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Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry

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Summary

The unanimous report of the joint American-British Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, signed at Lausanne on 20 April 1946 and addressed to the United States Government and His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom. The recommendations authorise 100,000 immigration certificates immediately for Jews who were victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution, hold that Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state and that neither people shall dominate the other, continue the Mandate pending a United Nations trusteeship agreement, administer future immigration under the Mandate’s terms without fixing a minimum or maximum, rescind the Land Transfers Regulations of 1940, and call for Arab advancement to equality of standards, education reform and suppression of any attempt to prevent the report’s execution by violence (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 412-660). Chapters II-IV examine the position of the Jews in Europe (estimating as many as 500,000 may wish or be impelled to emigrate), the political situation in Palestine, and geography and economics; Chapters V-X present the Jewish attitude and the Biltmore Program, the Arab attitude, Christian interests, Jews, Arabs and Government, public security including the Haganah’s structure as stated by the military authorities, and a General chapter rejecting partition. Seven appendices give the itinerary, a country-by-country account of European Jewry with population tables for 1939 and 1946 (Appendix III totals for Europe as printed: 9,946,200 in 1939 and 4,224,600 in 1946), a historical background of Palestine from the Hussein-McMahon letters to the new Arab Higher Committee of November 1945, a public-security narrative from the 1920 Jerusalem riots to March 1946 concluding that until 1939 violence came from the Arabs and since 1939 from the Jews, the Mandate text, and the staff list.

What the file is

  • The Avalon Project reproduction, combined from the index page at the URL above and 19 linked pages, fetched 2026-10-06 (access basis: government, as supplied). The original delivered is the combined HTML; the supplied text copy (47,041 words as given for this ingest; 3,281 lines counting the final blank line) is a plain-text rendering with no page markers, so locators are line numbers. Avalon navigation and footer furniture recurs between chapters and is not report text.
  • The report as reproduced: cover and title page (Department of State Publication 2536, Near Eastern Series 2; United States Government Printing Office, Washington: 1946), a transmittal letter to the President signed by Joseph C. Hutcheson, American Chairman, and Frank Aydelotte, Frank W. Buxton, Bartley C. Crum, James G. McDonald and William Phillips (lines 146-211), the Preface with the four terms of reference (lines 283-310), and Chapters I-X with Appendices I-VII listed in the contents (lines 24-80). Chapters I-X and Appendices I-VII are all accounted for section by section below, read in three parts (lines 1-1094, 1095-2188, 2189-3281).
  • Text quality: the text copy carries frequent typographic and OCR-style slips, recorded as printed in the reading notes and not corrected, among them “essentia1” for essential (line 438), “eve are convinced” in the Recommendation No. 1 comment, formerly garbled with a stray quotation mark inside it and “a flew life” for a new life in Chapter II, “stay” for staff and “display use” in Chapter III, and “136.000” for 136,000, “non-ollloial” and “coastal plaint” in Chapter IV. Part 2 adds, among others, “Thud” for Ihud and “sell-restraint” in Chapter V, “Stopped” for stripped, “oil” for of, “liven” for Even and “alla” for and in Chapter VI, four question marks standing for missing wording in Chapter VII para. 1, “Haffa” for Haifa in Chapter VIII, “bb4” garbling the men’s figure of a 911-immigrant ship and “manning” for morning in Chapter IX, “Rood” for good in Chapter X, “Jolm” for John in Appendix I, and “mood” for much, “lye” for life and “stair” for staff in Appendix II’s Poland section. Part 3 adds “194S” for 1945 and “bean” for been in Appendix II, “Jeremiah” for Jewish and “i,600” in its notes, the Soviet Union’s 1939 figure “13,560,000” and Rumania note’s “1916” in Appendix III, “1922655555” after the Churchill White Paper of 1922, “dike”, “tool:”, “Patrza”, “Rashid All” and “fullfillment” in Appendix IV, “late in 1930” in a May 1921 passage, “Babes”, “cd-Din”, “Commisoner”, “Tell-Aviv”, “Larch” and “eras” for was in Appendix V, and “ARTIC1E” and “organist” in Appendix VI; each is recorded as printed in the reading notes and not corrected.

Section by section

Preface and terms of reference (lines 283-310)

  • The Committee was appointed by the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom as a joint body, to examine political, economic and social conditions in Palestine as they bear on Jewish immigration and settlement and the well-being of the peoples living there; to examine the position of the Jews in the European countries where they were victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution and estimate those who wish or will be impelled to migrate; to hear competent witnesses and consult representative Arabs and Jews and recommend ad interim handling and permanent solution; and to recommend measures for the immediate needs of the European Jews, by remedial action in Europe or by emigration facilities outside Europe. The Governments requested the report within 120 days. The Committee assembled in Washington on 4 January 1946, held sessions in London from 25 January, investigated in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy and Greece, flew to Cairo on 28 February, reached Jerusalem on 6 March, sent subcommittees to the capitals of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia and Trans-Jordan, left Palestine on 28 March and concluded its deliberations in Switzerland (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 283-310).

Chapter I. Recommendations and Comments (lines 412-660)

