Summary
The British commission of enquiry under Walter Shaw, and the follow-on Hope Simpson enquiry, both published in 1930, whose recommendations to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases were carried into the Passfield White Paper and then negated by the “Black Letter” — the case in point in Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics for Zionist influence frustrating restrictive Mandate policy (Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics, PDF p.16-18 / printed p.148-150).
Details
- The commission was established after homicidal street-fighting between Muslims and Jews that had started around the Western Wall in Jerusalem over access to holy places; it reported that the religious issue symptomatised wider Arab political and economic grievances stemming from British authorities’ implementation of the Mandate’s commitment to the Jewish national home (PDF p.16 / printed p.148).
- On that basis it recommended that Jewish immigration be restricted and that “a scientific enquiry should be held into land cultivation and settlement possibilities” (note 50, quoting the Peel Commission Report, p.71); pending that enquiry, the eviction of peasant cultivators — further Jewish land purchases — was to be checked (PDF p.16 / printed p.148).
- The head of the second enquiry, John Hope Simpson, asserted that the Mandate’s objectives required the encouragement of close settlement and intensive cultivation to apply to Arabs as well as to Jews, and recommended that, for Arab Natives to maintain their existing standard of living, Jewish immigration should be summarily curtailed (PDF p.17 / printed p.149).
- The Hope Simpson Report is also quoted in note 65 for its wording on Jewish National Fund purchase: the result was that land had been “exta-territorialised” [as printed], the land being in mort-main and inalienable (PDF p.36 / printed p.168).
- The recommendations entered the Passfield White Paper of Colonial Secretary Baron Passfield (Sidney Webb); the memorandum Palestinian Arabs dubbed “the Black Letter”, penned by Malcolm MacDonald and signed by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, “clarified” the White Paper out of meaningful existence (PDF p.17 / printed p.149). Arthur Ruppin testified to the Shaw Commission that 90% of land vendors were absentees (note 69, citing the Shaw Commission report, Cmd. 3530, p.114).
Related pages
Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics, Peel Commission, Arthur Ruppin, Kenneth Stein