Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP)

Summary

The report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine to the second session of the General Assembly, signed on 31 August 1947 after three months of work at Lake Success, in Palestine, in Beirut and in Geneva. Part 1 (lines 1-990) covers the Preface and Introduction, Chapter I on the Committee’s creation under General Assembly resolution 106 (S-1) of 15 May 1947 and its activities — including the Arab Higher Committee’s refusal to cooperate, its intervention over three death sentences, its hearing of the Arab States at Beirut and its divided decision to visit Jewish displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria — and the opening of Chapter II on the elements of the conflict: Palestine’s geography and water, the population statistics to the end of 1946 (Arabs 1,203,000; Jews 608,000; others 35,000), the government statistician’s projections to 1960, and the opening economic analysis of two distinctive Arab and Jewish economies, agriculture, industry, the concessions and foreign trade. In this part the Committee’s two plans exist only as outcomes recorded in the activities summary: at the forty-seventh meeting three members (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) favoured a federal State plan and seven (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay) voted for the principle of Partition with economic union, Australia abstaining on both; eleven recommendations were later approved unanimously and a twelfth with two dissenting votes (Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP), lines 542-556). Part 2 (lines 991-1980) completes Chapter II — the wartime inflation and reconversion account, the Mandate’s obligations and practice with the “dual obligation” controversy, the development of the National Home, the 1939 White Paper’s immigration and land regime, Arab rights and self-governing institutions, the present situation of semi-military tension (820 security detainees and 17,873 detained illegal immigrants at 12 July 1947), and the summarized Jewish and Arab cases with the Committee’s appraisals of each — then gives Chapter III on religious interests and the Holy Places status quo, Chapter IV’s recapitulation of the proposals from Peel (1937) to the Jewish Agency and Arab States plans submitted to the Committee, Chapter V’s twelve recommendations (eleven unanimous, including termination of the Mandate, independence, economic unity as a cardinal principle, and an international arrangement for some 250,000 Jewish displaced persons in assembly centers; the twelfth, that no Palestine solution can be considered a solution of the Jewish problem in general, carried over two dissenters), and the opening of Chapter VI: the majority partition plan’s justification and its Part I provisions for a two-year transition from 1 September 1947, admission of 150,000 Jewish immigrants during the transition, constituent assemblies, and the Declaration’s chapters on Holy Places and on religion and minority rights (Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP), lines 991-1980).

What the file is

The UNISPAL reproduction of the report (Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Volume 1, Lake Success, New York, 1947), downloaded from the URL above (access basis: IGO, as supplied). The original delivered is the HTML page; the supplied text copy (about 53,628 words as given for this ingest; 53,240 words and 2,968 lines counting the final blank line in the copy as placed) is a plain-text rendering of that page with no page markers, so locators are line numbers. The copy opens with UN website navigation furniture (lines 1-75 approx.), which is not report text, and ends past the part 1 range with the remainder of the report.
The report as reproduced: title page, table of contents (Preface, Introduction, Chapters I-VIII, appendix and annexes), Preface and Introduction, and eight chapters — I. The Origin and Activities of UNSCOP; II. The Elements of the Conflict; III. Religious Interests and Holy Places; IV. The Main Proposals Propounded for the Solution of the Palestine Question; V. Recommendations (I); VI. Recommendations (II), the majority plan of partition with economic union, with boundaries and the City of Jerusalem; VII. Recommendations (III), the minority federal State plan; VIII. Reservations and Observations. Part 1 accounts below for the Preface, Introduction, Chapter I in full and Chapter II sections A and the opening of B (to the foreign trade table at Ch. II para. 52). Part 2 accounts below for the rest of Chapter II (sections B concluded, C and D), Chapter III, Chapter IV, Chapter V in full, and Chapter VI Part I (justification, partition and independence, transitional period and constitution, and the Declaration through Chapter 2 clause 6).
Text quality: the text copy carries frequent typographic slips, recorded as printed in the reading notes and not corrected, among them in part 1 “Untied Nations Special Committee” and resolution “107 (S-l)” in Chapter I, “Garcia GRANDEES” in the membership list, “taken a Lake Success”, “de desirability”, “broad cast” and “Aral Higher Committee”, “sub mdice” and “sub jidice”, “mistimed hospitality”, “about halt of this area” and “a wild contusion of limestone hills” in Chapter II, “Ramie” for Ramle, the sub-headings “(d)” for (a) and ”(&)” for (b), “natural income” for national income, “10 per tent”, “245.000”, “5,700.000” and “194$”. Footnote markers (1/ to 50/) occur throughout part 1, but the footnote texts themselves are not reproduced in this copy; where a passage is quoted from a footnoted source the report’s own framing is given in the section entries below. Part 2 continues the same pattern (markers 50/ to 162/), and adds its own slips, among them “10:” for the 1939 Middle East export percentage, “25..0” in the military expenditure table, “in so tar” in the Hogarth Message passage, “riot admitted” for not admitted in the Administration’s quoted statement, “bean”, “Anglb-French” and “Balfdur” in Chapter II.D, “dear” for clear in Chapter V, “Sandstorm” for Sandstrom in Chapter VI, and “Women may not and be elected” in the partition plan’s transitional provisions.

Section by section

Preface and Introduction (lines 194-224)

The Preface states that the Committee completed its task within the three months fixed by the General Assembly under great pressure of work, and that defects may be discovered by those who have studied the Palestine question for years. “The problem of Palestine is not one the solution of which will emerge from an accumulation of detailed information.” The problem “is mainly one of human relationship and political rights”, and its solution may be reached only through a correct appreciation of the situation as a whole and “an endeavour to find a human settlement”. While a majority and a minority plan are proposed, “both plans are derived from findings and principles most of which have been agreed to unanimously”, and such unanimity may assist the General Assembly in solving a question that has frustrated all previous efforts (lines 194-202).
The Introduction states that the volume comprises a preface, eight chapters, an appendix and a series of annexes; that chapters I-IV present factual information as background; that Chapter V puts forward eleven unanimous recommendations on general principles and a further recommendation adopted with two dissenting votes; that Chapters VI and VII contain respectively a majority plan and a minority plan including provisions for boundaries; and that Chapter VIII lists the reservations and observations whose text is in the appendix (lines 204-224).

Chapter I.A. Creation of the Special Committee (Ch. I paras. 1-21)

On 2 April 1947 the United Kingdom delegation requested that the question of Palestine be placed on the agenda of the next regular session and that a special session be summoned to constitute and instruct a special committee to prepare for the Assembly’s consideration of the question; the United Kingdom would submit an account of its Mandate administration and ask the Assembly to make recommendations, under Article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine (para. 1). Secretary-General Trygve Lie communicated the request; by 13 April 1947 the requisite majority had concurred, and the first special session opened at Flushing Meadow, New York, on 28 April 1947 (para. 2). Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia requested an additional agenda item, “The termination of the Mandate over Palestine and the declaration of its independence” (para. 3); the General Committee decided by eight to one with three abstentions not to recommend its inclusion (para. 4), and the Assembly adopted the General Committee’s recommendations (para. 5), leaving the United Kingdom item as the sole agenda item, referred to the First Committee (para. 6).
The First Committee granted a hearing to the Jewish Agency for Palestine and, at its forty-eighth meeting, to the Arab Higher Committee — a decision the Assembly declared a correct interpretation of its intention; both presented views on constituting and instructing the committee. Other organisations’ requests were refused because they did not represent a considerable element of Palestine’s population, without excluding their being heard by the committee of investigation once established (paras. 7-10).
Sir Alexander Cadogan, for the United Kingdom, clarified the statement that His Majesty’s Government could not imagine “carrying out a policy of which it does not approve”: it did not mean the Government would not accept any Assembly recommendation, only that it would not carry out a decision it felt to be wrong (para. 11). At the First Committee’s fifty-second meeting the United Kingdom representative said: “We have tried for years to solve the problem of Palestine. Having failed so far, we now bring it to the United Nations, in the hope that it can succeed where we have not.” The reservation was that the United Kingdom “should not have the sole responsibility for enforcing a solution which is not accepted by both parties and which we cannot reconcile with our conscience” (para. 12).
The First Committee agreed the Special Committee should have the broadest competence; on composition, the Australian resolution for eleven members excluding the five permanent Security Council members was adopted thirteen to eleven with twenty-nine abstentions, and the composition — Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia — was approved thirty-nine to three with ten abstentions (paras. 13-15). The General Assembly adopted the First Committee’s recommendations on 15 May 1947 by forty-five to seven with one abstention (paras. 16-17).
Resolution 106 (S-1), quoted in full (para. 18): the Special Committee “shall have the widest powers to ascertain and record facts, and to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine”; it determines its own procedure; it shall conduct investigations in Palestine and wherever it may deem useful and receive written or oral testimony from the mandatory Power, representatives of Palestine’s population, Governments and such organisations and individuals as it deems necessary; it “shall give most careful consideration to the religious interests in Palestine of Islam, Judaism and Christianity”; it shall prepare a report and submit such proposals as it considers appropriate, the report to be communicated to the Secretary-General not later than 1 September 1947. Resolution 107 (S-1), adopted unanimously with a number of abstentions, called on all Governments and peoples, particularly Palestine’s inhabitants, to refrain pending Assembly action “from the threat or use of force or any other action which might create an atmosphere prejudicial to an early settlement of the question of Palestine” (para. 19 in the text’s numbering sequence as printed).
Membership (para. 20): Australia, J. D. L. Hood (S. L. Atyeo alternate); Canada, Justice I. C. Rand (Leon Mayrand); Czechoslovakia, Karl Lisicky (Dr. Richard Peach); Guatemala, Dr. Jorge Garcia Granados — printed “GRANDEES” — (E. Zea Gonzales); India, Sir Abdur Rahman (Venkata Viswanathan; H. Dayal, second alternate); Iran, Nasrollah Entezam (Dr. Ali Akdalan, as printed); Netherlands, Dr. N. S. Blom (A. I. Spits); Peru, Dr. Alberto Ulloa (Dr. Arturo Garcia Salazar); Sweden, Justice Emil Sandstrom (Dr. Paul Mohn); Uruguay, Professor Enrique Rodriguez Fabregat (Secco Ellauri); Yugoslavia, Vladimir Simic (Dr. Jose Brilej). The Secretariat numbered fifty-seven, headed by Dr. Victor Hoo as the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative and Dr. Alfonso Garcia Robles as Principal Secretary (para. 21).

