History Commons^™

Towards Nakba: The Failure Of The British Mandate Of Palestine, 1922-1939, Nicholas Ensley Mitchell

LSU Master's Theses

In 1922, with the issuance of the Churchill White Paper, the British government committed itself to assuming the responsibilities of the Balfour Declaration and create a bi-national state in the Mandated territory of Palestine. By 1939, the British, represented by the Mandatory Authority, found themselves trapped between a Palestinian-based Zionist movement, itself torn between two competing factions, and a Palestinian Arab nationalist movement whose leadership had collapsed. The internal split between Revisionist Zionism under Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Mainstream Zionism under Chaim Weizmann and, later, David Ben-Gurion prevented the British government from negotiating with a cohesive Zionist organization. The collapse of …