Occupation. Is not nice
Peace. But not at any price
For Occupation. Is not nice
but a blight upon the peoples soul
and imposition far from droll
‘Palestine Mandate Power’ Britain’s White Paper of 1939 (a policy paper issued by the government under Neville Chamberlain) was responsive to the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt.
The paper called for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” within an independent Palestinian state within 10 years but definitively rejected the idea of the creation of a Jewish state (as being contrary to the interest and to past promise made to the peoples-as-a-whole). The paper also limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for the next 5 years – ruling that beyond that date, any such immigration levels were to be determined by the Arab majority.
On Sept. 22, 1947, the US Department of State’s ‘Middle East Office’ Loy Henderson strongly warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall that partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was not workable and would lead to untold troubles in the future. (Henderson informed Marshall that his views were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.”)