  • Recommendation No. 1: information about countries other than Palestine gave no hope of substantial assistance in finding homes for Jews wishing or impelled to leave Europe, but Palestine alone cannot meet the emigration needs of the Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution; the two Governments, with other countries, should immediately endeavour to find new homes for all displaced persons, irrespective of creed or nationality, whose ties with their former communities have been irreparably broken, and should secure immediate effect for the United Nations Charter’s provision on human rights and fundamental freedoms, since the overwhelming majority will continue to live in Europe. The comment adds restitution of Jewish property, corporate restitution through reparations, and enforcement of civil liberties and equal rights against the legacy of anti-Semitism (lines 412-414).
  • Recommendation No. 2: “(a) that 100,000 certificates be authorized immediately for the admission into Palestine of Jews who have been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution; (b) that these certificates be awarded as far as possible in 1946 and that actual immigration be pushed forward as rapidly as conditions will permit.” The comment states that Jewish survivors far exceed 100,000 — more than that number in Germany, Austria and Italy alone — that most in Germany and Austria still live in assembly centres which should be closed, that no other country is open to the great majority in the immediate future and that almost all want to go to Palestine, and sets priorities (those in the centres and liberated in Germany and Austria, with primary consideration to the aged and infirm, the very young and skilled workmen), with no advantage to be gained by migrating between countries or entering Palestine illegally (lines 416-470).
  • Recommendation No. 3: to dispose “once and for all” of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs, the principles that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew, that Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state, and that the government ultimately established shall, under international guarantees, fully protect the interests in the Holy Land of Christendom and of the Moslem and Jewish faiths. The comment holds Palestine a Holy Land sacred to Christian, Jew and Moslem alike which no race or religion can justly claim as its very own, affirms the Jewish National Home’s right to continued existence, protection and development and the Arab population’s right to look on Palestine as their homeland, holds neither an Arab state nor a Jewish state just or practicable, and holds that genuine self-government for both communities cannot rest on a constitution in which a mere numerical majority is decisive (lines 436-480).
  • Recommendation No. 4: because hostility and each side’s determination to achieve domination make civil strife almost certain if an independent Palestinian State or States were attempted now or for some time, the Government of Palestine should be continued as at present under mandate pending execution of a trusteeship agreement under the United Nations. The comment records that the Peel Commission declared the Mandate unworkable in 1937 and that the British Government two years later announced its intention to terminate the Mandate by establishing an independent Palestine State, and that the Committee’s recommendations depart from the Mandatory’s recent policy and involve a long period of trusteeship (lines 482-500).
  • Recommendation No. 5: the mandatory or trustee should proclaim that Arab economic, educational and political advancement is of equal importance with that of the Jews and at once prepare measures to bridge the gap and raise the Arab standard of living to that of the Jews. The comment identifies the disparity in standards of living, including hospitals and social services, as one of the chief causes of friction, and suggests an Arab community on the lines of the Jewish community to organise Arab social services, financed largely by Government, with taxation raised from both peoples spent very largely on the Arabs (lines 502-514).
  • Recommendation No. 6: pending reference to the United Nations and a trusteeship agreement, the mandatory should administer Palestine according to the Mandate, which declares that the administration, “while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions”. The comment declines to fix a minimum or maximum for annual immigration after the 100,000, noting Peel’s “political high level” of 12,000 a year, holds the well-being of all the people of Palestine the governing consideration, rejects both a bar on further Jewish immigration without Arab acquiescence and the demand for forced immigration to produce a Jewish majority and state, holds that no qualified person must be refused admission on the ground that he is not a Jew, and declares that any immigrant Jew entering contrary to Palestine’s laws is an illegal immigrant (lines 516-560).
  • Recommendation No. 7: the Land Transfers Regulations of 1940 be rescinded and replaced by regulations based on freedom in the sale, lease or use of land irrespective of race, community or creed, with adequate protection for small owners and tenant cultivators; provisions in conveyances, leases and agreements stipulating that only members of one race, community or creed may be employed on the land be rendered nugatory and prohibited; and the Government exercise close supervision over the Holy Places and localities such as the Sea of Galilee and its vicinity. The comment holds the 1940 Regulations’ effect discrimination against the Jews tending to segregate the two peoples, endorses the Peel-endorsed principles that without a marked change in cultivation methods the land cannot support a large increase in population and that there is already congestion in the hill districts, criticises the Jewish National Fund lease provision that no labour other than Jewish be employed on its land, and notes that land acquired by the Fund, or for a Waqf by the Supreme Muslim Council, becomes inalienable (lines 518-565).
  • Recommendation No. 8: large-scale agricultural and industrial development plans could enlarge the country’s capacity and raise both peoples’ living standards, but will fail unless there is peace and require the willing cooperation of adjacent Arab states; their examination and execution should be conducted in full consultation and cooperation not only with the Jewish Agency but also with the governments of the neighbouring Arab States directly affected. The comment holds that projects such as a Jordan Valley Authority should be public projects under Government enterprise rather than private undertakings, that Government should acquire powers over water resources, and that removal of Article 18 of the Mandate would clear the way to tariff and trade agreements leading towards a customs union (lines 567-595).
  • Recommendation No. 9: the educational system of both Jews and Arabs be reformed, including compulsory education within a reasonable time. The comment states that Jewish schools, controlled and largely financed by the Jewish community, are imbued with “a fiery spirit of nationalism” and inculcate “a spirit of aggressive Hebrew nationalism”, as Peel had found nationalist propaganda in Arab schools, urges Government control over both peoples’ education including textbooks, curricula and inspection, and stresses increasing secondary, technical and university facilities for Arabs (lines 597-625).
  • Recommendation No. 10: if the report is adopted, it should be made clear beyond doubt to both Jews and Arabs that any attempt by threats of violence, terrorism or the organisation or use of illegal armies to prevent its execution will be resolutely suppressed; and the Jewish Agency should at once resume active cooperation with the Mandatory in the suppression of terrorism and illegal immigration and the maintenance of law and order (lines 627-635).

Chapter II. The Position of the Jews in Europe (lines 660-790)

  • Subcommittees visited the American, British and French zones of Germany and Austria between 8 and 28 February 1946 and France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece and Switzerland; Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the Soviet zones were not visited, the Soviet Deputy Commander having informed the Committee that in the Soviet zone of Germany there was no special Jewish problem (para. 2). About 98,000 Jewish displaced persons were living in Germany, Austria and Italy, most in the American and British zones in assembly centres; some 30,000 had come from Poland since the war’s end, with smaller movement from Rumania and Hungary (para. 3). Centre conditions, self-administration through centre committees and in many centres their own courts and police, and the work of UNRRA, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad are described (paras. 4-8).
  • The Warsaw ghetto and the barracks used for killing Jews are described, and the extermination at Maidanek and Oswiecim and many other centres, “of whom it is estimated that certainly not less than five millions perished” (para. 9). Survivors’ broken families, destroyed or occupied homes, the difficulty of establishing a relative’s death or recovering property, and the desire in Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Germany to leave — in Germany the Jews had been reduced from about 500,000 in 1933 to about 20,000 — are recorded, with Czechoslovakia and Austria more hopeful for re-establishment and the vast majority of displaced persons and migrants believing Palestine the only place offering a prospect (paras. 10-15). Acceptance of the certificate recommendation would let the centres close and discourage further migration within Europe (para. 16); speedy restitution is the most important practical step for those who remain (paras. 17-18). The chapter estimates “that as many as 500,000 may wish or be impelled to emigrate from Europe” (para. 19).

Chapter III. The Political Situation in Palestine (lines 793-860)

  • The chapter opens by quoting the Peel Commission that neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State and that every intelligent Arab and Jew asks “Who in the end will govern Palestine ?”, and states that nine years on the analysis remains valid and the gulf has widened (paras. 1-2). Jews held on suspicion averaged 450 during most of 1945 and were 554 at its end, and about 15,000 persons were in the whole-time police and prisons service (para. 3); about L.P. 4,600,000 was spent on law and order in 1944-45 against L.P. 550,000 on health and L.P. 700,000 on education, so that Palestine has developed into “a semi-military or police state” (para. 4).
  • Arab leadership remains with families prominent in Ottoman times, most notably the Husseinis, whose Palestine Arab Party, formally organised in 1935, shares with all Arab parties the objectives of immediate stoppage of Jewish immigration, immediate prohibition of land sales to Jews and independence for a state in which the Arab majority would be dominant (para. 5); absolute, unqualified Arab refusal to acquiesce in the admission of a single Jew is called the outstanding feature of Arab politics today, the parties of the Left showing as intransigent a nationalism as the old leaders (para. 6). Palestinian Arabs seek full Arab League membership and believe themselves as fitted for self-government as Syria, Lebanon and Trans-Jordan (para. 7). Jewish parties are united for unlimited immigration, abolition of land-sale restrictions and abrogation of the 1939 White Paper (para. 8).
  • The Jewish Agency is treated at length: Mandate Article 4 is quoted (para. 9); the Agency remains the most potent nongovernmental authority in Palestine and indeed in the Middle East, Peel’s description of it as a Government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government being even more accurate today, and it is generally believed to have unofficial but powerful influence over Haganah, estimated at over 60,000 strong (para. 10); its refusal to cooperate in carrying out the White Paper has led the Government to regard it as a distinctly dangerous influence (para. 11); criticisms were made by Arabs, Palestine Government officials, Agudath Israel and some individual Jews, while its National Home functions were not condemned (para. 12). Neither Jews nor Arabs hold the highest ranks of the Administration (para. 13), and Palestine is described as “a garrisoned but restive land” under curfew and press censorship (para. 14). A footnote records the Committee’s reliance on the two volumes of the Survey of Palestine compiled by the Government for its use.

