The Road Not Taken to a Federal Bi-National State: The Committee for the Question of Jewish-Arab Relations 1939-42

• Published in: Palestine-Israel journal of politics, economics, and culture economics, and culture, 2012-01, Vol.18 (2/3), p.181-188
• Main Author: Halabi, Yakub
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agreements; Arab people; Arab-Israeli conflict; Committees; Cooperation; Immigration; Investigations; Jewish people; Meetings; Palestinian people; Political leadership; Political power; Politics; Recruitment; Zionism
• ISSN: 0793-1395

According to Dr. Werner Senator, a non-Zionist member of the JAE who followed the moderate policies of Felix Warburg, "[t]he political conception of streams and of important figures has been altered during the last decade: a transformation from a homeland to the goal of a Jewish state. Despite this gloomy perspective, the report pointed to the existence of a cadre of Arab youth democrats, who expressed an understanding of the Jewish people's situation and ascribed a positive value to the Jewish aliya (immigration).\n With the dissemination of information after the end of the war about the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Jews in the concentration camps, the Zionist leadership shifted to the right and became more militant and stubborn in its demands of establishing a Jewish state and unfettered immigration of Jews, based on the belief that Jews could live safely only within a Jewish state. [...]the committee pointed out the fact that the British Mandate discriminated against the Palestinians by blocking their recruitment into the upper echelons of the bureaucracy.