Chapter I.B. Summary of activities (Ch. I paras. 22-81)

The Committee first met at Lake Success on Monday 26 May 1947; from then until 31 August 1947, “the day of the signing of this report”, it held sixteen public and thirty-six private meetings (paras. 22-23). At Lake Success it received the Secretariat’s “Working documentation on Palestine”, created a Preparatory Working Group, elected Emil Sandstrom Chairman and Alberto Ulloa Vice Chairman, adopted provisional rules of procedure, requested written statements from organisations that had asked to be heard in New York without granting hearings there, postponed the question of visiting displaced persons assembly centres in Europe, communicated the liaison-officer rule to the mandatory Power, the Jewish Agency and the Arab Higher Committee, and adopted a tentative plan of work (paras. 24-27).
In Palestine (arriving 14-15 June, first Jerusalem meeting 16 June at the Y.M.C.A. Building) the itinerary followed from 22 June to 3 July was built from Government of Palestine, Jewish Agency and Netherlands-representative proposals, studied by a sub-committee of the alternate representatives presided over by Dr. Ralph Bunche (paras. 28-29). The Government appointed D. C. MacGillivray as liaison officer; the Jewish Agency named Major Aubrey S. Eban and David Horowitz (para. 30); MacGillivray was also appointed the mandatory Power’s Geneva liaison officer (para. 31).
Non-cooperation of the Arab Higher Committee (paras. 32-34): the Committee was informed of the Arab Higher Committee’s decision to abstain from collaboration, read at its seventh meeting; it unanimously hoped for all parties’ cooperation but took no formal action, the Chairman having appealed by radio for full cooperation. On 8 July, at its 22nd and 23rd meetings, it wrote directly to the Arab Higher Committee repeating the invitation; on 10 July Jamal Husseini, its Vice-Chairman, replied that it found no reason to reverse its decision of 13 June 1947 to abstain from collaboration.
Testimony (paras. 35-44): the sixth meeting received factual information in private, at the witnesses’ request, from Sir Henry Gurney, Chief Secretary, and D. C. MacGillivray; at the eighth meeting M. Shertok and D. Horowitz for the Jewish Agency presented views on A Survey of Palestine and similar information. A hearings sub-committee (Australia, Netherlands, Uruguay, Yugoslavia and the Personal Representative; Dr. N. S. Blom chairman) produced criteria and a list approved with minor changes. Hearings in Jerusalem were granted to the Government of Palestine, the Jewish Agency, a number of other Jewish organisations and religious bodies, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann in his personal capacity. The Committee invited the Arab States to express their views; Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria accepted and designated Beirut; Transjordan, not a United Nations Member, would not send a representative outside the country but would welcome a visit, which pressure of time then prevented. Many written statements were also received.
Petitions (paras. 45-48): requests for immigration certificates and for the release of prisoners or detainees were answered in the negative as outside the Committee’s competence; appeals to investigate prison conditions, British police methods, the condition of the Jews in Yemen and refugees in Aden were likewise held to fall outside the terms of reference. Three appeals from organisations of illegal immigrants deported to Cyprus were considered: by six to three with two abstentions the Committee decided not to visit Cyprus, and it rejected (four in favour, five against, two abstentions) the detainees’ request to send representatives to Jerusalem to give evidence.
The three death sentences (paras. 49-58): relatives of three young men sentenced to death by the Military Court of Jerusalem on 16 June petitioned for the Committee’s good offices to secure commutation. The prevailing arguments held interference with judicial administration to be beyond the terms of reference, but that a step not implying interference could point out that executions might have repercussions on the Committee’s task, resolution 107 (S-1) providing a sufficient basis. The Committee adopted (nine to one, one abstention) a resolution expressing the majority’s “concern as to the possible unfavourable repercussions” and communicating it, with the relatives’ letter, to the mandatory Power through the Secretary-General; its letter to the relatives (eight to three) said interference was beyond its instruction and function but the matter was being brought to the proper authorities’ attention. The Chief Secretary replied that the sentences had not been confirmed and were still sub judice; the United Kingdom Government’s reply of 30 June maintained the same contention, stated that if the sentences were confirmed the High Commissioner could still exercise the royal prerogative of pardon and that it was “the invariable practice” of His Majesty’s Government not to interfere with that discretion, and denied the General Assembly resolution’s relevance, which in its view applied to “action calculated to disturb the peace in Palestine” and not to the normal processes of the administration of justice. The Committee did not take the matter up again.
At the fourteenth and fifteenth meetings members recorded that acts of violence committed since the Committee’s arrival were a flagrant disregard of resolution 107 (S-1) (para. 59, printed “59)”).
Beirut and Geneva (paras. 60-81): the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth meetings in Beirut heard the Governments of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen; a private individual’s hearing application was refused; the Chairman and seven members, in their private capacities, visited Amman briefly on 25 July. In Geneva further hearing requests were refused, petitions for the illegal immigrants transported to Port de Bouc, France, were held outside the Committee’s authority to intervene, Sub-Committee 4 (the eleven alternates, A. I. Spits chairman) studied religious interests, the Holy Places and the status of Jerusalem and proposed the constitutional stipulations inserted in both plans, and the majority plan’s City of Jerusalem recommendations were inspired by its Canadian, Netherlands, Peruvian and Swedish proposals, India, Iran and Yugoslavia disagreeing. On the displaced persons camps the Committee voted (six in favour, four against, one abstention) to visit: some members held the visit unnecessary since it was common knowledge the inmates wanted to go to Palestine, others held the terms of reference obliged it, and two members held it improper to connect the displaced persons, and the Jewish problem as a whole, with the problem of Palestine; Sub-Committee 3 (Hood chairman) visited selected assembly centres in Germany and Austria from 8 to 14 August under terms of reference “to ascertaining and reporting to the Committee on the attitude of the inmates of the assembly centers regarding resettlement, repatriation or immigration into Palestine”, and its report was approved and annexed.
Preparation of the report (paras. 73-81): after informal exchanges to ascertain the field of agreement, a record vote at the forty-seventh meeting showed three members (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) favouring a federal State plan against seven, Australia abstaining, and seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay), reserving their positions on boundaries and Jerusalem, voting in favour of the principle of partition with economic union, three against, Australia abstaining; agreement was later reached among the seven on both outstanding questions. At the forty-ninth meeting on 29 August 1947 eleven recommendations were unanimously approved and a twelfth made with two dissenting votes; at the fifty-second meeting the representatives signed the report and its covering letter, recording appreciation to Sir Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner, and the Palestine administration, to the Government of Lebanon, and to the Secretariat under Victor Hoo and Alfonso Garcia Robles.

