Peel Commission
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The Peel Commission of 1936, formally known as the Palestine Royal Commission, was a British Royal Commission of Inquiry set out to propose changes to the British Mandate of Palestine following the outbreak of the Great Uprising. It was headed by Lord Peel.
Image:Lord Peel arrives.jpg On 11 November, 1936, the commission arrived to Palestine to investigate the reasons behind the uprising. It returned to Britain on 18 January, 1937. On 7 July, 1937, it published its report.
History
The Commission was established at a time of increased violence; serious clashes between Arabs and Jews broke out in 1936 and were to last three years. The Commission was charged with determining the cause of the riots, and judging the merit of grievances on both sides. Chaim Weizmann made a speech on behalf of the Jews. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, refused to testify in front of the Commission. Instead, he demanded full cessation of Jewish immigration. Although the Arabs continued to boycott the Commission officially, there was a sense of urgency to respond to Weizmann's appeal to restore calm. The former Mayor of Jerusalem Ragheb Bey al-Nashashibi - who was the Mufti rival in the internal palestinian arena, was thus sent to explain the Arab perspective through unofficial channels. [1]
Recommendations
The report recommended that the Mandate be eventually abolished — except in a "corridor" surrounding Jerusalem, stretching to the Mediterranean Coast just south of Jaffa — and the land under its authority (and accordingly, the transfer of both Arab and Jewish populations) be apportioned between an Arab and Jewish states. The Jewish side was to receive a territorially smaller portion in the mid-west and north, from Mount Carmel to south of Be'er Tuvia, as well as the Jezreel Valley and the Galilee, while the Arab state was to receive territory in the south and mid-east which included Judea, Samaria and the sizable, though economically undeveloped and infertile, Negev desert.
Exchange of land and population transfer
The report recommended that "[s]ooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population":
"A precedent is afforded by the exchange effected between the Greek and Turkish populations on the morrow of the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. A convention was signed by the Greek and Turkish Governments, providing that, under the supervision of the League of Nations, Greek nationals of the Orthodox religion living in Turkey should be compulsorily removed to Greece, and Turkish nationals of the Moslem religion living in Greece to Turkey. The numbers involved were high--no less than some 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks. But so vigorously and effectively was the task accomplished that within about eighteen months from the spring of 1923 the whole exchange was completed. The courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now Greco-Turkish relations are friendlier than they have ever been before."[2]
The population exchange, if carried out, would have involved the transfer of approximately 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews. [3]
Reactions
The Arab leadership rejected the plan, while the Jewish opinion remained heatedly divided. The Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich (3-16 August) announced that the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission is not to be accepted, [but wished] to carry on negotiations in order to clarify the exact substance of the British government's proposal for the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The non-public reaction of the Jewish leaders was mixed, but the majority decision was to support the transfer provision. Ben-Gurion wrote:
The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples: [a Galilee almost free of non-Jews]. ... We are being given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imagination. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty---this is a national consolidation in a free homeland. ... if because of our weakness, neglect or negligence, the thing is not done, then we will have lost a chance which we never had before, and may never have again. (S. Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985; pp 180-182)
Following this, in 1938 the Woodhead Commission was set up to examine the details of the Peel Commission plan, and make recommendations for the implementation of it.
External link
- Summary section of the Report of the Palestine Royal Commission (from the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine - UNISPAL)
Further reading
- Palestine Royal Commission Report Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, July 1937. His Majesty’s Stationary Office., London, 1937. 404 pages + maps.
- Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World (Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1970) pp. 207-210