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Report of the Palestine Royal Commission

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aliasesPeel Commission Report, Palestine Royal Commission Report, Cmd. 5479

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Summary

The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission (Cmd. 5479), appointed by Royal Warrant of 7 August 1936 under Earl Peel to ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances which broke out in Palestine in mid-April 1936, to inquire into the implementation of the Mandate in relation to the Mandatory’s obligations towards Arabs and Jews, and to recommend the removal and prevention of legitimate grievances. Part 1 (PDF p.1-47) gives the Warrants, the Preface and the opening of Part I, The Problem: Chapter I, a historical background from ancient Israel through the Arab conquest, the Diaspora and the rise of Zionism, and Chapter II through its first three sections and the start of its fourth, tracing the Arab Revolt, the McMahon Pledge, the Sykes–Picot agreement, the Balfour Declaration and its wartime purpose and contested meaning, the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, and the delay to the Mandate’s confirmation on 24 July 1922. The Commission frames the 1936 disturbances as the outcome of a conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalism, “fundamentally a conflict of right with right” (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.14 / printed p.2). Part 2 (PDF p.48-87) completes Chapter II — the Mandate Articles quoted, the 16 September 1922 Trans-Jordan memorandum, and the Commission’s analysis that the Mandate’s primary purpose is the Jewish National Home while its general obligations under Article 22 of the Covenant run mainly to the Arabs, the two having been assumed compatible — and gives Chapter III through the start of its fourth sub-section: Palestine 1920-1925 under Sir Herbert Samuel, the situation in 1925 as the Commission re-reads it, the 1926-1929 depression and recovery, the Wailing Wall incident of September 1928 and the August 1929 outbreak, and the 1930 controversy over the Shaw Report, the Hope Simpson Report and the Passfield White Paper, breaking off at the announcement of the Prime Minister’s letter to Dr. Weizmann.

What the file is

  • The Palestine Royal Commission Report, presented as Cmd. 5479, printed and published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London (PDF p.2), downloaded from https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/Cmd5479.pdf (access basis: public-domain). The original PDF (47,698,315 bytes, SHA-256 f16631ebcc041f5a521e93a305eeccf80b6d8cb8ce5eb5e1aa92086d184876cc, on Josh’s computer at the path given in the stub) is too large to deliver, so raw/ holds the supplied text copy and a stub for the original. The text copy has 423 PDF pages, about 187,982 words as given for this ingest, with === PDF p.N === markers; printed pagination runs one page behind the front matter and then 12-13 pages behind the PDF pagination in the body (PDF p.14 is printed p.2, PDF p.47 is printed p.34).
  • No publication date or signature date appears in PDF p.1-47 as read in this part; the year 1937 in the frontmatter rests on the Report’s identity as the Peel Commission report, recorded in other ingested sources as published on 7 July 1937 (see Peel Commission). The imprint page’s year is read in the text copy as “I927” (PDF p.2) and is held under Open questions, not corrected.
  • Text quality: the text copy is heavily OCR-garbled throughout this range. Many pages are laid out word-per-line and are read in printed order, with passages at page turns reassembled; digits are frequently garbled (dates appear as “rgr4”, “Igzo” and the like, and are given in the reading notes with the copy reading noted). Two pages are blank in the text copy: PDF p.1 and PDF p.31, the latter at the position of the map of Pre-War Turkish Administrative Districts listed in the Contents as opposite printed p.19 (PDF p.5). Two passages are incomplete in the copy: the opening of Chapter II paras. 6-7 at the turn of PDF p.32-33, and the Sykes-Picot enumeration and the end of para. 11 at PDF p.34, where items (2) and (3) are missing. The Contents’ own page numbers are partly garbled. Quotations on this page that run across the copy’s scrambled page turns are marked reassembled in the reading notes.
  • Structure as listed in the Contents (PDF p.3-5 / printed p.iii-v): Royal Warrants (printed p.vi), Preface (printed p.ix); Part I, The Problem — Chapter I, The Historical Background (printed p.2), Chapter II, The War and the Mandate (printed p.16), Chapter III, Palestine from 1920 to 1936, Chapter IV, The Disturbances of 1936, Chapter V, The Present Situation; Part II, The Operation of the Mandate — Chapters VI-XIX, Administration through Conclusions and Recommendations (printed p.363); Part III, The Possibility of a Lasting Settlement — Chapter XX, The Force of Circumstances (printed p.370), Chapter XXI, Cantonisation (printed p.377), Chapter XXII, A Plan of Partition (printed p.380), Chapter XXIII, Conclusion (printed p.394); Appendices 1-4 (printed p.398-404), including the Mandate for Palestine as Appendix 1; maps and a population graph as listed in the reading notes. Chapters III onward are not yet read.

