Chaim Weizmann was preferable for Israel over his White Paper. He also agreed that Israel should annexe the Negev desert, where no one was living. However, when Lord Moyne, the British Governor of Palestine, met Churchill, he was surprised that he had changed his views in two years. Eleven days later Moyne was assassinated for his trenchant views on immigration in November 1944; the immigration question was put on hold. In February 1943, the British government also rejected a plan to pay $3.5 million and just $50 per head to allow 70,000, mostly Romanian, Jews to be protected and evacuated that Weizmann
Rehovot That year, Rehovot had a population of 3,193. The agricultural research station that opened in Rehovot in 1932 became the Department of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1933, a juice factory was built. In 1934, Chaim Weizmann established the Sieff Institute, which later became the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1937, Weizmann built his home on the land purchased adjacent to the Sieff Institute. The house later served as the presidential residence after Weizmann became president in 1948. Weizmann and his wife are buried on the grounds of the institute. In 1945, Rehovot had a population of