Chapter IV. Geography and Economics (lines 862-1094)

  • Geography (paras. 1-3): Palestine, about the size of Wales or Vermont, is geographically an integral part of Syria; nearly all the Jews and almost half the Arabs live in the plains, less than one-seventh of the total area, while the mountains and southern deserts are populated, apart from scattered Jewish colonies, exclusively by Arabs; both sides claim the whole country, Arabs regarding proposals for Jewish settlement in the deserts as evidence of the well-planned “creeping conquest”. Palestine lies across natural lines of communication between Cairo and Damascus and between Iraq and Trans-Jordan and the Mediterranean, and a pipeline delivers crude oil to the refineries at Haifa.
  • Population (paras. 4-7): official estimates put the population at 750,000 at the 1922 census and 1,765,000 at the end of 1944, the Jewish part rising from 84,000 to 554,000 (13 to 31 percent), three-fourths of the Jewish expansion accounted for by immigration, while Moslems rose from 589,000 to 1,061,000, of which growth only 19,000 was accounted for by immigration. Density is estimated at 179 per square mile, or 336 excluding the Beersheba sub-district. Future estimates are given from Professor Notestein, Dr. D. V. Glass, the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics and the Government Statistician, the Government Statistician putting the Jewish population at 664,000 at the end of 1959 if no immigration occurred. The natural-increase table (per 1,000) gives for 1941/44 Moslems 30.71, Jews 17.83 and Christians 18.89, against 1922/25 Moslems 28.27, Jews 20.44 and Christians 20.18; the high Arab rate is accounted for by high fertility and the disappearance of Ottoman conscription and malaria, and its continued rise by declining mortality.
  • Economic contrasts (paras. 8-11): the Jewish sector combines “close settlement on the land” with remarkable industrial development and a socialist-experiment character under centralised guidance, the Jewish Agency being a large landowner, promoter and financier, and Histadrut not simply a union federation but a consumers’ co-operative, social-service operator and capitalist employer, with recent instances of its members striking against it as owner; the Arab sector remains individualist small-scale peasant farming. Only citriculture, shared about equally, associates the two sectors. Jewish wage rates are consistently higher, unskilled more than twice as high, and Arab social services are extremely limited.
  • Wartime developments and postwar prospects (paras. 12-20): the war made the Jewish sector increasingly urban and industrial while the Arab sector remained overwhelmingly agricultural, turned Palestine into a base and supply source, and produced inflation, money-wealth and a change from nominal debtor to creditor confined within the sterling area. Postwar uncertainties include dependence of Jewish industry on continuing immigration, high production costs, the Arab boycott of Jewish products (little effect when the Committee was in the country), building costs of roughly L.P. 20 a cubic metre, a cost-of-living index above 250 against a pre-war 100, and workers in one factory receiving L.P. 12 a week working 60 instead of 48 hours.
  • Economic expansion and immigration (paras. 21-26): given central direction, cooperative effort and peace, Palestine could provide further opportunities for prosperous settlement while improving its present population’s standards; the War Supply Board is to become a Department of Commerce and Industry and the Government’s post-war development programme covers land reclamation, forestation, soil conservation and irrigation. Natural resources are extremely limited and water is the binding limit; the Government has no statutory authority to control or even ascertain water resources. The Commission on Palestine Surveys’ Jordan Valley Authority proposals — bringing Jordan-source water to the Esdraelon and coastal plain, irrigating the lower Jordan Valley and generating power from the Jordan and the Mediterranean — are described, with the rider that such planning presupposes cooperation and has little bearing on an immediate haven for homeless Jews; Jewish insistence on providing a home for the homeless even at an all-round cut in the present Jewish population’s living standards is recorded, with the warning that passionate expansion on a dubious resource basis might render the economy top-heavy to the point of collapse.

Chapter V. The Jewish Attitude (lines 1099-1178)

  • The Jewish case, heard in Washington, London and most massively in Jerusalem, rested on the Biltmore Program of 1942 — Agency control of immigration, abolition of land-sale restrictions, and a Jewish State once a Jewish majority is achieved — plus the immediate 100,000 certificates; the demand for a Jewish State goes beyond the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate (para. 1). Jewish opponents heard were assimilationist groups, Agudat Yisrael and Middle Eastern Jewish representatives fearing for their relations with Arabs (para. 2). The Program commands the Zionist movement as a whole, expressing Palestinian Jewry’s policy (para. 3). Inside Palestine, Mapai largely determines the official line; the critics — Aliyah Hadashah, Hashomer Hatza’ir with its bi-nationalism pamphlet, and Dr. Judah Magnes’s Ihud — do not exceed one quarter of the Jewish population but are a constructive minority (para. 4); the Revisionist Party, at some one percent, and the more extreme groups supporting the terrorist campaign stand on the other side (para. 5).
  • The Palestinian Jew’s outlook is pride mixed with bitter frustration (para. 6). The main complaint is that the Mandatory slowed the National Home after 1930 to placate Arab opposition; during the three and a half years of Arab revolt the Jews shot only in self-defence and rarely took reprisals, and state bitterly that their reward was the 1939 White Paper, which cut immigration and “thus caused the death of thousands of Jews in Hitler’s gas chambers” as the chapter reports their claim (paras. 7-8). An immediate result of the success of Arab terrorism was the beginning of Jewish terrorism, a closing of ranks and a general militarization, the Agency becoming the political headquarters of a citizen army (para. 9). After V-E day, with the White Paper still in force under a Labor Government, the Agency stated frankly that it was quite futile for it to attempt to cooperate in suppressing illegal activity (para. 10). The Committee was repeatedly advised that maintaining the present policy could only lead to a state of war with the extremists holding the passive support of almost the whole Jewish population (para. 11) (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1109-1178).

Chapter VI. The Arab Attitude (lines 1205-1292)

  • The Arab case, heard in Washington, London, Cairo and Jerusalem and in the Arab capitals, rests on Arab occupation of Palestine for more than a thousand years and a denial of Jewish historical claims; the Balfour Declaration gave away what did not belong to Britain, and the Mandate violated self-determination by forcing an undesired immigration, an invasion (para. 2). Palestinian Arabs demand independence now, as the surrounding Arab States have received it, and would join the Arab League as a self-governing country (para. 3). The highest importance is attached to the 1939 White Paper promises and to the assurances given by President Roosevelt to King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in February 1945 (para. 4). Arabs profess sympathy for persecuted European Jews but deny responsibility for that persecution, some offering a refugee quota if Western countries did the same (para. 6); against Peel’s view of indirect benefits from Jewish enterprise, Arabs attribute improvement to their own efforts and declare that, if they must choose between freedom and material improvement, they prefer freedom (para. 7). A substantial number still declare allegiance to the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, and Palestinian Arabs were on the whole spiritually neutral in the second World War, Jamal Effendi el-Husseini’s evidence on the Mufti in Germany being quoted (para. 8). The leaders’ demands are immediate independence, final cessation of Jewish immigration and prohibition of all land sales by Arabs to Jews (para. 9).
  • The chapter dwells on the cultural and political resentment: an alien civilization’s invasion, a clan-based, semi-feudal society shocked by Jewish dress and manners, a vague sense of Western capital’s imponderable power, and the feeling that the Jewish case is well portrayed in Washington and London while the Arab case goes unheard (paras. 10-11). No other subject has united the Arab League as Palestine has (para. 12); neighbouring governments and peoples believe a Zionist State would be a direct threat and a wedge splitting the Arab world, and fear it would become expansionist (para. 13). A footnote declines to enter into the undertakings given to the Sharif Hussein of Mecca, referring to the 1939 Anglo-Arab Committee’s report in Command Paper No. 5974 (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1213-1292).

Chapter VII. Christian Interests in Palestine (lines 1319-1386)

  • Arab Christians, numbering some 125,000 and led in delegation by the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Galilee, declared complete solidarity with the Moslem Arabs in demanding an independent Arab State; the non-Palestinian Christian groups could not speak with a common voice, and the keys of the Holy Sepulcher are still entrusted to Moslems (para. 1; the copy’s wording at one point in this paragraph is missing, four question marks standing in its place). The legitimate Christian interest demands freedom of access to the Holy Places and tranquillity in a country all of which is, from the Christian point of view, a Holy Land (para. 1). Archaeology and pilgrim traffic are noted, the latter a substantial invisible export (para. 2). The Holy Places of the three religions are interspersed and cannot be segregated into separate geographical units (para. 3). General Edmund Allenby’s Proclamation of 11 December 1917 on protecting every sacred building of the three religions is quoted (para. 4). It is improper to treat Palestine either as an Arab State or as exclusively designated for Jewish national aspirations (para. 5) (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1329-1386).

