Britain's policy change in Palestine is not…

Britain's policy change in Palestine is not easily implemented.

Successive British governments have supported (or at least not rejected) a Jewish national home in Palestine since the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

The Mandate itself is premised on that pledge.

The Yishuv had grown to about four hundred thousand by the mid-1930s, and the Jewish economic and political structures in Palestine are well ensconced.

The extent of the Jewish presence and the rapidly deteriorating fate of European Jewry mean that the British will have an extremely difficult time extricating themselves from the Balfour Declaration.

Furthermore, the existing Palestinian leadership, dominated by Hajj Amin al Husseini, is unwilling to grant members of the Jewish community citizenship or to guarantee their safety if a new Arab entity is to emerge.

Thus, for the British the real options are to impose partition, to pull out and leave the Jews and Arabs to fight it out, or to stay and improvise.