Pre-State Israel: The British Palestine Mandate

Reference

History & Overview The Mandate system was instituted by the League of Nations in the early 20th century to administer non-self-governing territories. The mandatory power, appointed by an international body, was to consider the mandated territory a temporary trust and to see to the well-being and advancement of its population.

In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Great Britain with the Mandate for Palestine. Recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine," Great Britain was called upon to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine-Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). Shortly afterwards, in September 1922, the League of Nations and Great Britain decided that the provisions for setting up a Jewish national home would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River, which constituted three-fourths of the territory included in the Mandate and which eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The British Mandate authorities granted the Jewish and Arab communities the right to run their internal affairs; thus the yishuv established the Elected Assembly and the National Council. The economy expanded, a Hebrew education network was organized and cultural life flourished.

The Mandatory government did not succeed in maintaining the letter and spirit of the Mandate. Under Arab pressure, it withdrew from its commitment, especially with respect to immigration and land acquisition. The White Papers of 1930 and 1939 restricted immigration and acquisition of land by Jews. Later, immigration was limited by the 1930 and 1939 White Papers, and land acquisition by Jews was severely restricted by the 1940 Land Transfer Regulations.

After the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947, Britain announced the termination of its Mandate over Palestine, to take effect on May 15, 1948. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.

Sources: Israeli Foreign Ministry
- Text of the Mandate
  The Council of the League of Nations
  
  Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
  
  Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
  
  Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country; and
  
  Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine; and
  
  Whereas the mandate in respect of Palestine has been formulated in the following terms and submitted to the Council of the League for approval; and
  
  Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and
  
  Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations; confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
  
  ARTICLE 1. The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.
  
  ARTICLE 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of selfgoverning institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
  
  ARTICLE 3. The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
  
  ARTICLE 4. An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of the country.
  
  The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
  
  ARTICLE 5. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.
  
  ARTICLE 6. The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
  
  ARTICLE 7. The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.
  
  ARTICLE 8. The privileges and immunities of foreigners, including the benefits of consular jurisdiction and protection as formerly enjoyed by Capitulation or usage in the Ottoman Empire, shall not be applicable in Palestine.
  
  Unless the Powers whose nationals enjoyed the aforementioned privileges and immunities on August 1st, 1914, shall have previously renounced the right to their reestablishment, or shall have agreed to their nonapplication for a specified period, these privileges and immunities shall, at the expiration of the mandate, be immediately reestablished in their entirety or with such modifications as may have been agreed upon between the Powers concerned.
  
  ARTICLE 9. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that the judicial system established in Palestine shall assure to foreigners, as well as to natives, a complete guarantee of their rights.
  
  Respect for the personal status of the various peoples and communities and for their religious interests shall be fully guaranteed. In particular, the control and administration of Wakfs shall be exercised in accordance with religious law and the dispositions of the founders.
  
  ARTICLE 10. Pending the making of special extradition agreements relating to Palestine, the extradition treaties in force between the Mandatory and other foreign Powers shall apply to Palestine.
  
  ARTICLE 11. The Administration of Palestine shall take all necessary measures to safeguard the interests of the community in connection with the development of the country, and, subject to any international obligations accepted by the Mandatory, shall have full power to provide for public ownership or control of any of the natural resources of the country or of the public works, services and utilities established or to be established therein. It shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country, having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land.
  
  The Administration may arrange with the Jewish agency mentioned in Article 4 to construct or operate, upon fair and equitable terms, any public works, services and utilities, and to develop any of the natural resources of the country, in so far as these matters are not directly undertaken by the Administration. Any such arrangements shall provide that no profits distributed by such agency, directly or indirectly, shall exceed a reasonable rate of interest on the capital, and any further profits shall be utilised by it for the benefit of the country in a manner approved by the Administration.
  
  ARTICLE 12. The Mandatory shall be entrusted with the control of the foreign relations of Palestine and the right to issue exequaturs to consuls appointed by foreign Powers. He shall also be entitled to afford diplomatic and consular protection to citizens of Palestine when outside its territorial limits.
  
  ARTICLE 13. All responsibility in connection with the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites in Palestine, including that of preserving existing rights and of securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free exercise of worship, while ensuring the requirements of public order and decorum, is assumed by the Mandatory, who shall be responsible solely to the League of Nations in all matters connected herewith, provided that nothing in this article shall prevent the Mandatory from entering into such arrangements as he may deem reasonable with the Administration for the purpose of carrying the provisions of this article into effect; and provided also that nothing in this mandate shall be construed as conferring upon the Mandatory authority to interfere with the fabric or the management of purely Moslem sacred shrines, the immunities of which are guaranteed.
  
  ARTICLE 14. A special commission shall be appointed by the Mandatory to study, define and determine the rights and claims in connection with the Holy Places and the rights and claims relating to the different religious communities in Palestine. The method of nomination, the composition and the functions of this Commission shall be submitted to the Council of the League for its approval, and the Commission shall not be appointed or enter upon its functions without the approval of the Council.
  
  ARTICLE 15. The Mandatory shall see that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.
  
  The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its own members in its own language, while conforming to such educational requirements of a general nature as the Administration may impose, shall not be denied or impaired.
  
  ARTICLE 16. The Mandatory shall be responsible for exercising such supervision over religious or eleemosynary bodies of all faiths in Palestine as may be required for the maintenance of public order and good government. Subject to such supervision, no measures shall be taken in Palestine to obstruct or interfere with the enterprise of such bodies or to discriminate against any representative or member of them on the ground of his religion or nationality.
  
  ARTICLE 17. The Administration of Palestine may organist on a voluntary basis the forces necessary for the preservation of peace and order, and also for the defence of the country, subject, however, to the supervision of the Mandatory, but shall not use them for purposes other than those above specified save with the consent of the Mandatory. Except for such purposes, no military, naval or air forces shall be raised or maintained by the Administration of Palestine.
  
  Nothing in this article shall preclude the Administration of Palestine from contributing to the cost of the maintenance of the forces of the Mandatory in Palestine.
  
  The Mandatory shall be entitled at all times to use the roads, railways and ports of Palestine for the movement of armed forces and the carriage of fuel and supplies.
  
  ARTICLE 18. The Mandatory shall see that there is no discrimination in Palestine against the nationals of any State Member of the League of Nations (including companies incorporated under its laws) as compared with those of the Mandatory or of any foreign State in matters concerning taxation, commerce or navigation, the exercise of industries or professions, or in the treatment of merchant vessels or civil aircraft. Similarly, there shall be no discrimination in Palestine against goods originating in or destined for any of the said States, and there shall be freedom of transit under equitable conditions across the mandated area.
  
  Subject as aforesaid and to the other provisions of this mandate, the Administration of Palestine may, on the advice of the Mandatory, impose such taxes and customs duties as it may consider necessary, and take such steps as it may think best to promote the development of the natural resources of the country and to safeguard the interests of the population. It may also, on the advice of the Mandatory, conclude a special customs agreement with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included in Asiatic Turkey or Arabia.
  
  ARTICLE 19. The Mandatory shall adhere on behalf of the Administration of Palestine to any general international conventions already existing, or which may be concluded hereafter with the approval of the League of Nations, respecting the slave traffic, the traffic in arms and ammunition, or the traffic in drugs, or relating to commercial equality, freedom of transit and navigation, aerial navigation and postal, telegraphic and wireless communication or literary, artistic or industrial property.
  
  ARTICLE 20. The Mandatory shall cooperate on behalf of the Administration of Palestine, so far as religious, social and other conditions may permit, in the execution of any common policy adopted by the League of Nations for preventing and combating disease, including diseases of plants and animals.
  
  ARTICLE 21. The Mandatory shall secure the enactment within twelve months from this date, and shall ensure the execution of a Law of Antiquities based on the following rules. This law shall ensure equality of treatment in the matter of excavations and archaeological research to the nationals of all States Members of the League of Nations.
  
  (1) "Antiquity" means any construction or any product of human activity earlier than the year 1700 A. D.
  
  (2) The law for the protection of antiquities shall proceed by encouragement rather than by threat.
  
  Any person who, having discovered an antiquity without being furnished with the authorization referred to in paragraph 5, reports the same to an official of the competent Department, shall be rewarded according to the value of the discovery.
  
  (3) No antiquity may be disposed of except to the competent Department, unless this Department renounces the acquisition of any such antiquity.
  
  No antiquity may leave the country without an export licence from the said Department.
  
  (4) Any person who maliciously or negligently destroys or damages an antiquity shall be liable to a penalty to be fixed.
  
  (5) No clearing of ground or digging with the object of finding antiquities shall be permitted, under penalty of fine, except to persons authorised by the competent Department.
  
  (6) Equitable terms shall be fixed for expropriation, temporary or permanent, of lands which might be of historical or archaeological interest.
  
  (7) Authorization to excavate shall only be granted to persons who show sufficient guarantees of archaeological experience. The Administration of Palestine shall not, in granting these authorizations, act in such a way as to exclude scholars of any nation without good grounds.
  
  (8) The proceeds of excavations may be divided between the excavator and the competent Department in a proportion fixed by that Department. If division seems impossible for scientific reasons, the excavator shall receive a fair indemnity in lieu of a part of the find.
  
  ARTICLE 22. English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be repeated in Hebrew and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in Arabic.
  
  ARTICLE 23. The Administration of Palestine shall recognise the holy days of the respective communities in Palestine as legal days of rest for the members of such communities.
  
  ARTICLE 24. The Mandatory shall make to the Council of the League of Nations an annual report to the satisfaction of the Council as to the measures taken during the year to carry out the provisions of the mandate. Copies of all laws and regulations promulgated or issued during the year shall be communicated with the report.
  
  ARTICLE 25. In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.
  
  ARTICLE 26. The Mandatory agrees that, if any dispute whatever should arise between the Mandatory and another member of the League of Nations relating to the interpretation or the application of the provisions of the mandate, such dispute, if it cannot be settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to the Permanent Court of International Justice provided for by Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
  
  ARTICLE 27. The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate.
  
  ARTICLE 28. In the event of the termination of the mandate hereby conferred upon the Mandatory, the Council of the League of Nations shall make such arrangements as may be deemed necessary for safeguarding in perpetuity, under guarantee of the League, the rights secured by Articles 13 and 14, and shall use its influence for securing, under the guarantee of the League, that the Government of Palestine will fully honour the financial obligations legitimately incurred by the Administration of Palestine during the period of the mandate, including the rights of public servants to pensions or gratuities.
  
  The present instrument shall be deposited in original in the archives of the League of Nations and certified copies shall be forwarded by the SecretaryGeneral of the League of Nations to all members of the League.
  
  Done at London the twentyfourth day of July, one thousand nine hundred and twentytwo.
  
  Sources:The Avalon Project

Report on the Mandate to the League of Nations (1936)

REPORT BY HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND TO THE COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF PALESTINE AND TRANS-JORDAN FOR THE YEAR 1936.

PALESTINEINTRODUCTORY.

Palestine lies on the western edge of the continent of Asia between latitude 30° N. and 33° N., Longitude 34° 30 E. and 35° 30' E.

On the south-west it is bounded by Egyptian territory, on the south-east by the Gulf of Aqaba, on the east by Trans-Jordan, on the north by the French Mandated territories of Syria and the Lebanon, and on the west by the Mediterranean. The boundaries are as follows:--

South-west.--From a point on the Mediterranean coast north-west of Rafa, passing in a south-easterly direction to the south-west of Rafa, to a point west-north-west of Ain Maghara; thence to the junction of the Gaza-Aqaba and Nekl-Aqaba roads, from whence it continues to the end of the boundary line at the point of Ras Taba on the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba.

South-east.--From Ras Taba, the Gulf of Aqaba to a point two miles west of Aqaba, thence up the centre of the Wadi Araba, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan, to the centre of the River Yarmuk to the Syrian frontier.

North.--The northern boundary was laid down by the Anglo-French Convention of the 23rd December, 1920, and its delimitation was ratified in 1923. Stated briefly, the boundary runs from Ras el Naqura on the Mediterranean east-wards to Metulla and across the upper Jordan valley to Banias, thence to Jisr Banat Yaqub, thence along the Jordan to the Lake of Tiberias and on to El Hamme station on the Samakh-Deraa railway line.

West.--The Mediterranean Sea.

AREA AND CLIMATE

2. The average length of Palestine from south to north is about 160 miles and its extreme width from east to west is less than 70 miles, the total area being approximately 10,100 square miles inclusive of a water area of 261 square miles (the Dead Sea, Lake Tiberias and Lake Huleh). In size it is therefore comparable with Wales or Belgium.

3. The climate of Palestine, affected by the neighbouring deserts of Arabia and Nubia as well as by nearby temperate zones, is characterized generally by a dry, warm, but not excessively hot summer, and a mild winter with heavy periodical rainfalls accompanied by high, cold winds; frost is rare. But the typical climate is varied by the diverse topography of the country. In the south and south-west there are wide expanses of sand dunes and desert. The remainder of the country falls naturally into three longitudinal strips--the maritime plain, the mountainous regions (or central highlands), and the Jordan valley. Each of these strips, which are more closely described below, is climatically distinct.

The climate of the maritime plain is warm but equable; the heat of summer and the cold of winter are both tempered by the westerly winds from the Mediterranean. In the central highlands there is a greater range of temperature both daily and seasonal, and the maximum temperature is a few degrees lower than in the coastal plains. Snow and hail occasionally fall in Jerusalem and Hebron, and the winter storms are accompanied by penetrating winds which necessitate the use of clothing suitable for a cold English climate.

The Jordan valley is tropical. The high air pressure and the excessive heat in summer combine to produce most oppressive conditions, but the winter in this region is warm and balmy.

The maritime plain and the central highlands are both healthy, though the one, on account of greater humidity, is relaxing in its effects, while the other, through sudden changes of temperature, predisposes to chills and respiratory complaints.

4. The following records are typical of the three climatic zones:--

		Maritime Plain, Haifa	Central Highlands, Jerusalem	Jordan Valley, Tiberias
Mean temperature Mean daily maximum temperature Mean daily minimum Absolute maximum temperature Absolute minimum temperature Relative humidity	Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter	77°F. 60°F. -- -- -- -- 104°F. 35°F. 69 per cent. 70 per cent.	70°F. 52°F. 83°F. 60°F. 60°F. 44°F. 102°F. 21°F. 55 per cent. 68 per cent.	83°F. 62°F. 95°F. 72°F. 71°F. 54°F. 114°F. 34°F. 51 per cent. 64 per cent.

5. Rainfall is of vital importance in Palestine and any reduction in its quantity arouses concern for the prospects of agriculture and water conservation generally. The mean volume of annual rainfall is roughly equal to that of the rainfall in the east of England.

There are two well-marked periods of precipitation. The "former rain" in October and November is not usually large; during December, January and February, the rainfall steadily increases; in March it begins to abate, and it is practically ended in April. The characteristic winds are the moist west and south-west of winter and the dry north and north-west of summer. Desert heat is brought by the sirocco from the hot deserts of the south or east generally in April and May and occasionally in September and October.

6. Along the greater part of the western seaboard lies a stretch of fertile plain of sand and sandy loam soil. In the south this plain has an average width of about 20 miles, but it gradually narrows to the north until at Mount Carmel, near Haifa, the hills approach to within a few hundred yards of the sea. Beyond Carmel the plain widens again, but in this area it is marshy and malarial.

The second strip consists of two distinct mountainous regions divided sharply by the plain of Esdraelon. To the north of that plain are the mountains of Galilee extending beyond the Syrian frontier and rising to Jebel Jermak to a height of 3,934 feet above sea-level; to the south are the mountains of Samaria and Judea, which in places reach heights little less than those of Galilee. Most of this second strip of country is desolate and stony, but at irregular intervals there occur stretches of fertile land capable of deep tillage.

The plain of Esdraelon, which cuts so sharply through the mountain system of Palestine, is roughly triangular in shape. Though the soil is here of a heavier and more clayey texture than that of the coastal plain, Esdraelon is proverbially fertile and is especially suitable for cereal production.

The third and eastern strip of country is the Jordan valley, a natural depression which, starting from sea-level in the extreme north of the country, falls gradually to a depth of 1,300 feet below that level at the Dead Sea, about 100 miles to the south.

7. The capital of Palestine is Jerusalem, situated in the midst of the hills of Judea, and the principal towns are Haifa, with its modern harbour, in the north at the entrance to the plain of Esdraelon; Jaffa, a second port which lies some 40 miles west- north-west of Jerusalem; Tel-Aviv, which is contiguous to Jaffa; and Nablus, the ancient Sichem, in the hills of Samaria. Jerusalem has a majority of Jewish inhabitants; in Haifa the Arab and Jewish elements are now approximately equal in numbers; Tel-Aviv is an entirely Jewish township of 150,000 inhabitants. In Jaffa a large majority of the people are Arabs, and in Nablus, apart from a small community of Samaritans, all the people are Arabs.

Other important towns where the population consists of both Arabs and Jews are Hebron, 20 miles to the south of Jerusalem; Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee; and Safad, a remote town in mountainous country in the extreme north of Palestine.

CHANGES IN PERSONNEL 1936.

From Palestine.

8. During the year, the following left Palestine:--

His Honour Mr. Justice O. C. K. Corrie, M.C., Senior Puisne Judge, Supreme Court, was appointed Chief Justice, Fiji.
Mr. L. I. N. Lloyd-Blood, M.C., Solicitor-General, was appointed Attorney-General, Cyprus.
Mr. F. H. Baker, President, District Court, was appointed Puisne Judge, Nigeria.
Mr. W. Foster, Deputy Postmaster-General, and Mr. J. F. Rowlands, O.B.E., Deputy Director of Public Works, retired on pension.

To Palestine.

The following appointments were made:--

Mr. O. M. Tweedy was appointed Press Officer, in succession to Mr. R. A. Furness, C.B.E., whose contract of service with the Government had expired.
Mr. J. Gutch, Assistant Colonial Secretary, Gold Coast, was appointed Establishment Officer, Secretariat.
Mr. R. H. R. Church, Assistant District Commissioner, Somaliland, was appointed Assistant Secretary.
Mr. A. L. Craig-Bennett was appointed Chief Fisheries Officer.
Mr. G. N. Sale, formerly in Mauritius, was appointed Conservator of Forests.
Mr. W. B. Kennedy-Shaw was appointed Departmental Assistant, Department of Antiquities.
Mr. R. Macdonald, formerly Assistant Auditor, Federated Malay States, was appointed Senior Assistant Auditor.
Mr. A. H. E. Rogers was appointed Principal of the Government Trade School at Haifa.
Miss J. McDowall was appointed Woman Medical Officer.
Mr. R. J. Manning, formerly Puisne Judge, Trinidad, was appointed Senior Puisne Judge.
Mr. L. E. C. Evans, formerly Senior Crown Counsel, Sierra Leone, was appointed Relieving President of a District Court.
Mr. B. V. Shaw, formerly Resident Magistrate, Kenya, was appointed Relieving President of a District Court.
Mr. P. J. Bourke, formerly Legal Adviser and Crown Prosecutor, Seychelles, was appointed a Chief Magistrate.
Mr. J. P. Hogan was appointed a Chief Magistrate.
Mr. R. F. Jardine, C.M.G., was appointed Chief Inspector, Land Registration.
Mr. A. E. P. Rose, formerly Crown Counsel, Northern Rhodesia, was appointed Solicitor-General.
Mr. S. Fry was appointed Director of Programmes, Palestine Broadcasting Service.
Mr. H. C. H. Jones, formerly Executive Engineer Kenya, was appointed Assistant Director of Public Works.
Mr. R. Le Mare, formerly Assistant Treasurer, Nigeria, was appointed a Senior Assistant Treasurer.
Mr. F. G. Horwill was appointed Examiner of Banks.
Lieutenant the Honourable H. C. Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, was appointed Aide-de-Camp to His Excellency the High Commissioner.

PUBLIC SECURITY.

9. The year 1936 in Palestine was dominated by the disturbances which lasted throughout the country from the 19th April to the 12th October.

10. The autumn of 1935 had been marked by considerable political disquiet and by demonstrations of Arab discontent over Jewish immigration and the sales of Arab lands to Jewish buyers.

11. Arab spokesmen conducted a vigorous campaign against those accused of facilitating the transfer of Arab lands to Jewish ownership: a number of small land owners were persuaded to register their lands as family waqfs (a form of trust under Moslem religious law) to save them from falling into Jewish hands: and one large sale to Jews was cancelled through the instrumentality of the Supreme Moslem Council.

12. The ventilation of this grievance proceeded side by side with a sustained Press denunciation of Government's policy for the admission into Palestine of Jewish immigrants, the number of which in 1935 had totalled nearly 62,000.

13. Simultaneously in the Press a strong campaign was maintained criticizing the preference given by Jewish employers to Jewish casual and other labour to the exclusion of Arabs.

14. In paragraphs 12 and 13 of the Introductory Chapter of the Annual Report for 1935, reference was made to two internal incidents which had occurred in the autumn of 1935 and which had served to foment the already existing Arab malaise:--

(a) the discovery of a large quantity of smuggled arms and ammunition from Belgium. All Arabs--in view of the name of the consignee who was never traced-- assumed that these armaments were destined for Palestinian Jewry.

(b) The short terrorist campaign of Sheikh Izzedin al Qassan which ended in his death in an encounter with the Palestine Police and in his subsequent apotheosis as a national hero-martyr.

15. Concurrently, certain external events in neighbouring countries were exerting their influence on Arab thought and policy in Palestine which was already interesting itself deeply in the Italian-Abyssinian conflict.

16. In Egypt the students' movement which actually instigated disorders there in November, 1935, was closely watched by Arab youth in Palestine which gradually achieved a certain degree of influence with the Arab leaders themselves and used this influence to press for the adoption of a more extreme Arab policy. These activities were voiced in the Press through the medium of "Al Difa`a" newspaper, which was suspended for a month under the Press Ordinance for advocating the adoption in Palestine of the methods employed by the Egyptian students.