Chapter II.A. Geographic and demographic factors (Ch. II paras. 1-23)

Physical features (paras. 1-3): the total land area is estimated at about 26,000 square kilometres, a little over 10,000 square miles, about half of it uninhabitable desert; set at the cross-roads between Europe, Asia and North Africa, the territory has derived from its position “the ill-matched gifts of political strife and economic advantage”. The coastal plain, nowhere more than some twenty miles wide, is broken by a spur of hills towards Haifa; inland lie the plains of Esdraelon and Jezreel, the Huleh Valley with unreclaimed swamp, the hills of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, and the Jordan rift valley falling to the Dead Sea some 1,200 feet below sea level; to the south the Beersheba district, arid semi-desert with a very small settled population and about 90,000 Bedouin nomads, merges into the Negeb proper.
Water (paras. 4-8): rainfall is heaviest over the coastal plain and the northern and central hills and too small over the Jordan Valley and Beersheba for summer crops without irrigation; population distribution coincides very closely with rainfall distribution. Further considerable agricultural development must rely on intensive irrigation rather than extending cultivation; Palestine, unlike Egypt, has no great river carrying water from beyond its boundaries and depends on precipitation within its boundaries and in the Syria-Lebanon catchment from which the Jordan is partly fed. The Government of Palestine’s estimate of water available annually for new exploitation (millions of cubic metres): springs and rivers 800 (dry year) / 1,000 (average) / 1,500 (wet); wadi storm water 100 / 500 / 1,200; underground water 200 / 200 / 200; totals 1,100 / 1,700 / 2,900. Somewhat higher estimates are given by the Jewish Agency and implied in the Hays and Savage overall irrigation scheme, whose complete form provides nearly 2,000 million cubic metres actually reaching the fields; there is no disagreement that Palestine is not very bountifully supplied with water.
Other resources (para. 9): Palestine is exceedingly poor in the resources typical of modern industrial development — neither coal, iron nor any other important mineral deposit; the only considerable non-agricultural resources are the potassium and sodium salts extracted from the Dead Sea. Oil “has not been discovered in payable quantities”; present fuel supplies depend entirely on oil reaching the Haifa refineries via the pipeline from the Iraq oil fields.
Population statistics (paras. 10-14): two censuses have been held, in 1922 and 1931; censuses prepared in 1936, 1941 and 1946 were postponed by political disturbances, and current estimates rest on births and deaths records with a margin of error that grows as the base census year recedes. The total settled population at the end of 1946 was estimated at nearly 1,846,000, an increase of 184 per cent on the 1922 census. The by-religions table (para. 12): 1922 — Moslems 486,177, Jews 83,790, Christians 71,464, Others 7,617, total 649,048; 1931 — Moslems 493,147 (as printed), Jews 174,606, Christians 88,907, Others 10,101, total 966,761; 1941 — 906,551, 474,102, 125,413, 12,881, total 1,518,947; 1946 — 1,076,783, 608,225, 145,063, 15,488, total 1,845,559. By national classification at the end of 1946: Arabs 1,203,000; Jews 608,000; others 35,000; total 1,846,000 (para. 13). The Jewish proportion rose from 12.91 per cent in 1922 to 32.96 per cent in 1946, the Moslem proportion falling from about 75 per cent to 60 per cent and the Christian from 11 per cent to 8 per cent (para. 14).
Immigration and natural increase (paras. 15-16): the Jewish population’s great increase is due in the main to immigration — recorded Jewish immigrants from 1920 to 1946 totalled about 376,000, given in the text as “an average of over 8,000 per year”; the flow was high in 1924-1926, fell in the following years (net emigration in 1927), and rose to even higher levels between 1933 and 1936 as a result of Nazi persecution in Europe, the Jewish proportion rising from 18 per cent in 1931 to nearly 30 per cent in 1936. The Arab population increased almost entirely by natural increase; “the natural rate of increase of Moslem Arabs in Palestine is the highest in recorded statistics”, explained by very high fertility coupled with a marked decline in death rates from improved conditions of life and public health.
Future trends (paras. 17-19): the government statistician P. J. Loftus’s estimates in volume III of A Survey of Palestine, “the most complete demographic study that has yet been made of Palestine”, conclude qualitatively that the Arab (particularly Moslem Arab) population will continue to grow rapidly while, apart from immigration, the Jewish population will increase more slowly. Calculated on the most probable assumptions and assuming no immigration, the 1960 population would be Moslems 1,533,000, Jews 664,000, Christians 176,000, other 21,000, total 2,394,000 — an increase of 30 per cent in fourteen years, with the Jewish population declining “from about 31 per cent of the total to 28 per cent” (para. 19, percentages as printed).
Distribution (paras. 20-23): density at the end of 1944 was 174 persons per square mile, rising to 324 excluding the Beersheba area — higher than Switzerland’s and slightly lower than Italy’s — and Palestine contains none of the basic raw materials of modern industry. The heaviest concentration is along the coastal plain from Gaza to Haifa, with Galilee, Esdraelon and the Jerusalem sub-district also fairly thickly populated and the south extremely sparse apart from about 90,000 Bedouin nomads in the Beersheba sub-district. “There is no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas”: Jews are more than 40 per cent of the population in the Jaffa (including Tel Aviv), Haifa and Jerusalem districts, 25-34 per cent in Tiberias and Beisan, 10-25 per cent in Safad, Nazareth, Tulkarm and Ramle, and not more than 5 per cent in the central districts and those south of Jerusalem; and there is a considerable Arab concentration even in the areas of main Jewish concentration, since these are the most populous parts of the country.

Chapter II.B. Relevant economic factors (Ch. II paras. 24-52, opening)