Chapter VIII. Jews, Arabs and Government (lines 1413-1522)

  • Under the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi the Jews have developed “a virtual Jewish nonterritorial State with its own executive and legislative organs”, a shadow Government that has ceased to cooperate in maintaining law and order; the obligatory year’s national service is now partly used for military training, and illegal organisation is corroding the Jewish community’s free democracy (paras. 1-2). The economic gulf with the Arabs has been widened in part by the non-employment of Arab labour on Jewish National Fund land and by the refusal to devote Jewish funds directly to raising Arab standards (para. 3); the Jewish community has never, as a community, faced cooperation with the Arabs, the Agency’s Jewish State proposal handling a million and a quarter Arabs in the vaguest generalities (para. 5). Rare cooperation — Haifa’s Municipal Commission, the Citrus Control and Marketing Boards, joint trade union activity in the Palestine Potash Company and on the railways — is far outweighed in Arab eyes by the exclusiveness of the General Federation of Jewish Labor and of the Agency’s labour policy (para. 6).
  • Jewish settlement is a miracle of physical and spiritual endeavour, with no expulsion of the indigenous population and exploitation of cheap Arab labour vigorously opposed as the Committee presents the Zionist record, but exclusiveness and self-isolation remain its failing, exaggerated by relations with the Administration since 1939 (paras. 7-9). Both peoples are deprived of responsible participation in central government; at least one-third of Jews settled in the last ten years have failed to apply for Palestinian citizenship (para. 10). Arab leadership is divided by the Husseinis and their rivals and by the gap between upper class and peasants, and has refused to develop a self-governing Arab community parallel to the Jews’ (para. 11).
  • On Arab education: only some fifteen Arab secondary schools exist in the whole country, the Kadoorie School at Tulkarm has 65 places and technical education a single school with some 60 places, for a population 80 per cent of which gains its living by farming; less than half the Arab children who would like to attend primary school can do so, and “Only one Arab girl in eight receives any education.” (paras. 12-13). Villages have built their own schools from voluntary subscriptions (para. 14), while practically every Jewish child has primary schooling (para. 15). The Arab community should assume the Jewish community’s responsibility for education, with Government aid making compulsory education possible, the Committee was informed, within the next ten years (para. 16). The Administration is a Colonial Service administration whose major decisions are taken in London, a remote control that militates gravely against reconciliation, compounded by centralisation in Palestine itself; the officials’ patience and the district administration’s standard are praised, and their pitifully inadequate salaries noted (paras. 17-21) (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1425-1522).

Chapter IX. Public Security (lines 1549-1674)

  • “Palestine is an armed camp.” Appendix V lists the main incidents of disorder; up to 1939 the Jews exercised very great restraint, and in recent years the threat to law and order has come from them (paras. 1-2). Illegal immigration has revived since the war’s end, by land over the Northern Frontier in summer 1945 and latterly by sea in purchased or chartered ships, with sabotage of patrol launches and attacks on coastguard stations; three intercepted ships carried 911, 247 and 733 immigrants, who were taken to a clearance camp and released with their numbers deducted from the quota (para. 3; the first ship’s men’s figure is garbled in the copy).
  • The Haganah’s structure, as stated by the military authorities: a static force estimated at 40,000, a field army based on the Jewish Settlement Police estimated at 16,000, and a full-time force, Palmach, with a peace establishment of 2,000 and a war establishment of 6,000, each branch including women, with arms procured over years and kept in specially constructed caches (para. 4). The Biriya search particulars furnished by the military authorities are set out: shots at an Arab Legion sentry on the night of 27th-28th February 1946, a detained platoon of 25 men, and two caches containing a Sten gun, a Bren, four modern rifles, a wireless set, grenades and Haganah documents (para. 4). Something in the nature of conscription is in force, shown by two press notices of 6th November 1945 widening the year’s service duty to all girls and boys aged 17-18, and Jewish Settlement Police service often ends in Haganah service (para. 5). The Irgun (“Irgun Zvai Leumi” as printed), formed in 1935, is estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000, and the Stern Group at between 200 and 300 (para. 6).
  • The Agency ceased or reduced cooperation from the end of the war; the Palestine Post extract of 30th December 1945, for which David Ben-Gurion took responsibility in evidence, dissociates the Agency from the murders of 27th December 1945 while declaring assistance futile under the Government’s policy and appealing to the Yishuv difficult while the Mandatory itself violates the Mandate (para. 7). “Private armies ought not to exist if they constitute a danger to the peace of the world.” The Agency’s chairman said the Jews would take care of themselves if British troops withdrew, while the Arab representatives asked for withdrawal forthwith; the Committee is clear that withdrawal would bring immediate and prolonged bloodshed (para. 8) (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1559-1674).

Chapter X. General (lines 1701-1834)

  • The Committee assumes a draft Trusteeship Agreement will shortly be prepared for the United Nations; the Mandate text is in Appendix VI (para. 1). On immigration it has nothing to add to Recommendation No. 6 (para. 2). Partition is reviewed and rejected: Peel’s “Neither” answer to who shall govern is endorsed, the Partition Commission’s impracticability conclusion recited, and, no partition being basically acceptable to Jews and Arabs today, “We are accordingly unable to recommend partition as the solution.” (para. 3). Lord Milner’s 1923 words on Palestine’s sacred character are quoted, with Peel’s application of them equally against Jewish control; the principle is no domination, and self-governing institutions depend on a will to work together not yet present, local mixed administrative areas being suggested meanwhile (para. 4). The land recommendations are restated, with proper protection to be devised for Arab small-owners and tenants wherever they reside (para. 5). The 100,000 certificates cover only a comparatively small proportion of Europe’s Jewish refugees; the general refugee problem is for the United Nations, whose existing refugee bodies have failed through insufficiency of resources (para. 6). Acknowledgements to the two Governments’ officers and staff and to the Secretaries, H. G. Vincent, L. L. Rood, H. Beeley and E. M. Wilson, follow.
  • The report is signed at Lausanne on April 20, 1946 by Joseph C. Hutcheson, American Chairman, and John E. Singleton, British Chairman, and by Frank Aydelotte, Frank W. Buxton, W. F. Crick, R. H. S. Crossman, Bartley C. Crum, Frederick Leggett, R. E. Manningham-Buller, James G. McDonald, Morrison and William Philips (spellings as printed in the signature list), giving the Committee’s full membership of twelve (computed from the names listed) (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1701-1834).

Appendix I. Itinerary of Committee (lines 1861-2036)

  • The itinerary in full, 1946: Washington, 4-17 January, and London, 23 January-4 February, with the full Committee; February subcommittee journeys to the American and French zones of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Paris, Berlin, Poland, the British Zone of Germany, Vienna and the American and British zones of Austria and Italy, assigning members by name to each; Cairo, 28 February-5 March, and Palestine, 6-28 March, with the full Committee; Damascus and Beirut, 15-20 March (Hutcheson, Lord Morrison, McDonald); Baghdad and Riyadh, 16-21 March (Singleton, Buxton, Manningham-Buller); Amman, 23-24 March (Lord Morrison, Phillips, Leggett); and Lausanne, 29 March-20 April, with the full Committee. The signature list’s Morrison is thus identified as Lord Morrison (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1867-2036).

