Beschreibung:

PALESTINE -- THE CHURCHILL WHITEPAPER -- Palestine. Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation. [Cmd. 1700.] London: HMSO, 1922. 8° (246 x 152mm). 32 pp, verso of final leaf blank. (Single hole punch to margin, paper very lightly toned.) Self-wrappers, stapled as issued (staples rusting). Provenance : ?filing number in pencil to upper margin front wrapper.
PALESTINE -- THE CHURCHILL WHITEPAPER -- Palestine. Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation. [Cmd. 1700.] London: HMSO, 1922. 8° (246 x 152mm). 32 pp, verso of final leaf blank. (Single hole punch to margin, paper very lightly toned.) Self-wrappers, stapled as issued (staples rusting). Provenance : ?filing number in pencil to upper margin front wrapper. THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S INTERPRETATION OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION AS OF 1922. A fascinating correspondence between Winston Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies, and the Palestine Arab Delegation, with brief notes to and from Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organisation. The British Government's responses to the Arab Delegation's letters are thought to have been largely written by Herbert Samuel, the first High Commissioner of Palestine (1920-1925). In their letters the Delegation express their fear of mass immigration and Bolshevism, their dissatisfaction with the proposed constitution, and their desire for a new constitution for Palestine guaranteeing religious equality and the rights of minorities. Churchill's responses however make it clear that the British Government will only discuss matters on the basis of the Balfour Declaration , refusing to negotiate with the Delegation on the grounds that 'no official machinery of representation has as yet been constituted', whilst making it plain that 'His Majesty's Government have no intention of repudiating the obligations into which they have entered towards the Jewish people'.