ABSTRACT
The idea of partitioning Palestine in return for sovereignty was not novel to the World Zionist Organization and its leadership. Partition proposals had been broached since the 1920s by personages within the Zionist Organization. Thus, for example, Avigdor Jacobson, who had served since 1925 as the Zionist Executive's representative at the League of Nations and co-ordinated political activities in France and Italy, formulated during the years 1929–31 a series of models for solving the Palestine problem, and in 1931 arrived at the conclusion that the sole solution was the establishment of a sovereign Jewish State in part of Palestine. Haim Arlozoroff, who from 1931–33 headed the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, raised the proposal in 1931. Two years later, Mussolini, in conversation with Weizmann, raised the partition proposal but the latter refused to consider it as an operative plan. Generally, up to the beginning of 1937, Zionist official policy opposed any form of partition or cantonization. For this reason, Jacobson was forbidden to make reference to his plan in his diplomatic contacts. The official view of the Zionist leadership at the close of 1936 was that a solution of the Palestine problem should be reached within a framework of parity, i.e. within a framework providing Jewish—Arab equality in rule over Palestine, although this did not constitute a strategic retreat from the Zionist goal of a Jewish State. 1
