ABSTRACT
World War Two brought about the demise of the old European colonial empires. France and Italy had been defeated, and victorious Britain was debilitated and bankrupt. The performance of the British economy and Britain's status as the greatest trading and investing power had been in decline since the beginning of the twentieth century. There were a number of reasons why the British decided to give up the Palestine mandate. But none was more significant than their failure to reach an agreement with the Americans on a settlement of the Arab-Zionist conflict. One cause for British hope was that temporarily, the moderates within the Jewish Agency Weizmann and Nahum Goldmann were left in charge of negotiations Although the British and the Americans had identical strategic interests in the Middle East, and they co-ordinate their planning for a possible future conflict with the Soviet Union, the American establishment was divided within itself over the Palestine question.
