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Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development

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aliasesHope Simpson Report, Simpson Report, Cmd. 3686

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Summary

The October 1930 report (Cmd. 3686) by Sir John Hope Simpson to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on immigration, land settlement and development in Palestine, written after an on-the-spot enquiry begun on his arrival in Jerusalem on 20 May 1930 and signed on 22 August 1930. Part 1 gives the covering letter, synopsis, glossary and equivalents, Chapter I on the country and climate, Chapter II on the agricultural land, and the opening of Chapter III on the population. Simpson accepts the Director of Surveys’ estimates over earlier guesswork: Palestine is about 10,000 square miles in total, the cultivable land of the inhabited hills and the five plains is 6,544,000 metric dunams, Jewish holdings account for a round 900,000 metric dunams of it, and 5,644,000 metric dunams remains for non-Jewish cultivators — the land base on which the report’s later immigration and settlement argument rests (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 437-752). Part 2 completes Chapter III, gives Chapter IV on land tenure, Chapter V on Jewish settlement, Chapter VI on the position of the fellah and the opening of Chapter VII on agricultural development: Simpson finds 61,408 fellah families cultivating 5,644,000 dunams at an average 91.9 dunams against a “lot viable” of not less than 130 dunams on unirrigated land, calls the fellah population as a class hopelessly bankrupt, holds the Zionist colonies’ boycott of Arab labour contrary to Article 6 of the Mandate, and puts the land Hankin of the P.L.D.C. says can still be acquired without displacing tenants at 100,000 dunams at the outside (lines 892-1782). Part 3 completes Chapter VII, gives Chapter VIII on agricultural produce and Chapter IX on Palestinian industry, and opens Chapter X on immigration: only 13.2 per cent of village Arab children of school age are in school against nearly 100 per cent of Jewish children; the whole cooperative movement (173 working societies, 33,436 members in the 134 surveyed) is Jewish and no Arab society exists; citrus can safely be put at at least 200,000 more dunams and 10,000 holdings, not the Jewish Agency experts’ 500,000; and against the Jewish Agency Memorandum’s claim that talk of absorptive capacity is out of place for industry, Simpson warns that importing immigrants to staff doubtful industries whose capital will run out could produce a crisis beside which 1926 would seem unimportant (lines 1783-2673).

What the file is

  • The UNISPAL reproduction of the report (October 1930, price 3s. 0d. net as printed “3s. Od.”, Cmd. 3686), downloaded from the URL above (access basis: public-domain).
  • About 69,969 words as given for this ingest, 3561 lines in the text copy as saved; the text copy is the UNISPAL web page text, preceded by the site’s navigation furniture (lines 1-68), with no page markers. Locators are line numbers; the printed pagination is given in the Synopsis (main text printed p.12-153, Chapters I-III at p.12-29).
  • Contents (Synopsis, lines 155-287): I. The Country and the Climate; II. The Agricultural Land; III. The Population; IV. Land Tenure in Palestine; V. Jewish Settlement on the Land; VI. The Position of the Fellah; VII. Agricultural Development; VIII. Agricultural Produce; IX. Palestinian Industry; X. Immigration; XI. Conclusion; followed by a Glossary and a Table of Equivalents.
  • Maps referred to are not in the text copy: Map No. 1 (tours), No. 2 (natural divisions), No. 3 (Huleh, not reproduced), No. 4 (Strahorn soil map) and No. 5 (rainfall); the covering note states the maps except No. 3 will be published later as an Appendix.
  • Text quality: the text copy carries slips confirmed present in the file as saved, among them “W.C.a” and “3s. Od.” on the title page, “Sir Spenser Davis..” in the acknowledgements, “Dr. Kuppin” for the Dr. Ruppin named elsewhere, “Commissioner of Lanus”, “Strahom” and “Strahorris” for Strahorn, and a scrambled Glossary pairing under “Waad Leumi”. Whether these are slips of the printed report or of the UNISPAL transcription cannot be settled from the files supplied, the original supplied being the same web page; they are held as printed in the text copy under Open questions.

Section by section

Covering letter, Synopsis, Glossary and Equivalents (lines 70-435)

  • Simpson reached Jerusalem on 20 May 1930, consulted constantly with the High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, drew on official records, Arab and Jewish authorities and organisations, and visited tracts and villages and northern Trans-Jordan (lines 116-125).
  • Acknowledgements name the Supreme Moslem Council and the Arab Executive, Jamal Effendi Husseini as guide in Arab villages, the Jewish Agency as supplier of a very large amount of information, Dr. Wilkansky and his proof-sheets on “The Fellah’s Farm”, Air Commodore Playfair’s aerial test survey of the Hill Districts as “a deciding element in the conclusions which have been reached”, and Director of Surveys C. H. Ley and his staff (lines 127-151). The report was written in Athens; secretary Maurice C. Bennett, assistant secretary C. L. Horton (line 151).
  • The Glossary defines the report’s working terms in its own words, among them Fellah as “Arab peasant cultivator”, Effendi as “Arab landlord”, and Mesha’a as “Unpartitioned land in customary joint ownership” (lines 289-359). The Table of Equivalents gives the metric dunam as 1,000 square metres and the Turkish or old dunam as 919.3 square metres (lines 361-435).

