The Peel Commission

The general strike that began in April 1936 and the revolt that grew out of it forced the British government to appoint a royal commission under Lord Peel. It took evidence in Palestine and London through the winter of 1936–37, much of it in closed session, and reported on 7 July 1937 with a conclusion no previous inquiry had reached: the Mandate was unworkable, because the obligations Britain had assumed toward Jews and Arabs were irreconcilable, and the country should therefore be divided.

The commission proposed a Jewish state comprising the Galilee and most of the coastal plain, an Arab state covering the rest and joined to Transjordan, and a British-administered enclave running from Jerusalem to Jaffa. The Jewish state as drawn contained a very large Arab population. The commission’s answer was explicit: sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population, and if an arrangement could be made for the transfer — voluntary or otherwise — of land and population, Parliament should be asked to fund it. The precedent invoked was the Greek–Turkish exchange of 1923.

The Zionist leadership was consulted on the boundaries before publication and secured changes in its favour. Its response to the report was divided, and the Twentieth Zionist Congress accepted the principle of partition while rejecting the specific frontiers proposed. David Ben-Gurion’s private correspondence from these months, later published, treated the transfer clause as the most valuable element in the plan.

The Arab Higher Committee rejected the report in a memorandum of 23 July 1937 and the revolt resumed that autumn, more radical than before; the British responded with mass arrests, deportations, house demolitions and the outlawing of the Higher Committee. In 1938 a second commission under Sir John Woodhead was sent to work out the details of partition and concluded that it was impracticable, and in May 1939 the MacDonald White Paper abandoned the idea altogether in favour of limits on immigration and land sales and an independent Palestine within ten years. Partition, however, had entered the record — and so had transfer.

Sources

• The Peel Commission, 1936–1937 — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Peel Commission Report, July 1937 (full text) — PalQuest
• Memorandum of the Arab Higher Committee on the Peel Commission Report, 23 July 1937 — PalQuest