What did Britain want to do with palestine after the balfour declaration had been abandonned?

Question

After the 2nd world war, the labour party was voted in in britain. They no longer wished to establish a 'jewish homeland in palestine' as their conservative predecessors had intended. What was their intent had the jews not rebelled against britain?

Answer 1

Firstly, the "Balfour Declaration" was not a declaration but a statement of intent sent in a private letter to Lord Rothschild, an influential British Jew, partly with the aim of keeping international Jewry on the British side during WW1.
Secondly, it's not true that the Labour government of Clement Attlee elected after WW2 wanted to reverse the plan to set up a Jewish state in Palestine. They were caught in the middle of a deteriorating situation between Jews and Arabs, and with no resources after six years of war, turned the problem over to the newly-formed United Nations.

The UN recommended that Britain should give up the mandate over Palestine given it by the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations, and drew up a plan for partition of the land into two separate Jewish and Arab states of roughly equal size, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem governed internationally. The provisional Jewish government and most Jews applauded and accepted this plan, but the Arabs saw themselves as losing the best land and rejected it (many of them would have been in a large minority in the Jewish state). However it was the extremist Jews of the Stern and Irgun gangs, pioneering modern terrorism, who attacked Arab settlements, British forces and administrators and indeed their own official forces, making the plan unworkable and provoking the 1947-8 conflict.

By a programme of ruthless ethnic cleansing they acheived more than their original objective; most Arabs fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the "safe" area in and around Nazareth and the Israeli state was established with about 80% of the land west of the Jordan river instead of the 55% envisaged by the UN plan.

Answer 2

Essentially to turn into an independent arab state. It wasn't economic to run and there was a huge stretch on British Forces elsewhere.

Answer 3

To get out quick. What a quagmire it has become there.