Chapter I. Palestine: The Country and the Climate (lines 437-630, printed p.12-20)

  • Total area: competing estimates from 8,528 to 10,170 square miles are examined; the Director of Surveys’ July 1929 total is 26,158,000 dunams or 10,100 sq. miles, the Commissioner of Lands warning that pending the cadastral survey such estimates “can be little more than guesswork based on insufficient data”; Simpson accepts a total “in the neighbourhood of 10,000 sq. miles” (lines 441-469).
  • Hill country: the Commissioner of Lands’ two-thirds-cultivable assumption is displaced by the RAF aerial test survey of about one-tenth of the hills, which found only 40 per cent cultivable; the Director of Surveys’ accepted estimate is 8,862,000 dunams including the Hill Wilderness, nearly 2,450,000 cultivable, the inhabited hills alone 6,124,000 dunams. Hillside soil is shallow, plots are cultivated with mattock and hoe where the plough cannot be used, irrigation is slight, and the hill country “will always remain an unsatisfactory proposition” for agriculture except as fruit replaces grain (lines 475-505).
  • The Maritime Plain (to the 150-metre contour, Rafa to Haifa in this division) is 3,218,000 dunams, 2,663,000 cultivable; the Acre Plain north of Haifa is 550,000 metric dunams, 379,000 cultivable, mainly heavy alluvial soil with ample water, a large area held by the Bayside Land Corporation, and its future to be helped by the Haifa Harbour works in progress (lines 509-545).
  • The Vale of Esdraelon is 400,000 metric dunams, 372,000 cultivable. Simpson sets Samuel’s “smiling countryside” account against Strahorn’s account of Arab cereal cultivation from rim villages, records mixed results of Jewish settlement including Afuleh as “a sea of thistles” and 30,000 dunams of Jewish-held land derelict, and rejects the wilderness claim: “It is a mistake to assume that the Vale of Esdraelon was a wilderness before the arrival of the Jewish settlers and that it is now a paradise”, adding that it is unjust to the removed fellah to present him as producing nothing. Soreness over the absentee Sursock family’s sales and the displacement of Arab tenants is recorded as still acute (lines 549-589).
  • The Huleh Plain is 191,000 metric dunams, 126,000 cultivable, with 25,000 to 30,000 metric dunams of marsh available for reclamation and a further 9,000 to 10,000 if Lake Merom were drained, its soil said to be the most fertile in Palestine (lines 591-613).
  • The Plain of the Jordan (including Jezreel) is 1,065,000 metric dunams, 554,000 cultivable; the enquiry committee’s additional irrigable area, the existing irrigation and the Beisan Agreement areas give a stated whole-valley cultivable total of 514,017 dunams (computed from the figures as printed) (lines 609-625).
  • The Beersheba region is estimated at 3,200,000 dunams, 1,500,000 cultivable, admittedly pure guesswork; without irrigation it cannot be developed, and no organised attempt has been made to ascertain an artesian supply (lines 621-625). Rainfall ranges from five inches at Jericho and six in Beersheba to thirty to forty in the Galilee hills (line 627).

Chapter II. Palestine: The Agricultural Land (lines 631-752, printed p.20-24)

  • The chapter’s premise: agricultural immigration depends on the difference between the total cultivable area and the area required for the existing agricultural population, so a definite figure must be adopted although no exact statement is possible before the cadastral survey (lines 639-645).
  • Estimates rejected or qualified: Jabotinsky’s 16,000,000 to 18,000,000 dunams (basis unknown); Ruppin’s evidence to the Commission on the Disturbances putting 2,500,000 dunams forward as tillable but uncultivated, resting on Lord Stanhope’s government-based figures, which Simpson calls “in fact far from accurate”; and the Commissioner of Lands’ 30 April 1930 total of 12,233,000 metric dunams on his own definition of cultivable (lines 645-683).
  • The Director of Surveys’ estimate is accepted: inhabited hills cultivable 2,450,000, the five plains cultivable 4,094,000 (Maritime 2,663,000; Acre 379,000; Esdraelon 372,000; Huleh 126,000; Jordan 554,000), Beersheba 1,500,000, for a stated cultivable total of 8,044,000 metric dunams against 18,114,000 uncultivable. Strahorn’s soil-survey figure for the plains, 4,055,002 metric dunams, is close to the Director’s 4,094,000 for the same area (lines 685-733).
  • Settlement area: excluding Beersheba, where settlement is not possible at present, the area in which settlement might be possible is 6,544,000 dunams in the hills and five plains (lines 735-739).
  • Jewish holdings: on Ruppin’s statement, Jews held 1,200,000 Turkish dunams, 1,000,000 of it cultivable, 14.04 per cent of the cultivable area excluding Beersheba; with a further 50,000 metric dunams purchased and 80,000 to 85,000 under option, over 16 per cent is in Jewish possession or under option. Deducting a round 900,000 metric dunams for Jewish holdings from 6,544,000 leaves 5,644,000 metric dunams available for non-Jewish cultivators (lines 741-752).