17. In Syria, Nationalist agitation for the conclusion of a Franco-Syrian treaty on the lines of the Anglo-`Iraqi Treaty, culminated early in 1936 in the outbreak of a prolonged strike, in sympathy with which the Palestine Arabs declared a short general strike on the 4th February. There was considerable elation in Arab circles in Palestine when at the end of February the French Government invited a Syrian National Delegation to Paris to discuss the terms of a Franco-Syrian Treaty.

18. The political events of November and December, 1935, and of the first three months of 1936 are described in the following section (Policy) of the introductory Chapter of this Report, with particular reference to the High Commissioner's dealings with the Arab leaders on the subject of

(a) Arab political demands;

(b) proposals for a Legislative Council (see paragraphs 22 and 23 of the Introductory Chapter of the Palestine and Trans-Jordan Annual Report for 1935); and

(c) the proposed despatch of an Arab deputation to England following on the two Parliamentary Debates in London in February and March, 1936, on the subject of the proposed Legislative Council.

19. The fluctuations of these political developments found their echo in the state of public security throughout the country. Tension between the Arab and the Jewish communities which was fostered in both Presses remained at a high pitch, and on the 15th April an incident occurred which precipitated matters.

20. That night a number of cars on the road between Tulkarm and Nablus were held up by Arab highwaymen. After the armed robbers had removed valuables from the occupants of the cars, three Jews were forced to sit together in a truck where they were shot by the bandits in cold blood. One was killed outright and another died later from his injuries. There is little doubt that the unfortunate victims were deliberately chosen because they were Jews.

On the following night two Arabs living in a hut near the road from Kfar Saba to Petah Tiqva were deliberately shot by two armed men. Before he died, one of the victims stated that the assailants were Jews, and he described them. It was the general impression among Arabs throughout the country that the crime was a reprisal for the murder of Jews on the previous night.

One of the Jews shot on the 15th April was buried at Tel-Aviv on the 17th and the funeral was made the occasion of a demonstration. The Police were stoned, speeches were made, and there were cries of "We don't want this Government, we want a Jewish Army." A party of Jews started to move towards Jaffa but were stopped by the Police.

The funeral was succeeded by an anti-Arab labour campaign in Tel-Aviv and some unemployed Jewish labourers demonstrated outside shops which employed Arabs. In the afternoon an Arab carter was assaulted by a party of Jews who forced him to return to Jaffa, and later a shop was broken open and looted because the manager was an Arab and Arabs were employed there. That evening a number of Arab carters passing through Tel-Aviv were assaulted or threatened and there were several other cases of assault.

21. On Saturday, the 18th, an Arab delivering ice in Tel-Aviv was assaulted and his ice destroyed; and an Arab omnibus in Tel-Aviv was stoned by Yemenite boys, as was an Arab- driven truck. In the Manshieh Quarter of Jaffa, which is the northern part of old Jaffa and adjoins Tel-Aviv, Arabs employed on structural alterations in a shop were molested. During the 17th and 18th of April no case of reprisal on the part of Arabs was reported to the Police.

On Sunday, the 19th April, about 9.30 a.m., rumours became current in Jaffa that two Arabs had been killed in Tel-Aviv by Jews, and crowds of Arabs began to congregate in the centre of the town. Further rumours were subsequently circulated that the bodies of the two alleged victims had been brought to the Jaffa Central Police Station. Despite denials of the rumours by the District Commissioner, and a subsequent abortive search by Arab notables, at his invitation, of the Central Police Station and buildings, the crowd maintained their belief in the rumour and departed amid much disorder towards the Government hospital to pursue their investigations. On their way they made a series of indiscriminate assaults on Jews.

Simultaneously, two other rumours, also unfounded, had gained wide credence in two other separate parts of Jaffa:--

(a) In the Manshieh Quarter; that four Arabs, including one woman, had been murdered by Jews;

(b) At the Town Square; that three Arabs had been killed by Jews in an Arab orange- grove on the Salameh Road.

22. The effect of these rumours was to produce immediate acts of violence by Arabs.

A lady in her car just escaped from an Arab attack and got back to Tel-Aviv. Her damaged car was closely followed into Tel-Aviv by other vehicles, similarly damaged by violence and stone-throwing. A Jewish lorry driver and his assistant were also injured by stones. Thereafter cars passing from Tel-Aviv towards Jaffa were systematically stoned by a patrol of Jews operating along the road from a lorry. During this stone-throwing one Arab lorry travelling towards Jaffa had its wind-screen smashed, and an Arab, who was riding on the top of the load, was severely injured. When the driver of this lorry, who had been cut about the face, reached Morum's Corner, one of the main traffic centres of Jaffa, he (or a companion travelling with him) shouted: "The two on the top have been killed by Jews".

Later, when two more wounded Arabs arrived in another car, the Jaffa crowd started to stone and attack the police, threatened an advance on Tel-Aviv, and murdered a Jew in an adjacent street. The police repeatedly warned them to disperse and when, despite the appeals from one or two of their own people, they refused, baton charges were launched. These charges, which were met by fusillades of stones, had little effect and finally the officer in charge fired one round from his revolver, wounding one rioter. The mob at once dispersed.

Meantime, elsewhere in the town, isolated cases of the murder of Jews--one of whom was stabbed to death near Town Square and another beaten to death in the Manshieh Quarter--had followed in quick succession; and near Morum's Corner two private cars had been violently attacked by the mob. The first car extricated itself by its own power; but the occupant of the second (whom the crowd imagined to be a Jew but whose identity has never been discovered) was saved from certain death by the action of a senior Police officer who, seeing two Arabs in succession about to murder the man, ordered a British constable to shoot. Both Arabs were killed. The immediate effect of these shots was to disperse the crowd. They undoubtedly also affected the crowd in the Manshieh Quarter, which also dispersed.

By 2 p.m. the situation was in hand, and the police and the military reinforcements, which had arrived during the morning, were in control.

Curfew was imposed on Jaffa and Tel-Aviv on the night of the 19th April, and the Palestine (Defence) Order in Council and the Emergency Regulations thereunder were immediately brought into force for all Palestine by Proclamation.

23. On the 20th April there was further serious rioting on the borders between Jaffa and Tel-Aviv, in particular in the Catton, Manshieh and Saknat Abu Kebir quarters. It was again a question of mob-belief in unfounded rumours and resulted in the assembly of large excited mobs of Arabs and Jews; and in Saknat Abu Kebir a serious collision was only prevented by police action. In the course of these incidents two Arabs and two Jews were killed (all at Saknat Abu Kebir) and twenty-six Jews and thirty-two Arabs injured.

24. The total casualties in Jaffa and Tel-Aviv between the 19th and the 22nd April were as follows:--

	Killed or died of injuries.	Severely injured.	Slightly injured.	Total.
Arabs ... ... Jews ... ...	5 16	31 26	41 49	77 91

25.--(a) The Emergency Regulations published on the 19th April vested Government with exceptional powers under the following headings:--

(1) Occupation of buildings, etc., and the requisition and control of food, forage, and stores, etc.;

(2) The regulation of road traffic and transport fares, and acquisition of local transport vehicles and control of their use;

(3) Control of the sale of petrol, firearms and explosives;

(4) Punishment of acts of sabotage;

(5) Imposition of curfew;

(6) Censorship of parcels, letters, telegrams, press matter; control of publications;

(7) Control of telephones, and movements of vessels;

(8) Deportation;

(9) The right of the Police Force to arrest without warrant; the right of entry and search of houses and confiscation of goods; and the right of search of suspected persons or vehicles.

(b) Additional Regulations were published on the 22nd May and gave District Commissioners the power to place persons under police supervision and to restrict their movement from one part of Palestine to another.

(c) On the 1st June further additional Regulations were published which gave

(1) District Commissioners power to order the opening of shops and business premises which had been closed on account of strike;

(2) District Commissioners power to order the detention of persons in internment camps for a period not exceeding one year;

(3) Powers of arrest without warrant to members of the fighting forces.

(d) The additional Regulations of the 6th June made provision for the infliction of death sentences or imprisonment for life in certain circumstances for

(1) shooting at the troops or police;

(2) bomb throwing or dynamiting;

(3) acts of sabotage;

(4) acts endangering the safety of ships, aircraft, trains, transport vehicles.

Under these Regulations the Government also took power to--

(1) impound labour for the clearing of roads obstructed by barricades, nails, etc.;

(2) control the publication of newspapers by the issue of permits;

(3) levy collective fines in money or kind upon inhabitants of towns or villages who had committed an offence or connived at its commission;

(4) demolish houses from which firearms had been discharged or other crimes of violence committed.

(e) Under further additional Regulations of the 20th June, the crimes of violence which had been made punishable with death or imprisonment for life in certain circumstances were made punishable with a minimum penalty of five years imprisonment in all circumstances, and this minimum penalty was extended to the possession of bombs and to the possession of firearms without authority or reasonable excuse.

(f) The additional Regulations of the 25th August--

(1) made it an offence to communicate information, by signalling or otherwise, as to the movement or disposition of troops;

(2) provided for the imprisonment of persons committing disciplinary offences in internment camps.

The following is a chronological statement of the main events which occurred during the period from the 22nd April to the 12th October.

Detailed descriptions of these events will be found both in this section and in the following (Policy) section of this Report.

22nd to 30th April.

The formation of local National Committees.
The declaration of a general strike throughout Palestine.
The beginning of disorders and sabotage.

May and June.

The hardening of the strike.
Proposals for civil disobedience and for a strike of Arab Government officials.
The intensification of violence and sabotage.
The appearance of organised Arab bands in arms.
The debate in the House of Commons and the announcement of the appointment of the Royal Commission.
The establishment of a Concentration Camp by Government.
The arrival of British re-inforcements from Egypt.
The publication of the Emergency (Amendment) Regulations (No. 4) 1936.

July and August.

The announcement of the membership and the terms of reference of the Royal Commission.
The attempted mediation of the Amir Abdullah.
The visit of Nuri Pasha to Jerusalem, 20th-30th August.
The manifesto by the Arab Higher Committee dated the 30th August.

September.

The letter from the Secretary of State to Dr. Weizmann.
The publication of the British Statement of Policy regarding Palestine.
The arrival in Palestine of Lieutenant-General Dill.

October.

The appeal by the Arab Rulers.
The issue of a call by the Arab Higher Committee for the cessation of the strike and disorders.
The end of the strike.

26. The Arab political reaction to the events in Jaffa on the 19th April is described in the following sub-section (Policy). By the end of April the Arab strike was general all over Palestine with the exception of Haifa Port, and this development had an inevitable effect on public security.

27. During the remainder of April demonstrations and incidents of disorder (one of which resulted in two casualties) persisted in Jaffa town, and Jewish buses were frequently stoned and fired upon. Several cases of incendiarism involving mainly Jewish property were reported about this time throughout the Southern District, and there was considerable interference with telephone lines.

Demonstrations accompanied by stone-throwing occurred in Nablus, Jenin and Beisan, and in a number of cases the police were compelled to disperse mobs by baton charges. On two occasions (in Nazareth town) they were obliged to open fire.

The Jewish settlements in the Northern District suffered from constant cases of arson, and malicious damage of trees and crops.

In Jerusalem a few assaults were made by Arabs on isolated Jews, while a large number of Jewish shops in the Old City were closed and Jewish residents in the Old City or in Arab quarters began to move. In Hebron the Jewish community was concentrated in the local Jewish hospital and later transferred to Jerusalem.

28. During May and June a perceptibly increasing amount of lawlessness and disorder developed throughout the Jerusalem, Northern and Southern Districts in the form of attacks on public and private Jewish property, sabotage on railways, telegraph and telephone communications, and, after the institution of frequent patrolling of the main routes by the police and troops, in the placing of barricades and other obstacles on the roads to impede the traffic. In addition, a considerable amount of organized sniping was directed against detachments of British troops and police on patrol, as well as against the escorted road convoys which were inaugurated during this period. The sniping of Jewish settlements, which had been carried out sporadically since the outbreak of the disorders, became more persistent.

29. During the second fortnight of May three Jews were murdered and two others wounded in a crowd leaving a Jerusalem cinema on the night of the 16th May. Two more Jews were also murdered in the Old City, and one was shot at. As a result there followed a further exodus of Jewish householders to safer quarters in the suburbs, while curfew orders were successively imposed, first on the Old City, then on the mixed quarters, and finally over the whole of the Jerusalem Municipal Area.

Other victims were a British policeman, an Austrian Christian, and two Moslem Arabs; and an attempt was made to assassinate a British Assistant Superintendent of Police near the Old City Wall on the 12th June, the Police officer concerned being seriously wounded. One of his assailants was killed by the British policeman who was accompanying the officer at the time.

30. In the Northern District disorders in the towns decreased and activity tended to concentrate in the countryside. The disturbances took three principal forms:--

(i) Malicious destruction.--During the months of May and June, 30,000 trees were destroyed by forest fires. In the Haifa rural district, damage amounting to £P.4,000 was done to fruit orchards.

(ii) Sabotage of Communications.--Telephone wires were cut throughout the district, roads were barricaded, and bridges and culverts were mined. Serious damage was done, and in one case a bridge on the Nablus-Tulkarm branch of the Palestine Railways was destroyed. The train service on this route was discontinued as a consequence.

(iii) Violent armed attacks from ambush on the Military and Police Force.-- There were four major engagements and several minor though violent skirmishes between armed Arab bands and military detachments.

During this period (May and June) the attacks made by armed bands were characterized by the following four features:--

(i) The larger numbers attacking;

(ii) the increased amount of ammunition used by the attackers;

(iii) the improved organization of the attacks, and the fact that in place of the former indiscriminate sniping the fire of the gangs was now organized and controlled; and

(iv) the appearance among the rebels of "volunteers" from Syria and `Iraq.

In Haifa Town the Arab strike, except as regards transport undertakings, remained widespread, but work in the Port was continued with but little interruption. There were two street demonstrations, one in May and the other in June, in the course of which the police were forced to open fire to disperse the crowds.

Police stations and military billets were constantly sniped at in Acre and Nablus. A collective fine of £P.300 was imposed on Nablus in May, and on Acre and Safad in June.

31. In the Southern District acts of violence and sabotage began to occur with frequency from the end of May. These acts tended to concentrate on the damaging of the railway and of telegraph and telephone communications. After the arrival of the first military reinforcements, during the latter weeks of May, there was an intensification of sniping on military patrols and on detachments of military and police.

In the Jaffa--Tel-Aviv area, inter-racial animosity notably increased with the inauguration in May of landing facilities for cargo on the Tel-Aviv foreshore and later at the new jetty. Bitter protests were made by the Arab boatmen of Jaffa port, who regarded this new development as a direct challenge.

During June there were twelve acts of sabotage on the railway, and on two occasions trains were wrecked, one of the derailments near Lydda on the 26th June causing four deaths and considerable damage to the line and rolling stock. In consequence of this act of sabotage, which followed closely upon an organized attack on the Civil Airport at Lydda, a curfew was imposed on the town of Lydda, which was also fined £P.5,000. Throughout this period Jewish settlements in the Southern Districts became increasingly the object of sporadic attacks and, as in the Northern District, great damage was done to trees and crops by arson and malicious destruction.

Beginning on the 19th June, certain areas in the Old City of Jaffa on the hill overlooking the Port were demolished. These house demolitions were carried out by the Army after notice to evacuate had been given to the inhabitants involved, to whom the Government promised compensation. Those who became homeless and destitute were given relief.

The operations were carried out without loss of life, and in all 237 houses were demolished. As a result, not only has public security been greatly improved in a quarter of the town where, on account of narrow difficult streets and lanes, police work had always--and in particular during the disturbances following on the outbreak of the 19th April--been notoriously difficult, but also two wide streets which by the end of the year were open to traffic, have been created which will improve public health conditions and contribute both to the commercial and residential amenities of the town. During the autumn, a housing scheme for the accommodation of those rendered homeless by the demolitions was initiated by Government. Further reference to this scheme will be found in paragraph 34 of Chapter XX (Public Health).

32. During July and August there was no change in the general situation. The strike continued to be maintained and disorders continued unabated, except indeed for a temporary lull during the attempted mediation of His Highness the Amir Abdullah and later during the negotiations between the Arab Higher Committee and Nuri Pasha es Said. Reference to these negotiations is made in the following section (Policy).

33. In Jerusalem itself a thorough organization of anti-intimidation pickets by the military and the police encouraged such hawkers of village produce as were able to reach the town, and continued to protect the Jewish shops in the commercial centre. On the roads leading to Jerusalem, however, strikers and their sympathizers frequently assaulted villagers bringing produce into the town, destroying their produce and in many cases also killing their animals.

One aircraftman was assassinated and an attempt was made to assassinate a second near Gethsemane on the 10th August.

The Acting Mayor of Hebron was murdered by unknown persons on the 13th August.

Night sniping at Jewish settlements continued in the rural areas of the Jerusalem District, and military and police patrols were fired upon with greater frequency. There were constant cases of sabotage of telegraph and telephone wires as well as of rail and road communications and of crops; and the water-supply pipe-line from Ras el Ain to Jerusalem was wilfully damaged on several occasions.

34. Acts of violence continued during the months of July and August both in Jaffa and in the Southern District generally; and a succession of murderous activities and disorders in the middle of August resulted in the temporary imposition of a 21-hour curfew in Jaffa town.

35. In the Northern District during the month of July, there were several major engagements with armed bands in the Jenin and Safad areas, and a band in the Nazareth area was known to be terrorizing the neighbouring Arab villages with demands for food and money, although it did not come into conflict with the Government's forces.

During July seven attacks were made on the `Iraq Petroleum Company's pipe-line in the Plain of Jezreel and the Beisan Valley.

During August determined efforts were made both by peaceful persuasion and by intimidation to extend the Arab strike in Haifa to workers at the port and on the railways, as well as in the `Iraqm Company's works and in other large commercial undertakings where Arab labour was employed. These efforts were frustrated by the added protection given by the Naval and Military Forces.

There was also a recrudescence of violence in Haifa and its vicinity resulting in the murder of an Arab police officer in Haifa town and of four Jews and an Arab woman on Mount
Carmel.

The bands in the hills had in the meantime increased their numbers and their arms, and towards the end of the month were joined by trained guerilla leaders from outside Palestine. One of these was Fauzi ed Din el Kauwakji, a Syrian who had achieved notoriety in Syria in the Druze revolt of 1925-26. This person subsequently proclaimed himself generalissimo of the rebel forces, and "communiqués" and "proclamations" purporting to have emanated from him were circulated in the country.

These bands came into conflict with the British troops on at least six occasions during August. In the course of these engagements the bands suffered severe casualties. El Hamme Police Post was attacked by an Arab armed band on the night of the 6th-7th August and a number of arms were stolen.

A small party of British troops who were bathing near Beisan on the 12th August were subjected to a surprise attack by a large Arab armed band. Unfortunately their Lewis gun "jammed" and those who were on guard were killed by the band, who succeeded in capturing the Lewis gun and some rifles.

36. During September in the rural district of Jerusalem, intimidation increased, and there were indications of more efficient organization of the sabotage of telegraph and telephone communications which suffered heavily. Action to counter this increase of sabotage was taken by the recruitment of additional Arab watchmen and by posting them in the villages adjacent to acts of destruction, charging their salaries against the villagers. Armed Arab bands continued to beset the lines of communications, the leaders in several cases being "wanted" criminals, while the personnel was mainly recruited from the villages, sometimes by free enlistment, but probably more often by intimidation.

On the morning of the 7th September, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate a senior (Jewish) British official while walking with a Jewish colleague to the Government Offices, Jerusalem.

37. During September, the `Iraq Petroleum Company's pipe-line was again damaged on thirteen occasions, and there was a recrudescence of violence in Tiberias, as a result of which two Jews were killed and two wounded. Sporadic shooting at the troops by armed Arab parties continued in the Tulkarm, Nablus, Acre, and Safad Districts, and during the month there were six major police and military encounters with rebel bands, in which the Arabs suffered severe casualties.

Incidents were also reported of these bands raiding Arab villages for goods and money.

An armed Arab band attacked a postal car near Rosh Pina on the night of the 9th September, and four British constables who proceeded to the rescue were ambushed and killed, their Lewis gun and rifles being taken by the rebels.

On the 27th September, Haj Khalil Taha, a prominent Arab politician and a member of the local strike committee of Haifa, was shot dead by an Arab.

38. The closing stages of the strike which ended in the appeal of the Arab rulers and the manifesto by the Arab Higher Committee are described in the following section (Policy); but while these protracted negotiations were in progress, violence and disorder persisted throughout the country. There were frequent police and military engagements with armed bands, in one of which, in the Bethlehem sub-district, the Syrian revolutionary and rebel leader, Said Bey al A'as, was killed. On the same date, the 7th October, an unsuccessful attempt was made in Haifa on the life of an Arab Superintendent of Police.

39. The response to the Arab Higher Committee's manifesto of the 10th October was immediate, and on the 12th October all Arab shops and businesses re-opened; and towards the end of the month Fawzi el Kauwakji and some of his confederates escaped from Palestine to `Iraq, and with his departure disorders temporarily ceased.

40. Isolated outrage, however, persisted up to the end of the year. It took several forms:--

(a) Shooting on the military and police forces, which was still frequent in October but became negligible in November and December and was no longer directed against the military.

(b) Attacks on Jews by Arabs. In October these attacks were still frequent, and after a lull in November they were resumed in December when the number of cases reported, including long-range-firing on Jewish settlements and transport, was sixteen.

(c) Robbery with intimidation by Arabs from Arab houses and villages. During the period thirty-one cases were reported.

(d) Highway Robbery. These activities had apparently no political inspiration, all save three of the incidents concerning Arab transport alone. They were generally believed to be prompted by economic distress among isolated groups of those who had recently been actively engaged in the armed bands. One such group was attacked and dispersed by the police in December. Special deterrent measures were introduced by the police early in the New Year which were markedly successful, and incidents of highway robbery which numbered twenty in December, 1936, were reduced to thirteen in January, 1937.

