British White Paper

Issued on 17 May 1939 by Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, the White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years, after which any further immigration would require Arab consent. It restricted Jewish land purchases, enforced through the Land Transfer Regulations of 1940, and proposed an independent state within ten years with a permanent Arab majority, in effect abandoning the Balfour Declaration's promise of a Jewish national home. The League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission judged it inconsistent with the Mandate.

It came a year after the Évian Conference had shown that few countries would take in Jewish refugees, and it shut the gates of the Land of Israel just as the Holocaust began. David Ben-Gurion's response became famous: "We will fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and the White Paper as if there were no war." The policy drove Aliyah Bet, and after 1945 it fueled the armed Jewish struggle against British rule.