The two economies (paras. 24-26): Palestine’s economy presents “the complex phenomenon of two distinctive economies one Jewish and one Arab”, closely involved yet in essential features separate, the separateness not corresponding to clear territorial divisions. Apart from a small number of experts, no Jewish workers are employed in Arab undertakings and, apart from citrus groves where Arabs work as seasonal labourers on Jewish farms, very few Arabs are employed in Jewish enterprises; government service, the Potash Company and the Oil Refinery are almost the only places where Arabs and Jews meet as co-workers. Wage rates, investment size, productivity and labour costs differ considerably between similar occupations. Arab agriculture tends to subsistence farming with only about 20-25 per cent of production (excluding citrus) marketed; Jewish agriculture is largely intensive cash-crop farming with about 75 per cent sold. Yet under the Mandate there has been a unified administration, internal freedom of trade, a common transport system, a single currency and some common public services, and the capital investment associated with Jewish immigration has profoundly affected Arab life and raised Arab living standards; the economic relations nonetheless have “something of the character of trade between different nations”, separateness as producers (citrus the main exception) remaining unyielding to the economic forces expected to produce homogeneity.
Agriculture (paras. 27-38): about 65 per cent of the population gain a living directly from agriculture, yet the country is not self-sufficient in food, about 50 per cent of its cereals being supplied by imports; most land cultivable by present methods is under crops, and development depends on advanced methods and more extensive irrigation, though Jewish authorities claim government estimates are too conservative. Citrus is the main export crop, accounting before the wartime interruption for 80 per cent of the total value of exports. Citrus production is approximately equally shared between Jewish and Arab cultivators; Arab cultivators produce over 80 per cent of the cereals and more than 98 per cent of the olives; the majority of Arab cultivators retain on average about 75 per cent of their production for their own consumption, while about 75 per cent of Jewish produce is sold. Jewish agriculture is described as “progressive, scientific and experimental”, organised through some three hundred communal and co-operative settlements and the “Tnuva” and other co-operative marketing organisations, the settlements having increased “from five in 1882 to over 300 to day” (as printed) with a population of well over 150,000. The 1944-1945 production-value table (para. 33) gives, Jewish / Arab / Total in Palestine pounds: grains 497,048 / 4,403,409 / 4,900,457; vegetables 1,745,870 / 5,113,553 / 6,859,423; fodder 951,178 / 156,847 / 1,108,025; fruits excluding citrus 1,379,620 / 3,139,374 / 4,518,994; olives 53,235 / 3,320,320 / 3,373,555; melons 83,975 / 969,630 / 1,053,605; totals 4,710,926 / 17,103,133 / 21,814,059. Vegetable production rose from 129,000 tons in 1939 to 245,000 in 1945 and fruit (excluding citrus) from 131,000 to 174,000 tons, while grain production fell from 242,000 to 209,000 tons; citrus exports in 1945-1946 were more than 5 million cases valued at nearly £P 3,500,000, against 15 million cases at about £P 4,500,000 in 1938-1939, the Government having assisted citrus producers by advances of more than £P 3,250,000. The Citrus Control Board and Citrus Marketing Board, working on equal export quotas to Jewish and Arab producers, make citrus “the one considerable economic activity where Jews and Arabs are producing for the same market under similar conditions”. The only extensive undeveloped good land is the Huleh Valley — a swamp of which 150,000 dunams could be reclaimed, a Jewish concession originally granted by the Turkish Government having been of no value — and the northern Beersheba semi-desert, with a settled population of 7,000 and about 90,000 nomadic Bedouins, whose development by irrigation remains problematic.
Industry (paras. 39-46): industry “has now emerged as the largest contributory to the natural income” (as printed). The two major development periods were 1933-1939, dominated by refugee immigrants from Western Europe, particularly Germany, bringing capital and technical and managerial skill, and 1941-1945, under wartime closure of outside supply and Middle East military demand. Jewish capital invested in industry was £P 1,000,000 in 1925-1929, £P 2,500,000 in 1930-1932, £P 7,000,000 in 1938-1939 and £P 6,000,000 in 1940-1944; an employment index for manufacturing industry in all communities ran 1939 = 100, 1942 = 200, 1943 = 214, 1944 = 209, 1945 = 221. Raw materials rose from 10 per cent of imports in 1939 to 32 per cent in 1946, wholly manufactured goods falling from 64 to 41 per cent. The most important industries are textiles, food production, chemicals and light metal industries; diamond cutting and polishing, developed in wartime by skilled cutters settled from Europe, exported £P 5,500,000 of cut and polished diamonds in 1946; the chemical industry, including Dead Sea potash, is relatively important. According to the 1942 census of industry, 75 to 80 per cent of persons engaged in industry were employed in Jewish-owned enterprises and about 90 per cent of workers in industry are Jewish; the most developed Arab industries are milling, tobacco manufacturing and some branches of the textile and metal trades, with the purely Arab soap industry at Nablus worthy of mention; Arab industry is by and large much less developed and less capitalised than Jewish industry.
Concessions (paras. 47-50): electric power is supplied by the Jerusalem Electric and Public Service Corporation for Jerusalem and the Palestine Electric Corporation for other areas, the latter working the 1921 Rutenberg Auja basin concession and the Jordan Concession for the Jordan and Yarmuk waters, for Palestine and Transjordan. The Palestine Potash Company was granted a concession in 1930 for seventy-five years to extract salts and minerals from the Dead Sea, operating at its northern and southern extremities. The Anglo-Iranian Oil and Iraq Petroleum Companies hold pipeline concessions to Acre Bay, with Haifa oil-dock rights, the refinery right having been transferred to Consolidated Refineries Limited, which established a refinery at Haifa in 1939. Concession companies enjoy privileges such as immunity from customs duties on products imported for their work.
Foreign trade (paras. 51-52, beginning): the relevant features are the change in volume and composition since 1939, the large adverse balance of payments and dependence on capital imports, and trade relations with other Middle East countries. Total trade grew greatly from the beginning of the Mandate to 1940 (1922: exports £P 4,000,000, imports £P 5,700,000; 1939: exports £P 5,100,000, imports £P 14,600,000, rounded). The table of imports and exports by value (thousands of Palestine pounds) gives imports 14,633 (1939) / 40,691 (1945) / 70,432 (1946) and exports 5,468 / 20,396 / 24,485, with an excess of imports of 9,165 in 1939 and 20,295 in 1945; the table continues past line 990.

Chapter II.B. Relevant economic factors, concluded (Ch. II paras. 53-67)

Foreign trade concluded (paras. 53-56): wartime cessation of citrus exports was temporary; citrus will again dominate, but Palestine must increase manufactured exports to maintain its import rate. The persistent import surplus is financed by capital imports — mainly funds from world Jewry, immigrants’ capital and religious institutions’ funds — and wartime British military expenditure left sterling balances estimated at about £125,000,000, held mainly by private Palestine citizens. Trade with Middle East countries rose from 17.7 per cent of imports and “10:” per cent (as printed) of exports in 1939 to 39 and 31 per cent in 1946. The 1946 Arab boycott of Jewish products adversely influenced exports to Arab countries and could seriously hamper industrial development if indefinitely maintained.
Wartime inflation (paras. 57-67): the cost-of-living index (pre-war 100, December of each year) rose from 131 in 1940 to 275 in 1946, driven mainly by British military expenditure (£P 8.5 million in 1940, peaking at £P 31.5 million in 1943, £P 23.5 million in 1946). Average industrial earnings 1939-1945 rose 200 per cent for Arabs and 258 per cent for Jews, and construction unskilled earnings 405 and 329 per cent respectively, so real wages fell little and for some groups rose; wartime prices relieved Arab cultivators’ debt burden. Of the 130,000 people in the armed forces, military construction or military production during the war, reabsorption has so far been eased by continued military expenditure at about 20 per cent of national income, but the economy faces the double adjustment of increasing industrial competition and falling income as military expenditure is reduced, with tourism a possible partial offset.

Chapter II.C. Palestine under the Mandate (Ch. II paras. 68-124)