41. During November and December, pamphlets were distributed in Jerusalem and elsewhere by unknown persons which were designed to foment Moslem-Christian animosities. These activities did not assume any magnitude and were promptly and openly condemned by the leaders of both religions.

42. A mutual boycott of considerable stringency between the Arab and Jewish communities broke out after the end of the strike. It provoked isolated instances of violence and intimidation and continued to be observed until the end of the year.

43. Throughout the year and more particularly during the period of the disorders the local Press left much to be desired and caused the Government to take repeated summary action against individual newspapers under the Press Ordinance.

Between the 1st January and the 18th April, 1936, one Arabic paper was suspended for a fortnight, while official warnings were given to one Arabic and one Hebrew newspaper.

During the six months of the disturbances Arabic newspapers were suspended on 34 occasions and Hebrew papers on 13 occasions. Arabic papers during the same period were officially warned 11 times and Hebrew papers 10 times.

From the termination of the strike up to the end of the year, one Hebrew paper and nine Arabic papers were suspended. In November, on the occasion of the Bairam festival at the end of the month of Ramadan, all four Arabic daily newspapers were simultaneously suspended for publication of inciting articles.

According to the terms of the Press Ordinance all suspensions were on the grounds of publishing matter likely to endanger the public peace or of publishing false report or false rumour calculated to create alarm and despondency. During the year, seven foreign newspapers and one book were prohibited from entering Palestine.

44. Particulars dealing with crime, police traffic control, and the work of the police dog section will be found in Chapter XI (Military Clauses).

The following statement gives particulars of casualties (excluding accidental casualties) during the period 19th April to 15th October inclusive.

A. DEFENCE FORCES (NAVY, ARMY AND AIR FORCE).
	Killed or died of wounds.	Wounded.
	2 19	17 87
B. PALESTINE POLICE FORCE AND TRANS-JORDAN FRONTIER FORCE. (1) British Casualties.
	Killed or died of wounds.	Wounded.
Officers ... ... Other Ranks ... ...	- 7	7 33
(2) Non-British Casualties.
	Killed or died of wounds.	Wounded.
Officers-- (i) Moslems ... ... (ii) Christians ... ... (iii) Jews ... ... Other Ranks-- (i) Moslems ... ... (ii) Christians ... ... (iii) Jews ... ...	1 - - 7 - 1	4 4 - 37 (includes 2 members of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force.) 9 8
C. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
	Killed or died of wounds.	Wounded.
(i) Arabs-- (a) Moslems ... (b) Christians ... (ii) Jews ... ... (iii) Christians ... ... Non-Arabs ...	187 8 80 2	768 36 308 19
SUMMARY.
	Killed or died of wounds.	Wounded.
Defence Force Casualties Civilians ... ...	37 277 314	206 1,131 1,337

Note.--The numbers given above are those officially recorded as having been treated at civil, military and Jewish hospitals, or where death has been recorded and verified.

Undoubtedly, however, a large number of Arab casualties were concealed, and unconfirmed information received from a reliable source places the number of Arabs killed during the disturbances at approximately 1,000.

POLICY.

45. In last year's report a full account was given of the proposals made by His Majesty's Government for the establishment of a Legislative Council in Palestine. These proposals were announced successively to the Arab and Jewish leaders on 21st and 22nd December, 1935. The Jewish leaders rejected them uncompromisingly; the Arab attitude though critical was disposed to give them full consideration.

Shortly before, on 25th November, 1935, His Excellency had at their request received a deputation of the following political party leaders:

Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, President of the National Defence Party.
Jamal Eff. al Husseini, President of the Palestine Arab Party.
Abdul Latif Bey Salah, President of the National Bloc.
Mohamed Ishaq Eff. Budeiri, Reform Party.
Yacoub Eff. Ghussein, President of the Executive Committee of the Arab Young Men's Congress.

who had handed to him a memorandum embodying their main demands, namely:--

(a) that a democratic government should be established in Palestine;

(b) that Jewish immigration should be stopped completely;

(c) that all sales of lands to Jews should be prohibited.

This memorandum was submitted by the High Commissioner to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

46. On 29th January, 1936, the considered views of His Majesty's Government were conveyed to the Arab Executive who met His Excellency for the purpose.

The reply to the Arab memorandum was as follows:--

(a) The demand for the establishment of democratic government in Palestine has been answered by the communication on the part of the High Commissioner to the Arab leaders on 21st December, 1935, of proposals for the establishment of a Legislative Council with a large unofficial majority, in the composition of which the elective principle is recognized.

(b) There can be no question of the total stoppage of Jewish immigration into Palestine. The guiding principle as regards the admission of immigrants is the policy of economic absorptive capacity and His Majesty's Government contemplates no departure from that principle.

In order to ensure that the closest possible relation is maintained between the number of new immigrants to be admitted and the absorptive capacity of the country, both now and in the future, a Statistical Bureau has been set up in charge of a highly-trained and experienced statistician from Canada. It is intended that this Bureau should carry out periodical surveys of trade, industry and agriculture and should keep the High Commissioner in close touch with the changing economic situation in the country.

(c) The Secretary of State approves in principle of the enactment of legislation whereby, except in the sub-district of Beersheba and in urban areas, and also except as regards land planted with citrus, no landowner shall be permitted to sell any of his land unless he retains a minimum area which is sufficient to afford a means of subsistence to himself and his family. As a safeguard against collusive sales, this minimum area shall be inalienable and shall revert to Government if it ceases to be cultivated by the owner-occupier.

The High Commissioner shall retain the power to approve the sale of a subsistence area if he is satisfied that to do so will be in the interest of the public good; for example, where a subsistence area is needed for suburban development or is blocking development of rural land or an important irrigation or drainage scheme.

Subsistence areas will have to be defined and prescribed having regard to the condition of cultivation present in each region, and the extent of those subsistence areas will be varied from time to time as the land in question is improved or as irrigation becomes possible. Consideration will moreover have to be given to the possibility, in suitable circumstances, of concentrating subsistence areas and also to the question whether leases of subsistence areas might under certain conditions be permitted.

The legislation proposed will be of general application so that outside the excluded areas the sale of land to any person would be subject to the restrictions indicated.

47. In February the proposals for the Palestine Legislative Council were debated in the British House of Lords and in March in the House of Commons. No vote was taken, but the two debates revealed a general opinion among all parties in both Houses that the proposals were premature and that further experience of the working of the various Municipal Councils was necessary before a Legislative Council came into being. The Secretary of State had already received a Jewish deputation regarding these proposals, and with his approval the High Commissioner, on 2nd April, 1936, invited the following Arab leaders to meet him:--Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, Jamal Eff. el Husseini, Abdul Latif Bey Salah, Mahmud Eff. Abu Khadra, and Yacoub Eff. Ghussein, and on behalf of the British Government informed them that the Secretary of State, having already seen a Jewish deputation which had made strong representations against the setting up of a Legislative Council, would welcome a corresponding opportunity of hearing the expression of Arab opinion. The High Commissioner was therefore authorised to invite an Arab deputation to London for this purpose.

In response to a question whether it would be open to the deputation also to submit to the Secretary of State the Arab case regarding land sales and immigration, the High Commissioner said that although the principal matter to be discussed with the Secretary of State was that of the Legislative Council, the deputation would also be at liberty to put forward their views on land sales and immigration.

The Arab leaders, after a short discussion, accepted the invitation unanimously.

48. At the moment when the disturbances broke out seventeen days later, on the 19th April, 1936, the position as regards the Government and the Arab leaders was that the latter were actually in the normal course of considering what persons should form the Arab deputation which had been invited to visit the Secretary of State in London.

An account of the Jaffa disturbances on the 19th April, 1936, and of the incidents which led up to the outbreak is contained in the preceding section of this report (Public Security).

49. On the 20th April, 1936, a National Committee was formed in Nablus and urged that a general Arab strike should be declared throughout Palestine and be observed for an indefinite period until Arab demands were satisfied, and that similar Committees with similar objects should be formed throughout the country. Between the 20th and 22nd April the strike movement spread rapidly in the towns and villages, and by the latter date, with the exception of Haifa, it was general in Palestine. On the 25th April, the leaders of all Arab parties met and decided to establish a Supreme Arab Committee (later styled the Arab Higher Committee) to control Arab national activities during the emergency. The Committee was composed as follows:--

Haj Amin Effendi al Husseini, President.
Mufti of Jerusalem.
President, Supreme Moslem Council.
Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, Secretary.
General Secretary of the Istiqlalist Party.

Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, Treasurer.
Manager of the Arab Bank.
Affiliated to the Istiqlalist Pary.
Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, Member.
President, Defence Party.
Jamal Effendi al Husseini, Member.
President, Arab Palestine Party.
Abdul Latif Bey Salah, Member.
President, National Bloc, Nablus.
Dr. Hussein Fakhri Effendi al Khalidi, Member.
Mayor of Jerusalem.
One of three Secretaries of the Reform Party.
Yacoub Effendi Ghussein, Member.
President of the Executive of the Young Men's Congress.
Yacoub Effendi Farraj, Member.
Vice-President of the Defence Party.
Alfred Effendi Rock, Member.
Vice-President of the Palestine Arab Party.

Two of the members, Yacoub Effendi Farraj and Alfred Effendi Rock represented the Arab Christians, Orthodox and Catholic respectively.

The Committee adopted a resolution to continue the general strike until the British Government changed its policy in a fundamental manner, of which the immediate manifestation should be the stoppage of Jewish immigration. They formulated their demands in a letter to the High Commissioner as follows:

(1) The prohibition of Jewish immigration.

(2) The prohibition of the transfer of Arab lands to Jews.

(3) The establishment of a National Government responsible to a representative Council.

50. Meantime, on the 21st April, 1936, the High Commissioner had received the following Arab leaders:--

Ragheb Bey Nashashibi (Defence Party).
Jamal Eff. al Husseini (Arab Palestine Party).
Abdul Latif Bey Salah (Young Men Congress).
Shibli Eff. Jamal (Reform Party).

In addressing them, he stated that he felt that every one deplored the disorders and the consequent loss of life which could achieve no good and were the direct cause of evil and bitterness. He counted on them to use their influence to check disorder and asked them to explain to all over whom they had influence that the police would not hesitate to quell any disturbances. He further urged them to exert their influence among school-children to induce them to resume their studies.

51. On the 27th April, 1936, the newly-formed Arab Higher Committee addressed a letter to the High Commissioner enclosing their resolutions of 25th April. (Paragraph 49.)

52. On the 5th May the High Commissioner again invited the members of the Arab Higher Committee to meet him. He warned them against being associated with illegal acts subversive of Government and urged them to use their influence to restrain people from violence and sabotage, and advised them to send their deputation to London (see paragraph 47). The Committee in a written reply expressed their regret for the loss of life and the illegal acts, but stated that they could not call off the strike or send a deputation to London unless Jewish immigration was suspended during the course of their conversations with the Secretary of State.

53. On 6th May the Secretary of State made a statement in the House of Commons in the course of which he stated that he believed that the underlying cause of the disturbances in Palestine was Arab discontent and that he understood that the Arabs had threatened to continue the strike until Jewish immigration was stopped. He took the occasion to reaffirm what he had said immediately after the Jaffa outbreak, that there was no question of the Government stopping immigration in consequence of the strike. He further confirmed that the invitation to the Arabs to send a deputation to London where they would receive a full and impartial hearing, was still open.

54. On 2nd May, 1936, a violent manifesto was issued by the car-owners' and drivers' committee, inciting Arabs to the non-payment of taxes. The President and the Vice-President of the Committee were convicted on a charge of distributing inciting circulars and were fined £P.25 each. On 8th May, 1936, a Congress of the National Committees (see paragraph 49), including the President and members of the Arab Higher Committee, met in Jerusalem and decided on the non-payment of taxes and a continuation of the strike.

Shortly after, in reply to a memorandum addressed to them by the High Commissioner, the Arab Higher Committee intimated that they were not responsible for the movement in favour of civil disobedience, but that this movement was in fact a spontaneous demand made by Arabs generally and that the Committee could not use their influence to check illegal acts unless Jewish immigration was suspended.

55. On the 18th May the Secretary of State made a statement in the House of Commons that the Government had decided to send a Royal Commission to Palestine but that it would not leave until order had been restored in the country. This announcement was received without enthusiasm by the Arabs, and the Arab Higher Committee decided they could not call off the strike unless Jewish immigration was suspended until such time as the Commission had reported.

56. On the same day--the 18th May, 1936--a notice was published in the Palestine Official Gazette approving a Jewish Labour Schedule of 4,500 immigrants in respect of the period of six months ending the 30th September, 1936.

57. On the 23rd May sixty-five Arabs were arrested in the public interest and subjected to varying periods of police supervision under Emergency Regulations. In most cases they were ordered away from their own localities and put into enforced residence elsewhere. During June, however, Government found it necessary to detain certain of them--among them Hassan Sidki Dajani and Saleh Abdu, President and Vice-President of the car-owners' and drivers' committee (see paragraph 54), and Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, the Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee (see paragraph 49).

To succeed Auni Bey, the Arab Higher Committee appointed as Secretary another adherent of the Istiqlalist party, Izzat Eff. Darwaza, who was also later interned at Sarafand. Details of the Sarafand Internment Camp are included in a subsequent chapter of this Report (Military Clauses).

58. On the 12th June, 1936, Government issued an addition to the Emergency Regulations (originally declared on the 19th April, 1936) providing for more severe penalties for the offence of discharging firearms at members of His Majesty's Forces or the Palestine Police Force, bomb-throwing, or illicit possession of arms. Details of these Regulations are included in the preceding Section of this chapter (Public Security).

59. At the beginning of June, three prominent Arabs, Jamal Eff. al Husseini, a member of the Arab Higher Committee, Dr. Tannous and Shibli Eff. Jamal left for England as an unofficial delegation with the object of enlisting sympathy for the Arabs. They were accompanied by Emil el Ghori, an Arab politician and journalist, who remained in London after the delegation had completed its mission and opened an Arab information bureau there.

60. On 19th June, a debate took place in the House of Commons about Palestine. It was opened by the Rt. Hon. W. G. Ormsby-Gore who had assumed the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies on the 29th May. The following is the text of the main points of his speech:--

"At the outset I should like to express my own personal concern that Palestine, with which I have had myself close association in the past and the welfare of which I have so much at heart, should now be distracted by civil strife. . . . .

"Disturbances, accompanied by strikes of non-Jewish shops, motor transport, the port workers at Jaffa, and, in short, of almost all Arab industrial enterprises, have now, I regret to say, continued for some eight weeks. Several municipalities have joined in the strike, but essential services are still being maintained, and intimidation, I am informed, is responsible only in a very small measure for the continuation of the strike which clearly has the full sympathy of all too large a part of the Arab population. Nevertheless, the supreme Arab Committee have publicly dissociated themselves from the outbreak, though I fear that in this sphere--and I am confirmed by the opinion of the High Commissioner--they can now exercise little influence on the situation owing to the wide-spread character of the disturbances. I should also like to mention that the supreme Moslem Council has decided to take no part in the strike and the Sharia Courts are still open and the Waqf Administration is working. I am also glad to say there has been no disorder or complaint regarding anything in connection with the services at the mosques which have been carried on without interruption, and perform their religious duties in a quite normal manner. .

"I have made it abundantly clear, in answer to questions, that the first essential is that order must be restored. . . . . In the last three weeks the security forces have been strongly reinforced. . . . .

"With these forces it has been possible to authorize the High Commissioner to supplement the normal powers of the Government to restore law and order and to deal with riots. . . . . The important new orders are principally in the form of regulations made under the Palestine (Defence) Order in Council dated the 23rd July, 1931. . . . .

"It will be appreciated that it is very difficult for effective military action to be taken against individual snipers and small parties who burn crops and attack communications particularly at night. The recent advent of strong military reinforcement has prevented large-scale acts of violence in the principal towns, and every effort is now being made by the authorities to give greater protection to life and property throughout the country as the troops recently arrived become distributed. I am glad to say that railway and other communications, in spite of these attacks which I have detailed, are maintained despite interruptions. Escorts are now being provided for car convoys and all trains. Work, however, has been most seriously dislocated and remains almost at a standstill at the port of Jaffa, though up to now Haifa has been unaffected. . . . .

"At this point I should like to take the opportunity of expressing His Majesty's Government's complete confidence in Sir Arthur Wauchope and their appreciation of his services throughout his time as High Commissioner, and I must at once pay a special tribute to the Palestine Police, British, Jew and Arab, for their devotion to duty and their loyalty in the face of most trying circumstances. May I further pay a tribute to the Jews in Palestine, who, despite extreme provocation and attack, have exercised most commendable self-restraint. . . . I am glad to say that the situation in the neighbouring mandated territory of Trans-Jordan has, under the steadying influence of His Highness the Amir Abdullah remained almost entirely undisturbed.

"After that survey I will turn to the future. Let me say at once that His Majesty's Government have not been, and will not be, moved by violence and outrage. As soon as order is restored, but not before, His Majesty will be advised to appoint a Royal Commission to visit Palestine to carry out a most full and searching investigation into the causes of unrest and of any grievances which may be brought to their notice by either Arabs or Jews. This will be a really impartial and authoritative body, and I wish to give an assurance that any grievances put forward to that Commission will be investigated. The sole aim of His Majesty's Government is to obtain an objective and non-partisan report, to enable them to do justice to all sections of the Palestine population. I am convinced that on the basis of the recommendations of such a Commission a means can be found and will be found, within the framework of the Mandate, with its dual obligations to Jews and non-Jews to secure that end. Let me make it quite clear that I shall submit no name for service on such a Royal Commission of anyone who has been or is in any way connected with Palestine or has any known pre-conceived views, or has ever taken part in Jewish or Arab affairs. . . . . I am confident that the persons serving on such a Commission will approach all their problems, difficult though they will be, with a really objective and impartial mind.

"No one regrets more than I do that the relations between His Majesty's Government and the Arabs of Palestine have been temporarily strained, and I really hope that this is only a passing phase. The Arab people are rightly proud of their historic achievements and of their contribution to civilisation. There has been a traditional friendship between Great Britain and the Arab people which His Majesty's Government value, and it is their earnest desire to see it preserved. They believe that that is equally the desire of the vast majority of Arab peoples throughout the world. The notable assistance given by Britain to the Arabs in the War, in Arabia, in `Iraq and elsewhere, should be evidence of our good will and interest in the future of the Arab people.

"At the same time, there is the age-long aspiration of Jews all over the world for a centre in Palestine. This aspiration and claim were formally and most specifically recognised by His Majesty's Government in the Balfour Declaration in 1917. This Declaration was subsequently endorsed in almost identical terms by all the other Principal Allied and Associated Powers in the War, and was finally enshrined in the Mandate which is our authority for the government of Palestine; and it was entrusted to His Majesty's Government by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers at the San Remo Conference in January, 1920. The Balfour Declaration itself made it clear that with the establishment of the Jewish national home and the recognition of the Jewish claims nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Hence it is clear that under that Declaration we have a dual obligation, both to the Jew and to the Arab.

"There is at present a state of apprehension on both sides, and half the trouble that has led to these disorders is psychological. The Arabs are afraid that the Jews will completely dominate the country, and they fear for the future of their homes and the homes of their fathers and of their children. The Jews, equally, are afraid that the great and really remarkable constructive work which they had already done in Palestine will be cut short or terminated, that the national home on which they have set their hearts will be brought to naught and that the Arabs seek to drive them out of Palestine or reduce them to an inferior status of barely tolerated aliens in Palestine, under Arab domination. I honestly believe that both these fears are baseless, but they must be shown to be baseless. It is the desire of the British Government to find a solution, consistent with their fundamental dual obligation, and they regard those obligations equally as obligations of honour. It is my confident belief that we can dissipate those fears, and do justice to both parties, and it is my intention, when the solution is found, to apply that solution with firmness and consistency. We are most anxious, therefore, that order shall be speedily restored so that the work of the Royal Commission may start without delay.

"Clearly the Royal Commission will have to investigate in detail the existing law and administrative practice of the Palestine Government regarding such matters as land transfers and the regulations regarding immigration not only of Jews but of Arabs and others. These important questions will have to be examined by His Majesty's Government in the light of the evidence collected and in the light of the recommendations of the Commission. I am sure that the whole of this Committee will agree with me that, pending such an impartial inquiry, it would be very wrong of me to prejudice, either by speech or action, the findings of the Commission. We can contemplate no change of policy whatsoever until we have received and considered their report.

"I said a moment ago that certain important questions would have to be submitted to His Majesty's Government in the light of the evidence and the recommendations made by the Royal Commission. Perhaps I ought to add, lest misunderstandings arise, that I am sure it will be appreciated that no Government, least of all a mandatory Power, with its special responsibilities to the League and its duty of reporting to the League, can divest itself of the ultimate responsibility, or undertake in advance to carry out proposals or recommendations which it has not seen; but I would like to say that His Majesty's Government will certainly consider with the utmost care, and with all possible weight, any recommendations made by so authoritative a body as I have envisaged. If, as the result of their examination, they find that the action advised by the Commission commends itself to them, they will carry it into effect without fear and without favour.

"I hope that the Committee will share my view, that in spite of temptation and in spite of crime and outrage, it is essential to take a long view. I should deeply regret any speech that would add fuel to the flames and add an increased racial strife and bitterness. We want Arabs and Jews to realise that both have an assured future in Palestine, and that the whole object of the British Government in that country is that both shall be able to live together in peace and amity in a land holy not only to them but to the three great faiths throughout the civilised world. We hold the Mandate for Palestine specially in trust for the world which regards Palestine with sentiments above, perhaps, any other country and we are determined to preserve our authority as mandatory Power, and to administer Palestine with justice and equity to Jew and Arab alike."