Chapter III. Palestine: The Population (lines 753-891, printed p.24-29; opening only)

  • Census of 1922: total 757,182 — Mohammedans 590,890, Jews 83,794, Christians and others 82,498 — with the town and rural breakdown given in the reading notes (lines 757-773).
  • Mid-1930 estimates from Department of Health records (Appendix 4): Mohammedans 692,195, Jews 162,069, Christians and others 91,727, total 945,991; distribution urban 340,962, rural 501,968, tribal 103,331; the rural Arab population of the hills and five plains is calculated in Appendix 2 as 478,390 (lines 777-797).
  • Vital statistics, averages 1923-1929: births per the table — Moslems 56.59, Jews 35.54, whole country 50.97; deaths — Moslems 31.24, Jews 13.10, whole 26.52; infantile mortality — Moslems 199.49, Jews 110.25, whole 185.06. Simpson notes the Moslem excess of births over deaths (25.35) exceeds the Jewish (22.44), attributes the very low Jewish death rate in part to vigorous young immigrants, and gives Jewish infantile mortality at 95.8 in 1928 and 89.78 in 1929 against England’s 74 and Germany’s 97 for 1929 (lines 801-877).
  • The comparative infantile mortality table begins at the end of this part: 1926 New Zealand 39.76, 1926 Netherlands 61.1 (lines 879-891). The chapter continues in part 2.

Chapter III. Palestine: The Population (lines 753-1005, printed p.24-29; completed in part 2)

  • Comparative infantile mortality table completed: 1925 U.S.A. 71.7, 1927 Egypt 152.00, 1926 Poland 174.75 (lines 892-905).
  • Average fellah family 5.5; families in the Hills and Five Plains 86,980; the 104-village enquiry found 29.4 per cent of families without holdings, leaving 61,408 families actually cultivating (lines 905-915).
  • Health: malaria and trachoma, the drainage work of the Government, Jewish agencies, the P.I.C.A. and the Supreme Moslem Council (Wadi Rubin), the Kupath Cholim and Hadassah services, 38 hospitals with 1,692 general beds (one bed for 559 persons), and the Arab complaint over Jewish doctors — Jaffa and Tel-Aviv together 179 practitioners for 73,000 people in 1929, 631 in the whole country (lines 915-1005).

Chapter IV. Land Tenure in Palestine (lines 1005-1140, printed p.29-38)

  • The five categories Mulk, Miri, Waqf, Metruke and Mewat are defined; Miri is the common agricultural title, held in perpetuity subject to continuous cultivation, and true Waqf is put at under 100,000 dunams, with about £30,000 of tithe from over one hundred Ghair-sahih villages diverted to the Supreme Moslem Council’s Waqf administration (lines 1005-1030).
  • Mesha’a: joint undivided ownership redistributed every two years, partition blocked by unregistered titles and heavy costs; villages Mesha’a fell from 56 per cent in 1923 to 46 per cent in 1930, and Simpson urges accelerated partition by Area and District Officers rather than committees (lines 1025-1075).
  • Tenancies: no occupancy right exists for the Arab tenant, who holds yearly at will. The Land Transfer Ordinance 1920 and its 1920-21 replacement were circumvented by ejecting tenants before sale or buying their withdrawal, and the Protection of Cultivators Ordinance 1929 gives only money compensation where “what is eminently required is, not compensation for disturbance, but a provision against disturbance”. Simpson calls for occupancy right secured against rent increases except with Court sanction, contrasting the Jewish National Fund tenant’s intended 49-year renewable lease and the P.I.C.A.’s instalment sales and long leases, and for a register of tenants (lines 1075-1115).
  • Land settlement and registration: the settlement’s two objects are an exact record of proprietors’ rights and a basis for land taxation replacing Tithe and Werko; the onerous registration fees in Appendix 6 must be made light if the record is to stay accurate (lines 1110-1140).

Chapter V. Jewish Settlement on the Land (lines 1140-1470, printed p.38-60)

  • Agencies: the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association and the Zionist Colonisation Department (land bought by the Palestine Land Development Company for the Jewish National Fund, settlement financed by the Keren Hayesod); Jewish land in June 1930 is 1,250,000 Turkish dunams, with options over a further 80,000 to 85,000 metric dunams (lines 1140-1155).
  • P.I.C.A.: 34 colonies, 454,840 metric dunams, founded 1882 as the I.C.A. under Rothschild support; the Kabbara drainage (£92,000 spent), Pardessana (450 settler families, 1,000 workmen’s families) and the old colonies’ excellent relations with Arab neighbours and workmen (lines 1155-1170, 1265-1275).
  • Zionist settlements: self-labour as the outstanding principle; Keren Kayemeth and Keren Hayesod expenditure on agricultural colonisation totals £4,891,190 for a settlement population of 4,406 adults and 2,364 children; 26.6 per cent of the settlements’ cultivable area was not cultivated by the settlers themselves in the last year, and over 155,500 dunams of the Fund’s 270,000 are in reserve. None of the Zionist settlements is self-supporting in Simpson’s sense, Kfar Yeheskiel alone in the Agency Memorandum’s modified sense, at £134,329 for 59 families (£2,277 per family) against Agro-Joint settlement in Russia at £150-£200 per family and Greek refugee settlement at under £80 (lines 1165-1265).
  • Effect on the Arab: Simpson differentiates the P.I.C.A. sharply from the Zionist colonies. From the Jewish Agency’s own Esdraelon annex of 688 tenants he reads only 379 families still cultivating and 309 landless, against Area Officers’ records of 1,270 farmers displaced and a District Commissioner’s 4,900 persons with interests in the land. On the Sursock lands the Government, not the purchasers, failed Article 6. Hankin of the P.L.D.C. puts land still acquirable without displacing tenants at 100,000 dunams at the outside (lines 1265-1310).
  • Land and employment clauses: Article 3(d)-(e) of the Jewish Agency constitution as quoted, Article 23 of the Keren Kayemeth draft lease (Jewish labour only, £P10 per default, restitution after three) and the Keren Hayesod agreements are set against the 1921 Zionist Congress friendship resolution and the General Federation of Jewish Labour’s memorandum; Simpson concludes the land “has been extraterritorialised”, that the boycott of Arab labour is contrary to Article 6 and a source of danger, and that the Federation is pressing it onto the P.I.C.A. colonies (lines 1295-1345).
  • Government lands: Huleh and Beisan are a fait accompli recoverable only by purchase or expropriation; the remaining Chiftlik estates (listed, Rafa 90,000 dunams the largest) are occupied by Arabs whose holdings can neither be reduced nor taken for Jewish settlers without development first, and dispossessing them “would amount to a distinct breach of the provisions of Article 6 of the Mandate”; the idea that the Government commands large free areas is called a myth (lines 1345-1470).