Section by section

  • Royal Warrants (PDF p.6-8 / printed p.vi-viii). Warrant I, 7 August 1936, Edward VIII, appoints William Robert Wellesley, Earl Peel (Chairman), Sir Horace George Montagu Rumbold (Vice-Chairman), Sir Egbert Laurie Lucas Hammond, Sir William Morris Carter, Sir Harold Morris and Reginald Coupland, with the Terms of Reference quoted in the Summary above; signed by Malcolm MacDonald. Warrant II, 17 December 1936, George VI, after the Demise of the Crown, authorises the Commissioners named in the earlier Commissions, the Palestine Commission among them, to continue, ratifies the terms, and deems intervening proceedings taken under the new Warrant; signed by John Simon. A note records that the minutes of Public Evidence and a volume of Memoranda prepared by the Government of Palestine are published separately, and gives the United Kingdom share of the Commission’s cost as approximately £4,050 and the printing cost as £15 10s. 0d., both figures garbled in the copy and held under Open questions.
  • Preface (PDF p.9-12 / printed p.ix-xii). Address to the King repeating the appointment and Terms. Para. 1: departure postponed nearly three months by the continuance of the disturbances; official reports and Palestine Government descriptive and statistical memoranda studied; first meeting, London, 6 October, decided no witnesses until Jerusalem and minds free from prejudice. Para. 2: strike ended 12 October; left London 5 November, sailed from Marseilles by the S.S. Cathay, arrived Jerusalem 11 November. Para. 3: ceremonial opening at Government House, 12 November, Warrant read in the three official languages, welcome by the High Commissioner, General Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope. Para. 4: the Arab Higher Committee’s boycott decision, taken while the Commission was on its way; the Chairman’s appeal at the opening, quoted in the reading notes; no Arab witnesses until British and Jewish evidence was almost complete; boycott called off 6 January, stay prolonged for the Mufti of Jerusalem and other Arab Higher Committee representatives. Para. 5: formal sessions in Jerusalem, no Counsel, evidence in public so far as possible; in Palestine 60 witnesses at 30 public sessions and 53 witnesses at 40 private sessions, in English with interpretation. Para. 6: the Commissioners’ Powers (Conferment of) Ordinance, No. 71 of 1936. Para. 7: the Chairman’s opening speech on interpretation — the words “underlying causes” mean no enquiry into the detailed course of the last six or seven months, claims and counter-claims being for the Courts or the Administration; the Terms are very wide and to be interpreted in a broad and comprehensive manner; Prime Minister Baldwin quoted that a Royal Commission is entirely independent and uncontrolled. Para. 8: not all offers of evidence could be examined; gratitude to those who submitted memoranda. Para. 9: tours — Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Petah Tiqva; Bethlehem, Hebron and Beersheba to Gaza; from Tiberias, Haifa, Acre and the Huleh district; the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot; district offices and officers of all races. Para. 10: three Commissioners visited Trans-Jordan on 9 January as guests of the British Resident, Lieutenant-Colonel C. H. F. Cox, with a long private audience with the Amir Abdullah at Amman. Para. 11: left Jerusalem in the week beginning 17 January, discussions at Helouan in Egypt, sailed 24 January, London 30 January. Para. 12: in London one public session (two witnesses) and seven private sessions (eight witnesses, all former officials or holders of high office). Para. 13: the two accompanying volumes.
  • Part I title page (PDF p.13).
  • Chapter I, The Historical Background (PDF p.14-27 / printed p.2-15), complete in this part.
    • Opening, paras. 1-2: the disturbances of 19 April 1936 were the outcome of a conflict between Arab and Jewish Nationalism; adapting Lord Durham’s sentence, the Commission expected to find “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state” (PDF p.14 / printed p.2), but not so wide a gulf; one side in the disturbances put itself in the wrong by resorting to force while the other patiently kept the law, yet the conflict is fundamentally one of right with right; a historical introduction is required.
    • Section 1, The Jews in Palestine, paras. 3-7: Israelites in the hill-country by about 1100 B.C., distinguished by monotheism and the Mosaic Code; David (c.1010-970 B.C.) and Solomon (c.970-930 B.C.), united kingdom, then schism into Israel and Judah; Assyrian destruction of Samaria and deportation, then Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem about 585 B.C.; Cyrus’s permission of return in 538 B.C., reckoned at 40,000, Temple rebuilt, Torah taking final form under Persian and Ptolemaic rule; Seleucid persecution and the Hasmonaean revolt, independence from about 150 B.C.; Pompey’s storming of Jerusalem in 63 B.C.; Roman province, Herod, revolt in 64 A.D. as printed in the copy (see Open questions), destruction by Titus in 70 A.D., revolts of 115 and 132 A.D., Jerusalem destroyed and ploughed up in 135 A.D., population killed or enslaved, only a few thousand Jews left; Hebraism’s gift ranked with those of Greece and Rome, and Jesus a Jew on Jewish soil.
    • Section 2, The Arabs in Palestine, paras. 8-12: five hundred years of Roman and Byzantine rule, then Arab conquest inspired by Islam between A.D. 632 and 713 across Syria, ‘Iraq, Persia, Egypt, north Africa and Spain, checked at Constantinople in 678 and 717 and at Poitiers in 732; the Arab golden age of trade, science and learning. Palestine took no great part; Jerusalem’s university, the Dome of the Rock as the age’s surviving great work there, and the Haram Sharif with the Mosque al Aqsa ranking with Mecca and Medina as one of three paramount Holy Places of Islam, having preceded Mecca as the Qibla. Decay, Seljuk Turks, Crusades from 1099, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Mamluk rule, Mongol raids, Ottoman conquest in 1517 lasting, except Napoleon’s invasion and Mohammed Ali’s occupation, till 1914. Palestine in 1914 an outstanding example of Ottoman lethargy and maladministration: population overwhelmingly Arab, hills precariously cultivated, maritime belt sparse, Esdraelon marshy and malarious, Beersheba buried — yet to its Arabs their country and home, Syria of which Palestine had long been part.
    • Section 3, The Diaspora, paras. 13-21: Jewish history linked inextricably with the Palestine problem; Diaspora begun before 135 A.D., the ‘Iraq community from the exiles of 538 B.C. and the Hellenized Egyptian community that produced the Septuagint; waves into Syria, Yemen, Greece, Italy, then with the Arab conquest into north-west Africa and Spain, where Jewish life reached its highest point since the homeland, Maimonides (1135-1204) its greatest scholar, Arab and Jew harmonious and Spanish Jews assimilated in all but religion. Persecution began in the Christian, not the Moslem, world: restrictions, the middleman and money-lender position, Crusade massacres, expulsions from England, France and in 1492 Spain; Sephardim at Salonika and in the Ottoman Empire, safe from the worst but held inferior; ghettos and the yellow badge in Central Europe and Italy, migration to Lithuania, Poland and Hungary, Cossack conquest, Russian rule and the Pale of Settlement; survival — perhaps four million Jews in the early Diaspora, probably about one and a half million in 1700 — and the ghetto’s intensifying, hot-house nationalism. Emancipation in the West: United States 1787, France 1790, Italy 1870, Germany 1871, England’s last formal inequality removed 1890, Disraeli Prime Minister in 1868, Lionel de Rothschild in the Commons in 1858 and his son Nathaniel in the Lords in 1885, Jewish preeminence out of proportion to numbers. The new, racial Anti-Semitism from about 1880 in Germany, the Dreyfus Case, Russian pogroms from 1881 to 1910, tens of thousands murdered; between 1880 and 1910 at least three million Jews fled Eastern Europe, the majority to the United States, whose Jews rose from roughly a quarter of a million in 1870 to about four and a half million, of some ten million Jews in Europe about nine million in Central and Eastern Europe.