61. On the 22nd July, in reply to a question in the House of Commons asking for an assurance that no change in the declared policy of the Government with regard to the immigration of Jews into Palestine would take place until after the Royal Commission had reported, the Secretary of State for the Colonies made the following statement:--

"As I informed the House on the 19th of June (see paragraph 60) His Majesty's Government can contemplate no change of policy whatsoever with regard to Palestine until they have received and considered the Report of the Royal Commission. As regards, however, the suggestion that there should be a temporary suspension of immigration whilst the Commission is carrying out its enquiry, I am not at present in a position to make any statement as to the intention of His Majesty's Government beyond saying that their decision will be taken in due course on the merits of the case and that there is no question of its being influenced by violence or attempts at intimidation."

62. Towards the end of June a memorandum for submission to Government was prepared by senior Arab Government officials of the Public Service, in which it was represented that the cause underlying the disorders was the insufficient regard paid to legitimate Arab grievances both in the past and since the outbreak of the disorders. The memorandum went on to recommend that the stoppage of Jewish immigration was the only fair and humane solution of the existing deadlock. This memorandum was transmitted by the High Commissioner to the Secretary of State.

A memorandum in similar terms was later addressed to Government by Arab Government officials of the junior division of the service.

63. On the 29th July, the composition and the terms of reference of the Royal Commission were announced by the Secretary of State in the following terms:--

"His Majesty has been pleased to approve the appointment of the following to serve on the Palestine Royal Commission:--

The Right Honourable The Earl Peel, G.C.S.I., G.B.E.
The Right Honourable Sir Horace Rumbold, Baronet, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., M.V.O.
Sir Laurie Hammond, K.C.S.I., C.B.E.
Sir Morris Carter, C.B.E.
Sir Harold Morris, M.B.E., K.C.
Professor Reginald Coupland, C.I.E.

Lord Peel will be Chairman of the Commission and Sir Horace Rumbold Vice- Chairman. Mr. J. M. Martin of the Colonial Office will be Secretary.

"The terms of reference of the Royal Commission will be:--

'To ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances which broke out in Palestine in the middle of April; to enquire into the manner in which the Mandate for Palestine is being implemented in relation to the obligations of the Mandatory towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively; and to ascertain whether, upon a proper construction of the terms of the Mandate, either the Arabs or the Jews have any legitimate grievances on account of the way in which the Mandate has been, or is being, implemented; and if the Commission is satisfied that any such grievances are well-founded, to make recommendations for their removal and for the prevention of their recurrence.'

"It is not yet possible to state on what date the Commission will leave for Palestine, but it is not proposed that the Commission should begin its work in Palestine until order is restored there. When a Royal Commission has been appointed, it has complete control over its own proceedings, so it would be impossible for me to give even an approximate indication of the time which will elapse before the report of the Commission will become available.

"As regards the suggestion that there should be a temporary suspension of immigration while the Commission is carrying out its enquiry. I am unable to add anything to the full reply which I gave on 22nd July to the question by the Honourable Member for the Consett Division of Durham." (See paragraph 61.)

64. At the beginning of August, the Amir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan invited the Arab Higher Committee, individual members of which he had previously received at their request, to discuss the position with him in Amman. This attempt at mediation, however, broke down, as the members of the Committee expressed themselves unable to co-operate unless concessions--including an announcement that Jewish immigration would be suspended during the visit of the Royal Commission to Palestine, which the British Government refused to entertain--were granted.

A further series of negotiations on similar lines was undertaken during the second half of August by Nuri Pasha es Said, at that time `Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs.

65. These negotiations, in their turn, were nullified as a result of the publication at the end of August of a manifesto by the Arab Higher Committee, the text of which was as follows:--

"Negotiations between the Supreme Arab Committee and His Excellency, Nuri Pasha es Said, Foreign Minister of `Iraq, were continued for some days in the course of which all the points which relate to the Palestine Arab case were discussed in an atmosphere of confidence and frankness. These discussions resulted in a complete understanding and in consenting with all satisfaction and trust to the mediation of the Government of `Iraq and of Their Majesties and Highnesses the Arab Kings and Princes.

"In consequence His Excellency the Minister of `Iraq will conduct the necessary official correspondence in this respect, while the Supreme Arab Committee will submit the matter to the Nation, through a General Congress of the National Committees, for consultation and confirmation. The Nation will continue its general strike with the same steadfastness and conviction which it has shown, and with an unblemished dignity, full of confidence, patience and sobriety, and until such time as these negotiations attain the desired result which will safeguard for this brave Nation its existence, secure for it its rights and the realization of its aspirations."

66. While the negotiations were in progress conjecture was rife as to the terms under which they were being conducted and on 2nd September a local Jewish newspaper, the Palestine Post published a completely unfounded account of the conditions which Nuri Pasha had been authorized by the British Government to offer to the Arab leaders. One of these alleged conditions was the suspension of immigration. Dr. Weizmann, the Chairman of the Zionist Organization, who was then in London, thereupon wrote to the Secretary of State asking for assurances on this point. The Secretary of State replied in a letter denying that any promise had been made to Nuri Pasha by the High Commissioner or by His Majesty's Government regarding either the suspension of immigration (i.e. in return for the cessation of the disturbances) or the position of the Foreign Minister of `Iraq as the mediator in the affairs of Palestine.

67. On the 7th September His Majesty's Government issued their statement of policy regarding Palestine in the following terms:--

"Disorders broke out in Palestine in April of this year which, after rioting at Jaffa and elsewhere that was quickly suppressed, took the form of a declaration by a Committee of Arab notables of a general strike of a definitely political character for aims inconsistent with the Mandate and pursued by methods which directly challenged the constituted authority. There have been widespread acts of murder and other outrages by gangs of armed terrorists. Apart from attacks in which British soldiers, airmen and police as well as many Arabs and Jews have lost their lives, the activities of these armed gangs have included repeated attempts to disorganize the means of communication, cutting of telegraph and telephone wires, derailing of trains, and attempts to prevent roads from being used by traffic. Considerable material damage has been done seriously affecting the economic life of the country and several attempts have been made to damage and set fire to the oil pipe-line between Haifa and `Iraq. An important result of the strike has been the practical closing of the port of Jaffa although happily the port of Haifa has hitherto been little affected.

"Active steps were at once taken by the Palestine Administration for the protection of life and property and for the suppression of disorders and during the months following on the outbreak of the disturbances the Palestine garrison has been considerably reinforced. In spite, however, of the greatest forebearance exercised by the British authorities, with the full approval of His Majesty's Government, whose chief concern has been to restore peace between the different communities in Palestine by measures which would entail the smallest possible amount of suffering and loss of life, the political strike has continued accompanied by outrages and guerilla warfare. Widespread intimidation has been used by those responsible for the continuance of those disorders with the object of compelling at any rate the passive co-operation of the Arab population at large. In short the situation which has been created is a direct challenge to the authority of the British Government in Palestine.

"On the 18th of May the then Secretary of State for the Colonies announced in the House of Commons that His Majesty's Government had decided that it was desirable that a full enquiry on the spot should be undertaken but that the first step must be the re-establishment of law and order; and that after order had been restored it was their intention to advise His Majesty to appoint a Royal Commission which would, without bringing into question the fundamental terms of the Mandate, investigate the causes of unrest and any alleged grievances either of the Arabs or the Jews.

"On the 29th of July the personnel of the Royal Commission was announced in the House of Commons together with its terms of reference which are as follows:--

'to ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances which broke out in Palestine in the middle of April; to enquire into the manner in which the Mandate for Palestine is being implemented in relation to the obligations of the Mandatory towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively; and to ascertain whether, upon a proper construction of the terms of the Mandate, either the Arabs or the Jews have any legitimate grievances on account of the way in which the Mandate has been, or is being, implemented; and if the Commission is satisfied that any such grievances are well-founded, to make representations for their removal and for the prevention of their recurrence.'

"The Royal Commission will undertake its duties at the earliest possible moment, but, as has already been stated, order must be restored in Palestine before the Commission begins its enquiry there.

"This is the condition essential to enable it to perform its duties effectively. Unhappily, however, the Arab leaders have taken up the position that they will not end the strike until fundamental changes have been introduced by the British Government in its policy with regard to Palestine, and, notwithstanding the announcement of the personnel and the terms of reference of the Royal Commission, the strike has continued accompanied by outrages of ranging degrees of intensity in many parts of the country. All efforts to introduce a reasonable spirit of accommodation have hitherto failed.

"Well-disposed Arab rulers and notabilities in neighbouring countries have from time to time expressed willingness to use their influence in attempts at conciliation. The King of Saudi Arabia offered the use of his good offices acting in concert, if their co-operation could be secured, with other Arab rulers. Unfortunately conditions have continued to be such that it has not been found possible to make any successful progress by this means. A public-spirited attempt has also been made by His Highness the Amir of Trans-Jordan, but this likewise has proved fruitless. A further recent initiative in the same direction has been taken by General Nuri Pasha es Said, Foreign Minister of 'Iraq. Protracted discussions by him with the Palestine Arab leaders have led to no satisfactory result, for the Palestine Arab leaders issued on the 31st of August a manifesto declaring that they would continue the strike until their aims had been attained.

"Despite General Nuri Pasha's intervention, daily outrages and other instances of grave disorders have continued unabated, and after a careful review of the whole situation, His Majesty's Government are satisfied that the campaign of violence and threats of violence, by which the Arab leaders are attempting to influence the policy of His Majesty's Government, cannot be allowed to continue and more rapid and effective action must now be taken in order to bring the present state of disorder to an end with the least possible delay. With this end in view, it has been considered essential to send further substantial reinforcements to Palestine. An additional division of troops is accordingly being sent there. In view of the size of the reinforcements and of the additional responsibilities entailed, it has been decided that the supreme military control in the country shall be entrusted to a Lieutenant- General. The officer selected to command is Lieutenant-General J. G. Dill, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., late Director of Military Operations and Intelligence at the War Office.

"His Majesty's Government deeply regret that such decisions should have been forced upon them. Great Britain accepted the Mandate for Palestine upon terms which involve responsibility for the welfare of all sections of the population of Palestine. They regard this responsibility as a trust which they have no choice but to carry out. In this connection it is appropriate to recall that in their report to the Council of the League of Nations in 1930, the Permanent Mandates Commission stated that in their view the following two assertions accurately express what they conceived to be the essence of the Mandate of Palestine:--

(1) that the obligations laid down in the Mandate of Palestine in regard to the two sections of the population are of equal weight; and

(2) that the dual obligations imposed upon the Mandatory are in no sense irreconcilable.

"His Majesty's Government are fully in accord with the sense of this pronouncement at Geneva and it is their earnest desire to carry on a policy of impartial justice to both Arabs and Jews and to work for the peace and progress of a country so specially dear to both races.

"It has been the constant aim of British policy to secure and maintain relations of friendship and confidence with the Moslem peoples. For this reason, apart from all others, they would have wished to avoid by all possible means the course of action which has now been forced upon them. But no Government, least of all a Government exercising mandatory responsibilities, can allow themselves to be deflected from their course by violence and outrages. It is still their hope, however, that when those who are disturbing the peace of Palestine have been brought to realize that their present actions are inimical to the true interests of all sections of the population and to the country as a whole, and that the Mandatory Government is determined to exercise its authority with impartiality and justice, it will be possible to ascertain whether any legitimate grievances or fears for the future exist on the part of either Arabs or Jews and to make recommendations for their removal with a view to establishing more cordial and peaceful relations between all concerned. His Majesty's Government are convinced that these objects are attainable within the framework of the Mandate which they have no intention of abandoning.

"It is the confident hope of His Majesty's Government that the Royal Commission will make recommendations which will enable His Majesty's Government to bring finality to a situation of doubts and fears on both sides and that out of the tragic misunderstandings and disorders of the last five months a lasting settlement can be reached."

This statement was simultaneously published as an Official Communiqué of the Palestine Government and five days later, on 12th September, the High Commissioner summoned the members of the Arab Higher Committee before him. In the course of the interview, he emphasized the forbearance which had been shown by the Government in the past and stated that more drastic military action would be taken to restore order. He urged the Committee to issue a call for the cessation of the strike and disorders while there was yet time.

At the same time, District Commissioners held meetings with local notables whom they advised in the same sense.

68. Lieutenant-General Dill arrived in Jerusalem on the 13th September and assumed duty as General Officer Commanding in Palestine and Trans-Jordan on the 15th September. The military reinforcements from England began to reach Palestine shortly afterwards, and by the end of the first week in October all had arrived.

69. Meanwhile the Arab Higher Committee were in constant communication with Their Majesties King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, King Ghazi of `Iraq, the King of the Yemen, and His Highness the Amir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. On the 8th October the Committee received a communication from King Ibn Saud and on the 9th October from King Ghazi and the Amir Abdullah. All three communications were couched in identical language.

"The prevailing situation in Palestine has greatly pained us. We in agreement with our brothers the Arab Kings and the Amir Abdullah ask you to resort to quietness in order to avoid bloodshed, relying upon the good intentions of our friend the British Government and its declared desire to ensure justice. You may rest assured that we will continue our endeavours to help you."

On the 10th October, the Arab Higher Committee issued a manifesto which, after citing the text of the communications which they had received from the three Arab Rulers, continued in the following terms:--

"The Supreme Arab Committee, after consultation with representatives of the National Committees and with their unanimous agreement, have unanimously decided to respond to the appeal of Their Majesties and Highnesses, the Arab Kings and Amirs, and to call upon the noble Arab Nation in Palestine to resort to quietness and to put an end to the strike and the disorders as from Monday morning, the 12th October, 1936, and to ask all members of the nation to proceed, early morning, to their places of worship for the purpose of holding services on behalf of the martyrs and to thank God for the power of patience and fortitude with which he endowed them. They will then leave their places of worship and open their places of business and will resume their normal occupations, and God is our aid."

The response to this manifesto was immediate; work was resumed generally through the country; and with the exception of a few minor incidents, disorders ceased, and after a month it was possible to make arrangements for the return to England of the reinforcements which had been sent out to Palestine two months before. By the end of the year almost all the units of the additional division had left the country.

70. On the 29th October, the High Commissioner, in a broadcast message, announced the imminent departure from London of the Royal Commission which arrived in Palestine on 11th November, 1936.

71. On the 5th November the Secretary of State made the following statement in the House of Commons:--

"On the 19th June and the 22nd of July I informed the House that His Majesty's Government could contemplate no change of policy whatsoever with regard to Palestine until they had received and considered the Report of the Royal Commission. On the 22nd of July I also said that, as regards the suggestion that there should be temporary suspension of immigration whilst the Commission was carrying out its enquiry, I was not at the time in a position to make any statement as to the intentions of His Majesty's Government beyond saying that their decision would be taken in due course on the merits of the case.

"As the House is aware, the Royal Commission is leaving for Palestine today and His Majesty's Government have carefully considered whether or not there should be a temporary suspension of immigration while the Commission is carrying out its enquiry. They have decided that a temporary suspension of immigration would not be justifiable on economic or on other grounds. It is the view of His Majesty's Government that, if any drastic departure from the immigration policy hitherto pursued were now to be introduced in advance of the findings of the Royal Commission, this would involve an alteration in the existing situation and might be held to prejudice the enquiry of the Royal Commission, which will be directed, among other matters, to the very important question of immigration generally.

"At the same time, His Majesty's Government have thought it right, in the present circumstances obtaining in Palestine, to ask the High Commissioner to take a conservative view of the economic absorptive capacity of the country. He has accordingly recommended that the six-monthly labour immigration schedule which was due to be issued last month, should be fixed at 1,800 certificates: this recommendation has been approved by His Majesty's Government. This figure compares with a schedule of 8,000 in April, 1935; 3,250 in October, 1935, and 4,500 in April, 1936.

"The new schedule of 1,800 certificates includes a special allotment of 300 certificates to provide for registration as immigrants of German-Jews in possession of a capital of £P1,000 already in Palestine who will have been unable as yet to transfer from Germany the qualifying capital within a prescribed period of twelve months. The total increase, therefore, in the Jewish population resulting from this schedule will not exceed 1,500. It will be appreciated, however, that immigration is not confined to those persons who receive certificates under the Labour Schedule. The categories under which other immigrants enter are as capitalists (that is to say persons in possession of £P1,000) and dependants of such capitalists, and dependants of persons authorized to enter under the Labour Schedule, and of persons already resident in Palestine. Taking into account all forms of Jewish immigration, it is expected that the total for the six months from October 1936 will be substantially below that for the preceding six months."

The announcement raised great resentment in Arab circles, and two days later a meeting of the Arab Higher Committee decided unanimously to boycott the Commission and that no Arab witnesses would appear before it.

72. After making a rapid general tour of the country, the Commission opened its enquiry in Jerusalem on the 16th November, 1936.

A letter of welcome had been sent on 13th November to the Chairman by the members of the Arab Higher Committee, in which they stated their regrets that the Arab people were unable to fulfil their traditional duties of hospitality towards the Commission owing to the action taken by the British Government regarding the issue of the half-yearly Jewish Labour Schedule on the 5th November, 1936 (see paragraph 71). The Committee assured the members of the Commission that the Arab population of Palestine was fully confident of their integrity and sincerity.

The Commission was in session, both public and private, up to the end of the year, by which time its enquiry was drawing to a close.

Throughout this period, the Arab boycott was maintained, but, as will be described in the Annual Report for 1937, the Arab Higher Committee on the 6th January, 1937, unanimously withdrew their decision not to co-operate with the Commission and the Arab evidence was heard before the Commission concluded its enquiry on the 19th January, 1937.

73. The opening session of the Royal Commission took place on the 12th November at Government House, Jerusalem. After the High Commissioner had officially welcomed the members to Palestine and the Chief Secretary had read the Royal Warrant of their appointment, Earl Peel, the Chairman, delivered the following speech:--

"Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen,

"On behalf of my colleagues and myself, may I thank Your Excellency very warmly for the most kind words with which you have received us? May we also thank all those who have come here today to welcome us at the outset of our enquiry? May I lay stress upon those words `The outset of our enquiry'? We were most anxious to begin our task here in Palestine with minds as free as possible from any prepossession and from all preconceived ideas. We bring, I believe, each of us some contribution of experience derived from one sphere or another of public life; but we were determined that, as regards views and judgments on the affairs of Palestine, we should apply minds fresh and impartial to the problems before us. We therefore heard no evidence before we left London and our only meeting was devoted to discussions of procedure and other points of detail. When our departure from London was delayed, we again considered this question, but in spite of the loss of time we came again to the same conclusion.

"But we have been by no means inactive. We were appointed by His Majesty the King as long ago as August last. We have had, therefore, time to acquire some knowledge of the elementary facts of the situation in Palestine and of the machinery of government and policies on which we may expect to hear evidence. The Government of Palestine and its officers have been of the greatest possible assistance in these requirements. They have answered very fully our rather onerous requests for facts and figures, and we should like to express, through Your Excellency, our keen sense of gratitude to your officers for the fulness and lucidity of the papers with which we have been supplied and for the figures, statistics and descriptions of administrative detail which we have studied. They have saved us an immense amount of labour and have lightened the burden of our enquiry. They have given us a framework which makes it far more easy for us to appreciate the evidence which will be laid before us.

"Let me refer to one point of procedure. The question of whether we should hold our sittings in public or in private has been before us. We have decided that in an enquiry of this importance it would be wiser to hold our sittings as far as possible in public, but we recognize that there may be witnesses whom it would be proper to hear in private and that, in many cases, the witnesses themselves may prefer to give their evidence or part of their evidence in a similar manner.

"You have heard the terms of reference approved by His Majesty. We are `to ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances which broke out in Palestine in the middle of April'. You will note the words `underlying causes'. It does not appear to be necessary, therefore, to enquire into the detailed course of events in the last six or seven months. If there are claims and counter-claims arising out of these events, they are matters for the Courts or for the Administration, but we have to deal, I believe, with wider issues.

"Then we are `to enquire into the manner in which the Mandate is being implemented in relation to the obligations of the Mandatory towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively, and to ascertain whether, upon a proper construction of the terms of the Mandate, either the Arabs or the Jews have any legitimate grievance on account of the way in which the Mandate has been or is being implemented; and if we are satisfied that any such grievances are well founded to make recommendations for their removal and for the prevention of their recurrence'.

"Time will perhaps be saved if those who propose to give evidence will first study our terms of reference. We have, of course, no authority to exceed them, but the terms themselves are very wide and we intend to interpret them in a broad and comprehensive manner. In this connection I would like to quote from a speech made in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister a few days ago. Mr. Baldwin said:--

'I would like to emphasize . . . that a Royal Commission in this country is an entirely independent body, uncontrolled by His Majesty's Government, and perfectly free to report in any sense that it thinks fit within the terms of its reference.'

"We are under no illusion as to the difficulty of our task, and we make a general appeal to the people of Palestine without any distinction to do nothing which may add to our difficulties and give us their friendly co-operation. To those who may give evidence before us, I would quote some words used by the Prime Minister in the speech to which I have referred:--

'I think it is very important that, while the Commission is engaged on this work, which is very difficult and very delicate, we should avoid as far as we can such controversial treatment of that subject as might inflame feelings that have not subsided and that are only too ready to be inflamed on either side.'

"Unhappily, while we were on our journey here, an incident has arisen that can hardly be said to be of assistance. One large section of this population, through its leaders, has declared that it will take no part in the work of the Royal Commission. It would be most unfortunate if without their advice and assistance we were compelled to arrive at conclusions and to make decisions.

"A Royal Commission is an entirely independent body with no responsibility for the policy of His Majesty's Government in the present or in the past. Is it too much to ask that all those who love Palestine and hold her future dear will join with us and share our labours? It would be deplorable indeed if strife and fear and dissension were to be the portion of this Holy Land which sent forth in the past a message of peace and goodwill to all the world."

JEWISH IMMIGRATION INTO PALESTINE.

74. Immigration continued to be regulated as heretofore in accordance with the estimated economic absorptive capacity of the country.

There were 29,727 Jewish immigrants registered during the year. Of these, 2,970 were capitalist immigrants, whose dependants numbered 2,810, and 6,981 were persons coming to employment, whose dependants numbered 4,496. The number of immigrants, apart from dependants, authorized under labour schedules was 4,500 for the period April-September, 1936, and 1,800 for the period October, 1936--March, 1937.