Appendix II. European Jewry — Position in Various Countries (lines 2063-2188, in part)

  • Germany (paras. 1-5): the 1933 Census counted 499,682 persons of the Jewish faith, 400,935 of German nationality, and around 300,000 emigrated between 1933 and 1941; about 74,000 Jewish displaced persons, including migrants, are now in Berlin and the western zones, about 52,500 of them in the centers, 85 per cent of the non-German population being Poles; about 20,000 native Jews survive, of a Stuttgart community of 4,500 only 178 remaining, among them only two children; only one rabbi survives in all of Germany, as the appendix states; re-establishment turns on restoration of property and employment.
  • Austria (paras. 6-12): about 190,000 Jews in 1938; excluding displaced persons and migrants, some 4,500 in Vienna and 2,500 in the western zones; a group of 1,000 Austrian Jews in Palestine and Egypt wrote wishing to return. Centers held, in the American zone, approximately 5,600 in February and 7,000 on the first of April, and in the British zone 819 and 1,019; about 73 per cent of the 8,000 were Polish Jews, as stated; not more than 8,000 are assessed to have crossed into Italy since last summer. Through the Vienna transient centers 3,085 Jews passed in December, 3,229 in January, 2,443 in February and 1,150 in March (9,907 in total, computed from the monthly figures); the American-zone practice of facilitating onward movement has been changed to accord with the British, and migrants now receive the ordinary 1,200-calorie civilian ration in place of 2,300 to 2,400, plus Joint Distribution Committee parcels of about 400 calories.
  • Poland (paras. 13-25): Jews were 27.3 per cent of the urban and 3.2 per cent of the rural population before the war; the German-occupied territory held 2,042,600 Jews and the Soviet-ruled territory 1,309,000 at the 1939 partition; only 80,000 of the former Jewish population of 3,351,000 are now in Poland, and the vast majority want to leave; the village of Lowicz fell from about 3,000 Jews to 20. A further 800,000 returnees from the U.S.S.R., including about 150,000 Jews, are expected, and up to 200,000 Jews may wish to leave the country, Poland being one of the chief possible sources of mass migration, by routes through Berlin and through Vienna, Linz and Salzburg; UNRRA reception centers for returnees are urged.
  • France (para. 26): about 320,000 Jews before the war, about 180,000 now, some 40,000 in need of relief in February, 5,000 returned of the 120,000 deported, and some 20,000 recent refugees to whom France may be unable to extend permanent residence.
  • Czechoslovakia (paras. 27-32): some 360,000 Jews before Munich and 315,000 within the pre-Munich boundaries by September 1939; of the Czech provinces about 68,000 entered concentration camps and only about 3,000 survived, roughly 16,000 registered Jews now remaining there; of the 135,000 Slovakian Jews, 72,000 were deported and only 30,000 are now left, of whom 24,000 profess the Jewish faith; 60 per cent of the Jews are estimated to wish to leave, a number likely to diminish with restitution.
  • Rumania (paras. 33-35): reported from documents and outside evidence only, Rumania having not been visited; around 850,000 Jews in 1939 and 335,000 today within the present borders, the largest Jewish community in any European country as stated; in November 1945 half of Rumanian Jews were unable to make a living and received Joint Distribution Committee assistance; some 150,000 are heard to have made formal application for Palestine certificates (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 2075-2188).
  • Hungary (paras. 36-39): about 400,000 Jews in the territory that is Hungary today in 1939, now about 200,000, 90 per cent in Budapest; in 1945 (printed “194S”) 77 per cent of Budapest Jews received clothing relief, 46 per cent food, 66 per cent money and 14 per cent rent help from Jewish organizations; there is no legal discrimination but restitution decrees are unimplemented, anti-Semitism has risen sharply after 25 years of propaganda, and only the thoroughly assimilated, older people and Jewish Communists and Socialists — 30,000-40,000 — are expected to wish to remain; 50,000-60,000 have expressed a wish to go to Palestine, the United States being first choice but understood to be impossible at scale. Zionist organizations are active in Hungary and Rumania, form part of the Central Jewish Committees with controlling influence, and direct the westward movement; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee relief funds are paid to those Committees with little control east of Vienna (lines 2190-2200).
  • Bulgaria (para. 40): some 45,000 Jews against 50,000 in 1939, few having died from Nazi persecution, but the whole range of discriminatory legislation, confiscation, forced sales and compulsory labor was applied, restitution is cumbersome and slow, and, though it appears there is no anti-Semitism, all non-Communist Jews desire to leave; 12,000 have registered for Palestine, though facilities for leaving appear doubtful (lines 2204-2206).
  • Yugoslavia (para. 41): about 11,000 remain of approximately 75,000 before the war; economic condition does not differ from other inhabitants and emigration attitude depends on political outlook, no evidence of anti-Semitism existing; about 2,750 wish to emigrate to Palestine and 550 or so to other countries, chiefly the United States (line 2210).
  • Italy (paras. 42-44): a Jewish population in the region of 46,000, of whom 30,000 native Jews present no special problem and 16,000 (computed from the figures given: 6,500 in four southern UNRRA centers, about 5,500 in other centers and 4,000 precariously in cities) are non-Italian Jews who regard Italy only as a point of departure for Palestine, which Italy cannot assimilate in her present economic condition though her Government and people are friendly; at Santa Maria di Bagni 600-700 marched in an organised demonstration with children carrying “Down with the White Paper.”, and at Santa Maria di Leuca seven tires of the Committee’s cars were cut, both recorded as evidence of intense feeling against remaining in centers and of almost fanatical love for Palestine; Italian Jews have no desire to emigrate (lines 2214-2226).
  • Greece (para. 45): some 10,000 Jews, survivors of a prewar population of 75,000, of Salonika’s 56,000 only some 2,000 surviving; fundamentally no anti-Semitism, but practically all Jewish property was confiscated, about half the population receives assistance, and estimated potential emigrants range up to 50 per cent depending on the estimator (lines 2230-2234).
  • Belgium (para. 46): 90,000 before the war, now 33,000, of whom 6,000 German and Austrian refugees (whose status has been legalized) and 2,000 recent immigrants; no tendency to large-scale emigration (line 2238). Netherlands (para. 47): approximately 150,000 before the war including refugees, now some 30,000 including 6,000 refugees who have temporary asylum but not yet permanent residence rights; no evidence of any strong desire to emigrate (line 2242). Switzerland (para. 48): asylum was provided for some 35,000 Jews, mostly from France and Italy; about 10,500 refugees remain and 24,500 or so have returned; Swiss policy has “bean” (as printed) temporary refuge and transit, and some 4,000 may remain if funds are provided, the others not being absorbable (lines 2246-2248).
  • The Appendix II notes (lines 2250-2256) give, for Germany para. 2, the zonal figures British 15,600, French “i,600” (as printed), American 54,000 and Berlin 3,000 (74,200 in total, computed, against about 74,000 stated); for Poland para. 13, the 1931 census (total population 31,915,000, Jews by religion 3,113,000, 9.8 per cent) and the 1939 official estimate (35,339,000; 3,351,000, 9.7 per cent); and, for Poland para. 20, that Polish Jews were some 46 per cent of Jewish immigrants to Palestine from 1922 to 1929, German and Austrian immigrants rising from 30 to 57 per cent of the total during 1936-1939 while “The proportion of Polish to total Jeremiah immigrants declined from 41 to 11 per cent” (“Jeremiah” as printed).

