Summary
The contested measure at the centre of Chapter IX of the Peel Commission Report: how much of Palestine’s land can be cultivated, on whose definition, decides in the Report’s treatment how much further agricultural settlement the land can carry (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.245-249 / printed p.234-238).
Details
- The Palestine Government’s definition covers land which is actually under cultivation, or which can be brought under cultivation by the application of the labour and resources of the average Palestinian cultivator (the copy garbles “actually” and “and” in the definition at this point, so it is not quoted verbatim). On it, excluding Beersheba (12,577,000 dunums) from the remainder’s 13,742,000 dunums and regarding 6,622,000 as uncultivable, the cultivable area is 7,120,000 dunums (PDF p.245-246 / printed p.234-235).
- The Jewish Agency experts’ figures, as stated in Abraham Granovsky’s The Land Issue in Palestine, give 9,197,000 dunums cultivable exclusive of Beersheba — plains 3,876,650, hill and mountain districts 5,320,350 — the net difference from the Government estimate being 1,382,000 dunums after the 695,000 dunums of forest are allowed for (PDF p.246 / printed p.235).
- Maurice Hexter condemned the Government definition as falsified by tax evasion and as excluding land requiring capital outlay, land under water and fallow, and proposed instead that cultivability is determined by the interaction of the land’s physical properties and the economic factors of production applied to it, ascertainable only by a detailed spot analysis of each particular project (PDF p.247-248 / printed p.236-237).
- The Commission holds that no really satisfactory definition in advance can be found, that cultivability must be discovered by a system of “trial and error”, and that until the contrary is proved the Administration will be wise in adhering to their own definition in so far as it relates to an increase of immigrants on the land (PDF p.248-249 / printed p.237-238).
Where sources disagree
- The Government and Jewish Agency experts’ totals — 7,120,000 and 9,197,000 dunums — rest on the rival definitions above and are held side by side; the Report adopts the Government definition provisionally for immigration purposes without holding the Jewish figures false.
Related pages
Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, Economic capacity, Lot viable, Musha’a