    • Section 4, Zionism, paras. 22-30: Jews never forgot Palestine — prayer for rain at Palestine’s season, Eretz Israel, longing to return to Zion; a Jewish presence almost always since the fall of the Jewish State, substantial under Arab rule, nearly blotted out in Crusades and Mongol invasions, recovering under Ottoman rule, Safad with as many as 15,000 Jews by Jewish tradition in the sixteenth century a centre of Rabbinical learning, its Galilee Jews Arabic-speaking and at one with their Moslem and Christian neighbours, declining to some 4,000 in Safad and 3,000 in Tiberias a hundred years ago and not more than 12,000 in all Palestine in 1845; the remnant’s meaning for ghetto Jewry and the belief in eventual return behind steadfastness and false Messiahs. Nineteenth-century change: modernism making the prophecies symbolic and emancipation seeming to remove the need for more than a spiritual home, then Anti-Semitism, the Dreyfus Case and the pogroms showing the new status insecure; the Alliance Israélite Universelle founded in France in 1860 and its agricultural school near Jaffa, the Anglo-Jewish Association in 1871, Baron Edmond de Rothschild’s seven pioneer colonies and fund between 1883 and 1900. By 1914 over 80,000 Jews in Palestine (the 1881 figure is garbled in the copy, see Open questions), nearly 12,000 on the land among forty-three colonies; the newcomers’ new idea — a distinct Jewish society and revival of Jewish culture — “This new idea was known as Zionism” (PDF p.25 / printed p.13). Zionism’s negative side, escape from the psychological drawbacks and minority-status of Diaspora life, the world as one vast ghetto even under tolerance; its positive side, a national life in Palestine, however small, with Hebrew revival from the outset, shown in the pre-War Hilfsverein schools dispute. Practical politics: Herzl, spurred by the Dreyfus Case, convened the Basle congress in 1897 and founded the Zionist Organisation, sought a charter from the Sultan and a powerful European backing, turning to England — Shaftesbury’s 184- proposal (last digit lost in the copy), George Eliot, Laurence Oliphant, Disraeli and Sir Moses Montefiore — Chamberlain’s 1903 East Africa offer of a tract with local autonomy, tempted many but rejected by the majority; on Palestine and only Palestine Zionist hopes were fixed when war broke out.
  • Chapter II, The War and the Mandate (PDF p.28-47 / printed p.16-34), sections 1-3 complete, section 4 begun.
    • Section 1, The Arab Revolt, paras. 1-12: Arab provinces restive, Syrian nationalism from about 1860, the Syrian Protestant College founded in 1866 under American auspices (called in the Report as printed “Roberts College”, see Open questions), Young Turks coup of 190- (last digit lost in the copy) and disappointed hopes of autonomous provinces, Turcification, secret societies from 1909, Arab Congress at Paris in 1913, Aziz Ali’s trial. Ottoman entry into the War on 31 October 1914; dangers of a Turco-German attack on the Suez Canal and of the Caliphate’s Jihad; negotiations with Hussein, Sherif and Emir of Mecca, who refused the Jihad in the Holy Cities; June 1915 proclamation assuring independence of the Arabian Peninsula. France’s March 1915 claim to Syria including Palestine, and the June 1915 committee report conceding northern Syria while reserving Jerusalem and part of Palestine for international administration. Suez attack repulsed February 1915, Gallipoli, rumours of Constantinople’s fall; the Syrian Nationalist Committee’s decision for the Sherif; Hussein’s letter of 14 July 1915 proposing Arab independence bounded by Mersina and Adana to 37 degrees of latitude, Persia, the Indian Ocean saving Aden, and the Red Sea and Mediterranean to Mersina; McMahon’s premature-boundaries reply. Sari Bair setback of 10 August; the Sherif’s 9 September insistence on limits; the Syrian representative’s terms — British interests in ‘Iraq and French on the Syrian coast admitted, independence of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Homs insisted on; McMahon’s letter of 24 October 1915, quoted, excluding Mersina and Alexandretta and the portions of Syria west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo as not purely Arab, and, subject to that modification and existing treaties with Arab chiefs, accepting the limits and giving the assurances of recognition and support of Arab independence, guarantee of the Holy Places, British advice and advisers only, and special measures in the vilayets of Bagdad and Basra. The Arab construction and the British answer: the Commission states it has not undertaken the full re-examination this issue would need, records that the British Government have never accepted the Arab case, and quotes Churchill’s 1922 reply to the Arab Delegation that the reservation covered the vilayet of Beirut and the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem, so “The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir H. McMahon’s pledge” (PDF p.33 / printed p.20). Palestine was never expressly mentioned in the correspondence; only Aleppo and Beirut were later disputed, the Sherif deferring Beirut and its coasts till after the War; gold subsidy and arms followed. Sykes-Picot: Grey’s November 1915 instructions, Picot’s opening claim to all Syria, his agreement to an Arab-administered interior under French influence, Sykes’s and Picot’s negotiations with Russian consultation, agreement of May 1916 dividing the area — a French-controlled coastal belt from a little north of Haifa to a little west of Mersina, and the rest left to the Arab State or Confederation of States (items (2) and (3) missing in the copy, see Open questions). The Sherif’s people bore the brunt of the fighting; Palestine’s Arabs did not rise, some conscripts deserting and others fighting in the Turkish army, desert revolt being easier than revolt under occupation, while Syrian nationalists within the Turkish lines paid on the gallows.
    • Section 2, The Balfour Declaration, paras. 13-28: Zionist scheme prepared, Russian obstacle fading, formal negotiations February 1917 with Britain, France and Italy approving; publication delayed till Allenby’s success seemed certain, then the Declaration of November 1917 as Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild, quoted in full. Wilson had approved the text; France endorsed it 14 February 1918 and Italy 9 May 1918. Lloyd George’s evidence: launching at that time was due to propagandist reasons amid the Roumanian, Russian, French, Italian, shipping and American crises, Jewish sympathy being believed substantial to the Allied cause, and the Zionist leaders’ definite promise to rally Jewish support, which they kept; millions of leaflets, dropped on German and Austrian towns and distributed from Poland to the Black Sea; Germany’s and Turkey’s rival chartered-company proposition, overtaken by Allenby’s capture of Palestine. The Arabs, the Report argues, do not realise the Allied sacrifices behind the Arab world’s present position or that the Declaration, helping the victory, helped Arab emancipation. Meaning: the words for a National Home were a compromise between Ministers contemplating an ultimate Jewish State and those who did not; HMG could only facilitate a Home’s growth, its becoming a State depending mainly on Jewish zeal and enterprise; Lloyd George’s evidence that a Jewish State was not to be set up immediately without reference to the majority’s wishes, but that if Jews became a definite majority by the time representative institutions were accorded, Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth; Wilson on 3 March 1919 on foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth, Smuts at Johannesburg on 3 November 1919 foretelling “in generations to come a great Jewish State rising there once more” (PDF p.38 / printed p.25), Cecil in 1917, Samuel in 1919 and Churchill in 1920 in terms contemplating an eventual Jewish State. Arab reaction: occupation at the Armistice of 30 October 1918, Wilson’s Fourteen Points assurance of unmolested autonomous development for nationalities under Turkish rule, and the Anglo-French joint Declaration of 7 November promising complete emancipation and national governments deriving authority from the free choice of indigenous populations in Syria and Mesopotamia — Palestine, always regarded by Arabs as included in Syria, to be separated and specially governed instead; Hussein and Feisal regarded the policy as a breach of the McMahon Pledge. Feisal at Paris nevertheless persuaded to welcome the Declaration: his meeting with Weizmann east of the Jordan, his conciliatory Paris memorandum wishing for a great trustee over Palestine, and the agreement of 3 January 1919 pledging cordial co-operation between the Arab State and Palestine, acceptance of the Declaration and large-scale Jewish immigration and settlement, with Feisal’s reservation making execution dependent on fulfilment of his Arab independence claims. The Agreement as “the one brief moment in the whole story at which a genuine harmony was established between Arab and Jewish statesmanship” (PDF p.40 / printed p.27). Balfour’s speech of 12 July 1920, the small notch in Arab territories; France, never bound by the Pledge, nullifying the settlement at Damascus; Feisal proclaimed King of Syria and Palestine in March 1920, expelled by the French army by the end of August, made King of ‘Iraq a year later, Abdullah Emir of Trans-Jordan; the Agreement could not operate, its condition unfulfilled, and in 1920 and 1921 violent Arab outbreaks occurred: “The conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalism had begun” (PDF p.41 / printed p.28).