75. In connection with the issue of the latter schedule, the Secretary of State for the Colonies made the statement which is quoted in full in paragraph 71.

76. The Palestine Government has continued to take all possible measures to check illegal immigration through the agency of His Majesty's Consular Officers abroad, by the usual control arrangements at ports and frontiers and by the employment of a special preventive force on land and sea. Additional preventive measures are now under consideration by the Government.

77. Eight hundred and twenty-eight persons (including 198 Jews) who made their way into the country surreptitiously and were detected, were sentenced to imprisonment for their offence and recommended for deportation; 674 such deportations were carried out during the year, including 89 Jews. Ten Jewish and twelve non-Jewish travellers were also deported for over-staying their period of permitted stay in the country, and 47 Jews and 67 non-Jews were deported for other immigration offences. In addition, 1,220 persons, including five Jews, were summarily deported to Syria and Egypt on apprehension at the frontiers.

78. The proportion of Jewish immigrants from Germany has considerably increased, amounting to 27 per cent., as compared with 14 per cent. in 1935 and 16 per cent. in 1934. Poland, which provided 41 per cent. of the Jewish immigrants, continues to be the principal centre of Jewish immigration to Palestine. The proportion of immigration certificates allotted by the Jewish Agency to Germany and to German refugees under the labour schedule increased from 18 per cent. for the period April--September, 1935, to 38 per cent. for the period April--September, 1936.

ARAB AFFAIRS.

79. From the beginning of the year until April the representatives of the united Arab Parties whose coalition is described in paragraph 31 of the Introductory Chapter of the Annual Report for 1935 continued to make collective representations to Government upon matters affecting Arab interests. In April, however, a body styled the Supreme Arab Committee was formed. The circumstances in which this Committee came into being and its principal activities are described in the section of this Report dealing with Policy. The Supreme Arab Committee absorbed the representatives of the different parties including the Istiqlal Party, and the President of the Supreme Moslem Council.

After the formation of the Supreme Arab Committee the different parties temporarily sank their differences and Arab political affairs continued to be handled by this Committee who also presented the Arab case to the Royal Commission during its visit to Palestine.

80. As a result of the long strike and the campaign of boycott of Jewish goods and Jewish shops, the Arabs made an effort towards a financial and commercial re-organization aimed at achieving independence of Jewish economy. A separate Arab Chamber of Commerce was established in Jerusalem. Contact between the Arab Chambers of Commerce in different towns became more noticeable and a number of new Arab shops were opened. Steps were also taken to encourage the importation and sale of Arab products from Syria in place of Jewish products.

81. In March an `Iraqi delegation of fifteen senators, deputies and notables who were proceeding to the Agricultural Exhibition in Cairo passed through Palestine on their way to and from Egypt. While in Palestine, they were the guests of the Arab community and visited Nazareth, Jenin, Nablus, Jerusalem, and Jaffa and, on their homeward journey, Haifa.

SUPREME MOSLEM COUNCIL.

82. At its twenty-ninth session, the Permanent Mandates Commission asked for fuller information concerning the composition, working and results of the Supreme Moslem Council. (Minutes, Pages 148 and 208.) This information is given below.

The Commission also asked for information as to its representative character. The circumstances in which the members actually constituting the Council were appointed are described hereafter. Briefly, they are: the President was elected in 1922; the Members were appointed by the High Commissioner under the Supreme Moslem Shari'a Council Ordinance, 1926, the dates of their appointment being two in 1926, one in 1928 and one in 1929.

83. Whilst discussing the representative character of the Supreme Moslem Council, it will be borne in mind that it is not a political body, but an administrative body dealing with Moslem religious affairs. In so far as it is representative, it is representative of the Moslems of Palestine in their religious aspect. Whether, if there were an election, the present members would be re-elected, it is impossible to prophesy. But although the present members were not elected, they are as representative as any who could be appointed by the High Commissioner.

84. The Supreme Moslem Council was established by an Order issued by the first High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, in December, 1921. This Order regulates the activities of the Supreme Moslem Council.

Under the Order of December, 1921, a Moslem body was created, to be known as the Supreme Shari`a Moslem Council. The main object of the creation of this body was to put in its hands the control and the management of Moslem Awqaf and Shari`a affairs in Palestine. The Government was to have no voice in the constitution of the Council; the powers of administration and control with regard to Moslem Awqaf were vested in the Council to the exclusion of Government. Although the Council was not vested specifically by the Order with the power to administer and control Shari`a Courts, by section 1 it was entrusted with the control and management of Shari`a affairs, and by section 8 it was empowered to appoint the judges and inspectors of Shari`a Courts after the nomination of the Council had been approved by the Government. The Council was given power to dismiss all Awqaf and Shari`a officials, including the judges and inspectors, without the prior approval of Government, and was obliged only to report the fact of dismissal and the reasons therefor to Government.

The Supreme Moslem Council was to be elected by general election, but the special law required by section 4 of the Order, prescribing the method of election and laying down the functions, status and precedence of the President, has never been submitted to Government for enactment.

As regards the members of the Council, under the Order they were to be elected by the secondary electors elected by the inhabitants of the District which the member was to represent in accordance with the Ottoman Law of Elections to the Chamber of Deputies.

85. The duties of the Supreme Moslem Council were defined as follows:--

(a) To administer and control Moslem Awqaf and to approve the annual Awqaf Budget and, after approval, to transmit the Budget to Government for information.

(b) To nominate for the approval of Government and after such approval to appoint Qadis of the Shari`a Courts, the President and members of the Shari`a Court of Appeal, and the inspector of Shari`a Courts. If the Government withholds its approval, it shall signify to the Council within 15 days the reasons therefor.

(c) To appoint Muftis from among the three candidates to be elected by a special electoral college in accordance with the special regulation to be passed by the Council, provided that the election of Muftis in Beersheba District shall be made by the Sheikhs of the Tribes. (The regulation for the election of Muftis has never been enacted.)

(d) To appoint the directors and mamurs of Awqaf and all Shari`a officials.

(e) To control the General Waqf Committee and all other committees and waqf administration.

(f) To dismiss all Waqf and Shari`a officials. When an official is dismissed, notice thereof is sent to Government with reasons for dismissal.

(g) To enquire into all Moslem Awqaf and to produce proof and evidence establishing the claim to these Awqaf with a view to having such returned to the Council.

The Moslem Community have the right to supervise the actions of the Council through the Electoral College.

86. The election of a President and members of the Council in accordance with the Order was held in 1922. It was at that election that the present holder of the office of President was elected.

87. In 1926 the term of office of the members elected in 1922 expired and an election for new members was held. The election was challenged by one of the parties and declared void by the High Court. Thereupon the Supreme Moslem Shari`a Council Ordinance, 1926, was promulgated, by which it was provided that pending the holding of fresh elections certain named persons should, together with the President, constitute the Council, and that the Council, as constituted, should exercise the functions prescribed by the Order of December, 1921, other than those defined in section 8 (4) of the Ordinance.

In the Ordinance of 1926, it is also provided that the High Commissioner shall have power--

(a) to constitute a committee of Moslems for the purpose of preparing a revision of the Order of 1921; and

(b) to make regulations concerning the election of the members of the Council.

In fact, with the exception of the President, the present members of the Council were appointed by the High Commissioner. A committee was also appointed on the 14th May, 1926, in order to revise the Order of 1921. The Committee so appointed by the High Commissioner under the chairmanship of the President, Supreme Moslem Council, submitted to Government a draft Election Ordinance and a draft Organic Law for the Constitution of the Supreme Moslem Council to replace the Order of December, 1921, and the Ottoman Law of Election.

In 1929 the drafts submitted by the Council were made public, but in view of the riots which took place in August, 1929, and of the unrest which followed, these documents did not receive the careful and general study by the Moslem Community which they required. Several comments and criticisms were, however, submitted to Government. Since that date, no further move has been made in the matter.

88. As regards the activity of the Supreme Moslem Council, the following is a summary of its activities since it was established:--

(i) Twenty-one new mosques and three minarets were built, and 313 mosques, including their minarets, were repaired in towns and villages.

(ii) Two hundred and twenty-four new buildings, including shops and houses, were built; some of these buildings are of considerable value, such as the waqf building which was originally the Palace Hotel in Jerusalem and is now used as Government offices.

(iii) Three hundred waqf buildings, including shops and houses, were repaired.

(iv) The Council drained and assisted in draining many swamps on waqf lands.

(v) The Council planted about 40,000 trees on waqf lands.

(vi) The Council contributed to the enlargement of waqf lands by the purchase of about 25,000 dunums.

(vii) Eight schools for boys, girls, and orphans are maintained by the Supreme Moslem Council, and 24 schools receive annual grants-in-aid from it.

(viii) The Supreme Moslem Council has also granted scholarships to 64 Moslem students in universities in Egypt, Syria, and Europe.

(ix) The Supreme Moslem Council established a Moslem orphanage which takes care of some 270 to 300 students of both sexes. After completing their elementary studies, the orphans are trained in various industries including printing, carpentry, tailoring for men and women, bent wood work, shoe-making, work for the blind, and book-binding.

(x) The Supreme Moslem Council contributed financially towards the training of about forty Moslem midwives who graduated from the midwifery school under the Department of Health.

(xi) The most important work undertaken by the Council was the repair of the Mosque of Al Aqsa and other parts of the Haram el-Sharif at Jerusalem, the cost of which amounted to £P.100,000.

JEWISH AFFAIRS

89. The principal Jewish case before the Palestine Royal Commission was presented by the Jewish Agency. Their chief spokesman was Dr. Ch. Weizmann, the President of the Agency, who also submitted a comprehensive memorandum regarding the interpretation of the Mandate for Palestine and the Jewish grievances. He was supported by other representatives of the Jewish Agency.

Other Jewish institutions and organizations which appeared before the Royal Commission in Palestine included the Vaad Leumi, the Chief Rabbinate, the Agudath Israel, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Jewish Farmers Federation, and the Poale Zion. The evidence given in the public sittings of the Royal Commission, which were fully reported in the Hebrew Press, was followed with keen interest by the Jewish public.

90. The General Council (Vaad Leumi) made representations to Government during 1936 in regard, inter alia, to questions of public security, the proposed establishment of a Legislative Council, municipal affairs affecting the Jewish population in towns of mixed populations, subvention of the Jewish religious courts, and grants-in-aid of the Jewish educational and health services. The General Council also issued statements addressed to the Arab population, calling for co-operation between Arabs and Jews and disclaiming any design on the part of Palestine Jewry on the Moslem Holy Places and any desire to establish predominance over the Arab people of Palestine.

91. The negotiations between the Vaad Leumi and the Agudath Israel, which were inaugurated in May 1935, with a view to meeting the legitimate demands of the Agudath Israel within the framework of the Jewish Community Rules and had been interrupted by the death of Chief Rabbi Kook, were not resumed owing to the disturbances and to the absence of the appointment of a successor to the late Chief Rabbi.

Notwithstanding the differences existing between the two bodies in religious matters, they have acted in accord in other fields of communal activity where national or external interests as contrasted with sectional or internal interests are involved. They have, for example, continued to work in unison in municipal matters in the Jewish Municipal Council and in the discussions and declarations of the Jewish community and the Jewish Agency in regard to the proposals for the Legislative Council. The modus vivendi with the Jewish Agency in the matter of the immigration of Agudath members into Palestine has continued in force.

92. The divergencies between the Revisionist and the Zionist bodies, and in particular the Jewish Labour Federation, were less marked during 1936, and as a result of the disturbances there was a truce between the opposing parties, though no permanent conciliation has been effected. At the end of the year, the Jewish Agency was, however, attacked by the Revisionist press and party in regard to the distribution of immigration certificates under the Labour Immigration Schedule, and there were disputes between Labour Federation and Revisionist workmen in regard to the allocation of work on buildings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

93. A local religious council was constituted in Jerusalem to deal with all religious matters affecting the local community and particularly with the administration of affairs connected with the ritual slaughtering of animals. Hitherto there had been four independent bodies controlling ritual slaughtering in Jerusalem. Through the mediation of the newly constituted council, it proved possible to combine three of the groups concerned in a single board for the control of ritual killing. The Agudath Israel continues to maintain a separate board of its own.

94. The Federation of Jewish Labour continued its campaign for funds for unemployment relief works. A sum of over £P.100,000 had been collected up to the end of 1936. With these funds the Federation has undertaken various relief works and invested in a number of undertakings in conjunction with the Jewish Agency to provide employment on roads and buildings and in agriculture and stone quarrying.

95. The Department for Social Services of the Vaad Leumi (under the direction of the eminent social worker, Miss Henrietta Szold), has considerably extended its activities in supervising and co-ordinating the social work carried out by Jewish local committees. It gave valuable assistance to the Government Probation Officers in dealing with young Jewish delinquents.

96. The General Council (Vaad Leumi) conducted an energetic campaign for the naturalisation as Palestinian citizens of Jewish immigrants, who are qualified therefor by residence, and gave much assistance to the Department of Migration in the acceptance of applications for certificates of citizenship under the Palestinian Citizenship Order, 1925.

97. Local Councils were constituted in the Jewish settlements of Beit Vegan, Kfar Saba, Raanana, and Hertzlia.

98. The new hospital of the Kupat Cholim (Sick Fund) of the Jewish Federation of Labour at Petah Tikvah was officially opened by the High Commissioner in October.

99. A Jewish symphony orchestra was established at the end of the year through the initiative of Mr. Bronislaw Huberman, the well-known violinist, who secured the services of a large number of Jewish players and considerable financial support for his scheme from abroad. Mr. Arturo Toscanini conducted the first concerts of the new orchestra, which achieved a striking success. A number of the concerts are being broadcast by the Palestine Broadcasting Service.

100. Dr. Nahum Sokolow, a former President of the Jewish Agency, and for many years a member of the Executives of the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, died in May, 1936. He had been one of the leaders of the Zionist movement since its inception. He was also well known as a publicist and author, and his influence on Hebrew cultural development has been profound.

101. The Jewish community, and the inhabitants of Tel-Aviv in particular, suffered a great loss by the death in September of Mr. M. Dizengoff, C.B.E., the Mayor of Tel-Aviv, who had been so intimately associated with the foundation of Tel-Aviv and its subsequent phenomenal growth, and whose services to the city had been invaluable.

Mr. I. Rokach, the Deputy-Mayor of Tel-Aviv, was appointed by the High Commissioner to succeed Mr. Dizengoff as Mayor.

102. Rabbi Amiel, formerly Chief Rabbi of Antwerp, who had been elected as Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Jaffa and Tel-Aviv in succession to the late Rabbi Aaronsohn, took up his appointment in January.

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS.

103. The revised estimate of revenue for the financial period 1st April, 1936, to 31st March, 1937, is £P4,550,000, as compared with the original estimate of £P6,063,887. The principal decreases occur under Customs Duties (£P1,000,000), Licences, Taxes, etc. (£P310,000), Fees of Court, etc. (£P146,000), and Interest (£P41,000). This setback in revenue collections is due mainly to the strike. Expenditure is estimated at £P4,670,000, and the excess of expenditure over revenue for the year will be approximately £P120,000, excluding any charges which may fall to be borne by Palestine in respect of the excess cost of the British Forces temporarily sent to Palestine in connection with the recent disturbances. The cost of the emergency measures is at present estimated at approximately £P1,250,000. It is anticipated that with these charges included, the accumulated surplus balance of Government at the 31st March, 1937, will amount to approximately £P4,900,000, as compared with an actual surplus of £P6,267,810 at the 31st March, 1936.

104. During the calendar year 1936 a total of 31,671 immigrants entered Palestine, as compared with a total of 64,147 in the previous year. The total value of imports decreased from £P17,853,000 in 1935 to £P13,900,000 in 1936, while the total value of exports decreased from approximately £P4,766,000 in 1935 to £P4,040,000 in 1936. It should be pointed out, however, that the Jaffa Port was closed for nearly six months, and the fall in exports is mainly due to a fall in the citrus crop for the season 1935-36 which is reflected in the exports in 1936.

105. The number of dunums of land sold in 1936 is estimated at 76,000, valued at £P4,921,000, as compared with 187,000 dunums valued at £P11,720,000, in 1935.

106. The estimated value of investments in buildings in 1936 was £P4,000,000, as compared with £P7,000,000 in 1935.

107. New area planted with citrus trees was 20,000 dunums, as compared with 28,000 dunums in 1935 and 50,000 dunums in 1934.

108. During 1936, new companies registered totalled 183, with a registered capital of £P1,038,000, as compared with 298, with a registered capital of £P3,120,000, in 1935, while 50 companies increased their capital from £P1,060,611 to £P1,893,378, as compared with the year 1935 when 55 companies increased their capital from £P1,182,000 to £P2,952,000. At the 31st December, 1936, the currency in circulation amounted to £P5,621,134, as compared with £P6,561,134 at the 31st December, 1935. Deposits with the leading local Banks at the 31st December, 1936, amounted to approximately £P16,600,000, as compared with approximately £P16,000,000 at the 31st December, 1935.

109. Towards the end of 1935, revenue receipts began to reflect the prevailing uneasiness aroused by the unsettled political outlook in Europe, and they continued to fall during 1936. The disturbances which broke out in April, 1936, intensified the process. Customs receipts, which, until November, 1935, had maintained an average of £P245,000 a month, fell to £P138,000 in August, 1936, but by the end of 1936 they tended to stabilize at an average of about £P200,000 per month. Other revenues showed a decrease from approximately £P2,900,000 to approximately £P2,300,000. The general uneasiness to which reference has been made and the uncertainty as to the trend of events in Palestine tended to discourage new developments in trade and industry. The uneasiness was first felt in the money market, and credit facilities were curtailed. Winding-up orders were issued in respect of seven companies and six receiving orders in respect of others. Seventeen other companies went into voluntary liquidation, and 33 bankruptcies of persons were entered in 1936 as compared with thirteen recorded in 1935. The building industry, citrus plantation, and generally trade and industry suffered a setback.

110. With regard to the trade negotiations with Egypt referred to in paragraph 62 of the Introductory Chapter in the Annual Report for 1935, the Agreement reached between the two Governments was embodied in an exchange of notes between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Egyptian Government dated 18th August, 1936.* The benefits conferred by the Agreement are summarized in the above-mentioned paragraph of the Annual Report for 1935. In accordance with the terms of the Agreement, proposals were made in March by the Egyptian Government for a seasonal reduction of the Palestine Customs Tariff on vegetables grown in Egypt. The Egyptian Government has been invited to send a delegation to Palestine to discuss these proposals with a local Committee, and the proposed visit is expected to take place early in 1937. Negotiations with a view to facilitating trade between Palestine and `Iraq were opened in 1935, and in 1936 an Agreement was concluded by means of an exchange of notes on the 14th December, 1936, between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of `Iraq.** In the interest of the entrepôt trade of Palestine the `Iraqi Government will be given a free zone in the Haifa Harbour; and pending the establishment of this free zone the transit trade from or to `Iraq carried over the trans-desert route will receive special treatment by way of extension of the period of free storage of goods to 28 clear days. With a view to encouraging the trans-desert route, the Palestine import duty on rice of `Iraqi origin has been reduced to 50 per cent. of the general Palestine duty on rice in force at any time. The duty on dates of `Iraqi origin has also been reduced to one-half mil per kilo. Barley and ghee of `Iraqi origin have been exempted from import duty, subject, in the case of barley, to such temporary measures of general application as may be necessary to protect the Palestine crop.

_______________
*Cmd. 5361. Treaty Series No. 7 (1937).
**Cmd. 5372. Treaty Series No. 9 (1937).

111. During 1936 Dr. A. G. Tomkins of the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, reported on the question of the oversea transport of oranges from Palestine and the need for an investigation into the cause of fruit wastage. His proposals are under consideration by the Government.

112. Mention was made in paragraph 63 of the Introductory chapter to last year's report of the appointment of a Committee to investigate the question of transportation and marketing of citrus fruit with particular reference to the regulation of consignment of oranges by rail and by sea and the need for the establishment of a shipping board. The Committee's labours have been delayed owing to the disturbances. The Committee has divided its work into two sections: "Transportation" and "Marketing", and it has submitted an interim report on Transportation which is at present under consideration by the Government. It is expected that the Committee's report on Marketing will be submitted in the course of 1937. As a result of the special inquiry into the excessive competition of various products manufactured in countries with low wage levels and in countries where export bonuses are afforded which affect detrimentally the conduct of certain local industries, referred to in paragraph 63 of the 1935 Report, further protection was afforded to certain classes of goods and further exemption from duty was granted on certain raw materials. In addition to these steps, Customs drawbacks were granted in certain cases to locally- manufactured exported goods where exemption from duty of the raw material was impracticable.

113. Further steps were taken to implement the recommendations of the experts who visited Palestine in 1935 with a view to the re-organization of the Railway in regard to its tariff and general lines of development and to its accounting and store-keeping methods. Many of the recommendations of these experts have already been carried into effect. There remain, however, certain major recommendations which have perforce had to be postponed owing to the deterioration in the financial position.

114. During the summer of 1936 the General Manager of the Jaffa Citrus Exchange visited the United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, France. Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia to continue negotiations with the authorities with a view to securing the removal of trade and currency restrictions which are an obstacle to the Palestine export trade in oranges and grapefruit. The results achieved in 1935 are set out in paragraph 64 of the Introductory Chapter of the Annual Report for 1935. Various tentative arrangements were suggested, but up to the end of 1936 no further definite results have been reported.

115. At the 29th Meeting of the Permanent Mandates Commission held at Geneva from 27th May to 12th June, 1936, it was asked whether the Mandatory Power maintained that the provisions of the Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1911 could validly be advanced against Palestine in the matter of the duties on Japanese imports into the territory.

The Mandatory Power must accept the legal position that so long as that Treaty remains applicable to Palestine, discrimination against Japan is impossible. It is the general policy of His Majesty's Government to apply the provisions of its Commercial Treaties with foreign Powers to all territories for the administration of which it is responsible, unless there is reason to the contrary, and in the present instance no sufficient cause has been shown for giving notice to terminate the application of the Treaty to Palestine.

