Ben-Gurion said he wanted to "concentrate the masses of our people in this country [Palestine] and its environs."[26] When he proposed accepting the Peel proposals in 1937, which included a Jewish state in part of Palestine, Ben-Gurion told the twentieth Zionist Congress, "The Jewish state now being offered to us is not the Zionist objective. [...] But it can serve as a decisive stage along the path to greater Zionist implementation. It will consolidate in Palestine, within the shortest possible time, the real Jewish force, which will lead us to our historic goal.[27] In a discussion in the Jewish Agency he said that he wanted a Jewish-Arab agreement "on the assumption that after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine."[28]