The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine was abandoned in favor of an independent Palestine governed jointly by Arabs and Jews.

Previous White Papers had stated that the 1917 Balfour Declaration was not a British endorsement of actual Jewish statehood in Palestine.

In January 1938, the Woodhead Commission had been established to explore ways to implement the recommendations made by the Peel Commission (1936). The report of the Woodhead Commission was published on November 9, 1938. The idea of partition was upheld, but the proposed Jewish state was to be substantially smaller, receiving only the coastal plain.

In February 1939, the St. James Conference (also known as the Round Table Conference of 1939) convened in London; since the Arab delegation refused to formally meet with its Jewish counterpart or to recognize them, proposals were put by the government separately to the two parties, who however were not able to agree to any of them. The Conference ended on March 17 without making any progress.

The White Paper was bitterly opposed by the Jews in Palestine. In terms of the status quo, the White Paper was a significant defeat for the Jewish side. The White Paper inevitably brought tensions over immigration, escalating in the years at the end of World War II.

The Arab Higher Committee, which represented the Palestinian Arabs, also rejected the White Paper. They argued that the independence of the new Palestine Government was illusory, as the Jews could prevent its functioning by withholding participation, and in any case real authority would still be in the hands of British officials. The limitations on Jewish immigration were also held to be insufficient, as there was no guarantee immigration would not resume after five years. In place of the policy enunciated in the White Paper, the Arab Higher Committee called for "a complete and final prohibition" of Jewish immigration and a repudiation of the Jewish national home policy altogether.