In this connection reference should be made to paragraph 36A of Chapter XXIII.

AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND LAND.

116. Increasing attention has in recent years been given to the connected problems of afforestation, water conservation, soil erosion, and the improvement of grazing. These questions are of major importance in Palestine: centuries of neglect and of the indiscriminate cutting of timber have resulted in the almost total extinction of forest cover. Large areas of the country are in consequence seriously affected by soil erosion and denudation, and the position is aggravated by close and continuous grazing which precludes the possibility of natural recovery. The immediate result of these conditions, particularly in the hills; is a serious wastage both of soil and of water, which gravely affects the fertility of the country, while floods are a recurrent cause of loss and damage. As a result, also, Palestine is dependent for nearly all its timber requirements on supplies from other countries, the value of such imports being £P.1,344,000 in 1936.

117. The establishment of a separate Department of Forests on the 1st April, 1936, marked a further step in the development of an active and comprehensive policy with regard to these questions. Prior to that date the Forestry Service had formed part of the Department of Agriculture. Increased funds were allocated for afforestation during the year, and a new vote for research on soil erosion was provided in the Estimates. The activities of the new Department had necessarily to be restricted during the period of the disturbances, but considerable progress was made in the formulation of a comprehensive policy, on which the Department's programme of work will in future be based.

118. The year was a difficult one for agriculturists. The winter rains were poor, particularly in the southern and eastern parts of the country where crops were severely affected, and the yields of the major crops (with the exception of melons and potatoes) were considerably below those of the previous year. The situation was aggravated by the prolonged disturbances which rendered it difficult for farmers to transport their produce to the towns and compelled them to dispose of it locally at very low prices. Jewish farmers, moreover, suffered considerable losses from malicious damage to their crops. As the result of exceptionally heavy rains during November and December, the year closed more cheerfully. In spite of the adverse conditions, however, notable progress was made in a number of directions, such as the growing of potatoes and vegetables, the egg and poultry industry, and the use of agricultural machinery.

119. The activities of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries with regard to education and propaganda were expanded during the year. In August a new Agricultural Education and Research Officer was appointed, with a view to securing the co-ordination of all forms of research being carried out in the country and the adoption of a more active and comprehensive policy of agricultural education. Prior to this appointment a new Agricultural Supplement to the Palestine Gazette had been started. This supplement, which is published monthly in the three official languages, contains a wide range of information on subjects of interest to agriculturists. The establishment of the Broadcasting Service provided a further opportunity for the dissemination of information and advice to farmers, and talks, market reports, and weather forecasts form a regular part of the broadcast programmes.

120. Owing to the disturbances, little progress could be made during the year with the scheme for the grant of long-term credits to be financed from Loan funds to fellahin in the hill districts, which was described in paragraph 67 of the Introductory Chapter of last year's Report; but since the end of the year the High Commissioner directed that the scheme should now be proceeded with. Loans amounting to £P.34,000 were also issued to farmers in the autumn for the purchase of seed. In spite of financial stringency, Government continued to furnish direct assistance to the farmer in a number of ways: seed potatoes, grain, and vegetable seedlings were issued: beehives were distributed on generous terms, and a supply of duty-free sugar was once again made available for beekeepers: eggs, chicks, and swarms were distributed from Government poultry stations and apiaries, and fruit trees and vines from Government Horticultural Stations.

121. Citrus exports during the season 1935-36 were considerably less than in the previous season, owing to the effect of hot winds on the young fruit in May, 1935. Exports up to the end of the year, in the new season, showed a substantial increase.

The Export of Citrus Fruit Rules, 1936, which were framed in consultation with the industry, effected a number of important changes, including the prohibition of the export of oranges of a size larger than 120 to the box, and the alteration of the date of the commencement of the export season from the 15th November to the 20th November. The programme of the citrus advertising campaign for the season 1936-37 was prepared on the lines adopted in previous years: the advertising fee was raised from 3 mils to 3 1/2 mils a case, in order to ensure that the loss incurred in the previous season, when the number of cases exported had fallen considerably short of the estimate, should be satisfactorily covered.

122. The new Chief Fisheries Officer took up his duties in 1936. The Fisheries Service was increasingly active both in the enforcement of existing legislation and in the dissemination of advice and help to fishermen.

123. At its twenty-ninth Session the Permanent Mandates Commission raised the question as whether the time had not come to institute a constructive agrarian policy, and asked for information on the subject in the Report for 1936. Minutes, page 143.

The Palestine Government has, in fact, consistently followed an active policy of development, designed to increase the quantity and quality of crops and livestock and to encourage the intensification of farming by the adoption of improved irrigation and technical methods. This policy will be described in detail under the following heads:--

(i) Research and Demonstration.
(ii) Direct Assistance to Farmers.
(iii) Protective Legislation for Crops and Livestock.
(iv) Land Policy.
(v) Fiscal Measures.

(i) Research and Demonstration.

Six agricultural and nine horticultural stations have been established for research and experiment. At these stations, experiments are carried out to determine the optimum quantities and kinds of fertilizer to be applied under varying conditions, the most suitable periods of sowing, and the advantages of modern implements over the local primitive implements. Depth of ploughing and sowing, and dates of various cultural operations, are also studied. Horticultural research is primarily confined to investigations as to tree crops and methods of cultivation best suited to different altitudes and soils.

The results obtained at the agricultural and horticultural stations are then demonstrated by officers who visit villages and settlements in order to encourage the rural population to adopt improved farming practices and better systems of rotation with a view to increasing productivity, especially of lands where yields have fallen to the lowest limit of fertility.

In cooperation with leading farmers, a large number of demonstration plots have been laid down throughout the country, which also facilitate the dissemination of improved seed, and fruit demonstration plots have been established for the demonstration of the best methods of fruit culture and the most suitable kinds of fruit trees.

At the central stock farm a comprehensive series of breeding experiments is in progress, for which a variety of animals of different breeds have been imported with a view to the improvement of the local livestock.

Two agricultural schools were established, one for Arabs in 1931 and one for Jews in 1934, under the bequest of the late Sir Ellis Kadoorie. School gardens have been established in 192 Arab villages and at 100 Jewish schools. Weekly talks to farmers on agricultural subjects are now an established feature of the Palestine Broadcasting Service, and the farmer is further reached by the Department of Agriculture through a simply-worded pamphlet issued monthly as an Agricultural Supplement to the Palestine Gazette.

The work of the various branches of the Department of Agriculture and the agricultural research and education facilities of the various unofficial organizations are co-ordinated by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries in his capacity as Chairman of the Central Agricultural Council. This Council was established in 1931 to advise Government on agricultural economics and marketing, horticulture, plant protection, agricultural chemistry, citrus fruit, irrigation, animal husbandry, agronomy, and agricultural education.

(ii) Direct Assistance to Farmers.

At agricultural stations, large quantities of improved seed particularly of barley and wheat, are raised for distribution to farmers. Twenty-five small portable grading machines have been purchased for use in the villages so as to enable injurious weed seeds to be eliminated and seed grain to be graded.

Local inferior types of vegetables are gradually being replaced by superior imported varieties, of which millions of seedlings are raised at, and issued from, agricultural stations.

Farmers are encouraged to grow new crops and vegetables and are issued with improved seed, vegetable seedlings, fruit trees, bud-wood, and pedigree poultry. They are taught how to apply organic manure and fertilisers to the best advantage; they are taught the care, management, and feeding of animals and poultry, and no opportunity is lost to impress upon them the necessity for growing more fodder crops and for making silage. The treatment of pests and diseases, and the dipping of sheep, goats and cattle, is practised and demonstrated.

Five plant nurseries are maintained to raise and distribute thousands of fruit trees yearly.

Ten poultry stations and apiaries have been established throughout the country for the issue of large numbers of hatching eggs, day-old chicks and six-weeks old pullets and cockerels at low prices. Modern hives are also issued in replacement of native hives.

Inferior male stock are castrated and pedigree sires are imported, bred, and loaned to villages for the service of female stock. Milk recording has been started. Pedigree poultry are imported, bred and distributed, and sugar is imported free of customs duty and sold at cost price to beekeepers.

A Registrar of Co-operative Societies was appointed in 1932 for the primary task of organizing co-operative societies among Arab farmers with the purpose of improving Arab methods of marketing.

Good progress has been made year by year, in the construction of roads, particularly in the citrus belt, to facilitate the transport of fruit to the ports and railway stations.

A fruit inspection service is maintained in the interests of the citrus industry for the examination of citrus fruits destined for export.

Grants are also made to the Research Institute of the Jewish Agency for citrus research, the results of which are made available to the industry as a whole.

(iii) Protective Legislation for Crops and Livestock.

Stock-owners are encouraged to report contagious or infectious diseases. Fourteen land frontier quarantine stations are maintained to prevent the introduction of animal diseases. A staff of qualified veterinary surgeons is employed to control and suppress animal diseases in the country. A veterinary laboratory has been established to diagnose diseases and prepare vaccines and sera for use in the field. Life histories of injurious insects are studied in order that the most efficacious methods of combating pests and diseases may be involved.

All imported plants are inspected to prevent the introduction of injurious pests and diseases. A Locust Destruction Ordinance was enacted in 1932 to enable prompt and efficacious measures to be adopted in the event of locust attacks. The output of good types of plants in private nurseries is controlled. The spraying and fumigation against Red and Black Scale of citrus trees is supervised, and steps are taken to induce farmers to combat the Mediterranean Fruit Fly and other pests.

(iv) Land Policy.

Under the procedure of land settlement, an impetus is given to the partition of land held in common; with security of title, a definite stimulus is afforded to individual effort and to the improvement of private land holdings. The Protection of Cultivators Ordinance was enacted in 1933 with the purpose of giving a greater measure of protection to agricultural tenants and ensuring for them security of livelihood independent of changes of ownership.

A Department of Development was created in 1931 to initiate and supervise development measures generally and to supervise the re-settlement of landless Arabs, for which a sum of £P.250,000 was set aside. About £P.40,000 has been spent since 1933 for the improvement of water supplies in Arab villages and Jewish settlements, and a sum of £P.17,000 has been expended on boring machines for water-boring investigations.

Swampy areas have been reclaimed. At the end of 1934, the Huleh Concession was transferred from the former Concessionaires, who had carried out no drainage works to the Palestine Land Development Company which has larger funds at its disposal. The total area to be drained is 57,000 dunums, of which 16,000 dunums have been set aside for Arab cultivators in the area, and will be drained and irrigated by the Concessionaires free of charge to the cultivators. The remaining 41,000 dunums will be available for development and settlement by Jews. The question of financial participation by Government in this scheme is under consideration.

Irrigation and duty of water experiments are carried out to ascertain the most economical use of water. Underground water resources have been surveyed and a water table compiled. The irrigation system at Jericho has been reconstructed by Government and experiments have been made to conserve winter flood water in dams. Two Ordinances designed to protect and secure the better employment of surface water and wells have been drafted.

(v) Fiscal Measures and other forms of Assistance.

The Rural Property Tax has been instituted in replacement of Tithe and Werko. This measure was designed to assist the poorer farmers, since it provides for a graduated tax on various categories of land, the category being determined by productivity. The three lowest categories are wholly exempt, and the tax bears lightly on the ground crop land of the poorest cultivators. A sum of £P.50,000 has been set aside for long-term development loans to villagers and settlers in the hill districts. An Agricultural Mortgage Company has recently been formed; its offices were opened in Jerusalem in October, 1935, and the first applications for loans were received in January, 1936. This Company was formed at the instance of Government with the object of issuing long-term loans, on the security of first mortgages, for agricultural development. The issued capital of the Company is £P.335,000, of which £P.234,500 was called up during 1936. During 1936, 74 loans aggregating £P.66,750 were issued to Arab landowners, and 132 loans aggregating £P.72,219 were issued to Jews. The comparatively small number of loans issued to Arabs is explained by the fact that the issue of such loans was postponed during the period July to November, 1936, on account of the disturbances. These loans were required, as far as could be ascertained, for various works of improvement or conservation, building packing-sheds and dwelling-houses, purchasing pumps, engines and pipes, planting, development and fencing of new citrus groves or other fruit trees, and the payment of debts incurred in such works. It has recently been decided, on the advice of the Advisory Committee, that loans for planting new citrus groves should not ordinarily be granted, but that loans for the development of already planted groves may be continued in approved cases. Owing to the uncertainty of the law with regard to mortgages on leaseholds, no loans are at present granted on this security. All applications for loans after having been examined by the General Manager are inspected and valued by the Valuer and then submitted to the Advisory Committee who advise whether the loan should be granted, the amount and the period of repayment, which in most cases is 20 years. The rate of interest is 8 per cent.

Since 1930 the Government has assisted cultivators by the remission of taxes to an extent of nearly £P,600,000 and has granted agricultural loans amounting to £P.169,000, and forage loans amounting to £P.21,000.

Fiscal measures which have been taken with the object of maintaining prices and encouraging local agriculture include the stabilization of wheat and flour at £P.9 and £P.12.500 per ton respectively and the licensing in the interests of the local grower and miller of imports of wheat and flour in order to avoid a surplus on the markets. Tomato cultivation has increased from 7,000 tons in 1931 to 17,000 tons in 1935, and with a view to encouraging the further development of this important crop the customs duty of £P.2 per ton was increased to £P.4 in 1936 so as to discourage imports. Similarly, potato cultivation has been encouraged under the stimulus of a high import duty of £P.3 per ton, which is effective during the seasons when the local crop is on the market; production, which was negligible before 1930, had increased to about 7,000 tons by 1936.

MISCELLANEOUS.

124. The news of the death of His Majesty King George V on the 20th January, 1936, was received with deep sorrow throughout Palestine. In Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, and Tel Aviv flags were flown at half-mast and on the 21st January many shops and places of entertainment were closed. On the day of the funeral, memorial services were held in Jerusalem at Talavera Barracks and St. George's Cathedral at which the High Commissioner was present. Similar services were held in the Anglican Churches in Jaffa, Haifa, Nazareth, and Nablus and also in the churches of most of the other Christian communities in Palestine and also in most of the synagogues.

Both the Arab and the Hebrew Press published appreciations of the late King's personality and ability; and messages of sympathy were sent and visits of condolence were paid by many persons to the Administrative Officers in various parts of the country.

125. On the 16th January, Rabbi Amiel, formerly of Antwerp, who had recently been appointed Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, arrived in Palestine to take up his appointment.

126. On the 14th February the High Commissioner unveiled a signed portrait of His late Majesty King George V in the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

127. On the 24th February on the invitation of the High Commissioner, the Members of the Jerusalem Municipal Corporation met His Excellency at Government House. His Excellency congratulated the Mayor and Corporation on the work of the past year, and in reply the Mayor pointed out how much the Corporation was indebted to Government for valuable assistance, both financial and otherwise.

128. On the 23rd February the High Commissioner formally opened the Municipal Museum in Tel Aviv, the building for which had been presented to the town by the Mayor, the late Mr. Dizengoff.

129. On the 25th February the High Commissioner opened the Agricultural Land Experimental Station Laboratory in Rehovoth which he himself had presented to the Station, and unveiled a tablet commemorating the gift.

130. In March, the appointment of Mr. M. Haskel as the first Honorary Commissioner for the Union of South Africa in Palestine was announced.

131. On the 14th March the Austrian Consul-General inaugurated the Forest of Nazareth which was dedicated to the memory of the late Dr. Dolfuss. The ceremony was attended by representatives of the Palestine Government.

132. On the 30th March the opening ceremony of the Palestine Broadcasting Service took place at Ramallah, near Jerusalem, where the Transmitting Station had been established. The High Commissioner formally opened the station. All speeches were broadcast in the three official languages, as was a telegram from the Chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London in which he conveyed to the Palestine Broadcasting Service the good wishes of the Corporation for the success of their new enterprise. The ceremony was largely attended.

133. The Third Cruiser Squadron under the command of Admiral G. D. Lyon established its base in Haifa during the disturbances. Units of the fleet undertook the patrolling of the coast to prevent arms smuggling, and on shore the naval ratings cooperated with the land forces in many activities notably as supernumerary engine-drivers on the Palestine Railways and in charge of armoured trains patrolling the track. Reference has already been made in a previous section (Public Security) to their valuable assistance during the threatened harbour strike at Haifa during August.

134. The Levant Fair was officially opened on the 1st May by the High Commissioner, and though the attendance was adversely affected by the disorders, it attracted a reasonable number of visitors.

135. Early in May, following the general strike in Jaffa Port, permission was given by Government to land cargo on the Tel Aviv foreshore near the Levant Fair grounds. A jetty with loading apparatus was later constructed and a Customs House established by Government. It September a start was made to create a lighter basin just south of the jetty, with quays and warehouses. Work continued through the autumn and in December lighters were able to use the basin although the full scheme had yet to be completed. A considerable amount of cargo was handled in the Port, particularly after the opening of the orange season. The cost of these developments has been met by a private Jewish Company--the Marine Trust Company --whose appeal for funds met with a ready response.

136. On the 24th September Mr. Meir Dizengoff, who had celebrated his seventieth birthday in March and had been Mayor of Tel Aviv since the creation of the Municipality, died after a long illness. The body lay in state in the great Hall of the Museum which he himself had presented to the town, and many thousands of persons filed past the bier to pay their last respects. General mourning was observed throughout the Jewish community in Palestine, and his funeral, at which the High Commissioner, the Chief Secretary and the Southern District Administration were represented, was very largely attended. In October Mr. Rokach, the Deputy Mayor, was appointed by the High Commissioner to succeed Mr. Dizengoff as Mayor.

137. On the 27th October, the High Commissioner inaugurated the new hospital of the Jewish Federation of Labour Sick Fund at Petah Tikvah.

138. The progress of the inquiry by the Royal Commission, which began on the 16th November and was still incomplete at the end of the year, is described in a previous section of this Report (Policy).

139. On the 1st December the elections to the Chief Rabbinate of Palestine--a body consisting of a Rabbinical Council of six members and of two Chief Rabbis--took place. Three Sephardi Rabbis and three Askenazi Rabbis were elected to the Rabbinical Council; the Chief Rabbi Ya`akov Meir was re-elected Sephardic Chief Rabbi; and Rabbi Dr. Herzog, who was then Chief Rabbi of the Irish Free State, was elected to the post of Chief Rabbi of Palestine. The ceremony which took place in Jerusalem, was attended by the officers of the District Administration, and a message of greeting from the District Commissioner on behalf of the Government was read.

140. On account of the disorders the tourist trade practically ceased, but there were signs of a slight revival at the end of the year.

I.--JEWISH NATIONAL HOME.

1. The affairs of the Jewish community during 1936 were almost entirely dominated by the disturbances which broke out in April and the results of which are described elsewhere in this Report.

2. The economic situation of the Jewish community showed a slight improvement at the beginning of the year and hopes were entertained that with the conclusion of the Italo-Abyssinian conflict and the consequent relaxation of tension in Europe there would be a gradual return to the prosperous conditions that had prevailed in Palestine until the summer of 1935. These hopes however were not realized. The political unrest in the country, culminating in April in serious disturbances and in the Arab general strike, retarded the initiation of new enterprises and the development of existing activities, and there was a general contraction of investment in building, industry, and agriculture. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties caused by the prolonged disorders, the efforts made by the Jewish community to maintain its existing activities were in a large measure successful and, save in mixed Arab and Jewish quarters in the towns, commercial life remained almost normal amongst the Jewish community.

3. To assist in the protection of Jewish settlements, Government authorized the enrolment of a large force of Jewish supernumerary police and special constables, in the recruitment of whom the Jewish Agency co-operated. Government contributed towards the cost of maintaining this force at first in the proportion of about one-third, which was later increased to one-half; the balance was borne by the Jewish settlements and quarters concerned. Government provided the arms and equipment.

4. Jewish transport companies maintained passenger and goods traffic on the roads throughout the disorders. Special measures were taken by the police and military authorities to protect these transport services.

5. During 1936, 29,727 Jews were registered as immigrants of whom 6,981 were working men and women, 5,780 (including dependants) were of the capitalist category (persons with £P.1,000 and upwards), and 9,495 were dependants of residents in Palestine.

The Jewish population at the end of 1936 was estimated to be approximately 384,000, equivalent to about 29 per cent. of the total settled population of the country.

6. During the year, 18,146 dunums of land were purchased by Jews from non-Jews at a total cost of £P.158,826, as compared with 72,903 dunums at a total cost of £P.1,699,121 in 1935. There was vigorous Arab agitation against the sale of land to Jews, and Arabs accused of facilitating the transfer of Arab lands to Jewish ownership were denounced in the Press, at meetings, and in the mosques.

7. Government granted a long-term lease of 460 dunums of State Domain south of Jaffa for the purpose of a workmen's housing scheme on a co-operative basis sponsored by the General Federation of Jewish Labour. Government has also under consideration the grant of a lease of an area of State Domain north of Tel-Aviv and of the River Auja for a privately financed workmen's housing scheme, which is being planned in conjunction with the Municipality of Tel-Aviv, and for the erection on a portion of the land of a proposed new power station by the Palestine Electric Corporation, Ltd. The housing schemes should eventually assist considerably in relieving the housing shortage in Tel-Aviv and in bringing about a reduction in rents.

Government has approved the grant of a long-term lease of a part of the State Domain north of the village of Mughar in the Southern District (amounting to about 800 dunums) to the Jewish Farmers Federation for the establishment of a farm labourers' settlement in which it is proposed to accommodate about 100 families.