    • Section 3, The Period of Delay, paras. 29-39: the special regime not yet in legal form; Supreme Council decision of 30 January 1919 against restoration to Turkish rule; Zionist draft resolution of 3 February, leaders heard 27 February, Frankfurter’s detailed plan of 28 March — historic right, immigration and close settlement, a body representing Jews of Palestine and the world, Jewish education, local self-government; Palestine placed in the Mandate System, Article 22 of the Covenant quoted in full, including the sacred trust of civilisation, the three classes of Mandate, the provisional recognition of former Turkish communities as independent nations — “their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone” (PDF p.42 / printed p.29) — and the wishes of these communities as a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. Versailles signed 28 June 1919; delay from non-Zionist Jewish opposition and French-British complications over Syria; Wilson’s inter-Allied Commission project failing, his unofficial American Commission touring in June and July 1919 and privately reporting Arabs wanted complete independence for a united Syria and Palestine, with the United States first and Great Britain second choice if supervision were necessary; the American Jewish Congress resolution of 18 December 1918 and the Zionist scheme of 3 February 1919 urging Great Britain as Mandatory as the wish of the Jews of the world. San Remo, 25 April 1920: Syria to France, Mesopotamia and Palestine to Great Britain, responsible for giving effect to the Declaration. Treaty of Sèvres, 10 August 1920: Article 94 provisionally recognizing Syria and ‘Iraq as independent States under a Mandatory, Article 95 entrusting Palestine’s administration to a Mandatory responsible for putting the 2 November 1917 declaration into effect; never ratified, superseded by Lausanne in July 1923, which omitted the Mandates. United States intervention: note of 20 November 1920, consultation, minor alterations, the economic equal-opportunity claim waived for Palestine in recognition of its special situation and the National Home; Congress joint resolution of 30 June 1922 favouring a national home with safeguards, quoted. Anglo-American Convention signed 3 December 1924 (footnote: Cmd. 2559), reciting the Mandate; Articles 1, 2 and 7 quoted — United States consent to British administration, American nationals’ enjoyment of Mandate rights despite non-membership of the League, and no Mandate modification affecting the Convention without United States assent. Mandate draft confirmed by the League Council on 24 July 1922, nearly five years after the Declaration; by 1922 the paramount community was clear — the Arab community, over half a million, Arab in speech and aspirations, its leaders vehemently opposed and able to incite murderous attacks; the Arab delegation of February 1922 told the Colonial Office the people of Palestine could not accept the Declaration or the Mandate and demanded national independence. Churchill’s June 1922 statement of British Policy in Palestine (Cmd. 1700; Cmd. 3530 Appendix V), quoted at length: the Declaration “is not susceptible of change” (PDF p.45 / printed p.32); the recreated Jewish community of 80,000, one-fourth farmers, with its assembly, councils, schools organisation, Chief Rabbinate, Hebrew vernacular and Press, has in fact national characteristics; the National Home is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality on Palestine as a whole but the further development of that community into a centre in which the Jewish people may take an interest and a pride, its people in Palestine “as of right and not on sufferance” (PDF p.46 / printed p.33). The definition does not prohibit an ultimate Jewish State, Churchill himself told the Commission in evidence no such prohibition was intended, and the Zionist Executive declared its activities would conform to the policy; no allusion to a State in 1922 for the same reason as 1917 — some 16,000 Jews had entered in 1920 and 1921 against an Arab population of about 600,000, a leading Zionist in 1926 seeing “still little prospect of the Arabs being overtaken in a numerical sense within a measurable period of time” (PDF p.46 / printed p.33; footnote to Mr. 2. Stein, Survey of International Affairs, 1925, the initial as printed in the copy and unreadable); only the last few years’ immigration rise brought a Jewish State within the horizon.
    • Section 4, The Mandate, para. 40 (begun, PDF p.47 / printed p.34): only the Preamble and directly bearing Articles to be cited here, the rest in Appendix 1.
  • Chapter II, section 4 completed (PDF p.48-55 / printed p.35-42), paras. 40-52.
    • Articles quoted (PDF p.48-50 / printed p.35-37): Article 3 (local autonomy), Article 4 (the Jewish agency; the Zionist Organisation recognised as such agency), Article 6 (facilitate Jewish immigration and close settlement, including State and waste lands, without prejudicing other sections’ rights and position), Article 7 (nationality law facilitating Palestinian citizenship for Jews taking up permanent residence), the judicial-system/Wakfs article, Article 11 (development, land system for close settlement and intensive cultivation, arrangements with the Jewish agency), Article 13 (Holy Places; the Mandatory may enter into such arrangements as he may deem reasonable with the Administration for carrying the article’s provisions into effect; no interference with purely Moslem sacred shrines), the freedom-of-conscience and religious-bodies passages (no article headings in the copy), Article 18 (no discrimination against League Members’ nationals/goods; transit; customs), Article 22 (English, Arabic and Hebrew official), the holy-days article, Article 25 (postponement/withholding east of the Jordan, save Articles 15, 16 and 18), Article 27 (League consent to modification) and Article 28 (termination safeguards for Articles 13-14 rights and financial obligations).
    • Para. 41: the League Council’s approval on 16 September 1922 of the British memorandum defining Trans-Jordan and listing as inapplicable there recitals 2-3, Articles 4, 6, 13, 14, 22 and 23, Article 2’s Jewish National Home sentence and second sentence, and all of Article 11 except its first sentence; HMG accepted full Mandatory responsibility for Trans-Jordan.
    • Para. 42, the main points: (1) Preamble recital 3’s recognition of “the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine” (PDF p.50 / printed p.37; the copy garbles the continuation, “grounds” as “qounds”); (2) the Palestine Mandate differs from the “A” Mandates for Syria/Lebanon and ‘Iraq — Article 1 vests “full powers of legislation and of administration” (PDF p.51 / printed p.38) in the Mandatory, and the Arab claim that it violates Article 22 paragraph 4 is answered on permissive wording, the Council’s defining power, and the Balfour policy’s prior acceptance, Article 2’s self-governing-institutions requirement in any case implying ultimate independence; (3) the National Home’s field was understood as the whole of historic Palestine, Trans-Jordan’s cutting away under Article 25, in obedience to the antecedent McMahon Pledge, seriously disappointing the Zionists; (4) four major specific obligations — Articles 2 and 6 on the National Home, the same Articles’ safeguarding of all inhabitants’ (mainly Arab) rights, Articles 2-3 on self-governing institutions and local autonomy, and Article 13 on the Holy Places — the first positive and towards Jews only, the second negative and mainly towards Arabs, both equally binding, yet the Mandate’s primary purpose, as expressed in its Preamble and Articles, is held to be the promotion of the establishment of the Jewish National Home (PDF p.52 / printed p.39; the sentence is garbled in the copy at “expressed” and “Preamble”); (5) a Jewish Agency is provided for, no Arab counterpart envisaged; (6) Article 7’s common citizenship sits against Articles 15 and 22’s confirmation of Arab/Jewish difference in language and schools.
