Biltmore Conference - Definition and Overview

The Biltmore Conference was held in the New York Biltmore Hotel May 6 to May 11, 1942.

Various Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish organizations were represented in what was called as an Extraordinary Zionist Conference as a substitute for the full Zionist Conference which had been cancelled due to World War II.

The joint statement issued at the end of the session was known as the Biltmore Program. The Program asked for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. The final point of the Program reads as follows:

"The Conference declares that the new world order that will follow victory cannot be established on foundations of peace, justice, and equality, unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved.The Conference urges that the gates of Palestine be opened; that the Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority for upbuilding the country, including the development of its unoccupied and uncultivated lands; and that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world."

The Biltmore Program was a rejection of the proposal for a binational solution to the question of Arab-Jewish co-existence in Palestine. Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist-Zionist group accordingly voted against the program. It was also the first joint statement by Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish groups on Palestine.