The Palestinian Arab elite chose to boycott in virtually all British and U.N. overtures to them from 1920 to 1948, with egregious consequences. The Palestinian Arab elite shunned British officials who were staunch supporters of Arab rights if not openly anti-Zionist. Such rejection of potential allies benefitted the Zionist movement, which thus avoided certain impediments. Consciously and willfully, the Palestinian Arab elite chose physical resistance, estrangement, absolutism and immediacy over political patience, engagement, compromise and foresight.
The Palestinian Arab elite had at least four reasons to opt for the boycott strategy: opposition to Zionism and any Jewish national home in Palestine; opposition to the British presence; resistance to the full application of principles of self-determination and self-rule because of the threat to their position; and fear of any change that would undermine their power.
— Ken Stein, from a chapter in the 2016 Cambridge University Press book What Ifs of Jewish History
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