The Mandate and its obligations (paras. 68-74): the Mandate was assigned to Great Britain on 25 April 1920 on the understanding that the Balfour Declaration would be put into effect, confirmed by the League Council on 24 July 1922 and in force from 29 September 1923. Five obligations are singled out: securing the Jewish National Home with facilitated Jewish immigration and close settlement (articles 2 and 6); safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all inhabitants, with the Balfour proviso for the existing non-Jewish communities; developing self-governing institutions and local autonomy (articles 2 and 3); the community’s welfare, including public control of natural resources and an appropriate land system (article 11) and article 15’s “No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language.”; and the Holy Places responsibilities (articles 13 and 14). Under article 25, Transjordan was excluded in September 1922 from the Mandate provisions regarding the Jewish National Home. In practice Palestine is governed by a High Commissioner under the Orders-in-Council, with an Executive and an Advisory Council and six administrative districts; in 1945 government employees numbered approximately 45,000, some 68 per cent Arab, 21 per cent Jewish and 10 per cent British (as printed), with posts of importance held by British officials. The Permanent Mandates Commission in August 1937 called the present Mandate “almost unworkable”, and the mandatory Power itself concluded there was “an irreconcilable conflict between the aspirations of the Arabs and those of the Jews in Palestine”.
The National Home and the “dual obligation” (paras. 75-83): the Royal Commission found the words “National Home” were a compromise between ministers who contemplated an ultimate Jewish State and those who did not; Churchill’s June 1922 statement, the mandatory’s authoritative interpretation, held that Palestine as a whole was not to be converted into a Jewish National Home, that the Arabic population, language or culture were not to disappear or be subordinated, and that the Jewish community is in Palestine “as of right and not on sufferance” — on which Peel commented that “there is nothing in it to prohibit the ultimate establishment of a Jewish State”. On the dual obligation the accounts are held side by side: the Permanent Mandates Commission in 1930 satisfied itself the obligations to the two sections “are of equal weight”; the Royal Commission found “the primary purpose of the Mandate, as expressed in its preamble and its articles, is to promote the establishment of the Jewish National Home”; and Churchill told the Commons on 23 May 1939 that self-governing institutions were to be subordinated to that paramount pledge. Within a decade of Peel, the Jewish population rose from 400,000 to some 625,000 (as printed here), settlements from 203 to more than 300, and Tel Aviv to over 180,000; the Vaad Leumi maintains the Jewish school system and health and social services almost exclusively from its own resources, the Histadrut counts some 160,000 members, and the Jewish Agency is organized into some twenty departments and exercises decisive influence on immigration and agricultural development; the Yishuv merits Peel’s title of “a State within a State”.
Immigration and land under the 1939 White Paper (paras. 84-94): the regulative principle from 1922 was economic absorptive capacity; by 1937 the Jewish population reached nearly 400,000, and Peel held political and psychological factors should also be taken into account. The White Paper of 1939 admitted some 75,000 Jews over five years to bring the Jewish population to approximately one-third of the total, after which “no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it”, illegal entrants to be deducted from the quota; its land transfer regulations of 1940 prohibited or restricted transfers to Jews across 95 per cent of Palestine, leaving a “free” zone of some 332,000 acres (5 per cent). The Permanent Mandates Commission’s 1939 findings are recorded in both their parts: the policy “was not in accordance with” the interpretation the Commission had always placed on the Mandate, and on a new interpretation four members could not state the White Paper conformed while three considered existing circumstances would justify it if the Council did not oppose it. Arab leaders officially rejected the White Paper as falling short of their demands; the Jewish Agency President’s letter of 31 May 1939, quoted, held that it “subjects the Jewish National Home to Arab rule” and “envisages the termination of the mandate by jettisoning its primary purpose”. Enforcement stimulated illegal immigration and ship seizures; the Biltmore Programme of 11 May 1942 called for unlimited immigration and a Jewish Commonwealth; from 1945 Jewish resistance was accompanied by increasing violence culminating in the Irgun and Stern Group underground activities, and in June 1946 the Administration detained some 2,600 Jews including four Jewish Agency Executive members. The White Paper policy, modified by the admission of 1,500 Jewish immigrants per month, still stands; the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews and for rescinding the Land Transfer Regulations were not put into practice.
Arab rights and Arab political organization (paras. 95-105): the report sets the January 1918 Hogarth Message — Jewish return to be realized “in so tar as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population, both economic and political” (as printed) — beside the Mandate’s “civil and religious rights” and “rights and position”, and records that Arab leaders have consistently denied the Mandate’s legality and demanded cessation of immigration, independence and full national self-government. Government spending in 1944-1946 ran at only some 3 per cent of total expenditure on public health and less than 4 per cent on education, and the Government school system “still covers only some 57 per cent of Arab boys of school age and 23 per cent of the girls”, while Peel’s and the Government of Palestine’s conclusions that the Arabs shared considerably in the material benefits of Jewish immigration are both quoted. Such benefit, the report holds, weighs little with Arab political leaders, whose basic premise is self-government in an independent State barring further Jewish immigration. The Supreme Muslim Council was created in 1921 and the 1923 offer of an Arab Agency exactly analogous to the Jewish Agency was unanimously declined. Peel’s account of the Arab national movement’s centralized political machine, its “common front” on the Arab Higher Committee with “no opposition party”, is carried forward: the Committee, dissolved and six of its leaders deported in 1937, was reestablished in 1945 and reconstituted in 1946 with Jamal el Husseini as vice-chairman and the chairmanship held open for the Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, who “has not been allowed to return”; central decisions, on the boycott of Jewish goods or on the attitude to the present Committee, are effectively administered through a network of local committees, and nonconformity is represented as disloyalty.
Self-governing institutions (paras. 106-116): the June 1922 policy was “a full measure of self-government” by gradual stages. The 1920 Advisory Council, the 1922 Legislative Council proposal (rejected by the Palestine Arab Executive and stalled by the 1923 election boycott), some twenty elective municipal councils by 1935 and about a hundred local authorities at present, the 1935 legislative council proposal (Arab opinion divided, Jewish opinion in vehement opposition), and the 1939 White Paper’s ten-year path to an independent State are recounted in order. After the League’s dissolution the United Kingdom declared Palestine would be administered “in accordance with the general principles” of the Mandate until fresh arrangements were reached, a position the League Assembly’s resolution of 18 April 1946 took note of. The Anglo-American Committee’s proposals of 1 May 1946 (Palestine “neither a Jewish State nor an Arab State”, continued government under Mandate pending a Trusteeship Agreement), the July 1946 Morrison Plan of four semi-autonomous areas (rejected by the Jewish Agency unreservedly and opposed unanimously by the Arab delegates, who counter-proposed a unitary State with Jewish representation capped at one-third), and the British proposal of 7 February 1947 for a five-year Trusteeship (unacceptable to both sides) end with the mandatory Power, declaring it was “not prepared to continue indefinitely to govern Palestine themselves merely because Arabs and Jews cannot agree upon the means of sharing its government between them”, referring “the future government of Palestine” to the United Nations.
The present situation (paras. 117-124): Palestine lives under a semi-military regime of security zones, curfews and defence emergency regulations allowing unlimited detention, deportation and military courts without appeal; at 12 July 1947, 820 persons were held on security grounds — all Jews except four Arabs, 291 of them in Kenya — and 17,873 illegal immigrants were under detention. The Administration’s statement to the Committee is quoted at length, including that the Jewish community “still publicly refuses its help to the Administration in suppressing terrorism, on the ground that the Administration’s policy is opposed to Jewish interests”. White Paper enforcement has created deep-seated Jewish distrust, sharpest over illegal immigrant ships, and the Committee heard an eyewitness account of the Exodus 1947 being brought into Haifa under British naval escort. The Arab States’ Beirut assessment is quoted in reply: Zionism’s plan “involves recourse to terrorism”, and “against a State established by violence, the Arab States will be obliged to use violence; that is a legitimate right of self-defence”. The Arab League boycott of Jewish goods, decided in December 1945, is stressed by the Arab States as effective through Jewish industry’s dependence on Arab markets; against this, the report records limited everyday cooperation — joint strike actions, the General Agricultural Council and the citrus boards — and holds that on a basis of national autonomy such forces “may yet become a significant factor”. At para. 122, after the Foreign Secretary’s 13 November 1945 statement, the Committee adds its own recognition that “in practice the Mandate has become unworkable”.

Chapter II.D. The conflicting claims (Ch. II paras. 125-180)

The Jewish case (paras. 126-134), as mainly advanced by the Jewish Agency: a Jewish State in Palestine with immigration subject only to that State’s economic absorptive capacity, the State needed both as refuge and to affect the Arabs’ present great numerical preponderance; the case rests on the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate as international commitments to the Jewish people as a whole, intends that immigration unrestricted save by economic considerations might ultimately lead to a Jewish-majority commonwealth, holds that immigrants displace no Arabs but develop otherwise waste land, and assures that in the Jewish Home and State the Arab population, become a minority, “will be fully protected in all its rights on an equal basis with the Jewish citizenry”, no political injustice being done since the Arabs have never established a government in Palestine.
Appraisal of the Jewish case (paras. 135-155): the two Mandate obligations in practice proved mutually incompatible, self-governing institutions having in all probability made immigration’s continuance impossible; “The conclusion seems to be inescapable that the vagueness in the wording of both instruments was intentional”, and the 1922 restrictive construction was made before the Mandate’s confirmation and formally accepted by the Zionist Organization Executive — yet neither instrument precluded an eventual Jewish State. An implication that all Jews who wish to go to Palestine would have the right to do so is held unrealistic; the King-Crane Report had warned the Zionist programme could not be carried out except by force of arms; the governing assumption that Arab hostility would weaken proved false, and continued building even by restricted immigration “could be implemented only by the use of some considerable force”, which the Mandate’s Article 22 principle of the well-being of peoples not yet able to stand by themselves should preclude. The appraisal also questions the economic soundness of much Jewish development for its reliance on gift capital, holds that Jews would displace Arabs from the land if restrictions were not imposed and that some displacement has already occurred, and notes that today over 1,200,000 Arabs, two-thirds of the population, oppose a Jewish State.
The Arab case (paras. 156-161), as based mainly on the Arab Higher Committee’s contentions before the first special session and the Arab States’ at that session, at Beirut and Geneva: the immediate creation of an independent Palestine west of the Jordan as an Arab State, resting on the Arabs’ actual two-to-one majority, their “natural” right from uninterrupted possession since early historical times, their desire to safeguard their national existence from foreign intruders, and “acquired” rights from the wartime promises — in particular the McMahon–Hussein correspondence of 1915-1916 and the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, supported by the Hogarth Message, the Basset letter and the Declaration to the Seven. The Mandate is held illegal as inconsistent with Article 22 (no provisional recognition of independence, “full powers of legislation and administration” granted to the mandatory, the community’s wishes not a principal consideration in the mandatory’s selection), as violating Self-determination, and as not binding Arab States that were not League Members; Jewish immigrants’ presence is nonetheless recognized as a de facto situation.
Appraisal of the Arab case (paras. 162-180): Arab numerical preponderance is undisputed unless offset by free and substantial Jewish immigration, the Arab birth rate being considerably higher; the Arabs remain in possession of approximately 85 per cent of the land, the 1940 regulations having severely restricted Jewish acquisition; Palestinian nationalism, as distinct from Arab nationalism, is called a relatively new phenomenon sharpened by the National Home policy. On the wartime promises there is apparently no unequivocal agreement whether Palestine was included in the McMahon-Hussein pledge, Great Britain having consistently denied it; the 1939 British-Arab committee’s findings are quoted in full — the two sides “unable to reach agreement upon an interpretation of the correspondence”, the United Kingdom representatives conceding the Arab contentions “have greater force than has appeared hitherto” and that the exclusion language “was not so specific and unmistakable as it was thought to be at the time”, and the committee’s conclusion that His Majesty’s Government “were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine”. The Hogarth Message, delivered in January 1918, promised political freedom where the Balfour Declaration safeguarded only civil and religious rights. Feisal’s Paris memorandum and the Feisal-Weizmann agreement — conditional, and never having acquired validity — and Peel’s observation that Arab statesmen were once willing to consider giving Palestine to the Jews if the rest of Arab Asia was free are recorded. On self-determination: it “was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there”, and “the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle”. On validity: Peel’s three answers to the Article 22 claim are endorsed, the General Syrian Congress of 2 July 1919 had given Great Britain as second choice of mandatory after the United States, and “There would seem to be no grounds for questioning the validity of the Mandate for the reason advanced by the Arab States”; Lord Balfour’s statement that a mandate is “a self-imposed limitation by the conquerors on the sovereignty which they obtained over conquered territories” closes the chapter.