    • Paras. 43-49, general obligations: the Preamble’s first recital (giving effect to Article 22) and Article 22’s opening — peoples not yet able to stand by themselves, “the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation” (PDF p.53 / printed p.40) — the Mandate System as mainly an American/Wilsonian invention against annexation (“Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game”, PDF p.53 / printed p.40); applied to Palestine in 1919 the existing population was half a million Arabs with 65,000 Jews; Palestine’s uniqueness (Holy Land of three religions, historic Jewish homeland) is argued through Lord Milner’s Lords speech of 27 June 1923 — “Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the same footing as the other Arab countries” and its future cannot be left to “the temporary impressions and feelings of the Arab majority in the country of the present day” (PDF p.53-54 / printed p.40-41) — so Jewish rights and Arab rights were recognised together, Jews admitted to be in Palestine by right and the minority to be helped to grow, Arab civil/religious rights and position not to be prejudiced, without releasing the Mandatory’s general positive obligations, Jewish claims being subject to others’ rights as Arab claims were.
    • Paras. 50-52: the compatibility belief — the National Home would increase prosperity for all, Jewish labour, skill and capital revivifying the country, Arab fears gradually overcome — still held in 1922; if false, forcible conversion of Palestine into a Jewish State against Arab will would violate the Mandate System’s spirit, self-determination withheld while Arabs were a majority and conceded only when Jews were, and Milner’s case against Arab control applies equally to Jewish control; chapter summary at PDF p.55 / printed p.42 (Arabs understood Palestine would be in the sphere of Arab independence; the 1917 promise and the Jewish understanding that success would develop the Home into a State; general obligations mainly to Arabs, specific mainly to Jews; if the hostility belief proved false, operating or terminating the Mandate would be very difficult).
  • Chapter III, Palestine from 1920 to 1936 (PDF p.56-87 / printed p.43-74), sub-sections 1-3 complete, sub-section 4 begun.
    • Sub-section 1, 1920 to 1925, paras. 1-23: the Mandates came into operation together only on 29 September 1923, but Palestine’s execution began with the Civil Administration in summer 1920 under Sir Herbert Samuel — Crown Colony-type government, Executive Council of officials, Advisory Council with ten nominated non-officials (four Moslem Arabs, three Christian Arabs, three Jews) against an estimated population of 589,000 Moslems, 83,000 Jews and 71,000 Christians; British senior officials and judges, Palestinian junior posts and police, a 762-strong British gendarmerie enlisted in 1922. Arab society in 1920 as quasi-feudal: effendi landowning aristocracy (Husseini/Nashashibi rivalry), a small town middle class (Nablus soap), the fellahin majority as tenants of often absentee landlords in poverty from poor soil, water shortage, debt, insecure tenure and poor markets, Bedouin estimated at just over 100,000 in 1922; despite high birth-rate and inadequate health the peasant population grew, conscription’s end and checked emigration increasing village labour. Progress 1920-1925: survey/mapping, over half a million pounds lent to cultivators in total, crop advice, nearly 200 country primary schools, malaria and eye-disease campaigns, hospitals, Jerusalem water-supply, roads and railways — much of it by missions, philanthropic bodies and Jewish agencies (Hadassah named), Government activity in fact advantaging Arabs more, though closing the gap to the Jewish level could only be slow. Jewish immigration under Samuel’s “invidious task” (PDF p.59 / printed p.46) of regulation: population about 55,000 in 1918 to 108,000 by March 1925, Samuel’s review quoted on the immigrants’ variety — at least half from Eastern Europe, three-fourths in towns — their selection and three-year training in twenty European centres (Halutzim), and the financing machinery (Zionist Executive as Jewish Agency, Pica, Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemeth, Keren Hayesod): 944,000 dunums purchased and about 100 villages established, the settlers figure garbled in the copy (see Open questions); colonies’ varied organisation, Petah Tiqva’s and Rehovot’s growth, Tel Aviv from under 200 houses/2,000 people in 1914 to over 2,000 houses/30,000 — “the only town in the world which is wholly Jewish” (PDF p.61 / printed p.48) — Rutenberg’s power schemes, the Histadrut, the 314-member General Assembly and Va’ad Leumi recognised under the 1927 Religious Communities (Organisation) Ordinance regulations, and by 1925 a complete Hebrew education framework crowned by the Hebrew University’s opening, Hebrew now the everyday language. Yet the Home was still an experiment financed like a missionary enterprise. The other side: Balfour’s 1925 visit met by an Arab general strike; April 1920 Jerusalem outbreak (five Jews killed, 211 wounded; four Arabs killed, twenty-one wounded) with its three investigated causes; May 1921 Jaffa outbreak (47 Jews killed, 146 wounded; 48 Arabs killed, 73 wounded) and the Haycraft findings quoted — the fundamental cause Arab discontent/hostility connected with immigration and the conception of Zionist policy, “the feeling against the Jews was too genuine, too widespread, and too intense to be accounted for in the above superficial manner” (PDF p.64 / printed p.51) — with the 1921 troubles’ features (Moslem-Christian unity, community-wide hostility, the gulf no temporary phenomenon). Samuel’s conciliation: the March 1921 Awqaf Order, then in December 1921 a Supreme Moslem Council free of Government voice/control, its President commanding the Awqaf funds and Shari’a appointments — Haj Amin Eff. el Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921, elected its President and holding both offices ever since (the Awqaf annual figure is garbled in the copy); the 1922 Legislative Council proposal, tithe reduction, the Beisan settlement, and Samuel’s closing report of improvement, the Arab Executive declining, a moderate Nashashibi National Party forming — evidenced, the Commission notes, by the garrison’s reduction by end-1926 to an RAF squadron and two armoured-car companies.
