Summary
The Director of Development who arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1931 to carry out the development programme recommended after the 1930 inquiries, in the Peel Commission Report’s account (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.93 / printed p.80).
Details
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He arrived in the summer of 1931 as the new Director of Development and in December 1931 and April 1932 submitted two reports (PDF p.93 / printed p.80).
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He was to have been assisted by two colleagues, an Arab and a Jew; but, significantly enough, neither the Arabs nor the Jews would agree to take part in the work (PDF p.93 / printed p.80).
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Under the measures he was appointed to operate, Arabs claiming displacement from lands owing to Jewish purchase were invited in 1931 to submit claims for registration with a view to re-settlement at Government cost (PDF p.93 / printed p.80).
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In Chapter IX of the Report, French’s words are invoked for the recommended land code: any such code should be framed on the broadest and simplest lines possible, all minor details being left to rules and regulations — as printed in the copy and in the original PDF, its first adjective stands as “broadcast”, a likely misprint for broadest, so the sentence is paraphrased here, not quoted (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.239 / printed p.228).
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French, appointed Director of Development in 1931, was charged with preparing a register of “landless” Arabs and a resettlement scheme; the Report criticises his inquiry’s six exclusion categories as unduly restrictive and its exclusion of hired labourers, and records 3,271 applications to 1 January 1936, 664 admitted and 2,607 disallowed (PDF p.250-251 / printed p.239-240).
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His 1931 proposal for village Registrars to maintain the record of rights is cited with approval in the Report’s settlement recommendations (PDF p.243 / printed p.232).
Related pages
Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, John Hope Simpson, Passfield White Paper