ABSTRACT
As we saw in Chapter Five, Arabs and Zionists had become more entrenched in their positions under the combined impact of the White Paper and the World War. The failure of the Zionists and Philby to produce a comprehensive Middle East settlement through Ibn Sa'ud during World War II merely confirmed the growing tendency among both Arabs and Zionists to look upon the Powers, and not upon direct dealings with each other, as die key to the future of Palestine. 1 The Arabs maintained their claim that the Palestinians should exercise their natural right to independence, which included the right of the Arab majority there to prevent the Jews from becoming more numerous through further immigration. There were, they argued, already enough Jews in Palestine, whom they were prepared to recognise and treat as an ordinary - but not as an "extraordinary" - minority. As Nuri as-Sa'id described it, there were only two possible formulae for a post-war Palestine settlement: either (a) the Jews agree to live in Palestine as a minority, or (b) the Powers would impose a solution favourable to the Arabs. 2