Chapter III. Religious interests and Holy Places (Ch. III paras. 1-13)

The General Assembly’s request covered not only Palestine’s communities but the three faiths’ millions of believers worldwide, for whom Palestine is “Holy Land” (paras. 1-2). Lord Samuel’s account of the problem confronting the first High Commissioner is quoted: the chief Christian shrines, mosques ranking next only to the Kaaba and the Tomb at Medina, and the spots of Judaism’s strongest affections, with centuries of controversy over access, ownership and care (para. 3). The Mandate intended its article 14 special commission as the “means of solution”, but no agreement could be reached in the League Council on its constitution, and the responsibility devolved on the Government: the Palestine (Holy Places) Order in Council of 1924 vested jurisdiction in the High Commissioner, deciding on the basis of rights and practice existing during the Ottoman regime, with unaccepted decisions recorded as no change in the status quo (paras. 4-7). The Wailing Wall commission’s summary of the Christian status quo is quoted at length — guaranteed by the signatory Powers in 1855 and again in the 1878 Peace Treaty, resting on the Sultan’s decree of 1852, classifying the Holy Places among the Greek Orthodox, Latin and Armenian Orthodox rites in four categories, and recording that disputed objects have sometimes been allowed to fall into decay rather than risk altering the balance, urgent repairs devolving on the Administration (para. 8). The status quo has also been applied to Moslem and Jewish sacred places in dispute, particularly the Wailing Wall and Rachel’s Tomb (para. 9), and the Administration, like the Ottoman Government, possessed the police to impose its decisions (para. 10). Articles 9(2), 15, 16, 28 and 8(2) are set out, including each community’s right to maintain its own schools and the reestablishment of Capitulations at the Mandate’s expiration — which would “‘now be an anachronism” (as printed) (paras. 11-12). A new State or States may accept undertakings preserving existing rights, embodied in their constitutions and guaranteed internationally, with religious-rights disputes between a Palestinian State and another State referable to the International Court of Justice (para. 13).

Chapter IV. The main proposals (Ch. IV paras. 1-17)

Proposals of the past decade fall into three categories: partition into two independent States, separate or linked for economic unity; a unitary State; and a single State with a federal, cantonal or binational structure protecting the minority from domination (para. 1). Prior proposals are summarized in order: Peel, 1937 — partition recommended for the first time, Galilee, Esdraelon and the Maritime Plain to Isdud for the Jewish State, the rest united with Transjordan as the Arab area, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, a corridor to Jaffa and Nazareth under British Mandate; Woodhead, 1938 — Peel’s plan rejected because its Jewish State would contain a 49 per cent Arab minority, the four commissioners unable to agree on another scheme, the chairman’s plan (a northern Maritime Plain strip, a customs union of the two States and the mandated territories) and the fourth member’s variant both recorded; the Anglo-American Committee, 1946 — continued Mandate pending a Trusteeship Agreement on the three principles that Jew shall not dominate Arab nor Arab Jew, that Palestine shall be neither a Jewish nor an Arab State, and that the ultimate government fully protect the three faiths’ Holy Land interests, with revocation of the 1940 land regulations and 100,000 immigration certificates as its concrete recommendations; the Morrison Plan, 1946 — Arab and Jewish provinces under a central trustee government, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Negev under direct control, the way left open to a federal State or partition, and 100,000 immigrants admitted immediately; and the Bevin Cantonization Plan, 1947 — five years of British trusteeship, local areas with substantial Arab or Jewish majorities, a Constitutional Assembly after four years, and 96,000 Jews admitted during the first two years (paras. 3-7).
Proposals submitted to the Committee (paras. 8-12): most Jewish organizations agreed with the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi in demanding a Jewish State; the Ihud Association and Hashomer Hatzair favour a binational State with parity, the Communist Party a democratic Arab-Jewish State, and the American Council for Judaism opposes a Jewish State. The Jewish Agency supports the Basle 1947 programme — Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth, the gates opened to immigration, the Agency vested with control of immigration — and its Political Survey 1946-1947 calls a partition solution at best a “pis aller” to be judged by whether it ensures large-scale immigration and leads without delay to the Jewish State. The Arab States’ plan is for a unitary State with a democratic constitution: guarantees for the Holy Places and the status quo, full civil rights with a ten-year naturalization requirement, Jewish religious and cultural safeguards alterable only with a majority of the Jewish legislative members’ consent, Jewish representation in no case exceeding one-third, strict prohibition of Jewish immigration and continued land restrictions alterable only with a majority of the Arab members’ consent, and a Supreme Court to test legislation against the constitution; after a short transition under a nominated provisional government of seven Arab and three Jewish ministers, a constituent assembly of sixty would adopt the constitution, the Mandate would terminate and a treaty of alliance with the United Kingdom be concluded.
Recapitulation (paras. 13-17): all the solutions aim at reconciling two diametrically opposed claims in a small country of limited resources amid increasing tension; some are palliatives, and it is “only since the rise of nazism to power in Germany” that the question became acute enough to require solutions outside the normal evolution of an “A” Mandate; every practicable solution is confronted with more than 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews of separate outlook, languages, religion and aspirations; the extreme solutions, recognizing one party’s claims in full and ignoring the other’s, are the simplest — “The Special Committee has rejected such solutions.”

Chapter V. Recommendations (I) (Ch. V paras. 1-8 and Recommendations I-XII)

Introductory statement (paras. 1-8): it was “dear” (as printed, for clear) early in the Geneva discussions that neither extreme solution — a single independent State under either Arab or Jewish domination — had support in full; the crux is “the tact that” (as printed) two sizeable groups of over 1,200,000 Arabs and over 600,000 Jews are diffused throughout an arid, limited and poor country, so that satisfying fully both claims is manifestly impossible and accepting one in full indefensible. The binational solution was considered but would require numerical or political parity on Dr. J. L. Magnes’s lines, “complicated mechanical devices which are patently artificial and of dubious practicality”; the cantonal solution would be quite unworkable under existing diffusion. Members then tended towards partition qualified by economic unity or a federal-State plan, and two informal working groups worked out the plans in Chapters VI and VII. At the forty-seventh meeting on 27 August 1947 both extreme solutions were formally rejected; at the forty-ninth, on 29 August, eleven recommendations were unanimously approved and a twelfth, from which Guatemala and Uruguay dissented, appears in section B.
Recommendations I-IV: I. Termination of the Mandate — “The Mandate for Palestine shall be terminated at the earliest practicable date”, all parties agreeing on the need for change, the mandatory itself holding the Mandate unworkable and its obligations irreconcilable, and the League and Permanent Mandates Commission being dissolved, the Trusteeship System not having automatically taken over the mandates system’s functions. II. Independence — “Independence shall be granted in Palestine at the earliest practicable date”, the peoples being sufficiently advanced to govern themselves. III. Transitional period — as short as possible consistent with the preparations essential to independence, of positively stated duration not exceeding a very few years and tied to a specific and definitive solution. IV. United Nations responsibility — the administering authority during the transition “shall be responsible to the United Nations”, enforcement on an extensive scale possibly necessary, the Committee not feeling competent to formulate precise recommendations on the means of putting a solution into effect.
Recommendations V-VIII: V. Holy Places and religious interests — the sacred character of the Holy Places preserved and access ensured in accordance with existing rights, existing rights of the religious communities neither impaired nor denied, an adequate impartial system for settling religious-rights disputes, and specific stipulations inserted in the constitution(s) of any independent Palestinian State or States. VI. Jewish displaced persons — the General Assembly to undertake immediately an international arrangement for “the distressed European Jews, of whom approximately 250,000 are in assembly centers”, as a matter of extreme urgency both for their plight and for the Palestine problem. VII. Democratic principles and protection of minorities — a basically democratic constitution as a prior condition of independence, guaranteeing human rights and fundamental freedoms and full protection of minorities’ linguistic, religious and ethnic rights with full equality of all citizens. VIII. Peaceful relations — the Charter principles of peaceful settlement and refraining from the threat or use of force to be incorporated as a prior condition to independence.
Recommendations IX-XII: IX. Economic unity — “it shall be accepted as a cardinal principle that the preservation of the economic unity of Palestine as a whole is indispensable to the life and development of the country and its peoples”, reversing the present treatment of Palestine as an economic unit on customs, currency, transport, communications and development projects being held to handicap the whole territory and harm both communities. X. Capitulations — States whose nationals formerly enjoyed capitulation privileges to be invited to renounce any right to their reestablishment in an independent Palestine. XI. Appeal against acts of violence — the General Assembly to call on the peoples of Palestine to extend their “fullest cooperation” to the United Nations and exert every effort to end the acts of violence, the comment noting these have until very recently been confined almost exclusively to underground Jewish organizations. XII (section B, substantial majority; two members dissented and one recorded no opinion): “it be accepted as incontrovertible that any solution for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution of the Jewish problem in general”, Palestine’s limited area and resources and its settled population’s high natural increase making settlement of all Jews who may wish to leave most improbable, Arab resentment throughout the Middle East being a further factor; both the partition and federal proposals make provision for limited and controlled immigration into the Jewish areas during the transition.