    • Sub-section 2, The Situation in 1925, paras. 24-38: with hindsight the root was untouched — Arab nationalism — shown by the Arab Executive’s Legislative Council attitude and its delegation’s early-1922 statement to Churchill demanding full control, ending the “Zionist condominium” and stopping alien immigration lest an accepted constitution “be used to smother their national life” under a flood of alien immigration (PDF p.67 / printed p.54; “flood” is read as “goold” in the copy); Churchill’s replies (Palestine west of the Jordan excluded from the McMahon Pledge; a national government now would preclude fulfilling the Jewish pledge) drew the delegates’ answer that the National Home was depriving them of their natural right; the Commission’s reading is that Britain delayed self-government for concord in a common Palestinian citizenship, not merely for the Home’s growth. The Arabs repudiated the Declaration, refused any but a national government, boycotted the 1923 Legislative Council elections (nullified; the Advisory Council remained officials only after seven of ten invited Arabs withdrew), and in 1923 unanimously declined Devonshire’s proposed Arab Agency, exactly analogous to the Jewish Agency — Devonshire’s 9 November 1923 telegram closing all three attempts. Moderates are structurally outbid by extremists; the problem was never Palestine’s alone — world Jewry’s pressure for continued/increased immigration on one side, and on the other the neighbouring Arab world (Egypt’s 1919 rising, Milner Mission and 1922 independence declaration with four reserved points, Sir Lee Stack’s 1924 murder; Syria’s rejection of the Mandate, the four-state division, the 1925 Druse insurrection and French bombardment of Damascus, Palestinian sympathy strikes; ‘Iraq’s 1920 rebellion, provisional Arab Council, Feisal’s kingship and the 1922 Treaty replacing the draft Mandate; Trans-Jordan under Abdullah recognised in 1923 as “an independent government”, its population about one-third of Arab Palestine’s yet far more advanced towards freedom). The two national ideals could be reconciled, the Commission argues, only if one or both were abandoned: Jewish fusion/assimilation would negate Zionism, Arab acquiescence was equally unimaginable — the 1922 Arab delegates’ sentence that nature does not allow the creation of a spirit of co-operation between two peoples so different (PDF p.75 / printed p.62, Cmd. 1700 p.28 footnoted; the sentence is garbled in the copy and is not quoted verbatim here). The 1936 situation is this old situation intensified, its difficulties inherent from the beginning.
    • Sub-section 3, 1926 to 1929, paras. 39-54: the 1926-1929 depression (Polish zloty collapse and Eastern European currency restrictions impoverishing about half the immigration) — immigration 33,801 in / 2,151 out in 1925, 13,081 / 7,365 in 1926, 2,713 / 5,071 in 1927, Jewish unemployment about 400 at the beginning of 1925 to 9,000 at the end of 1927, revenue falling (table figures partly garbled, see Open questions), a 1927 earthquake, anticipated public works; yet production, orange plantations (twice 1923 by 1927) and exports rose (£1,308,333 in 1926, £1,889,759 in 1927, the 1925 figure’s first digit garbled), agricultural exports exceeding imports in 1927 for the first time since the War; Jewish population 121,000 (1925) to 151,000 (1928), Jewish-owned land 944,000 to 1,024,000 dunums; spring 1928 recovery (2,178 immigrants, ten more in than out) and the Jewish Agency’s enlargement — non-Zionists given equal seats under the 1928 constitution, endorsed at the August 1929 Zionist Congress. The depression years were years of peace — no Arab Congress meeting 1925-1928, forces kept low despite the Permanent Mandates Commission’s warning — mainly, the Commission argues, because the Home seemed to be failing, not because of Government development work or Lord Plumer’s prestige; recovery revived Arab fears, and the Agency’s enlargement plus neighbouring advances (Trans-Jordan’s 1928 Agreement and Organic Law, Egypt’s 1927 draft treaty, ‘Iraq’s 1930 Treaty pledging 1932 League admission, Syria’s 1928 Constituent Assembly) left Palestine alone with no advance. The Wailing Wall sequence: the screen forcibly removed by police during the 24 September 1928 Day of Atonement service at the Wall — Moslem property, Jewish access ab antiquo, the status quo maintained under Article 13 — the latent Temple-restoration fear the Commission analyses, the Zionist Organisation’s and Va’ad Leumi’s repudiations of any design on the Moslem Holy Places, the Mufti’s and Supreme Moslem Council’s campaign (telegram to the King, the 1 November General Moslem Conference, a Society for the Protection of the Moslem Holy Places), Moslem building “innovations”, failed Government settlement attempts, the Arab Executive’s 1929 revival and its Representative Assembly demand to Sir John Chancellor, and the 15/16 August 1929 processions to the Wall; the 23-29 August outbreak — Hebron over 60 Jews killed and more than 50 injured, Safad 45 Jews killed or wounded, colonies attacked, totals 133 Jews killed and 339 wounded, 116 Arabs killed and 232 wounded, most Arab casualties inflicted by troops/police, 27 death sentences confirmed (one on a Jew), three Arabs hanged. The Shaw Report’s causes are quoted at length: racial animosity on the part of the Arabs, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future, “was the fundamental cause of the outbreak of August last” (PDF p.81 / printed p.68; the longer sentence is garbled in the copy at “disappointment” and “fear”), the National Home as widely understood inconsistent with Arab nationalist demands and vice versa, the post-war immigrant as a possible future overlord, and the small direct benefit to individual Arabs despite Jewish enterprise’s general advantage, the Sursock sales instanced. Aftermath: reciprocal boycotts, Jewish merchants leaving Jerusalem’s Old City and Jaffa, the schism open and undisguised.
    • Sub-section 4, The Controversy of 1930, paras. 55-62 (begun): early-1930 truce; the International (Wailing Wall) Commission’s June arrival, the failed attempt at a voluntary agreement, its end-of-year report adopted, no serious Wall controversy since though Arab fears of designs on the Haram-esh-Sharif persist in evidence. The Shaw Report (March) — findings virtually identical with Haycraft’s, the same causes to recur in 1933 and 1936 — and its four recommendations (a clear policy statement defining the “non-Jewish communities” safeguards; immigration regulation revised against a repetition of 1925-1926 excess with non-Jewish consultation; a scientific cultivation inquiry to govern land policy; re-affirmation that the Zionist Organisation’s special position does not entitle it to share in government). Immigration certificates suspended pending Hope Simpson, whose October Report’s cultivable-land figure — 6,544,000 dunums against Zionist figures up to 16,000,000 and the Commissioner of Lands’ 10,592,000 (both as read in the copy, the latter two partly garbled) — yielded “there is no room for a single additional settler if the standard of life of the fellaheen is to remain at its present level” (PDF p.84 / printed p.71), Beersheba excluded, yet also his personal belief in room, with thorough development, for not less than 20,000 outside settler families on a higher standard, and a recommended active development policy for close settlement and intensive cultivation by both peoples; on industrial immigration, Arab unemployment “serious and widespread”, his “derived demand” rider for Jewish capital importing its own labour (Cmd. 3686 pp.131-6 footnoted). The October 1930 “White Paper” (Cmd. 3692) — MacDonald’s “double undertaking” quoted, the 1922 statement repeated on the Home and the Agency, “economic absorptive capacity” re-affirmed, security forces retained, a Legislative Council declared timely, and Hope Simpson adopted almost word for word but with two notable omissions (no commitment to ultimate room for substantial Jewish settlement after development; no derived-demand saving paragraph) and a tone more inclined to the Arab side than either Report. The Zionist outcry: Weizmann’s protest that the White Paper was “inconsistent with the terms of the Mandate” (PDF p.87 / printed p.74) and his resignation as President of the Zionist Organisation and Jewish Agency, other resignations, The Times letters, the near party-politics danger, and the Zionist case against Hope Simpson’s land estimate’s finality and against reserving all State land for landless Arabs under Article 6. Para. 62 begins: in November the Jewish Agency was invited to confer, and the following February the result was published as a letter from the Prime Minister to Dr. Weizmann — its treatment continues at PDF p.88, in part 3. The Preamble is quoted: the Allied Powers’ agreement to entrust Palestine’s administration to a selected Mandatory, the Mandatory’s responsibility for putting the 2 November 1917 declaration into effect in favour of a national home with nothing prejudicing the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities or Jews’ rights and political status elsewhere, recognition given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home, His Britannic Majesty selected and accepting, and Article 22 paragraph 8. Article 1 is quoted in full and Article 2 begun — the Mandatory responsible for conditions securing the establishment of the Jewish national home and the development of self-governing institutions, and for safeguarding all inhabitants’ civil and religious rights irrespective of race and religion. Article 2 continues at PDF p.48, in part 2.

