ABSTRACT
During the decade between 1929 and 1939, all the premises that had guided the 1923 decision to retain the Palestine mandate were superseded by more considerations. The British garrison needed substantial reinforcements and the Palestine police force had to be reorganized. The Colonial Office officials washed their hands of the Palestine problem. MacDonald learned that both the Conservative opposition and his parliamentary allies, the Liberals, would oppose the new policy. The second factor was the deep economic depression that spread from the United States to Britain. At a meeting, Laski had warned MacDonald of the harm that his Palestine policy was doing to Anglo-American relations. But MacDonald rebuffed all his entreaties to mitigate the new policy. The historic significance of Weizmann's achievement in providing a window of opportunity for Zionist immigration into Palestine during the early years of the rise of Nazism was not appreciated by the other Zionist parties at the time.