Chapter VI. The Position of the Fellah (lines 1470-1710, printed p.60-74)

  • The Lot viable: Simpson reviews the Disturbances Commission, the Experts, Wilkansky’s Key, Ben Zvi’s Tel-Arad demand of 200 dunams and Dr Joseph Weiz’s (as printed) 30-dunam hill lot, and concludes not less than 130 dunams unirrigated, 40 with irrigation and dairying, 15 to 20 on plantations. At Beer Zeit the lot viable was 112 dunams and only 65 of 180 families could be provided with one (lines 1485-1545).
  • The average fellah holding is 91.9 dunams (61,408 families on 5,644,000 dunams); the 104-village enquiry measured 75 dunams, and not one farmer under 120 dunams lived from his farm without outside employment (lines 1540-1555).
  • Income and debt: on May 1930 prices the 104 villages’ gross income is recalculated at £694,416, £P.29.20 per family, against production expenses of £P.22, taxes of £P.5 and Wilkansky’s household expenditure of £P.49.50; average debt £P.27 per family at a usual 30 per cent interest, the legal 9 per cent a dead letter; the revised net return of 100 dunams is £P.11.800 to an owner-cultivator and £P.3.600 to a tenant — “It is no exaggeration to state that the fellah population as a class is hopelessly bankrupt.” (lines 1610-1650).
  • The commuted Tithe, fixed on 1924-1928 prices, is now in effect 20 per cent of gross income after the price fall (wheat £11 to £6 a ton in twelve months); rents are rising (a Jewish-owned tract’s Arab rent rose from £260 in 1927-28 to £525 in 1929-30 at auction), holdings are shrinking by sale and subdivision, and in two months of 1930 the incomplete returns show 2,677 warrants for debt and 599 imprisonments, with Haifa sub-district execution proceedings equal to 64.2 per cent of its families in a year. Simpson proposes remitting the Tithe entirely if feasible, or halving it with prices, until a land tax replaces Tithe and Werko; arrears are £238,000 (lines 1645-1700).
  • The Beduin: 103,331 estimated in 1922 in five main tribes, rights never determined; their Jordan Valley and northern grazing claims are recorded in both Jewish and Arab versions at Wadi Hawareth, held side by side, and Simpson requires careful enquiry, recording and compensation before any development scheme, proposing possibly a reserve (lines 1695-1725).

Chapter VII. Agricultural Development (lines 1710-1782, printed p.74-91; A and the heading of B only)

  • Existing agencies: the Tel-Aviv Experimental Station (founded 1922, £85,500 spent, 40 scientists, nine Extension district instructors), Hebrew University research chemists, and the Government Department of Agriculture (expenditure £76,713 in 1929, £77,054 estimated 1930, of which £45,009 personal emoluments), outstanding for locust campaigns and stamping out cattle plague but too poorly funded for demonstration work, with the Fisheries and Sericultural services spending most of their grants on salaries (lines 1710-1760).
  • Simpson argues against duplicating the Jewish scientific institutions, for demonstration plots on smallholdings as the chief means of reaching the fellah, for the Department to sell or give away tree seedlings instead of protecting private (almost entirely Jewish) nurseries, and for detaching the Forest service (704,000 dunams of reserve) from the Department; Jewish planting at Motza, Dilb and Beth-Hakarem is given as proof of hill afforestation’s possibilities (lines 1755-1782). Section B, Education, begins at line 1782 and continues in part 3.

Chapter VII. Agricultural Development (lines 1710-1947, printed p.74-91; B-D completed in part 3)

