John Hope Simpson

Summary

Sir John Hope Simpson, C.I.E., author of the October 1930 report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on immigration, land settlement and development in Palestine (Cmd. 3686), the enquiry that followed the Shaw Commission (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 70-149).

Simpson proceeded to Palestine under the Secretary of State’s instructions to examine immigration, land settlement and development on the spot, reached Jerusalem on 20 May 1930, consulted constantly with the High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, and signed his report on 22 August 1930, the report having been written in Athens (lines 117-149).
His enquiry drew on the records of all Departments of the Palestine Government, on the Supreme Moslem Council and the Arab Executive, and on a very large amount of information supplied by the Jewish Agency; his tours were guided in Arab villages by Jamal Effendi Husseini and through Jewish settlements by representatives of the P.I.C.A. (lines 121-137).
In Wolfe’s account, Simpson, as head of the follow-on enquiry to the Shaw Commission, asserted that the Mandate’s objectives required close settlement and intensive cultivation to apply to Arabs as well as to Jews, and recommended that Jewish immigration be summarily curtailed so Arab cultivators could maintain their existing standard of living (Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics, PDF p.17 / printed p.149, as recorded on Shaw Commission).