Key passages

  • “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state” (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.14 / printed p.2, adapting Lord Durham’s sentence).
  • “fundamentally a conflict of right with right” (PDF p.14 / printed p.2).
  • “This new idea was known as Zionism” (PDF p.25 / printed p.13).
  • “The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir H. McMahon’s pledge” (PDF p.33 / printed p.20, quoting Churchill’s 1922 reply to the Arab Delegation).
  • “the one brief moment in the whole story at which a genuine harmony was established between Arab and Jewish statesmanship” (PDF p.40 / printed p.27, of the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement).
  • “The conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalism had begun” (PDF p.41 / printed p.28).
  • “is not susceptible of change” (PDF p.45 / printed p.32, quoting the June 1922 statement on the Balfour Declaration).
  • “as of right and not on sufferance” (PDF p.46 / printed p.33, quoting the June 1922 statement on the Jewish community in Palestine; the fuller sentence in the copy is word-per-line and reassembled in the reading notes).
  • “the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation” (PDF p.53 / printed p.40, quoting Article 22 of the Covenant).
  • “Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game” (PDF p.53 / printed p.40, attributed to President Wilson’s principles).
  • “Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the same footing as the other Arab countries” (PDF p.53-54 / printed p.40-41, quoting Lord Milner, House of Lords, 27 June 1923).
  • “the only town in the world which is wholly Jewish” (PDF p.61 / printed p.48, of Tel Aviv).
  • “the feeling against the Jews was too genuine, too widespread, and too intense to be accounted for in the above superficial manner” (PDF p.64 / printed p.51, quoting the Haycraft Commission).
  • “was the fundamental cause of the outbreak of August last” (PDF p.81 / printed p.68, quoting the Shaw Report on the August 1929 outbreak; the full sentence is garbled in the copy at “disappointment” and “fear”).
  • “there is no room for a single additional settler if the standard of life of the fellaheen is to remain at its present level” (PDF p.84 / printed p.71, quoting the Hope Simpson Report).

Evidence the work relies on

  • The Royal Warrants of 7 August 1936 and 17 December 1936, printed at the Report’s head (PDF p.6-8 / printed p.vi-viii).
  • Official reports on the Mandatory Administration and a series of descriptive and statistical memoranda supplied at the Commission’s request by the Palestine Government, studied before departure (Preface para. 1, PDF p.9 / printed p.ix); the memoranda and the minutes of public evidence form the two separate accompanying volumes (Preface para. 13, PDF p.12 / printed p.xii).
  • Evidence heard in Palestine — 60 witnesses at 30 public sessions and 53 witnesses at 40 private sessions — and in London after the return — two witnesses at one public session and eight at seven private sessions, the latter all former officials or holders of high office (Preface paras. 5 and 12, PDF p.10, p.12 / printed p.x, xii). Lloyd George’s and Churchill’s evidence is quoted on the Balfour Declaration’s purpose and the 1922 statement’s intent (Chapter II paras. 15-16, 20 and 39, PDF p.36-37, p.46 / printed p.23-24, 33).
  • The records bearing on the Balfour Declaration’s meaning, which the Commission was permitted to examine (Chapter II para. 20, PDF p.37 / printed p.24).
  • In Chapter II, section 4 and Chapter III (part 2): the Mandate’s Preamble and Articles as quoted (PDF p.47-50); the British memorandum on Trans-Jordan approved 16 September 1922; Article 22 of the Covenant; Lord Milner’s House of Lords speech of 27 June 1923; Sir Herbert Samuel’s review of his five years’ administration, quoted at length on the immigrants’ character (Chapter III para. 8); the Haycraft Commission’s findings on the 1921 disturbances, quoted (paras. 18-19); the Arab Executive delegation’s early-1922 communications to Churchill and Churchill’s replies (para. 24, and the Arab delegates’ 1922 sentence footnoted to Cmd. 1700, p.28); Devonshire’s telegram of 9 November 1923 (para. 28); the Shaw Report (Cmd. 3530), quoted and footnoted at pp.30, 31 and 64 in the Wailing Wall and outbreak passages and summarised in paras. 52-53 and 56-57; the Hope Simpson Report (Cmd. 3686), its land figures and conclusions and its pp.131-6 “derived demand” passage (paras. 58-59); and the October 1930 Statement of Policy (Cmd. 3692) with MacDonald’s Commons statement (para. 60).
  • Documents quoted or cited in Chapter II as presented there: Hussein’s letter of 14 July 1915 and McMahon’s letters of 9 September correspondence and 24 October 1915; Churchill’s 1922 reply to the Arab Delegation on the McMahon Pledge; the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916 as summarised; the Balfour Declaration text; Wilson’s Fourteen Points passage and his statement of 3 March 1919; the Anglo-French joint Declaration of 7 November; Feisal’s Paris memorandum and the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement of 3 January 1919 with its reservation; Balfour’s speech of 12 July 1920; Article 22 of the Covenant; the Zionist Organisation’s scheme of 3 February 1919 and Frankfurter’s plan of 28 March 1919; Articles 94 and 95 of the Treaty of Sèvres; the United States Congress joint resolution of 30 June 1922; Articles 1, 2 and 7 of the Anglo-American Convention of 3 December 1924 (Cmd. 2559, footnoted); the June 1922 statement of British Policy in Palestine (Cmd. 1700; Cmd. 3530 Appendix V, footnoted); and Mr. 2. Stein in the Survey of International Affairs, 1925 (footnoted, Chapter II para. 39; the initial as printed in the copy and unreadable).

Analysis

The Report in this range is a framing and historical narrative, not yet its findings: the Preface constructs the Commission’s independence and impartial procedure (no witnesses before Jerusalem, evidence in public, the boycott and its lifting), and Chapters I-II construct the problem as two nationalisms with deep historical roots before any examination of the Mandate’s operation, which the Contents places in Part II. Its method in Chapter II is documentary and testimonial: wartime pledges and declarations are quoted at length and their meaning settled largely through the evidence of the statesmen who made them, Lloyd George on the Declaration and Churchill on the 1922 statement, while on the McMahon Pledge the Commission expressly declines a full re-examination of the documents and records the British Government’s construction against the Arab case it summarises. Chapter I’s history is presented in the Commission’s own voice without cited authorities in this range, and its figures (Diaspora population, Palestine’s Jewish population in 1845, 1881 and 1914, American and European Jewish populations) are given without sources on the page. Limits of this part: the text copy’s OCR garbling, its two blank pages and its two incomplete passages (see What the file is and Open questions) mean some details rest on reassembled readings. In part 2 the method continues: Chapter II’s Mandate analysis is a close textual reading of the instrument against Article 22, resolving the Arab Article 22 claim on the texts and holding the National Home to be the Mandate’s primary purpose while insisting the general obligations survive; Chapter III is a retrospective narrative built substantially on quoted official material — Samuel’s administration review, the Haycraft and Shaw findings quoted at length, Hope Simpson’s figures and conclusions — arranged to show the 1936 situation as the 1920-1925 situation intensified, with the neighbouring Arab states’ advances used as the comparative frame for Palestine’s constitutional deadlock. Its population, land, revenue and casualty figures in this range are given in the narrative without sources on the page except where a report is named.