  • B. Education: Jewish schools spent £162,500 in 1928-29 on 227 schools and 19,449 pupils, with nearly 100 per cent of Jewish children attending, against a Government grant of £20,000; State elementary schools numbered 308 with 25,219 pupils, of whom 12,539 (including 573 girls) were in village schools — 13.2 per cent of the over 95,000 village Arab children of school age Simpson computes from the rural Arab population of 478,390. Arab demand is not the constraint: applications far exceed places, and at least 250 villages of 300 or more have no school. The 1929 education budget was £144,119, more than £18,000 below the Jewish organisation’s; Simpson proposes £15,000 a year more for ten years (with the Jewish grant-in-aid rising £1,500 a year proportionately), expansion of the Tulkarem agricultural school from some 40 to 120-150 boys, similar schools elsewhere, and a six-month practical-agriculture certificate required of rural schoolmasters (lines 1783-1821).
  • C. Irrigation: irrigation water is as a rule wasted, and scientific management in the Jordan Valley, Beisan, Wadi Fara’a and Jericho would probably double the irrigable area from the existing supply. The Aujha concession (1922, originally for power, held in the same hands as the Jordan power concession) has after eight years produced no scheme in operation; the Palestine Electric Corporation’s 1929 irrigation company submitted a Petach Tikvah scheme in late 1929 on which no report had yet been rendered. In Huleh the Government’s area has passed to the concessionaire Selim Bey Salam; a holding there need not exceed 40 dunams, half irrigated, and Henriques estimates draining the lake at over £1,000,000. The Ghor Mudawwara Agreement for Beisan, Semakh and Ghorul Fara’a (November 1921, minimum holding 150 dunams, Article 16 barring disposition before the transfer price was paid) was revised in September 1928 to let surplus land be sold, and Simpson records large areas already sold, vendors taking £3 to £4 a dunam over the price still owing to the Government — speculation that invalidates the agreement’s stated purpose. A hydrographic survey for artesian water, enactment of the Draft Irrigation Ordinance, and a separate Irrigation Service detached from the Department of Agriculture are all urged (lines 1823-1877).
  • D. Cooperation: of 249 registered cooperative societies 173 are known to be working — 39 agricultural, 52 credit, 27 industrial producers, 34 land purchase and building, 14 Kvotzoth, 7 miscellaneous (computed sum 173, as printed) — and the movement is confined to the Jews; there is no Arab cooperative society at work. Viteles’s data for 134 societies at end-May 1930 give 33,436 members, £334,827 of owned capital, £711,445 of members’ deposits and £294,411 of indebtedness; societies charge members 10 to 13 per cent, itself an index of moneylender rates above the dead-letter 9 per cent legal limit. Simpson rejects the view that the Arab will not cooperate, citing three fellahin near Wilhelma jointly hiring a tractor and five near Ramleh pooling teams, and endorses Strickland’s policy of not clearing old debts at once but limiting early loans and clearing a few members a year after three years. Jewish societies are urged to enlist Arab members, the Pardess orange growers above all: “Nothing is more fatal for the peace of Palestine than emphasis on the difference rather than on the common interests of these two constituents of the population.” (lines 1879-1947)

Chapter VIII. Agricultural Produce (lines 1949-2351, printed p.91-107)

  • (a) Citrus: orange cultivation was introduced by the Arabs before Jewish settlement and its technique perfected by Jewish scientific methods. Strahorn’s deduction (Experts, p.201) that irrigated plantations will not exceed 300,000 dunams is set against the Jewish Agency experts’ 595,000 irrigable dunams in the Maritime Plain and their conclusion of 500,000 dunams suitable for citrus after deducting for “nasaz”; Simpson’s safe statement is at least 200,000 dunams still available and undeveloped, providing 10,000 holdings, with a possible further 300,000 dunams and 15,000 families. The trade’s future turns on the European market absorbing ten to twelve million cases, in the growers’ hope some 30 million within ten or twelve years against less than 3 million today; he counsels proceeding “without undue precipitancy” lest disaster overtake new and existing settlers alike. Grapefruit, one tenth of the planted groves, flourishes in heavier soils with room in the Jordan Valley (lines 1953-1977).
  • (b)-(k): bananas occupy 2,368 dunams (1930) at £87 a dunam to bearing, with Odum’s 1927 report (name printed “Odium”) allowing only an industry of moderate dimensions and the nematode now spread through the groves; the melon trade (49,000 tons to Egypt in 1929) is squeezed by Egypt’s 500-millieme duty, Haifa’s commissioner computing a £P25.005 transport cost against £20-£25 wholesale per ten-ton truck. Almond exports over seven years far exceed recorded production, on a 1927 area of 27,776 dunams, 21,175 in Jewish colonies. Wine exports fell from over 2,700,000 litres (£58,821) in 1922 to some 900,000 (£21,686) in 1927 and table grapes from 1,334 tons to 246, against Cyprus and Greek competition; the vine growers’ licence fees rose from £P.5 a year before 1925 to £P.2,250, and the excise doubled from 1 April 1930. Tobacco (table, lines 2087-2195) rose to a 1929 crop of 1,057,300 kg against imports of 124,000 kg of tobacco, but the two-dunam minimum area, which Simpson would halve, and the criminal bar on smoking home-grown tobacco are the fellahin’s complaints against the Ordinance (offences compounded fell from 2,176 in 1928 to 1,962 in 1929). Olive oil is inferior for primitive extraction, sesame was exported (3,539 tons in 1929) and imported (3,470 tons) in near-equal amounts, and Gaza barley exports to the United Kingdom have fallen from 38,000 tons in 1908 to a post-war maximum of 1,600. Silkworm, honey (exports 9 tons in 1925 to 24 tons in 1929, foulbrood since 1924) and dairying follow; contagious abortion is recorded in 60 per cent of dairy herds, probably about 80 per cent infected, against an assumed 2,500 litres per cow and a milk price fallen to 10 mils in the Emek (lines 1979-2351).