Appendix III. Estimated Jewish Population of Europe (lines 2336-2580)

  • Two tables give, by country, the 1939 total and the 1946 total split into native and refugee-and-displaced, with the refugees’ nationality. Table A (the countries of continental Europe treated in Appendix II and others): Albania 200 to 300, Austria 60,000 to 15,000, Belgium 90,000 to 33,000, Bulgaria 50,000 to 45,000, Czechoslovakia 315,000 to 65,000, Denmark 7,000 to 5,500, Finland 2,000 to 1,800, France 320,000 to 180,000, Germany 215,000 to 94,000, Greece 75,000 to 10,000, Holland 150,000 to 30,000, Hungary 400,000 to 200,000, Italy 50,000 to 46,000, Luxemburg 3,500 to 500, Norway 2,000 to 1,000, Poland 3,351,000 to 80,000, Rumania 850,000 to 335,000, Yugoslavia 75,000 to 11,000; its foot row states 6,015,700, 1,153,106, 1,000,600 and 152,000, while the combined summary below restates Table A as 6,015,700, 1,153,100, 1,000,600 and 152,500. Table B: United Kingdom 340,000 to 350,000, Portugal 3,600 to 4,000, Soviet Union “13,560,000” (as printed) to 2,665,000, Spain 4,500 to 4,600, Sweden 7,600 to 19,500, Switzerland 26,000 to 28,600, with printed totals 3,930,600, 3,071,600, 2,833,000 and 238,500. Total for Europe as printed: 9,946,200 in 1939 and 4,224,600 in 1946, of which 3,833,600 native and 391,000 refugee and displaced. Notes a-j qualify the figures (Austria’s 1937 figure of about 192,000; Czechoslovakia’s pre-Munich boundaries and the exclusion of Carpatho-Ukraine survivors; Germany’s June 1933 census figure of 499,682; Hungary’s exclusion of an estimated 15,000 prisoners of war in the Soviet Union; Poland’s exclusion of an estimated 150,000 Polish Jews in the Soviet Union; Rumania’s inclusion of Bessarabia and Bukovina in the 1939 figure and exclusion of their estimated 40-45,000 survivors from the later figure, the note dating the 335,000 figure to “1916” as printed). The tables’ internal discrepancies are held under Open questions.

Appendix IV. Palestine: Historical Background (lines 2660-2778)

  • The First World War: before the war Palestine had no separate existence as a single administrative unit in the Turkish Empire; its population was some 689,000, about 85,000 Jews, the remainder an Arabic speaking people akin to those of Syria, Mesopotamia, the Arabian peninsula and Egypt, the great majority of Palestinian Arabs Moslems and somewhat less than ten per cent Christian; the economy was overwhelmingly agricultural and the standard of living low. The Hussein-McMahon letters of 1915-1916 promised British assistance for Arab independence, a promise the British Government has always held to have excluded Palestine and the Arab leaders have insisted included it. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsed by France and Italy in 1918 and sanctioned by a Joint Resolution of Congress in 1922, created a “National Home” new to international law: it appears certain no one in 1917 contemplated an immediate Jewish State ruling the large Arab majority, but many responsible persons believed a considerable Jewish majority might develop and a Jewish State be the ultimate outcome (lines 2666-2672).
  • The Palestine Mandate: approved by the League Council in July 1922 and effective September 1923, it recited the Balfour Declaration, recognised the Jews’ historical connection and right to reconstitute their National Home, required facilitation of Jewish immigration and close settlement, and provided for a recognised Jewish agency and for safeguarding all inhabitants’ civil and religious rights; “Though extensive safeguards were provided for the non-Jewish peoples, the Mandate was framed primarily in the Jewish interest.” Arab leaders demanded independence and riots occurred in 1920 and 1921. The Churchill White Paper of 1922 (followed in the copy by the digits “655555” as printed, forming “1922655555”) disclaimed a Jewish State, defined the National Home as a culturally autonomous Jewish community looking towards a bi-national but unitary Palestinian State, and established economic absorptive capacity as immigration’s limiting factor; accepted without enthusiasm by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs, it was the first failed major settlement attempt (lines 2676-2684).
  • The Disturbances of 1929 and the 1930 White Paper: population rose from 757,000 in 1922 (slightly more than 11 per cent Jews) to 960,000 in 1929 (more than 16 per cent Jews); the 1929 riots, the Shaw Commission and the October 1930 Passfield White Paper followed, the latter espousing a bi-partite and equal obligation and proposing immigration and land-purchase restrictions and a legislative council; the MacDonald letter of 1931 virtually explained away the intent to limit immigration and land sales, placating Jews and indignating Arabs — the second failed attempt (lines 2688-2692).
  • The Arab Revolt and Partition: by 1936 the population was 1,366,000, almost 28 per cent Jews; the 1936 general strike demanded self-government, prohibition of land transfers to Jews and immediate cessation of Jewish immigration; the Royal Commission denied equal obligations, held the Mandate unworkable and suggested partition (a Jewish State of Galilee, Esdraelon and the coastal plain, an Arab State of most of the rest plus Trans-Jordan, permanent mandates for Jerusalem and Holy Places). The Peel Report of 7 July 1937 was generally unfavourably received — the Jewish Agency first attacking partition as a breach of the Balfour Declaration, then authorising negotiations on a Jewish State’s terms while rejecting Peel’s details, and Arab leaders in the Husseini-controlled Arab Higher Committee and the Nashashibi National Defence Party denouncing it; after the Acting District Commissioner for Galilee’s assassination, regulations of 30 September 1937 removed Haj Amin el-Husseini from the Supreme Muslim Council and the General Waqf Committee, disbanded the Higher Committee and National Committees, deported five Arab leaders to the Seychelles and drove Jamal el-Husseini to Syria and Haj Amin to Lebanon, and military courts were established, the Arab campaign continuing as organised guerrilla fighting until the Second World War (lines 2696-2708).
  • The Woodhead Commission: the Palestine Partition Commission’s terms, published 4 January 1938, required boundaries including the fewest Arabs in the Jewish area and Jews in the Arab area; arriving late April and staying until early August, its November report found no partition plan within its terms offering much hope, rejected Peel’s plan, and considered Plan B (Galilee to the mandated area, the southern part of the region south of Jaffa to the Arab State) and Plan C (a Jewish State limited to the coast between Zikhron Yaaqov and Rehovoth, with northern Palestine, including the Plains of Esdraelon and Jezreel, and all the semi-arid south under separate mandate), two members favouring C, one B and one holding no practicable scheme devisable (lines 2712-2714).
  • The 1939 White Paper: Britain rejected partition as impracticable, held separate London conferences from 7 February to 17 March 1939 after Arab delegates refused to meet Jewish representatives, and on 17 May 1939 announced the National Home obligation fulfilled, an independent state in which Jews and Arabs would share authority within ten years, 75,000 immigrants over five years subject to absorptive capacity, and authority to restrict Jewish land purchase; Jews unanimously condemned it, Arabs at first rejected it then in majority came to accept it, and the Permanent Mandates Commission unanimously held it conflicted with the Mandate’s previous interpretation (four members holding it not in harmony with the Mandate, three that circumstances would justify it if the League Council did not oppose), the war suspending any League decision. Its constitutional changes were never implemented and Palestinians were not promoted to head Departments, while the Land Transfers Regulations of 28 February 1940 divided Palestine into Zone A (about 63 per cent, transfers save to a Palestinian Arab generally forbidden), Zone B (about 32 per cent, severely restricted) and an unrestricted remainder of about 5 per cent including the most fertile areas, and its immigration quotas were generally put into effect with further immigration beyond 1944 dependent on Arab agreement (lines 2718-2742).
  • Illegal immigration, the war and after: illegal immigration grew to unprecedented proportions, quotas being reduced by illegal entrants; the 1940 deportation policy produced the “Patrza” disaster (as printed), a deportee vessel scuttled in Haifa Harbor in November 1940 with loss of life to 252 persons, and some 1,350 illegal immigrants were sent to Mauritius in December 1940; only some 44,000 of the 75,000 had arrived by autumn 1943, so a further 31,000 were allowed, and since end-1945 immigration has continued at 1,500 a month pending this report. The Jewish Agency organised Jewish recruiting and campaigned for a Jewish force, crowned in September 1944 by the Jewish Brigade Group; official figures put Jewish recruitment for all military service “between 1939 and 1940” (as printed) at 27,028, against 12,445 Arabs from a population twice as large, the Mufti’s flight to Italy and Germany and active Axis support not having cost him his following — “he is probably the most popular Arab leader in Palestine today”. The Haganah (over 60,000, fairly well-armed and disciplined, with its own secret radio transmitter, generally exercising restraint but implicated in end-1945 violence), the Irgun and the Stern Group (whose outrages culminated in the High Commissioner assassination attempt of August 1944 and Lord Moyne’s murder in Cairo on 6 November 1944) are described; in Arab politics, Musa Effendi el-Alami attended the Egypt conferences leading to the Arab League, whose Covenant annex provides for a League-selected Arab delegate from Palestine and whose members undertook in December 1945 to boycott Jewish industry’s products, Arab Offices were established in Washington, London and Jerusalem, and a new Arab Higher Committee of November 1945 under Jamal el-Husseini’s leadership after his return united Arab leaders behind fulfilment of the White Paper and speedy independence for an Arab-dominated Palestine, closing: “There can be no gainsaying that Palestine today is governed without the consent of Jews or Arabs by an Administration depending almost solely upon force for the maintenance of a precarious authority.” (lines 2746-2778)

