Summary
The body Simpson’s 1930 report proposes, in its Conclusion, to carry out the intensive development of rural Palestine: a commission with a chairman of British nationality, one Arab Commissioner and one Jewish Commissioner, invested with the powers needed both to develop the land and to conduct its colonisation by Arab and Jew (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 3071-3085).
Details
- Until its development scheme is worked out, control of all disposition of land must rest with the authority in charge of development, transfers permitted only so far as they do not interfere with the scheme. The authority must be able to obtain the land it intends to develop: by amicable purchase, by a power to purchase at a valuation all land offered for sale — a vendor refused sanction for a sale having the right to demand the Government take the land at a valuation — and, failing those, under the existing Expropriation of Land Ordinance No. 28 of 1926 (lines 3069-3075).
- The Commission would distribute developed land to Jews named on lists supplied by the Jewish Agency and to Arabs named by the District Commissioners, considering both sections’ claims simultaneously and deciding finally itself. No difference could be made between Arab and Jew in size of holding allotted or amount granted for settlement: the average cost of settling an Arab family is assumed at about £60, and a Jew desiring a more liberal settlement must find its cost elsewhere than from the Commission (lines 3089-3095).
- Its success depends on the loyal cooperation of the Jewish Colonisation Agencies, whose schemes, though intended for Jewish settlement alone, must be framed to fall in with the scheme for the country as a whole, and on preventing artificial inflation of land prices, whether by agreement with the Agency or by Government control of dispositions (lines 3095-3105).
- Its division of labour with the Department of Agriculture: the Commission improves the land for the cultivator, introduces irrigation, regulates holding size and arranges occupation by migration of Arabs or settlement of immigrating Jews; the Department handles the technical side of the cultivator’s life, education and training (lines 3111-3115).
- Of the advances for development, 85 per cent to 90 per cent should prove recoverable, the outlay being reproductive expenditure (line 3201).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Lot viable, Economic capacity, Jewish Agency