8. The following grants-in-aid by the Palestine Government towards the expenditure of the Jewish community upon various services of a public character have been approved for issue during the financial year 1936-7:

Education:				£P.
	Grant-in-aid to the schools of the General Council (Vaad Leumi) (recurrent services)........................ Capital grant in respect of capital expenditure on new schools (non-recurrent services) ......................... Capital grant towards the construction of a trade school by the Mizrahi organization ........................			42,000 6,618 2,000
Health:
		(a) (b) (c) (d)	Tuberculosis hospital, Safad .............................. School hygiene............................................. Infant welfare work........................................ Tel-Aviv hospital (recurrent service)......................	1,700 1,765 1,038 5,841
	Grant to Hebrew University for anti-malarial research.............			163
	Agriculture and Forests:
	Grant for citrus research by the experimental station of the Jewish Agency .................................... Grant to Jewish Agency experiments on fruit growing at Hillside Station, Kiryat Anavim ...................... Grant to Jewish Agency for intensive farming experiments ......... Grant to Jewish Agency for research .............................. Grant to Hebrew University for field mice investigations ......... Grant to Hebrew University for spirochaetosis research ...........			3,000 300 300 2,950 200 180

9. The Levant Fair, 1936 (the seventh of the series of Fairs held at Tel-Aviv), was officially opened by the High Commissioner on the 30th April as originally planned, notwithstanding difficulties caused by the Arab strike in the clearance from the Jaffa docks of materials for the exhibits. On the occasion of the opening ceremony a message to the Fair was broadcast from London by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the course of which he said:--

"It gives me very real pleasure to participate in the opening ceremony of the International Levant Fair which is once more, after an interval of two years, opening its doors at Tel-Aviv to the markets of the Near and Middle East.

The growth of your remarkable city has been startlingly rapid and that of the Levant Fair itself hardly less so. It began in 1925 as a small exhibition of local produce. Within the short space of nine years, thanks to the hard work, enthusiasm, and the constructive imagination of those responsible for its inception, it has developed into an institution which any great city of the world might properly be proud of . . ."

There were six additions to the national permanent pavilions in the Fair established by the Governments of the Lebanese Republic, Norway, Roumania, Switzerland, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Sixteen countries had official displays at the Fair, 11 of which now possess permanent pavilions. Austria, Holland, Norway, and Turkey were represented at the Fair for the first time. The Palestine Government exhibit, representative of various fields of Government activity, was enlarged in scope and attracted much public interest. A notable feature of the Fair was the Agricultural Exhibition which was held as a separate unit in the Fair and at which a comprehensive display of agricultural produce was shown by the Government Department of Agriculture.

The attendance at the Fair (which totalled 320,000) was seriously affected by the disturbances, and there were fewer visitors from abroad than at previous Fairs.

10. Owing to the closure of Jaffa roadstead through the strike of lightermen and port workers, permission was granted by the Palestine Government in May for the construction by the Harbour and Communications Council which was formed by representative commercial interests in Tel-Aviv, of a jetty at Tel-Aviv for the off-loading of various categories of goods by lighters and for the establishment of bonded warehouses at the Levant Fair grounds. The Council raised £P.70,000 by voluntary subscriptions for this purpose. Subsequently the work was taken over by a Company known as the Palestine Marine Trust Limited, which was formed to provide facilities at Tel-Aviv for importing and exporting goods. The Company has since invited subscriptions to shares for an additional sum of £P.100,000, to which there has been a ready response by the Jewish public. A lighter port is now under construction which will provide a shelter for lighters during rough weather and will facilitate the on and off loading of goods.

A Customs house was also opened at Tel-Aviv railway station during the year to deal with imports by rail from Egypt and Syria.

11. Additional facilities were provided for the transaction of business by the population of Tel-Aviv with Government Departments within the boundaries of the city. Offices were opened by the District Administration, the Department of Migration, and the Police for the issue of licences under the Road Transport Ordinance; and a District Court now sits in Tel-Aviv as a division of the Jaffa District Court.

A branch sub-district office was also established at Nathanya in the Tulkarm sub-district under a Jewish District Officer to serve the needs of Jewish settlements in that neighbourhood.

12. The budget of the General Council (Vaad Leumi) of the Jewish Community of Palestine for the year ended the 30th September, 1936, provided for an estimated revenue of £P.146,185 and an estimated expenditure of £P.145,792, the principal heads of expenditure being Education £P.122,002. Health £P.10,833, Social Service £P.6,975 and Administration £P.5,738. An Order of the Elected Assembly prescribing the rate of fees to be levied by local committees on their members and the methods of assessment was approved by the High Commissioner.

13. The term of office of the Elected Assembly expired in 1934 without its having proved possible to hold fresh elections owing to technical difficulties which the General Council (Vaad Leumi) had experienced in completing the annual register of adult Jews of the community. To regularize the position of the Elected Assembly and of the General Council (Vaad Leumi), a validating Ordinance was enacted in October which provides that these bodies shall continue in office until such time as they are dissolved by Order of the High Commissioner. It is intended to hold new elections to the Elected Assembly early in 1937.

To assist the General Council in overcoming the difficulties experienced in compiling annually the register of adult Jews under the Jewish Community Rules, 1927, the Rules have been amended at the Assembly's request so as to provide inter alia that--

(a) the periodicity of elections to the Elected Assembly shall be four years instead of three years;

(b) the publication of the register of adult Jews shall be at four-yearly intervals instead of annually;

(c) the term of office of Committees of local communities shall be extended from one to four years.

The amendments do not affect the rights and position of those Jews who have opted out, or who desire to opt out, of the official Jewish Community.

14. The elections to the Rabbinical Council of the Jewish Community were held in December under the Regulations made under the Jewish Community Rules, 1927. Interest was chiefly centred on the choice of an Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi to succeed the late Chief Rabbi Kook. Rabbi I. H. Herzog, Chief Rabbi of the Irish Free State, was elected to the post. The veteran Sephardic Chief Rabbi Jacob Meir, who has occupied that position since 1921, was re-elected unanimously. The newly-elected Rabbinical Council consists of eight Rabbis including the two Chief Rabbis, equally distributed amongst the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish communities. Chief Rabbi Herzog was enthusiastically received by the Jewish community on his arrival in Palestine to take up his duties.

15. As a result of the disorders, the Jewish community was faced with the problem of assisting refugees who had evacuated their homes in the mixed quarters of Jaffa, Hebron, and Beisan.

The Tel-Aviv Municipal Corporation organized a Relief Committee for the purpose of assisting refugees from Jaffa from funds provided by the Municipal Corporation and private subscriptions. At the beginning of the disturbances, approximately 9,800 of these refugees who were unable to return to their homes were quartered in synagogues, private houses, and camps in Tel-Aviv. To these funds Government contributed to the extent of half the initial cost of the issue of blankets, etc., and half the cost of maintenance, at 20 mils a day per person, actually defrayed by the Committee. The number of refugees thus provided for decreased gradually to about 4,500 in the middle of June. Government reduced its grant in successive stages, schemes being worked out meanwhile by the General Council (Vaad Leumi) for the rehabilitation of refugees in Tel-Aviv and the neighbouring colonies. Government participated in the schemes by the grant of half the actual cost of rehabilitation of refugees accommodated in refugee camps, and half the actual cost of maintenance of certain of those refugees pending rehabilitation.

The Government grants on account of Jewish refugees in Tel-Aviv amounted to:--

Initial contribution for blankets .................. Maintenance grants ................................. Rehabilitation grants .............................. Funds for isolation and treatment of infectious children ........................................... Total		£P. 625 13,275 1,950 111 £P.15,961
Government also gave assistance in the form of maintenance grants for the Jewish refugees whom it had been found necessary to evacuate from Hebron and Beisan to Jerusalem and Tiberias respectively. The total expenditure on these relief measures for Jewish refugees was:--
(i) (ii) (iii)	Jewish refugees in Tel-Aviv from Jaffa and environs.................................... Jewish refugees in Jerusalem from Hebron ..... Jewish refugees to Tiberias from Beisan ...... Total	£P. 15,961 639 149 £P.16,749

16. Further developments have taken place in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The academic and research staff now comprises 110 members and the number of students is over 600.

In the Faculty of Humanities, new major study subjects have been established in Archaeology, Jewish History, Arabic Language and Literature and Semitics. The esta- blishment of a Chair of English Literature and Institutions has been undertaken by a Committee in England with the intention of commemorating the name of Sir Moses Montefiore.

In the Faculty of Sciences, a laboratory of meteorology and climatology has been established, the equipment of the institute of physics has been developed to allow of systematic research in certain fields of experimental physics, and the study of chemistry for beginners has been arranged. Important steps have been taken towards the establishment of the post-graduate medical school of the University. Construction has begun of the building to contain the medical laboratories of the University, which with the projected buildings of the University Hospital and the nurses' school of the Hadassah Medical Organization will form a University Medical Centre. A University club-house has been erected, providing a refectory for students and a large hall for public gatherings, and the buildings of the laboratory of bio-climatology and of additional chemical laboratories have been completed.

17. A considerable number of local industries which are entirely or largely in the hands of Jewish manufacturers were assisted by the grant of exemption from import duty on raw materials and by the increase of import duties for protective purposes on manufactured articles.

These included protective duties on cast-iron manufactures including enamelled cast-iron baths, manholes, manhole covers, gratings, grating frames, gully grids, and hydrant boxes; iron buckets and pails; chain springs and hooks used in making bedsteads and upholstery; crown corks; rice meal, clean rice, broken rice and rice flour; flushing cisterns; iron nails; envelopes; paper napkins; wire netting; electric light fittings; various articles of furniture of wood, iron, and steel; perfumery; primus stoves and burners; sauerkraut; and various silk and artificial silk goods and items of wearing apparel.

The raw materials exempted from import duty included lead ingots, zinc ingots, crude vegetable turpentine, paraffin wax, raffia, hot rolled mild steel wire and strip imported in coils, and nickel rivets and silver solder discs used in the manufacture of artificial teeth.

In paragraph 6 of the corresponding Chapter of the Annual Report for 1935 (page 34) it was stated in error that Government had granted exemption from import duty on handwritten talismans (Mezuzot), phylacteries and Scrolls of the Law used for Jewish ritual or liturgical purposes. In fact Government has imposed a protective tariff of 20 per cent. ad valorem on these articles at the request of the Jewish Authorities to protect the local Jewish industry.

II.--AUTONOMOUS ADMINISTRATION.

1. The proposals for the establishment of a Legislative Council, referred to on page 13, paragraph 23 of the Annual Report for 1935, are dealt with in paragraphs 45 to 48 of the introductory chapter of this Report.

2. The activities of all Municipal and Local Councils, with the exception of Tel-Aviv, which is a wholly Jewish Municipality, were hampered by the strike declared by many municipal corporations in sympathy with the general strike which prevailed during the period of disturbances from the 19th April until the 12th October, 1936. During this strike, essential municipal services were maintained in most municipal areas without the direct intervention of Government, but it was found necessary to make use of the powers vested in the High Commissioner by the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, 1934, to appoint municipal commissions at Haifa and Hebron in order to ensure the performance of essential municipal services. With the exception of Tel-Aviv, those municipalities, which did not take part in the strike, did not display any noticeable activity and, during the six months of disturbances, no municipal rates or taxes were collected.

3. After the cessation of the strike, the Municipal Councils resumed their normal activities and displayed considerable energy in the way of collecting the arrears of rates which had accrued during the disturbances and in repairing the damage which was caused by six months' stagnation.

4. The following Municipal By-laws were issued by the different Municipal Corpora- tions during the year:--

General By-laws (Safad) Licensing of Bicycles and Tricycles
Licensing of Bicycles and Tri- (Gaza)
cycles (Beersheba) Licensing of Bicycles and Tricycles
Licensing of Bicycles and Tri- (Haifa)
cycles (Beisan) Regulation of Stationary Vehicles
Prevention of Noises (Jaffa) (Gaza)
Town Planning (Jerusalem) Market (Jerusalem)
Town Planning (Haifa) Preservation of Streets (Jerusalem)
Town Planning (Tiberias) General By-laws (Shefa Amr)
General By-laws (Haifa) Regulation of Stationary Vehicles
Slaughter House (Jerusalem) (Tel-Aviv)
Prevention of Noises (Haifa) Road Transport (Tel-Aviv)
Rateable Value of Buildings General By-laws (Beisan)
(Tel-Aviv) Town Planning (Jaffa)
Water Supply (Beersheba) Street Trades (Beersheba)
Licensing of Bicycles and Tri-
cycles (Jerusalem)

The following by-laws were issued by Local Councils:--

Closing of Shops (Ramat Gan) Closing of Shops (Rishon-le-Zion)
General By-laws (Ramat Gan)

5. Mr. I. Rokach has been appointed Mayor of Tel-Aviv in succession to the late Mayor, Mr. M. Dizengoff. Mr. Rokach was for many years the Deputy Mayor of Tel-Aviv.

6. The Mayor of Hebron died in August and the election and appointment of a new Mayor is at present under consideration.

7. The following new Local Councils were established during the year 1936:--

Beit Vegan.
Kfar Saba.
Raanana.
Hertzlia.

Elections for the constitution of these Local Councils are now taking place.

8. The Local Councils Ordinance, 1921, has been amended so as to enable the setting up of Local Councils in urban and rural areas and gives power to such councils, when formed, to levy rates, including educational rates, upon owners or occupiers of properties.

9. The Petah Tiqva Local Council is being now raised to the rank of Municipal Corporation.

10. Except during the period of the disturbances, the administration of the mixed Municipalities was generally satisfactory and they have on the whole displayed a fair sense of financial responsibility. A marked improvement has been observed in the working of Municipalities since the enactment of the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, 1934.

11. A Municipal Auditor who has been able to give material assistance in advising the Municipal Councils as to the proper organization of their accounts was appointed.

III.--JEWISH AGENCY.

The representations of the Jewish Agency in regard to Government proposals for legislation concerned chiefly the Safeguarding of Public Water Supplies Bill, 1936, the Immigration (Amendment) Bill, 1936, the proposed establishment of a Legislative Council, and the proposed restrictions on land to prevent the sale of subsistence areas owned by smallholders.

The Agency urged that provision should be made in the Safeguarding of Public Water Supplies Bill 1936 for reasonable notice to be given of the High Commissioner's intention to declare any area to be a public water supply area, specifying the locality and purpose for which the water is to be used, so as to enable landowners and others to submit their views; that the proposed legislation should be made to apply equally to water supplies under the control of private companies which had been approved as public utility companies; and that machinery should be provided for assessing compensation for landowners and other water users in the area.

The Agency's representations, together with other observations on the Bill, have been referred by the Government for consideration in the first place by the Irrigation Sub-committee of the General Agricultural Council, on which the Jewish Agency is represented.

The Immigration (Amendment) Bill, 1936, was chiefly criticized by the Jewish Agency on the grounds that it is inequitable that in any prosecution for illicit entry and settlement, the onus should be on the accused person to show that he is lawfully in Palestine, even though a prima facie case had not been made out to show that an offence had been committed; and that this might impose an intolerable burden on citizens and new immigrants alike. After careful consideration, Government reached the conclusion that the provision is justified in the special circumstances of illicit immigration into Palestine, in order that attempts at evasion of the immigration law may be more effectively dealt with. Promulgation of the Bill has however been deferred pending the recommendations of the Royal Commission in regard to the manner in which immigration into Palestine shall be regulated in the future.

The Jewish Agency reiterated their opposition to the proposals for the establishment of a Legislative Council and submitted questions regarding certain details of the proposed measure.

In regard to the proposal to enact legislation to prevent the sale of land by landowners below a minimum area sufficient as a means of subsistence to the landowner and his family, the Jewish Agency made representations to the effect that the proposed measure was not warranted by the facts of the situation; that it was contrary to the Mandate and to the terms of the Prime Minister's letter to Dr. Weizmann of February, 1931; and that, so far from improving the position of smallholders, the measure would, if enacted, tend to restrict credit facilities and thus prevent the introduction of more intensive forms of cultivation and the improvement of agricultural methods.

Further action in both these matters was suspended owing to the disturbances and to the subsequent investigation by the Royal Commission whose report is awaited.

2. After consideration of applications by the Jewish Agency, the following labour immigration schedules were authorized by the High Commissioner:--

(a) 4,500 certificates for the period April-September, 1936, the Jewish Agency having applied for 11,200 certificates;

(b) 1,800 certificates for the period October, 1936--March, 1937, the Jewish Agency having applied for 10,695 certificates.

3. The General Council (Vaad Leumi) of the Jewish community made representations to Government on the subject of the computation of the grant-in-aid to Jewish schools, urging a return to the earlier formula based on the proportion of the Jewish to the total population of the country instead of the proportion of Jewish children of school-age to the total number of children of that age.

Government did not, however, see fit to accede to these representations, for the reasons that the total population formula had been abandoned by agreement with the Jewish Agency as not representing a fair division of expenditure on education between the two communities and that the school-age population formula represented a just and equitable division.

The General Council also made representations to Government in regard to assistance in obtaining a loan for the erection of school buildings.

4. Government was unable to accept the demand of the General Council (Vaad Leumi) for an increase of the Government contributions to Jewish Health Services, for the reason that these demands were not in accordance with the formula agreed upon in 1932 with representatives of the Jewish Agency as to the basis of the respective grants, and they would have resulted in the reduction of the provision for other services which in the opinion of Government must have priority.

5. The Jewish Agency submitted applications for the exemption of certain raw materials from import duty and for the imposition of protective tariffs on competing imports (see Chapter I, paragraph 17); and also made representations for certain modifications in the Syria-Palestine Customs Agreement, which are under consideration by a special sub-committee set up by Government for the purpose.

6. Representations were also made by the Jewish Agency in regard to the increasing of the employment of Jews in public works and in the railway and port services.

The share of Jewish labour in public works during the year amounted to 30 per cent. of the total wage bill of the Public Works Department.

Amongst other works Government entrusted to Jewish labour the construction of a section of the Jaffa-Haifa road, the by-pass road from the Affulah-Nazareth road to the Nazareth-Haifa road via Ginegar and Nahalal, and the Affulah-Shatta section of the Affulah-Beisan road, which were undertaken as an emergency measure for public security purposes and on which about 1,000 Jewish workmen found employment.

In December, arrangements were made to allot a section of Government porterage work in Haifa port to Jewish labour at contractors' rates. About 100 Jewish porters are thus employed. In addition about 50 per cent. of the port labour privately employed in Haifa port is Jewish.

The proportion of Jewish employees on the railways rose from 6 per cent. in 1935 to 8.4 per cent. in 1936.

7. The Jewish Agency submitted representations during the disturbances in regard to questions affecting the protection of Jewish life and property. The Agency continued to co-operate with the authorities concerned in all matters relating to the defence and security of Jewish settlements, and in the latter stages of the disturbances, when additional troops were brought into the country, the Agency assisted in securing accommodation for the forces in Jewish settlements and quarters. Jewish lorry drivers and guards were placed at the disposal of the military authorities.

Government authorized the enrolment by instalments of a large force of Jewish supernumerary police and special constables for the protection of the Jewish settlements, in the recruitment of which the Jewish Agency co-operated.

IV.--IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION.

1. The numbers of persons in the several classes recorded as having entered or left Palestine during 1936 and distributed by "racial" or "national" declarations are as follows:--

Arrivals.
	Totals.	Jews.	Arabs.	Others.
(a) Residents returning after a period exceeding one year .... (b) Residents returning after a period not exceeding one year. (c) Immigrants ................... (d) Exempted persons ............. (e) Temporary visitors ........... (f) Transit travellers ...........	1,119 60,761 28,945 442 49,505 7,160	581 17,314 27,909 1 14,137 437	450 36,858 506 -- 16,745 2,509	88 6,589 530 441 18,623 4,214
Total .....	147,932	60,379	57,068	30,485
Departures.
(a) Residents departing for a period exceeding one year .... (b) Residents departing for a period not exceeding one year. (c) Temporary visitors ........... (d) Transit travellers ...........	1,178 69,485 48,313 6,904	773 23,838 14,130 455	147 37,931 16,498 2,369	258 7,716 17,685 4,080
Total .....	125,880	39,196	56,945	29,739
Net increase of population due to recorded migration ..........	22,052	21,183	123	746
2. The numbers of persons recorded as having entered Palestine during 1936 and arriving by the several means of transport are as follows:--
		Sea.	Land.	Air.
Total arrivals ............................... Temporary visitors ........................... Immigrants ................................... Residents returning after a period exceeding one year ................................... Residents returning after a period not ex- ceeding one year ........................... Transit travellers ...........................		57,308 14,890 27,583 870 12,601 1,364	89,634 33,914 1,800 249 47,925 5,746	990 701 4 -- 235 50
This information was requested by the Permanent Mandates Commission when examining the 1935 Report (page 142 of the Minutes). The numbers of persons recorded as having departed from Palestine during 1936 and leaving by the several means of transport are as follows:--
		Sea.	Land.	Air.
Total departures ............................. Temporary visitors ........................... Residents departing for a period exceeding one year ................................... Residents departing for a period not ex- ceeding one year ........................... Transit travellers ...........................		35,996 14,810 1,005 18,823 1,358	88,698 32,707 173 50,334 5,484	1,186 796 -- 328 62

3. Of the persons who entered Palestine in 1936 as travellers, 2,284 were registered as immigrants. Of these, 1,817 were Jews and 467 were non-Jews.

Including exempted persons, the total number of immigrants during the year was thus 31,671, of whom 29,727 were Jews and 1,944 were non-Jews.

4. The recorded volume of Jewish immigration and emigration in 1936 and previous years is as follows:--

Year.	Jewish persons registered as immigrants.	Jewish persons recorded as leaving permanently.
1920-1924 ... ... ... ... 1925-1929 ... ... ... ... 1930-1934 ... ... ... ... 1935 ... ... ... ... 1936 ... ... ... ... Total ... ...	42,784* 57,022 91,258 61,854 29,727 282,645* _______	5,476 18,501 2,345 396 773 27,491** ______

* The records begin in September, 1920.
** No figures are available for Jewish emigration in 1920, 1921, 1932, 1933 and 1934, and the census taken in 1931 revealed that the actual number of Jewish emigrants was larger than that revealed in the migration records.