Appendix V. Palestine: Public Security (lines 2858-2926)

  • The present state: a police and prisons establishment of over 15,000 exclusive of supernumerary police, over 60 police barracks built as forts, a military force equivalent to two and a half divisions plus air and naval forces, and L.P. 4,600,000 spent on law and order in 1944-1945 against less than L.P. 5,600,000 on all other governmental services not directly attributable to the war. Emergency powers under the Palestine Defense Order-in-Council of 1937 and regulations from 1936 (seizure of buildings and transport, curfews, censorship, deportation, collective fines, detention camps) and 1937 (detention of deportees anywhere in the Empire, outlawing associations, military courts established for the trial of offences connected with sabotage and intimidation and with the discharge of firearms at persons and the carrying of arms and explosives, only the discharge and carrying offences being punishable by death — 908 cases tried and 109 death sentences confirmed in 1938 and 1939) were extensively used again in 1945 and 1946 against Jewish threats: detention orders on an Area Commander’s authority are not reviewable by any court, Jews in detention at late December 1945 stood at 554, and 251 Jews were deported to Eritrea in October 1944 and 55 more in December 1945 (lines 2864-2874).
  • The background narrative runs incident by incident: the April 1920 Jerusalem riots (five Jews and four Arabs killed, 211 Jews and 21 Arabs wounded); the May 1921 Jaffa disorders, introduced as following “The opening of Palestine to Jewish immigration late in 1930” (as printed) (47 Jews and 48 Arabs killed); the 1929 Wailing Wall sequence and the August 1929 massacres (133 Jews killed and 339 wounded, six colonies destroyed, 116 Arab deaths reported); periodic violence 1930-1935; the 1936-1939 Arab disturbances in detail, with totals from mid-1936 to end-1939 of 1,791 verified deaths and 3,288 cases of injury plus a conservative estimate of some 2,000 Arab rebels killed by police and military action; the post-1939 quiescence of the Arabs (with the 24 March 1945 attack on a Jewish hiking party west of the Dead Sea, one killed and three wounded); and Jewish violence from February 1939 through the war — the arms-theft racket and 1943 “arms trial”, the Irgun and Stern Group campaign of 1944 including Lord Moyne’s murder and the 10 October 1944 joint communique demanding actual collaboration from the Jewish community, after which the Agency cooperated until comparatively recently — to the renewed outbreak of May 1945 and the incidents of January-March 1946, total casualties from the end of the war in Europe to the Committee’s arrival in Palestine being 45 killed and 278 wounded. Its conclusion: threats arose very largely from the Arab-Jewish conflict over Jewish immigration; until 1939 violence came from the Arabs protesting continued immigration and since 1939 from the Jews protesting restrictions, and in 1936 the Arab leaders and in 1946 the Jewish leaders alike indicated their inability to halt violence (lines 2876-2926).

Appendix VI. The Mandate (lines 3005-3122)

  • The full text of the Mandate for Palestine as confirmed by the League Council and done at London on 24 July 1922, reproduced in the appendix: preamble (the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 to be put into effect, the Jewish people’s historical connection recognised, His Britannic Majesty selected as Mandatory) and Articles 1-28, including Art. 2’s double charge, Art. 4’s Jewish agency, Art. 6’s immigration and close settlement, Art. 11’s public-works arrangements with the agency, Arts. 13-14 on Holy Places, Art. 17 (“organist” as printed, for organise), Art. 21’s eight antiquities rules, Art. 22’s three official languages, Art. 25’s postponement provision east of the Jordan and Art. 28’s termination safeguards. Art. 1’s heading is printed “ARTIC1E 1”.

Appendix VII. List of Staff (lines 3201-3235)

  • Research staff: Paul L. Hanna, Frederick V. Loud, William F. Stinespring (American); Paul A. Wilson, E. Christie Willatts, Miss Hazel Hamilton (British); Miss Mary Chanter stands alone on the fourth Research Staff line, the copy running the two columns together, so her column cannot be determined from the copy (column uncertain). Administrative Officers: William M. Rountree, William F. Teagle. Verbatim Reporters: Miss Margaret Omer, Miss Helen B. Campbell; Miss Helen Painting, MBE, Miss I. M. Audrey Grundy. Secretarial Staff: Miss Helen Randall, Miss Dorothy C. Herchenroeder, Mrs. Frances R. Warden, Mrs. Sue Freshman; Miss Suzanne McDowall, Miss N. Audrey Greig, Miss Daphne Wakelen, Miss Elizabeth M. White. The Secretaries thanked in Chapter X (H. G. Vincent, L. L. Rood, H. Beeley and E. M. Wilson) are not named in this staff list as reproduced.

Key passages

Evidence the work relies on

  • Public sessions and witness evidence in Washington, London, Jerusalem and Cairo, subcommittee investigations in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy and Greece, and visits to the capitals of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia and Trans-Jordan, as set out in the Preface (lines 283-310).
  • The two volumes of the Survey of Palestine compiled by the Government of Palestine at short notice for the Committee’s use, acknowledged in Chapter III’s footnote as containing a great deal of new statistical and other information (lines 856-860).
  • Official data cited in the chapters read: police and prisons figures and the 1944-45 financial tables (Chapter III, paras. 3-4), the 1922 census and end-1944 official population estimates and the natural-increase table (Chapter IV, paras. 4-7), and population projections by Professor Notestein, Dr. D. V. Glass, the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics and the Government Statistician (Chapter IV, para. 6).
  • The Peel Commission Report, quoted and endorsed at points throughout Chapters I, III and IV, and the text of Mandate Articles 4 and 18 as discussed in Chapters I and III.
  • Witness evidence for the Jewish and Arab cases as presented in Chapters V and VI, including the Jewish Agency’s public-hearing statement on cooperation after V-E day and Jamal Effendi el-Husseini’s evidence quoted in Chapter VI, para. 8.
  • The military authorities’ account of the illegal armed forces in Chapter IX: the Haganah’s three-branch structure and estimated strengths, the Biriya search particulars of 27th-28th February 1946, and the estimated strengths of the Irgun and the Stern Group; and the two press notices of 6th November 1945 and the Palestine Post extract of 30th December 1945 reproduced there.
  • Lord Milner’s 1923 statement and General Allenby’s Proclamation of 11 December 1917, each quoted in the text (Chapters X and VII respectively).
  • Appendix II’s country information for Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and Rumania, the Rumania section expressly based solely on documents and evidence obtained from outside that country’s borders, as the appendix states (para. 33); the same headnote covers Hungary, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, whose sections follow in lines 2190-2210.
  • Appendix III’s population tables for Europe in 1939 and 1946, with their qualifying notes a-j, and Appendix II’s three footnote notes (zonal figures for Germany, the 1931 census and 1939 estimate for Poland, and the Polish share of Jewish immigration to Palestine) printed after the appendix (lines 2250-2580).
  • Appendix IV’s historical narrative, presented without citations in the appendix as reproduced, and Appendix V’s incident-by-incident public-security narrative, whose account of recent years rests in part on what the military authorities stated to the Committee about Arab quiescence (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, line 2904).
  • The Mandate text reproduced in full in Appendix VI (lines 3005-3122), the same instrument ingested separately as Mandate for Palestine (1922).