Chapter IX. Palestinian Industry (lines 2353-2627, printed p.107-119)

  • The 1928 Census of Industries counted 3,505 establishments employing 17,955 persons (10,186 wage-earners), an average of 5.1 per establishment; 1927 expenditure was £2,975,401, production £3,886,149 and capital invested £3,514,886. Food, Drink and Tobacco was the largest group (473 establishments, production £2,036,272), then Chemicals (£649,523) and Cement, Brick, Stone and Clay (£209,994). The Jewish Agency’s March 1930 census of Jewish industry covered 2,274 urban enterprises, 9,362 persons and £998,904 of capital, 1,725 of them employing fewer than five persons (lines 2357-2381).
  • Principal undertakings: the two potentially most important are the Jordan power concession (granted to “Mr. Kutenberg” as printed), worked by the Palestine Electric Corporation, and the Dead Sea salts concession of Novomejsky and Major Tulloch, worked by Palestine Potash Company, whose carnallite manufacture is approaching. The Nesher Cement Factory’s sales rose from 41,610 tons in 1926 to 68,661 in 1929, with 390 wage-earners (250 Jews, 10 Jewesses, 130 Arabs); Simpson holds that it could not exist without the protective tariff, raised to 850 mils a ton in December 1928, sells in Syria at 45s. a ton against 54s. at home, and made £19,271 profit in 1928 — a tariff whose benefit passes to a London-registered company. Shemen’s output rose from 2,742 tons in 1927 to 7,706 in 1929 with an entirely Jewish labour force; Nablus soap, by far the most important industrial export, is valued at “6240,000” a year (as printed; reading uncertain) with about 200 Arab workmen; Karaman, Dick and Salti’s Haifa tobacco factory, almost entirely Arab, employs over 500; the Grands Moulins and the Richon le Zion and Zichron Jacob cellars (last season 1,650,000 litres dry wine, 1,035,000 sweet, total value £80,000) follow (lines 2383-2501).
  • Development of industry: establishments rose from 1,236 before the War to 3,505, capital by 250 per cent — “almost entirely due to the importation of Jewish capital and the immigration of a Jewish population” — but 91 per cent of establishments employ five wage-earners or less and only 27 employ over 50. Large industry “appears to depend on manipulation of the tariff”. Against the Jewish Agency Memorandum’s position that for industry “the whole talk of the absorptive capacity of the country is out of place”, that immigration itself creates the home market, and that capacity depends only on Jewish capitalists willing to start industries and Jewish labour to come in and work, Simpson sets the Government’s duty to the future after imported capital is spent, the flat export totals Goldwater gives (£426,983 in 1927, £426,160 in 1928, £482,826 in 1929, soap over half in the first two years), and the 1926 relief-works episode: “It would be a bad, and might prove a fatal policy, to attract large capital in order to start doubtful industries in Palestine, with the object of justifying an increase in the number of immigrants.” Industries he expects to succeed naturally are tobacco, canning, fruit juice, printing, the Dead Sea chemical industry and the tourist industry; the indigenous Arab industries (tanning, pottery, weaving, carpetmaking, beside soap) “should not be overlooked” (lines 2503-2627).

Chapter X. Immigration (lines 2631-2673, printed p.119-120; opening only)

  • Immigration figures since 1 November 1922 are in Appendix 22 and emigration in Appendix 23. The original Immigration Ordinance (1920) authorised the Zionist Organization to introduce 16,500 immigrants a year on accepting responsibility for their maintenance for one year; immigration was suspended in May 1921 and the High Commissioner’s pronouncement of 3 June 1921 set the permitted categories — travellers, persons of independent means, professionals, dependents, persons with definite prospects of employment, persons of religious occupation and returning residents (letters as printed include “(6)” for (b), ”(/)” for (f) and “(gr)” for (g)). The Immigration Ordinance 1925, as amended in 1928, with its 1925, 1926 and 1927 Regulations, is the governing authority. Its nine categories begin: A.(i) £1,000 and upwards, A.(ii) professionals with £500, A.(iii) skilled artisans with £250, A.(iv) an assured £4 a month; B orphans, religious occupation and students with maintenance assured; C working men and women and their families; D dependent relatives residents can maintain. The chapter continues in part 4 (lines 2631-2673).

Key passages

  • “The estimate for Beersheba is quite unreliable, and any figures must be misleading, since we have no sufficient data and what can be done there in cultivation is entirely dependent on a most unreliable rainfall.” (Director of Surveys, quoted line 461)

  • “It is a mistake to assume that the Vale of Esdraelon was a wilderness before the arrival of the Jewish settlers and that it is now a paradise.” (line 553)

  • “It is, however, unjust to the povertystricken fellah’ who has been removed from these lands that the suggestion should continually be made that he was a useless cumberer of the ground and produced nothing from it.” (line 553)

  • “The immigration movement is in major part a movement of immigration to the towns.” (line 1240)

  • “It is no exaggeration to state that the fellah population as a class is hopelessly bankrupt.” (line 1645)

  • “Nothing is more fatal for the peace of Palestine than emphasis on the difference rather than on the common interests of these two constituents of the population.” (line 1947)

  • “It would be a bad, and might prove a fatal policy, to attract large capital in order to start doubtful industries in Palestine, with the object of justifying an increase in the number of immigrants.” (line 2613)

  • The Jewish Agency Memorandum, as quoted by Simpson: “from the point of view of Industry the whole talk of the absorptive capacity of the country is out of place and should be disposed of once and for all.” (line 2547)

Evidence the work relies on

  • Official records of all Departments of the Government of Palestine, and information supplied by the Supreme Moslem Council, the Arab Executive and the Jewish Agency, as acknowledged in the covering letter (lines 116-151).

  • Director of Surveys estimates of July 1929 and 20 July 1930, Commissioner of Lands estimates, and the RAF aerial test photographic survey of the hill country (lines 453-505, 685-719).

  • The Report of the Experts to the Joint Palestine Survey Commission, including Dr. Strahorn’s soil survey (p.143-236 of that report), and Strahorn’s soil map reproduced as Map No. 4 (lines 445, 589-613, 717-733).

