The Arabs Attack, the British Retreat, and the Jews Keep Building, 1918-1939

In response to growing Jewish immigration, land purchases, and economic expansion, the Arabs of Palestine engaged in mounting violence in 1920-21, 1929, and 1936-1939. In each case, Great Britain responded by retreating from its promise to facilitate a Jewish national home. In the first two cases, Zionist counter-pressure, led by Chaim Weizmann, succeeded in getting Britain to return to its commitments, but in 1939 Britain, seeking to appease the Arabs on the eve of World War Two, issued a White Paper effectively reneging on the Balfour Declaration. The Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine, buttressed by waves of immigration driven by escalating anti-Semitism in Europe, used these two decades of British rule to establish the foundations of a Jewish state. This episode describes the escalating Arab violence, the evolution of British appeasement, and the efforts of the Jews to reverse the British retreat and to build economic, social, and political institutions that could serve as the nucleus for their state.