Analysis

  • The report presents itself as a unanimous joint inquiry working from its four terms of reference within 120 days, resting on hearings, country subcommittee visits and the Government’s Survey of Palestine. Its recommendations are framed as a single package: the 100,000 certificates are paired with the rejection of both an Arab and a Jewish state, continued Mandate government pending trusteeship, and an express warning that obstruction by violence will be suppressed. Its limits are stated by the Committee itself: it could not assess the soundness of the specific development plans presented to it (Recommendation No. 8), it visited neither Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria nor the Soviet occupation zones (Chapter II, para. 2, and Appendix II, para. 33’s headnote for the unvisited four), and it declines to construct a yardstick for future annual immigration (Recommendation No. 6).
  • Chapters V and VI present the two national cases as the Committee heard them, attributing each side’s claims to its spokesmen, while Chapters VIII and IX rest their security account on the military authorities’ figures as furnished. Appendices IV and V, by contrast, narrate the Mandate’s history and the security record in the Committee’s own voice without citations as reproduced: Appendix IV’s judgments (the Mandate “framed primarily in the Jewish interest”, the Mufti as probably the most popular Arab leader today, Palestine governed without either people’s consent) and Appendix V’s closing allocation of violence — Arab before 1939, Jewish since — are the appendices’ own framings, and Appendix V’s casualty figures are given without a stated source in the text, while Appendix IV’s recruitment figure is given “According to official figures”. Appendix III’s tables, the report’s statistical basis for the scale of European Jewry’s losses, do not internally agree at several points (held under Open questions), so totals quoted from them carry that qualification.

People, organizations, places and events

Concepts

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • Chapter IV, para. 20 gives the price of butter as “the equivalent of 1 1/2 a pound” with no currency unit stated in the reproduced text; the unit is not supplied.
  • Chapter IV, para. 4’s Moslem growth from 589,000 to 1,061,000 is a difference of 472,000 (computed from the figures given); the paragraph itself states no total for that growth.
  • The transmittal letter’s six signatories (lines 191-211) are not the whole Committee: the signature list at the end of Chapter X (lines 1751-1779) names twelve members in all (computed from the names listed), with two chairmen, Joseph C. Hutcheson and John E. Singleton; the staff list is in Appendix VII (lines 3201-3235). In that list Morrison is given with no first name or initials; Appendix I identifies him as Lord Morrison. The same list spells the name “WILLIAM PHILIPS” with one l, against “William Phillips” in the transmittal letter; both forms are held as printed.
  • The Committee’s statement in Chapter II, para. 12 that German Jews were reduced from about 500,000 in 1933 to about 20,000 is given without a stated source in the text. Appendix II, para. 1 gives the 1933 Census figure as 499,682 persons of the Jewish faith, and para. 4 puts the native Jews surviving in Germany at about 20,000.
  • Chapter VII, para. 1: wording is missing in the reproduced text where four question marks stand (“failed to ???? or even harmony”); what the missing wording was is not recoverable from the text copy.
  • Chapter VI’s footnote gives the 1939 Command Papers for the McMahon correspondence documents as “Nos. 6967 and 69” (line 1245), the second number truncated as printed; the complete number is not given in the text.
  • Chapter IX, para. 3: the first intercepted ship’s men’s figure is garbled in the copy as “bb4” against 911 immigrants in total and 357 women; 554 men is computed from those two figures, not printed.
  • Chapter III, para. 10 estimates the Haganah at over 60,000 strong; Chapter IX, para. 4’s branch estimates sum to 58,000 on the peace establishment and 62,000 on the war establishment (computed from the figures given). Both accounts are held as stated.
  • Appendix II, para. 13’s two territorial figures for Polish Jewry at the 1939 partition, 2,042,600 and 1,309,000, sum to 3,351,600 (computed), against the former Jewish population of 3,351,000 stated in para. 16; the difference of 600 (computed) is not explained in the text.
  • Appendix II, para. 8 states about 73 per cent of the 8,000 (as stated) centre occupants in Austria were Polish Jews; the paragraph’s own first-of-April figures, 7,000 in the American zone and 1,019 in the British zone, sum to 8,019 (computed).
  • Appendix III’s tables do not internally agree: Table A’s foot row gives the 1946 total as 1,153,106 and the refugee figure as 152,000, while the combined summary restates them as 1,153,100 and 152,500; the 1946 total rows sum to 1,153,100 (computed), but the native rows sum to 991,600 and the refugee rows to 154,100 (computed), against the printed 1,000,600 and 152,500. Individual Table A rows also disagree: Bulgaria’s native figure (46,000) exceeds its total (45,000), Czechoslovakia’s native plus refugee (66,600, computed) exceeds its total (65,000), and France’s (170,000, computed) falls short of its total (180,000). In Table B the Soviet Union’s native plus refugee (2,765,000, computed) exceeds its total (2,665,000), Portugal’s (4,200, computed) exceeds its total (4,000), Sweden’s (19,600, computed) exceeds its total (19,500) and Switzerland’s (28,500, computed) falls short of its total (28,600); the Table B rows sum to 3,071,700 in total, 2,933,200 native and 238,700 refugee (computed), against the printed totals of 3,071,600, 2,833,000 and 238,500. The printed Europe totals for 1939 (9,946,200) and 1946 (4,224,600) each differ by 100 (computed) from the sum of the two tables’ printed totals. All figures are held as printed.
  • Appendix III, Table B gives the Soviet Union’s 1939 Jewish population as “13,560,000” as printed, against a Table B 1939 total of 3,930,600 in which it cannot be included as printed; the intended figure is not recoverable from the text. Note j, attached by its letter to Rumania’s native figure, reads “Includes the 1939 Jewish population of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, estimated at about 250,000”, which does not correspond to Rumania as printed; and Rumania note i dates the 335,000 figure to “1916” as printed, in context for 1946.
  • Appendix II’s Germany note gives the zonal figures British 15,600, French “i,600” (as printed), American 54,000 and Berlin 3,000, summing to 74,200 (computed) against the about 74,000 Jewish displaced persons stated in para. 2.
  • Appendix IV gives Jewish recruitment “between 1939 and 1940” (as printed) as 27,028 for all types of military service; the period as printed covers only part of the war the passage describes, and no other period is stated. Its Churchill White Paper date is printed “1922655555”, and Appendix V introduces the May 1921 Jaffa outbreak with “The opening of Palestine to Jewish immigration late in 1930” (as printed); both are held as printed.
  • Appendix V’s account of the arms trial states that the Jewish community thought the Government “should recognize that the Jews had a moral right to own”; the sentence breaks off as printed at that point, and no object for “own” is given in the text.
  • Appendix III, note e reads “The figure refers to the Jewish population within pre-Munich boundaries.” and is attached by its letter to Hungary’s 1939 figure (“e 400,000”); “pre-Munich boundaries” is also the wording of note b, which is attached to Czechoslovakia. The note is held as printed for Hungary.
  • Chapter X thanks the Secretaries H. G. Vincent, L. L. Rood, H. Beeley and E. M. Wilson; Appendix VII’s staff list as reproduced does not name any of them. The two lists are held as printed.

Coverage

lines 1-3281 of 3281, read in full in parts 1-3 of 3

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