  • Ruppin’s evidence and memorandum to the Commission on the Disturbances (the Shaw Commission), Lord Stanhope’s House of Lords statements of May 1925, Colonel Sawer’s 1922 review, and the Keren Hayesod Statistical Abstract for 1929, each as examined in Chapters I-II (lines 449-465, 645-683, 741-745).

  • The Census of 1922 and Department of Health population and vital-statistics records, with Appendices 2, 4 and 5 (lines 753-877).

  • The Committee on the Economic Condition of Agriculturists’ enquiry into 104 representative villages (report to the Government 3 July 1930), Dr. Wilkansky’s proof-sheets of The Fellah’s Farm and his Zionist Key for the Settlement of Various Zones, and the Department of Health’s 1929 report, as used in Chapters III, VI and VII (lines 905-965, 1470-1480).

  • The Jewish Agency’s Memorandum and its Appendices 7, 10 and 11 statements, the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod consolidated expenditure statements (Appendices 8 and 9), the Experts’ Report Table I (p.72) as updated by statements supplied by “Dr. Kuppin” (as printed), and Davar of 2 July 1930, as examined in Chapter V (lines 1155-1250).

  • Mr Hankin’s letter of 14 July 1930 and interview note, the text of the Jewish Agency constitution Article 3, the Keren Kayemeth draft lease Article 23 and the Keren Hayesod agreements Articles 7 and 11, and A Guide to Jewish Palestine (1930), as quoted in Chapter V (lines 1285-1340).

  • The notes of the Director of Education and the Director of Agriculture on Arab education, Mr Strickland’s memorandum on clearing old debts, Mr Viteles’s cooperative data at end-May 1930, and Henriques on the Huleh drainage (Experts, p.400), as quoted in Chapter VII (lines 1791-1945).

  • Strahorn in the Reports of the Experts (p.199-206, p.201 for the 300,000-dunam citrus deduction), the Jewish Agency experts’ citrus figures in its Memorandum, Odum’s 1927 banana report for the Palestine Economic Corporation, and the tables in Appendices 20-21, as examined in Chapter VIII (lines 1955-2035).

  • The 1928 Census of Industries of the Department of Customs, Excise and Trade, the Jewish Agency’s Memorandum on Jewish industry (census of March 1930), the Director of that Department’s note on industry’s future, and Mr Goldwater’s 1929 general report for the Palestine Corporation Ltd., as quoted and used in Chapter IX (lines 2357-2593).

Analysis

  • Method in this part: competing area and population figures are set side by side, their provenance traced (Stanhope resting on government figures, Ruppin resting on Stanhope), and the figure with a survey or aerial-photograph basis is adopted, with its remaining inexactness stated. The Beersheba figures are expressly set aside as guesswork and excluded from the settlement calculation.

  • The land arithmetic of Chapter II is the foundation of the report: a fixed cultivable total for the hills and plains, minus Jewish holdings, leaves the area available for the existing non-Jewish cultivators, against which later chapters measure holdings, immigration and development. Its force depends on the Director of Surveys’ percentages, which the report itself notes rest in part on applying surveyed fractions and aerial photographs to unsurveyed wholes.

  • Perspective in this part: Simpson credits Jewish drainage, capital and methods in Esdraelon while rejecting the claim that the valley was a wilderness and recording Arab displacement and soreness over the Sursock sales as facts of the enquiry; Arab cultivators’ lack of capital is presented as the binding constraint in the hills.

  • Perspective in this part: the P.I.C.A. is praised without reserve and its Arab relations held up as the counter-model, while the Zionist Organisation’s legal instruments — constitution, draft lease, settlement agreements — are quoted in full and judged against its public friendship declarations and against Article 6; the fellah is presented as a competent cultivator (“the ploughing of the fellah is above reproach”, on Wilkansky’s evidence) ruined by holding size, debt, rent and a Tithe fixed at vanished prices, not by indolence.

  • Method in part 3: the same pattern holds in the economic chapters — an expert figure is tested against a rival agency figure and the lower, safer one adopted (Strahorn’s 300,000 citrus dunams and Simpson’s own 200,000 still available against the Agency experts’ 500,000 suitable), and the Agency’s own industrial census and Memorandum are quoted at length before being judged. Simpson’s industry argument turns on time: imported capital supports an immigrant only until it is spent, so an industry that cannot compete thereafter is no basis for immigration, a test he applies to Nesher’s tariff, Shemen’s oilseeds duty and grand-scale textiles alike.

  • The education and cooperation sections extend the fellah argument of Chapter VI: the binding constraints named are schools (13.2 per cent of village Arab children taught), credit (no Arab cooperative society, societies that exist charging 10-13 per cent against a 9 per cent legal limit that is a dead letter) and water wasted for want of regulation, each with a costed or concrete remedy.

People, organizations, places and events

John Hope Simpson, Arthur Ruppin, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Herbert Samuel, Shaw Commission, Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund, Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, Palestine Land Development Company, Edmond de Rothschild, Histadrut, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Sursuq family, Supreme Muslim Council, Mandate for Palestine, Palestine Electric Corporation, Palestine Potash Company, Nesher Cement Factory, Ghor Mudawwara Agreement

Concepts

Jewish National Home, Waqf, Economic capacity, Mesha’a, Lot viable, Jewish Labour Only, Hebrew Labour, Cooperative societies

How it relates to other sources

  • The report is the enquiry the Shaw Commission page records as following the Shaw Commission: where Wolfe and Banko summarise its restrictive conclusions, this source gives Simpson’s own land and population figures and reasoning in Chapters I-III, including his 6,544,000-dunam settlement area and the 5,644,000 dunams left for non-Jewish cultivators.

