Summary
The Mandated enclave for the Holy Places at Jerusalem and Bethlehem proposed under Plan A in the Palestine Partition Commission Report’s Chapter IV, demarcated from north of Jerusalem to south of Bethlehem with sea access by a corridor including Lydda and Ramle, under a new Mandate framed with the protection of the Holy Places — “a sacred trust of civilization” — as its primary purpose (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.33-38).
Details
- The enclave rests on Mandate Article 13, which placed responsibility for the Holy Places and religious buildings and sites, preserving existing rights, free access and free exercise of worship, on the Mandatory, and Article 28, which requires the League Council on termination of the Mandate to safeguard Article 13 rights in perpetuity; the Royal Commission’s Ch. XXII held partition subject to “the overriding necessity of keeping the sanctity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem inviolate and of ensuring free and safe access to them for all the world” (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.33).
- Its northern boundary falls north of Ramallah, not between Ramallah and Jerusalem as the Royal Commission proposed, for defence — the Qalandiya landing-ground, the only possible site near Jerusalem, must lie far enough from the frontier for reasonable protection; the Ramallah–Latrun road is an essential military line of communication and must be included; the high point of Beitunya dominates and should be in the Mandated area — and for the Palestine Broadcasting Station about one mile north of Ramallah town, no alternative site near Jerusalem being found (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.34).
- Six Arab villages of the Ramle Sub-District — Shabtin, Shuqba, Qibya, Budrus, Ni’lin and Deir Qaddis — are included because five of them get water by a co-operative pumping arrangement from a well in Shabtin, and separating Qibya and Budrus (the only two defence requires) from their water by an international boundary is undesirable; west of the Lydda–Haifa railway the boundary includes the Arab villages Salama, al Kheiriya, Saqiya, Kafr Ana and al Yahudiya, the civil airport, and the residential area of the German colony of Wilhelma, which had asked to be excluded from the Jewish State; in the plains the southern boundary includes the military cantonments at Sarafand and the projected RAF base at Aqir (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.34-35).
- Sea access is by a wider mandated strip between Jaffa and the Jewish State, not a narrow acquired or cleared belt, its southern boundary the northern boundary of Rishon le Ziyon village, with treaty provisions for military ranges on the coastal sand dunes and for emergency military use of the Jewish State’s shore as far south as Wadi Rubin; the Jewish contention that the enclave between Ramle and the sea is unduly wide and should be a narrow strip carrying railway and road is rejected, protecting the Holy Places being the paramount obligation, which must override the Jewish State’s needs; the enclave is held not unnecessarily large, its boundaries, except part of the northern frontier, having been determined solely by defence (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.35-37).
- Its population (para. 70) is: urban Arabs 90,800, Jews 76,000, total 166,800; rural Arabs 120,600, Jews 4,100, total 124,700; total Arabs 211,400, Jews 80,100, total 291,500. Its land (dunums), Arabs / Jews: citrus 37,900 / 8,900; banana plantations 100 / —; other plantations 184,500 / 5,200; taxable cereal land 502,300 / 36,500; untaxable cereal land 102,300 / 1,100; total cultivable 827,100 / 51,700; built-on areas 29,700 / 7,800; uncultivable 628,400 / 19,200; total land (excluding roads, railways, rivers and lakes) 1,485,200 / 78,700 (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.37).
- In the Palestine Partition Commission Report’s Chapter IX, after examining the Jewish claim to part of Jerusalem, the Commission recommends that, as the Royal Commission proposed, the entire city be included in the Enclave for the Holy Places at Jerusalem and Bethlehem and no portion in the Jewish State, the religious and political objections being decisive and the proposed Jewish Corridor consequently unjustified (Palestine Partition Commission Report, PDF p.79-80).
Related pages
Palestine Partition Commission Report, Palestine Partition Commission, Holy Places, Partition, Nazareth