Before they were Israeli, the Jewish community of Palestine – the Yishuv – had been Britain’s close junior partner. A dispute over Britain’s restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine began in 1939, but was set aside during the struggle to defeat Hitler.
In a white paper that year, the British government declared the “Jewish National Home”, as promised in its 1917 Balfour Declaration, as a settled policy. It planned to replace direct rule with a democratic government for all. These plans never matured, because of the war and because of both Palestinian and Zionist resistance to them.