People, organizations, places and events

Earl Peel, Peel Commission, Arthur Wauchope, Arab Higher Committee, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Amir Faisal, Amir Abdullah, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, Henry McMahon, Arthur James Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Edmund Allenby, Edmond de Rothschild, Felix Frankfurter, Herbert Samuel, League of Nations, Balfour Declaration, McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Sykes–Picot agreement, Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, Mandate for Palestine, Amin al-Hussaini, Supreme Muslim Council, Arab Executive Committee, Herbert Plumer, John Chancellor, Walter Shaw, Shaw Commission, John Hope Simpson, Lord Passfield, Ramsay MacDonald, Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund, Histadrut, Vaad Leumi, Hebrew University, Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, Thomas Haycraft, Western Wall, Disturbances of August 1929, Jaffa Riots of May 1921, Tel Aviv, Hebron, Safad

Concepts

Zionism, Jewish National Home, Mandate system, Diaspora, Antisemitism

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • The imprint page’s year is read in the text copy as “I927” (PDF p.2), against the Report’s 1937 identity in other ingested sources; the copy is OCR-garbled throughout that page, and the original is not in raw/ to check. The exact publication and signature dates likewise do not appear in PDF p.1-47.
  • The cost figures at PDF p.8 are garbled in the copy (” ,d4,050” and “@IS 10s. od.”), read here as £4,050 and £15 10s. 0d.; reading uncertain.
  • Chapter I para. 6 dates the general revolt “in 64 AD.” in the text copy (PDF p.16 / printed p.4), as printed; held as printed, not corrected, the original being unavailable in raw/.
  • Chapter I para. 3 gives the Assyrian destruction year in a garbled form (“7~~915 B.C.”, PDF p.15 / printed p.3) and David’s and Solomon’s dates in garbled forms; the David and Solomon dates are read as c.1010-970 and c.970-930 B.C. from their surviving digits, the Assyrian year is not reconstructed.
  • Chapter I para. 26’s figure for Jews in Palestine in 1881 is garbled in the copy as “a~,000” (PDF p.25 / printed p.13); the thousands digit is lost. The 1914 figure on the same page, over 80,000, is clear.
  • Chapter II para. 1 calls the Syrian Protestant College, founded in 1866 under American auspices, “Roberts College” as printed in the copy (PDF p.28 / printed p.16): “soon to be famous throughout the Near East as Roberts College”. Held as printed in the copy.
  • Chapter II para. 1 gives no Lower House figure for Syrian Arab representation in the first Ottoman Parliament (PDF p.28 / printed p.16); the text states they were greatly under-represented in the Lower House and only had three out of forty seats in the Upper House. The same paragraph’s Young Turks coup date survives in the copy only as “Igo” (PDF p.28 / printed p.16), three characters, the last digit lost; it is recorded as 190- and not supplied. Chapter I para. 29’s Shaftesbury scheme date likewise survives only as the three digits 184 followed by a quotation mark (PDF p.26 / printed p.14), the last digit lost; it is recorded as 184- and not supplied.
  • The opening of Chapter II paras. 6-7 is scrambled at the turn of PDF p.32-33, with part of the Arab construction’s first limb lost in the copy; only the surviving second limb and the Commission’s response are recorded. The Sykes-Picot enumeration at PDF p.34 lacks items (2) and (3) in the copy, and para. 11 breaks off at that page’s foot; the division is recorded only as far as the copy gives it.
  • In the Balfour Declaration quotation at PDF p.35 / printed p.22, one line of the copy reads “existing Jewish communities in Palestine” where the same quotation’s safeguard, and the Mandate Preamble quotation at PDF p.47, read “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”; the copy is word-per-line and garbled at this point, and the reading is held as a conflict within the copy, not corrected.
  • PDF p.31 is blank in the text copy at the position of the Pre-War Turkish Administrative Districts map (listed opposite printed p.19); whether the original page is the map alone cannot be checked from raw/.
  • The footnote at Chapter II para. 39 names “Mr. 2. Stein” in the copy (PDF p.46 / printed p.33) for the Survey of International Affairs passage; the initial is as printed in the copy and unreadable, and is not supplied.
  • Part 2 figures garbled in the copy and not reconstructed: the total spent on the National Home since the War, read as “roughly #~,OOO,OOO” (PDF p.60 / printed p.47), and the settlers in the roughly 100 villages, read as “some ~5,000” on the same page, its first digit lost; Petah Tiqva’s starting area, read as ”‘/oo” acres (PDF p.61 / printed p.48); the four big factories’ capital, read as “over +oo,ooo" (PDF p.61); the Supreme Moslem Council President's Awqaf funds in 1936, read as ",&6,000” a year (PDF p.66 / printed p.53), a six-digit form with two digits unreadable; the tithe’s starting rate, read as “I& per cent.” against the clear 10 per cent. it was reduced to (PDF p.66); the revenue table at PDF p.75 / printed p.62 (second-column figures read as “886,3x2” and “‘&3,66g”, and a total read as “I,709#35”); the 1925 exports value, its first digit lost (PDF p.76 / printed p.63); and the Commissioner of Lands’ cultivable-land estimate, read as “10,5g2,000” dunums, against Hope Simpson’s clear-er 6,544,000 read as “G,544,000” (PDF p.84 / printed p.71). The 944,000-dunums purchase figure at PDF p.60 is corroborated within the Report by the clear 944,000 at PDF p.76.
  • Chapter II para. 41 follows para. 40 in section 4 without a new heading in the copy (PDF p.50 / printed p.37), and Chapter III para. 58 is numbered “$3” in the copy (PDF p.84 / printed p.71); both are recorded as they appear in the copy.
  • Chapter II, section 4 quotes the Mandate Articles in a selective order (Articles 3, 4, 6, 7, the judicial/Wakfs article, 11, 13, the conscience and religious-bodies passages (no article headings in the copy), 18, 22, the holy-days article, 25, 27, 28); the intervening Articles are not quoted in this range, consistent with para. 40’s statement that only directly bearing Articles are cited here and the rest placed in Appendix 1, which is not yet read.

Coverage

PDF p.1-87 of 423, read in parts 1-2 of 10. Parts 3-10 remain: part 3, PDF p.88-129; part 4, PDF p.130-172; part 5, PDF p.173-217; part 6, PDF p.218-260; part 7, PDF p.261-304; part 8, PDF p.305-350; part 9, PDF p.351-396; part 10, PDF p.397-423.

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