  • Its Esdraelon account — Sursock sales, displaced tenants, and rejection of the wilderness claim — is the contemporary official counterpart to the purchase and displacement accounts in Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics and The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, which cite the Hope Simpson report at second hand.

  • Ruppin’s figures as Simpson examines them qualify the Ruppin testimony quoted in other sources: the 2,500,000 dunams said to be available for settlement rest, on Simpson’s tracing, on inaccurate government-based figures and a Turkish/metric dunam confusion.

  • Simpson’s own land figures are applied, not just stated, in this part: the 5,644,000 dunams of Chapter II divided by 61,408 cultivating families gives the 91.9-dunam average holding that Chapter VI measures against his 130-dunam lot viable, so the report’s immigration conclusion is already arithmetically determined before Chapter X.

  • His Chapter V reading of the Jewish Agency’s Esdraelon annex — 379 of 688 families still cultivating — is the same annex method Wolfe and others cite at second hand; here the harrath (farm servant) reclassification that produces the figure is Simpson’s own.

  • The draft-lease Article 23 Simpson quotes is the clause Wolfe cites as JNF lease clause 23 (note 59) for the Jewish-labour condition; Simpson also quotes the Agency constitution and Keren Hayesod agreements that Molavi cites for the same regime.

  • Chapter IX is the report’s direct answer to the position recorded on Economic capacity: where the 1922 White Paper made immigration conditional on the country’s capacity to absorb new arrivals, the Jewish Agency Memorandum Simpson quotes argues that for industry that talk is out of place and immigration itself creates the market; Simpson’s flat 1927-1929 manufactured-export totals and his 1926 relief-works example are his evidence against it, in advance of Chapter X’s treatment of the immigration categories themselves.

  • His Nesher Cement Factory account (390 wage-earners in 1930, sales and tariff figures) precedes and differs in emphasis from Lockman’s: Simpson treats the factory as a tariff question, Lockman as a labour struggle over its quarry, and neither account mentions the other’s framing.

Open questions

  • Lord Stanhope’s statement is dated 20 May 1925 in Chapter I and the Stanhope figures Ruppin relied on are dated 28 May 1925 in Chapter II (lines 449, 661-665). Both dates are held as printed.
  • The mid-1930 distribution components as printed — urban 340,962, rural 501,968, tribal 103,331 — sum to 946,261 (computed from the figures as printed), not the stated total of 945,991.
  • The Glossary pairing under “Waad Leumi” (lines 323-327) gives the Keren Hayesod definition before the Waad Leumi definition and no Keren Hayesod heading; whether this is a two-column layout scramble in the printed report or in the transcription is not settled from the files supplied.
  • Text-copy slips held as printed (“W.C.a”, “3s. Od.”, “Dr. Kuppin”, “Commissioner of Lanus”, “Strahom”/“Strahorris”, square mile ”= 2.590 metric dunams” at line 399 where the surrounding conversions are of area) cannot be assigned to the printed report or to the UNISPAL transcription from the files supplied.
  • The Jewish Agency constitution is dated by Simpson to a signing at Zurich on 14 August 1920 (line 1295), as printed in the text copy; the date is held as printed.
  • The Agency’s Appendix 7 settlement-type counts and the Jewish National Fund’s own statement counts differ as printed (20 cooperative groups and 16 smallholders’ settlements against 27 cooperative group settlements and 18 smallholders’ settlements, with differing Yemenite counts), and neither set is reconciled in the text (lines 1155-1165).
  • The Committee’s 104-village income components as printed — field crops £483,600 plus other sources £420,070 — sum to £903,670 (computed from the figures as printed), not the stated Committee total of £912,670; the declaration and the May 1930 recalculation components do sum to their stated totals.
  • The balance in Wilkansky’s fellah estimate is given as “185” with no currency or unit in the text copy (line 1615); it is held as printed.
  • At Wadi Hawareth the Beduin migration is a new departure connected with defeating Jewish colonisation in the Jewish sources Simpson cites, and an annual summer-grazing migration in the Arab sources; both accounts are held (lines 1715-1725).
  • The electric-power concessionaire is named “Mr. Kutenberg” in the text copy (line 2385), as printed; the name is held as printed and not normalised.
  • The banana report’s author is named “Mr. George M. Odium” throughout the text copy (line 1993), as printed, and the Shemen works are said to have been founded in 1929 by a company whose own statement in the same passage gives output from 1927 (lines 2415-2463); both are held as printed.
  • The Shemen statement’s 1930-to-1-May row gives an output of 1,143 tons, a value of £33,000 and 110 workers but no sales tonnage in the text copy (lines 2465-2471); the gap is held as printed.
  • The Nablus soap production value is printed “6240,000” (reading uncertain) and the Grands Moulins outturn range begins “d690,000” in the text copy (lines 2477, 2481); both are held as printed, with no inferred value.
  • Chapter X (remainder), Chapter XI and the appendices are unread in this part; the report’s immigration argument beyond the opening categories, and its conclusion, are therefore not yet accounted for.

Coverage

lines 1-2673 of 3561, read in parts 1-3 of 4. Part 4 (lines 2674-3561) remains unread.

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