Chapter VI. Recommendations (II) — Part I, opening (Ch. VI paras. 1-4; Part I justification paras. 1-15; sections A-C to Chapter 2 clause 6)

Introduction (paras. 1-4): two working groups — on Constitutional Matters (“Sandstorm” as printed, for Sandstrom, Blom, Granados and Rand) and on Boundaries — explored a plan of partition involving economic union; at the forty-seventh meeting on 27 August 1947 the seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay) voted by recorded vote for the Plan of Partition with Economic Union, reproduced in three parts (Part I the plan, Part II Boundaries, Part III City of Jerusalem).
Justification (paras. 1-15): the basic premise is that the claims of Arabs and Jews, “both possessing validity, are irreconcilable”, and partition is the most realistic and practicable settlement, affording finality and placing political and economic responsibility squarely on both peoples; the conflict is “a clash of two intense nationalisms”, with some 650,000 Jews (as printed here) and some 1,200,000 Arabs now in Palestine. Jewish immigration is “the central issue in Palestine today” and the one factor above all ruling out the cooperation a single State requires; a Jewish State under partition is the only hope of removing it from the arena of conflict, and a definitively fixed territory, with its implicit limitation on immigration, carrying United Nations sanction, should lessen Arab opposition and allay fears of further expansion. Partition is therefore qualified by economic unity: a treaty association whose essential objectives are a common customs system, a common currency and a country-wide transport and communications system; surplus revenue, after charges and a percentage for the City of Jerusalem, is to be divided in equal proportions to the two States — justified because the Jews will have the more economically developed part embracing practically the whole citrus-producing area, because the customs union guarantees the Jewish State a larger free trade area, and because a financially precarious Arab State would disadvantage the Jewish State — and sympathetic consideration should be given to the Arab State’s claims for international loans for education, public health and other social services, and to international assistance for comprehensive irrigation schemes through the Joint Economic Board.
A. Partition and independence: Palestine within its present borders, following a transitional period of two years from 1 September 1947, shall be constituted into an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem; independence is granted to each State on its request only after it has adopted a complying constitution, made the Declaration to the United Nations and signed the treaty creating the Economic Union of Palestine.
B. Transitional period and constitution: the present mandatory Power administers under United Nations auspices, and shall admit into the proposed Jewish State 150,000 Jewish immigrants at a uniform monthly rate, 30,000 of them on humanitarian grounds, with immigration at 60,000 per year if the transition continues beyond two years, the Jewish Agency responsible for selection, care and organization; the 1939 land restrictions shall not apply to transfers within the proposed Jewish State. Constituent assemblies are elected by voters over twenty — Palestinian citizens resident in the State, and Arabs and Jews resident there, or resident in the City of Jerusalem, who sign a notice of intention to become citizens; “Women may not and be elected” (as printed) to the assemblies. During the transition no Jew may establish residence in the proposed Arab State’s area and no Arab in the proposed Jewish State’s, except by special leave. Each constitution must embody the Declaration’s chapters 1 and 2 and provide for a legislature elected by universal suffrage and secret ballot on proportional representation, peaceful settlement of disputes, the Charter’s force obligation, equal and non-discriminatory rights and fundamental freedoms, freedom of transit and visit for the other State’s and Jerusalem’s residents and citizens subject to security, and recognition of the Governor of the City of Jerusalem’s rights over Holy Places provisions within the States. A provisional government makes the Declaration and signs the Economic Union treaty; on General Assembly approval its State’s independence as a sovereign State is recognized, and if only one State fulfils the conditions the Economic Union regime applies pending United Nations action.
C. Declaration, opening: the Declaration’s stipulations are fundamental laws of the State, prevailing over any conflicting law, regulation or official action. Chapter 1 (Holy Places, religious buildings and sites): existing rights shall not be denied or impaired; free access and free exercise of worship secured in conformity with existing rights and subject to public order and decorum; Holy Places preserved, with government-called repairs at the community’s expense if not undertaken; tax exemption as at the State’s creation preserved; and the Governor of the City of Jerusalem empowered to determine whether the State’s constitutional provisions on Holy Places within its borders are properly applied and to decide disputes. Chapter 2 (Religion and minority rights), through clause 6: freedom of conscience and worship ensured to all with no discrimination on grounds of race, religion or language; family law, personal status and religious endowments of the minorities respected; religious and eleemosynary bodies protected from obstruction and discrimination; adequate primary and secondary education for the Arab and Jewish minority respectively in its own language and cultural traditions, with each community’s right to maintain its own schools unimpaired; no restriction on the free use of any language by any citizen; and no expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (by a Jew in the Arab State) except for public purposes or, after a year’s non-utilization following written notice, by Supreme Court order, full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court being paid previous to dispossession. The Declaration and the rest of Chapter VI fall in part 3.

Key passages

“The problem of Palestine is not one the solution of which will emerge from an accumulation of detailed information.” (Preface, line 198)
“We have tried for years to solve the problem of Palestine. Having failed so far, we now bring it to the United Nations, in the hope that it can succeed where we have not.” (United Kingdom representative, quoted at Ch. I para. 12)
“shall have the widest powers to ascertain and record facts, and to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine” (resolution 106 (S-1), quoted at Ch. I para. 18)
“There is no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas.” (Ch. II para. 22)
“the natural rate of increase of Moslem Arabs in Palestine is the highest in recorded statistics” (Ch. II para. 16)
“There would seem to be no grounds for questioning the validity of the Mandate for the reason advanced by the Arab States” (Ch. II para. 179)
“The Special Committee has rejected such solutions.” (Ch. IV para. 17, on the extreme solutions)
“The Mandate for Palestine shall be terminated at the earliest practicable date.” (Recommendation I)
“it shall be accepted as a cardinal principle that the preservation of the economic unity of Palestine as a whole is indispensable to the life and development of the country and its peoples” (Recommendation IX)
“it be accepted as incontrovertible that any solution for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution of the Jewish problem in general” (Recommendation XII)

Evidence the work relies on

The records of the first special session of the General Assembly (General Committee, First Committee and plenary meetings, with votes) and the texts of resolutions 106 (S-1) and 107 (S-1), for Chapter I.A.
The Committee’s own meeting record (fifty-two meetings, sub-committee reports, votes and correspondence, including the Arab Higher Committee’s communications of 13 June and 10 July 1947, the Chief Secretary’s letter and the United Kingdom Government’s reply of 30 June 1947) for Chapter I.B.
The Secretariat’s “Working documentation on Palestine” (first three volumes received at Lake Success), the Government of Palestine’s factual information presented by Sir Henry Gurney and D. C. MacGillivray, the Jewish Agency’s presentation on A Survey of Palestine, oral and written testimony received in Jerusalem, Beirut and Geneva, and the Sub-Committee 3 report on the displaced persons assembly centres (annexed), for the activities account.
For part 2: the Mandate’s text and articles (reproduced as Annex 20), the Palestine Orders-in-Council 1922-1940 and the Government’s 1945 employment figures, for Chapter II.C; the Churchill statement of June 1922, the Royal Commission’s findings, the Permanent Mandates Commission’s 1930 and 1939 findings, the 1939 White Paper’s immigration and land provisions and the Jewish Agency President’s letter of 31 May 1939, for the National Home and White Paper accounts; the 1939 British-Arab committee’s report on the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, Amir Feisal’s Paris memorandum and the Feisal-Weizmann agreement, and Lord Balfour’s League Council statement, for the appraisal of the Arab case; the Wailing Wall commission’s status quo summary, quoted in Chapter III; and the Peel, Woodhead, Anglo-American, Morrison and Bevin plans and the statements submitted to the Committee, summarized in Chapter IV. All as the report presents them; the footnote texts carrying the underlying citations (markers to 162/ in part 2) are not reproduced in this copy.
The Government of Palestine’s water estimates, the Jewish Agency’s higher water estimates and the Hays and Savage overall irrigation scheme, for Chapter II.A.
The censuses of 1922 and 1931, the government statistician’s estimates (end-1946 population and the by-religions table), and P. J. Loftus’s demographic study in volume III of A Survey of Palestine (1960 projections), for the population account; the 1942 census of industry and the Government’s agricultural production figures for 1944-1945 and trade statistics for Chapter II.B. All as the report presents them; the footnote texts that carry the underlying citations are not reproduced in this copy.

