Summary
The term the Palestine Partition Commission Report suggests for its Chapter XXII modification of partition: the proposed Arab and Jewish States, instead of receiving fiscal autonomy, would be required as a condition of the Mandate’s surrender to enter a Customs union with the Mandated Territories whose customs service the Mandatory Government administers and whose fiscal policy the Mandatory determines, the financial arrangements otherwise following the report’s Formulas A and B (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.246-248).
Details
- The suggestion is made at para. 506, exceeding the terms of reference in one respect, after the report concludes that strictly under those terms it could only report inability to recommend boundaries affording a reasonable prospect of self-supporting Arab and Jewish States. The union is not to be alterable thereafter without the League of Nations’ approval; the Mandatory, in determining fiscal policy, is to consult both states’ representatives and take account of all the union areas’ interests and, while any United Kingdom deficiency grant continues, of the Exchequer’s, without giving preferential treatment to British trade (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.245-246).
- States so established, deprived of the right to settle their own fiscal policy, would certainly not be sovereign independent states in the Royal Commission’s sense; the deficiency grant to the Mandated Territories, including the Arab State’s supplementary share, would exceed £1,000,000 at first. Subject to those reservations the report holds the financial and economic needs of both states provided for and Plan C’s boundaries to give a reasonable prospect of self-supporting states (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.246-247).
- The term itself was used of a somewhat similar scheme by a Jewish witness who had made a special study of the subject, and who said leaving the states to form an economic federation if they wished would be “a policy of suicide”, the Arab State’s pull being towards Damascus and Baghdad instead of Jerusalem and Haifa. The report ventures no prophecy whether economic federalism will lead ultimately to political federation, but holds that meanwhile it leaves Palestine, in the form of a customs union and a common system of communications, still whole and undivided (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.247-248).
Related pages
Palestine Partition Commission Report, Customs union, Partition, Palestine Partition Commission