with Arab consent. But Arab consent for Jewish immigration would mean, in fact, that there would be no more Jewish immigration to Palestine. Land sales were also restricted to those areas where the Jews were already predominant. And Palestine was to become independent in ten years' time. What that meant was that if Jewish immigration would only continue at 15,000 a year until 1944, and Palestine would become independent in 1949, Palestine would be an independent Arab state in which the Jews would only be a minority. That meant in practice the end of the Zionist idea. This independent state in ten years' time was possibly to be part of a greater Arab federation, so the British thought. And there would therefore be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state, but Palestine would be part of a greater Arab federation. But in such a greater Arab state, the Jewish minority would be even more inconsequential. The timing of the White Paper in May 1939 was particularly unfortunate. The Jewish plight in Europe was worsening from day to day. And as a result, the White Paper was widely condemned by the opposition in Britain and was even rejected by the League of Nations as the lack of British fulfillment of their mandate over Palestine. Britain's argument, on the other hand, was that the national home already existed. They had fulfilled their commitment completely. There were half a million Jews in Palestine. There were many Jewish settlements, a vibrant Jewish community with its political institutions and organizations. The British, so they argued, had honestly fulfilled their commitment. For the Zionists, this was a huge disappointment. This was an abandonment by the British of the Zionist enterprise. And the Arab rebellion in Palestine also presented the Zionists with a realization, that what they had ahead of them was a conflict between ideology and reality. The project as they had hoped was not one of peace but conflict. Armed conflict with the Arabs was inevitable eventually. And as a result of that realization, there were some on the Zionist side who questioned the very right of the Zionists to settle in Palestine and to continue with the project if this is what it entailed. There were those who thought that the idea of Jewish statehood should be abandoned. But for the majority of the Zionists, that was not the conclusion. And their idea was to prepare for the fight that was certainly to come. There was no choice but to face this reality. And it was the youth born in Palestine who would have to follow and execute the policy of confrontation. Active defense was the homeland's style of Jewish defense and self-help, as opposed to the Jews of the diaspora, who were more helpless in their confrontation with their enemies of the exile. The White Paper and its abandonment of the Zionist project meant that cooperation with Britain was no longer possible. And therefore, the Zionist project as one of evolution, of graduality, made no sense any more. There was no time for that. Time was running out. The predicament of the Jews in Europe was only getting worse, and British support had come to an end. It was no longer an evolutionary process that would be satisfactory, but a revolutionary process. And a revolutionary process meant that eventually there would have to be an armed confrontation with the Arabs in Palestine and perhaps the neighboring Arabs too. But war was not to be initiated. War was only to happen when all other options had been exhausted and when it was imposed by the other side. The Jews, therefore, at the end of the Arab rebellion had to prepare for partition and for possible war. Partition would not bring peace, they knew. And therefore, despite the fact that they were willing to concede on territory, they realized that this would entail confrontation anyway.