Analysis

Method, as the report presents it in part 1: a fact-finding committee of eleven states excluding the permanent Security Council members, working to a three-month deadline, receiving the mandatory Power’s and the Jewish Agency’s factual presentations and oral and written testimony, touring the country on an itinerary built from both the Government’s and the Jewish Agency’s proposals, hearing the Arab States at Beirut, and inspecting Jewish displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria — while the Arab Higher Committee, the Palestinians’ representative body in the report’s account, refused all collaboration and was heard only at the stage of the special session that created the Committee, and the Committee declined to visit the Cyprus detainees or receive their representatives. Its findings chapters rest heavily on the Government of Palestine’s statistics and on A Survey of Palestine, with Jewish Agency figures recorded alongside where they differ (water, irrigation capacity).
The Preface’s own framing limits the report’s claim: the problem “is mainly one of human relationship and political rights”, not one that detailed information can solve, and the two plans rest on findings and principles “most of which have been agreed to unanimously” — the activities summary shows the actual divisions beneath that framing: the federal plan drew three votes at the forty-seventh meeting, partition with economic union seven, the camp visit six to four, and the Cyprus visit was refused six to three.
Limits in the copy: the footnote texts are absent, so the report’s citations cannot be checked from this copy; several figures in its tables do not reconcile as printed (see Open questions), and the report itself notes that its population estimates carry a growing margin of error for want of a census since 1931.
Part 2’s method is appraisal by the report’s own terms: each side’s case is first summarized as its proponents present it and then appraised, and on the two contested interpretive questions the chapter records the conflicting authorities without choosing between all of them — the Permanent Mandates Commission’s “equal weight” against the Royal Commission’s “primary purpose” on the dual obligation — while on two others it does reach a position: that no grounds question the Mandate’s validity “for the reason advanced by the Arab States”, and that a Palestine solution cannot settle the Jewish problem in general (Recommendation XII, the one recommendation two members dissented from). The partition plan’s own justification concedes the premises it builds on: that both claims possess validity and are irreconcilable, that a Jewish State’s creation is “the only hope” of removing immigration from conflict, and that the Arab State would at first have difficulty raising sufficient revenue to keep up its present public services, which the equal division of surplus customs revenue is designed to meet.

People, organizations, places and events

UNSCOP, Jewish Agency, Arab Higher Committee, Emil Sandstrom, Chaim Weizmann, Jamal al-Husayni, Palestine Electric Corporation, Palestine Potash Company, Iraq Petroleum Company, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, Balfour Declaration, Mandate for Palestine, British White Paper of 1939, British White Paper of June 1922, Hogarth Message, McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Peel Commission, Palestine Partition Commission, Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Supreme Muslim Council, Vaad Leumi, Histadrut, Arab League, Permanent Mandates Commission

Concepts

Partition, Federalism, Jewish National Home, Self-determination, Biltmore Program, Binationalism, Holy Places, Status Quo (Holy Places), Customs union, Capitulations, Trusteeship

How it relates to other sources

The report is the originating document for the partition and federal-state plans that The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 and Perceptions of Palestine describe from outside: each gives the majority recommendation of partition with Jerusalem under international control and the minority federal recommendation, and Lockman gives the majority’s Jewish state at some 55 percent of the territory — points the plans’ own chapters (parts 2-3 of this ingest) will state in the Committee’s own terms.
On the Arab Higher Committee’s boycott, this report’s own record (a decision communicated 13 June 1947, an appeal on 8 July, a refusal on 10 July, and no formal Committee action beyond the Chairman’s broadcast appeal) sits alongside Christison’s presentation of the boycott as a no-win choice and Pappe’s defence of the decision; the report itself records the fact without that appraisal.
Its end-1946 population figures (Arabs 1,203,000; Jews 608,000) and its statement that there is “no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas” are the statistical background against which the earlier ingested inquiries — Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946) and the Peel and Partition Commission reports — had framed their own population and boundary accounts.
Part 2’s Chapter IV is the report’s own recapitulation of those same earlier plans — Peel’s partition, Woodhead’s rejection of it, the Anglo-American Committee’s trusteeship principles, the Morrison provincial autonomy plan and the Bevin cantonization plan — each of which is ingested here in its own report; the UNSCOP summaries are briefer than the originals and in the Morrison and Anglo-American cases match the accounts given in the Anglo-American report’s own appendices as ingested.
Chapter II.D’s appraisal of the wartime promises reproduces the 1939 committee’s findings on the McMahon–Hussein correspondence at greater length than the correspondence’s own source page carries them, including the United Kingdom representatives’ concession recorded there; the two accounts stand side by side on the correspondence page.

Open questions

The 1931 row of the by-religions table (Ch. II para. 12): the Moslem figure is printed as 493,147 — barely above the 1922 figure and far below 1941’s 906,551 — and the four components as printed sum to 766,761 against the printed total of 966,761, a discrepancy of 200,000 (computed). Whether the slip is in the copy or in the printed report cannot be settled from this copy, the footnote texts being absent.
The 1946 “other” figure is printed as 15,488 in the para. 12 table and as 15,481 in the para. 19 table, whose four components then sum to 1,845,552 against the printed total 1,845,559 (computed).
Recorded Jewish immigration 1920-1946 of about 376,000 is given as “an average of over 8,000 per year” (Ch. II para. 15); over the 27 years named it computes to about 13,900 per year. The text’s basis for the average is not stated in this part.
The Jewish share’s projected decline is stated at Ch. II para. 19 as “from about 31 per cent of the total to 28 per cent”, while para. 14 gives the 1946 Jewish proportion as 32.96 per cent; both stand as printed.
Para. 60 lists Yemen among the Governments heard at Beirut, while paras. 39-41 record the invitation sent to Yemen through Lebanon’s Consul General and acceptances from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria only; whether a Yemeni representative in fact appeared is not stated in this part.
The closing footnote marker of Ch. II para. 38 is printed “38/” amid a sequence running into the high 40s; as printed.
The footnote texts (markers 1/ to 50/ in this part) are not reproduced in the text copy, so the report’s citations for the special-session record, the correspondence and the statistics cannot be checked from this copy; the original HTML is saved alongside and carries the same rendering.
The 1946 excess of imports completing the Chapter II para. 52 table is printed as 45,945 (thousands of Palestine pounds); the table’s own imports 70,432 minus exports 24,485 computes to 45,947 (computed).
The 1945 government employees’ shares (Ch. II para. 72) are printed as 68 per cent Arab, 21 per cent Jewish and 10 per cent British, summing to 99 per cent (computed); no fourth share is stated.
The Jewish population is given as some 625,000 at Ch. II para. 80 (“increased from 400,000 to some 625,000” within the decade since Peel) and as some 650,000 in the Chapter VI partition justification (para. 3), against 608,225 at the end of 1946 in the para. 12 table; the settlements’ population is given as some 140,000 at para. 80 against “well over 150,000” at para. 31. All stand as printed.
The Anglo-French Declaration is dated “7 December 1918” in the list of documents the 1939 committee examined (Ch. II para. 168); elsewhere in this part it is dated only to 1918 (paras. 159, 171-172 give the Hogarth Message’s January 1918 date, not the Declaration’s). As printed.
The partition plan’s transitional provisions state “Women may not and be elected” to the constituent assemblies (Ch. VI Part I section B para. 2); a word appears to be missing as printed, and the sentence is held as printed.
The footnote texts continue to be absent in part 2 (markers 50/ to 162/), so the citations for the Mandate history, the claims appraisals and the Holy Places account cannot be checked from this copy.

Coverage

lines 1-1980 of 2968, read in parts 1-2 of 3 (part 1: Preface, Introduction, Chapter I in full, and Chapter II sections A and the opening of B to Ch. II para. 52; part 2: Chapter II sections B concluded, C and D, Chapters III, IV and V in full, and Chapter VI Part I through the Declaration’s Chapter 2 clause 6). Part 3 (lines 1981-2968) remains unread.

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