Palestine Royal Commission. Summary of the Report of the Palestine Royal Commission. Pasted on front in red lettering: "Confidential. Not to be published or broadcast before the morning of Thursday, 8th July."

(ZIONISM)

n.p.

(London)

1937

The Royal Commission on Palestine under the chairmanship of Lord Peel was appointed by the British Government on August 7th, 1936, to study the underlying causes of the Arab riots. In July 1937 the Commission presented its report recommending the partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a British mandatory enclave. The Peel Commission's proposal was a revolutionary solution to the Palestine problem and a concept that dominated attempts for peace in the region culminating with the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947. One notes with interest the Commission's finding that "restrictions on Jewish immigration will not solve the Palestine problem. The National Home seems already too big to the Arabs [the Jewish population of Palestine numbered 400,000 persons in 1937], and, whatever its size, it bars the way to their attainment of national independence" (p.13). Nonetheless, due to Arab pressure, the British subsequently adopted exactly this policy: the drastic reduction of Jewish immigration to Palestine, a policy laid out in the infamous White Paper of 1939