10. Births, Deaths and Infant Mortality, 1936.

	Christians.	Moslems.	Jews.	Others.	Totals.
Estimated population on 30th June, 1936 ... Deaths ... ... ... Death-rate per 1,000 of population ... ... Births ... ... ... Birth-rate per 1,000 of population ... ... Deaths--Infants under one year ... ... Infant mortality-rate per 1,000 births ... Natural Increase per 1,000 of population .	106,474 1,345 12.63 3,869 36.34 440 13.73 23.71	781,789 15,611 19.97 41,543 53.14 5,656 136.14 33.17	370,483 3,269 8.82 11,019 29.74 757 68.69 20.92	11,219 225 20.05 572 50.98 75 131.12 30.93	1,269,965* 20,450 16.10 57,003 44.89 6,928 121.54 28.78

*Not including nomadic Bedouin population numbering 66,553 at the date of the Census, November, 1931, and His Majesty's Forces.

Sources:UNISPAL

Timeline of British Rule in Palestine Click on a Time Period to Expand:
Note: Dates regarding biblical figures & events cannot be confirmed

Dawn of History
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Rule of Rome
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The Crusades
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Mamluk Rule
(1291-1516 CE)

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British Rule in Palestine
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The British Mandate Prepares for War

(1918-1947 CE)

.. ..... .

1918
Treaty of Versailles formally ends Word War I. Out of an estimated 1.5 million Jewish soldiers in all the armies, approximately 170,000 were killed and over 100,000 cited for valor.

1918
Damascus taken by T.E. Lawrence and Arabs.

1918
American Jewish Congress is founded.

Nov. 1918
Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates.

1918
Nahum Zemach founds the Moscow-based Habimah Theater which receives acclaim for “The Dybbuk.”

Jan. 5, 1919
The German Workers' Party (DAP) is founded in Munich; Adolf Hitler joins the Party nine months later.

April 5, 1919
35 Jews participating in a community meeting to discuss relief distribution from the United States were rounded up and massacred, suspected of being “Bolshevik plotters.” They were executed without question, or trial.

July 31, 1919
Holocaust surviror and author Primo Levi is born in Turin, Italy.

1919
Jewish educational summer camping is launched in the United States with what came to be known as the Cejwin Camps.

1919
Versailles Peace Conference decides that the conquered Arab provinces will not be restored to Ottoman rule.

1919
First Palestinian National Congress meeting in Jerusalem sends two memoranda to Versailles rejecting Balfour Declaration and demanding independence.

1919-1923
Romania grants citizenship to Jews.

1919
Egyptian revolution.

1919
Chaim Weizmann heads Zionist delegation at Versailles Peace Conference.

1919-1923
Third Aliyah, mainly from Russia.

1919
Emir Faisel wrote a letter to Felix Frankfurter supporting Zionism, “We Arabs...wish the Jews a most hearty welcome.”

1919-1943
Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Mordechai Anilewicz.

1919
League of Nations established in an effort to prevent further wars.

1920
Histadrut (Jewish labor federation) and Haganah (Jewish defense organization) founded.

1920
Vaad Leumi (National Council) set up by Jewish community (yishuv)to conduct its affairs.

1920
Keren Hayesod created for education, absorbtion and the development of rural settlements in Eretz-Israel.

1920
Chaim Weizmann elected president of the World Zionist Organization.

1920
Fall of Tel Hai to Arab attackers; Joseph Trumpeldor and five men under his command killed.

1920
Mandate for the Land of Israel given over to Britain on the condition that the Balfour Declaration be implemented, San Remo Conference.

1920
Sir Herbert Samuel, British statesman, appointed High Commissioner of Palestine.

1920
Henry Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, begins publishing its anti-Semitic propaganda, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Feb. 24, 1920
The first mass meeting of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) takes place at Munich's Hofbräuhaus.

April 1, 1920
Adolf Hitler is honorably discharged from the German Army.

1920
The San Remo Conference awards administration of the former Turkish territories of Syria and Lebanon to France, and Palestine, Transjordan, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Britain.

1920
Second and third Palestinan National Congress' held.

1921
The Times of London pronounces the PProtocols of the Elders of Zion a forgery.

1921
U.S. immigration laws “reformed” to effectively exclude Eastern European Jews and other immigrants. Further restrictions imposed in 1924.

1921
Fourth Palestinian National Congress, convenes in Jerusalem, decides to send delegation to London to explain case against Balfour.

1921
The Allied Reparations Committee assesses German liability for World War I at 132 billion gold marks (about $31 billion).

1921
The NSDAP, also known as the Nazi Party, establishes the Sturmabteilung (SA; Storm Troopers; Brown Shirts).

1921
Arab riots in Jaffa and other cities.

1921
Völkischer Beobachter (People's Observer), the official National Socialist newspaper, begins publication.

July 29, 1921
Adolf Hitler becomes the Nazi Party's first chairman with dictatorial powers.

1921
Kingdom of Iraq established.

1921
First moshav, Nahalal, founded in the Jezreel Valley.

1921
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Ya'akov Meir are elected the first two cheif Rabbis of Eretz-Israel.

1921-1944
Famous Hungarian Jewish poet and paratrooper who fought in WWII, Hannah Szenes (Senesh).

1922
Britain granted Mandate for Palestine (Land of Israel) by League of Nations.

1922
Transjordan set up on three-fourths of the British mandate area, forbidding Jewish immigration, leaving one-fourth for the Jewish national home.

1922
Jewish Agency representing Jewish community vis-à-vis Mandate authorities set up.

1922
Mordecai M. Kaplan founds the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the cradle of the Reconstructionist movement.

1922
The United States Congress and President Harding approve the Balfour Declaration.

1922
Supreme Muslim Council created under the jurisdiction of the British government to centralize religious affairs and institutions, but is corrupted by the overzealous Husseini family who used it as an anti-Jewish platform.

1922
Lenin creates the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

1922
Benito Mussolini establishes a Fascist government in Italy.

1922
Harvard's president proposes a quota on the number of Jews admitted. After a contentious debate, he withdrew the recommendation.

1922
League of Nations Council approves Mandate for Palestine.

1922
First British census of Palestine shows total population 757,182 (11% Jewish).

1922
Fifth Palestinian National Congress in Nablus, agrees to economic boycott of Zionists.

1922
Jungsturm Adolf Hitler (Adolf Hitler Boys Storm Troop) and Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler (Shock Troop Adolf Hitler) are established. The latter will form the nucleus of the Schutzstaffel (SS).

June 24, 1922
Walther Rathenau, Jewish foreign minister of Germany, is assassinated by members of Organisation Consul, a clandestine, right-wing political organization led by Captain Hermann Ehrhardt.

September 8, 1922
Jewish entertainer Sid Caeser is born.

Jan.1923
France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr after an economically broken Germany is unable to meet the annual installment of its war-reparations payments designed to pay off Germany's $31 billion war debt.

March 1923
The Schutzstaffel (SS; Protection Squad) is established. It is initially a bodyguard for Hitler but will later become an elite armed guard of the Third Reich.

1923
Palestine constitution suspended by British because of Arab refusal to cooperate.

1923
Overthrow of Ottoman Muslim rule by “young Turks” (Kemal Ataturk) and establishment of secular state.

1923
Sixth Palestinian national Congress held in Jaffa.

1923
The first issue of the pro-Nazi, antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker) is published in Nuremberg, Germany. Its slogan is "Die Juden sind unser Unglück" ("The Jews are our misfortune"), a phrase picked up from Heinrich von Treitschke.

Nov. 8-11, 1923
Hitler's so-called “Beer Hall Putsch” takeover attempt at Munich fails, temporarily rattling the National Socialist Party and leading to Hitler's arrest in Bavaria, Germany.

1923
Technion, first institute of technology, founded in Haifa.

1924-1932
Fourth Aliyah, mainly from Poland.

1924
Benjamin Frankel starts Hillel Foundation. The first Hillel House opens at the University of Illinois, offers religious and social services.

1924
Caliphate officially abolished.

February 29, 1924
Jewish MLB star Al Rosen is born.

March 8, 1924
Jewish sculptor Anthony Caro is born in England.

May 11, 1924
The first conference of the General Zionist movement is held in Jerusalem.

May 14, 1924
Ultra-Orthodox Jews found an agricultural settlement between Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva: Bnei- Brak.

1924
The United States Congress passes the Immigration Restriction Act, which effectively bans immigration to the U.S. from Asia and Eastern Europe.

July 1924
While in prison, Hitler begins work on Mein Kampf.

September 16, 1924
Birthdate of Lauren Bacall.

1925-1979
Pahlevi dynasty in Persia (“Iran”: 1935).

1925
Revisionist Movement founded by Zeev Jabotinsky.

1925
Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened on Mt. Scopus.

1925
Edna Ferber is the first American Jew to win Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

1925
Palestinian National Congress meets in Jaffa.

March 24, 1925
Publication of the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer resumes after being banned by the Weimar government in November 1923.

April 26, 1925
Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Germany.

1926
France proclaims Republic of Lebanon.

October 6, 1927
Warner Brothers releases The Jazz Singer, about a cantor's son who follows his dreams to Broadway against his father's wishes. This was the first "talking" movie ever made, and it is also famous for it's accurate portrayal of Jewish home life.

1928
Britain recognizes independence of Transjordan.

1928
Seventh Palestinian National Congress convened in Jerusalem; established a new forty-eight member executive committee.

1928
Yeshiva College is dedicated in New York.

February 11, 1928
Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in either house of the United States Congress, is born in Budapest, Hungary.

October 8, 1928
Jewish actor, producer, and director Larry Semon supposedly dies, but many believe he faked his own death to avoid creditors.

1929
2,000 Arabs attack Jews praying at the Kotel on the 9th of Av. Arabs view British refusal to condemn the attacks as support.

1929
Hebron Jews massacred by Arab militants.

1929-1945
Anne Frank, Holocaust victim whose diary, written during the Nazi Occupation became famous.

1929-1939
Fifth Aliyah, from Germany.

1930
Hope-Simpson report, predecessor to Passfield White Paper, recommends and end to all Jewish immigration to Eretz-Israel.

1930
Lord Passfield issues his White Paper banning further land acquisition by Jews and slowing Jewish immigration.

1930
Salo Wittmayer Baron joins the faculty of Columbia University, his is the first chair in Jewish history at a secular university in the United States.

1931
Etzel (the Irgun), Jewish underground organization, founded.

1930
Second British census of Palestine shows total population of 1,035,154 (16.9% Jewish).

1931
The Nahum Zemach-founded Moscow-based Habimah Theater which received acclaim for "The Dybbuk" moves to Eretz-Israel.

1932
'Abd al-Aziz Al Saud proclaims the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1932
British Mandate over Iraq terminated, Iraq gains independence.

1932
Discovery of oil in Bahrain.

1932 Herbert Lehman was elected New York's first Jewish governor; from that time on, Jews formed a pact with the Democratic Party.

1932
First Maccabia athletic games take place with representatives from 14 countries.

1932
German Chancellor von Papen persuaded President von Hindenburg to offer Hitler the chancellorship.

1932
Formation of Istiqlal Party as first constituted Palestinian-Arab political party; Awni Abdul-Hadi elected president.

April 21, 1933
Nazis outlaw Kosher slaughter of animals.

1933
Concession agreement signed between Saudi government and Standard Oil of California (SOCAL). Prospecting begins. SOCAL assigns concession to California Arabian Standard Oil Co. (CASOC).

1933
The American Jewish Congress declares a boycott on German goods to protest the Nazi persecution of Jews.

1933
Assassination of Chaim Arlozorov.

1933
Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

1933
Germany begins anti-Jewish boycott.

July 20, 1933
Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, signed the Hitler Concordat; whereby the Vatican accepted National Socialism.

1933
Albert Einstein, upon visiting the United States, learns that Hitler had been elected and decided not to return to Germany, takes up position at Princeton.

1933
Riots in Jaffa and Jerusalem to protest British "pro-Zionist" policies.

1934
In Afghanistan, two thousand Jews are expelled from towns and forced to live in the wilderness.

1934
American Jews cheer Detroit Tigers' Hank Greenberg when he refuses to play ball on Yom Kippur. In 1938, with five games left to the season, Greenberg's 58 home runs are two shy of Babe Ruth's record. When several pitchers walk him rather than giving him a shot at the record, many believe major league baseball did not want a Jew to claim that place in America's national sport.

1935
Jewish rights in Germany rescinded by Nuremberg laws.

1935
Hakibbutz Hadati, the religious kibbutz movement is founded.

1935
Regina Jonas was ordained by Liberal (Reform) Rabbi Max Dienemann in Germany, becoming the first woman rabbi.

1935
Ze'ev Jabotinsky founds the New Zionist Organization.

1935
Official establishment of the Palestine Arab Party in Jerusalem; Jamal al-Husseini elected president.

1936-1939
Anti-Jewish riots instigated by Arab militants.

1936
Supported by the Axis powers, the Arab Higher Committee encourages raids on Jewish communities in Eretz-Israel.

1936 Texaco buys 50% interest in California Arabian Standard Oil Co.'s concession.

1936
Leon Blum becomes the first Jew elected premier of France, enacts many social reforms.

1936
The first of the Tower and Stockade Settlements (Tel Amel) Nir David is erected.

1936
Syria ratifies the Franco-Syrian treaty; France grants Syria and Lebanon independence.

1936
World Jewish Congress convened in Geneva.

1936
Peel Commission investigated Arab riots, concluded Arab claims were "baseless".

March 9, 1936
The Przytyk Pogrom, in which 3 Jews were killed and 60 wounded.

October 4, 1936
The “Battle of Cable street” takes place in London.

1937
Reform Jewish Columbus Platform.

1937
British declare Arab Higher Committee in Palestine illegal and Mufti of Jerusalem escapes to Syria.

1937
The Peel Commission recommends the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs.

1937
Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion accept partition plan, despite fierce opposition at the 20th Zionist Congress.

1937
John Woodhead declares partition unworkable after Arab riots.

1937
Central conference of American Rabbis reaffirm basic reform philosophies in the Colombus Platform.

1938 Dammam Well No. 7 discovers commercial quantities of oil. Barge exports to Bahrain.

1938 Oil discovered in Kuwait.

Nov. 9, 1938
Kristallnacht — German Jewish synagogues burned down.

1938
Charles E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, launches media campaign in America against Jews.

1938
The Dominican Republic is the only country out of 32 at the Evian Conference willing to help Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany.

Sept. 29, 1938
Chamberlain declares "peace in our time" after allowing Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement.

1938
Catholic churches ring bells and fly Nazi flags to welcom Hitler's troops in Austria.

1938
Hershel Grynszpan, 17, a German refugee, assassinates Ernst von Rath, the third secretary to the German embassy in Paris.

1938
More than 100,000 Jews march in an anti-Hitler parade in New York's Madison Square Garden.

1939 First tanker-load of oil is exported aboard D.G. Scofield.

1939
President Roosevelt appoints Zionist and Jewish activist Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court.

1939
Jewish immigration severely limited by British White Paper.

1939
S.S. St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, is turned back by Cuba and the United States.

September 1, 1939
BBC News reports Germany has invaded Poland.

September 3, 1939
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces that Britain is at war with Germany.

1939
Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin introduces his song "God Bless America." He also wrote "White Christmas".

October 14, 1939
Jewish fashion CEO and icon Ralph Lauren is born.

1940
Nazis establish ghettos in Poland.

1940
British government authorizes the Jewish Agency to recruit 10,000 Jews to form Jewish units in the British army.

1940
British refuse illegal immigrant ship, the Patria, permission to dock in Palestine.

1940
Chabad-Lubavitch purchases their iconic headquarters in New York City

June 14, 1940
The first train of prisoners arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 20 people of these initial 700+ were Jewish.

September 24, 1940
The blatantly anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film “Jud Suss” premieres in Berlin

1941
British and France guarantee Syrian independence.

1941
underground movement formed.

February 25, 1941
A 2-day strike begins in Amsterdam, in opposition to the anti-Jewish actions being taken by the Nazi occupiers.

May 15, 1941
Palmach, strike force of Haganah, set up.

May 20, 1941
Jewish commando David Raziel is killed by a German bomber while on a mission for the British in Iraq.

September 29, 1941
The Babi-Yar Massacre.

March 2, 1942
Jewish rock musician Lou Reed is born.

1942
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise publicizes Riegner report confirming mass murder of European Jews.

1942
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1942
Nazi leaders refine the "Final Solution" -- genocide of the Jewish people -- at Wannsee Conference.

1943
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1943
Palmach parachutes into enemy lines in Europe.

1943
British deport illegal immigrants to Cyprus.

1943
Raphael Lemkin, an international lawyer who escaped from Poland to the U.S. in 1941, coins the term genocide to describe the Nazi extermination of European Jews.

1943
Zionist Biltmore Conference, held at Biltmore Hotel in New York, formulates new policy of creating a "Jewish Commonwealth" in Palestine and organizing a Jewish army.

October 6, 1943
Two days before Yom Kippur 1943, , calling for elected officials to increase the quota of Jewish refugees from Europe allowed in the U.S. The Rabbis also demanded the creation of a special federal agency tasked with the rescue of European Jewry.

November 18, 1943 The chief of the BBC orders his employees to downplay the attrocities of the Holocaust, warning them not to broadcast or publish anything that might try to “correct” anti-Semitic sentiments throughout Europe.

January 13, 1944 U.S. Treasury Dept. memo rebukes State Dept. for relative inaction regarding Jewish refugees.

1944 CASOC renamed Arabian American Oil Co.(Aramco).

1944
Jewish Brigade formed as part of British forces.

1944
FDR establishes War Refugee Board. For most victims of Nazism, it comes too late.

1944
Camp for Jewish war refugees is opened at Oswego, New York.

July 26, 1944
Russians arrive in the Lwow Ghetto, ridding the city of it's German occupiers, only to find the Jewish population liquidated.

November 1, 1944
Jewish singer/songwriter Richard "Kinky" Friedman is born.

1939/1942-1945
The Nazi German Holocaust against Jews.

1945
International tribunal for war crimes is established at Nuremberg.

1945
Bess Myerson becomes the first Jewish woman to win the Miss America Pageant.

1945
Covenant of League of Arab States, emphasizing Arab character of Palestine, signed in Cairo by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen.

1945
United Nations established.

1945
President Truman asks Britain to allow 100,000 Jews into Palestine.

1945
Arab League Council decides to boycott goods produced by Zionist firms in Palestine.

March 22, 1945
Two convicted members of the Stern Gang hanged for Murder of Lord Moyne in Cairo prison.

November 3, 1945
Winningest Jewish MLB player in history, Ken Holtzman, is born.

January 19, 1946
Member of Jewish underground destroyed a power station and a portion of the Central Jerusalem prison by explosives. Two persons were killed by the police..

January 20, 1946
Jewish underground members launched an attack against the British-controlled Givat Olga Coast Guard Station located between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Ten persons were injured and one was killed. Captured papers indicated that the purpose of this raid was to take revenge on the British for their seizure of the refugee ship on January 18. British military authorities in Jerusalem questioned 3,000 Jews and held 148 in custody..

April 25, 1946
Jewish underground attacked a British military installation near Tel Aviv. This group which contained a number of young girls, had as its goal the capture of British weapons. British authorities rounded up 1,200 suspects..

June 24, 1946
The Irgun radio "Fighting Zion" wams that three kidnapped British officers are held as hostages for two Irgun members, Josef Simkohn and Issac Ashbel facing execution as well as 31 Irgun members facing trial..

June 27, 1946
Thirty Irgun members are sentenced by a British military court to 15 years in prison. One, Benjamin Kaplan, was sentenced to life for carrying a firearm..

June 29, 1946
British military units and police raided Jewish settlements throughout Palestine searching for the leaders of Haganah. The Jewish Agency for Palestine was occupied and four top official arrested. .

July 1, 1946
British officials announced the discovery of a large arms dump hidden underground at Meshek Yagur. 2659 men and 59 women were detained fo the three day operation in which 27 settlements were searched. Four were killed and 80 were injured..

July 3, 1946
Palestine High Commissioner, Lt. General Sir Alan Cunningham commuted to life imprisonment the death sentences of Josef Simkhon and lssac Ashbel, Irgun members.

July 4, 1946
Tel Aviv. British officers, Captains K Spencer, C. Warburton and A. Taylor who had been kidnapped by Irgun on June 18 and held as hostages for the lives of Simkohn and Ashbel, were released in Tel Aviv unharmed. At this time, Irgun issued a declaration of war against the British claiming that they had no alternative but to fight. .

July 22, 1946
The west wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which housed British Military Headquarters and other governmental offices was destroyed at 12:57 PM by explosives planted in the cellar by members of the Irgun terrorist gang. By the 26 of July, the casualties were 76 persons killed, 46 injured and 29 still missing in the rubble. The dead included many British, Arabs and Jews. .

July 24, 1946
London. The British government released a White Paper that accuses the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gangs of "a planned movement of sabotage and violence" under the direction of the Jewish Agency and asserts that the June 29 arrest of Zionist leaders was the cause of the bombing.

July 28, 1946
The British Palestine Commander, Lt. General Sir Evelyn Barker, banned fraternization by British troops with Palestine Jews whom he stated "cannot be absolved of responsibility for terroristic acts." The order states that this will punish "the race . . . by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them." .

July 29, 1946
Police in Tel Aviv raided a workshop making bombs..

July 30, 1946
Tel Aviv is placed under a 22hour-a-day curfew as 20,000 British troops began a house-to-house sweep for members of the Jewish underground. The city is sealed off and troops are ordered to shoot to kill any curfew violators.

July 31, 1946
A large cache of weapons, extensive counterfeiting equipment and $1,000,000 in counterfeit Government bonds were discovered in Tel Aviv's largest synagogue. Also, two ships have arrived at Haifa with a total of 3,200 illegal Jewish immigrants. .

August 2, 1946
British military authorities ended the curfew in Tel Aviv after detaining 500 persons for further questioning..

August 12, 1946
The British Government announced that it will allow no more unscheduled immigration into Palestine and that those seeking entry into that country will be sent to Cyprus and other areas under detention. Declaring that such immigration threatens a civil war with the Arab population, it charges a "minority of Zionist extremists" with attempting to force an unacceptable solution of the Palestine problem..

August 12, 1946
Two ships carrying a total of 1,300 Jewish refugees arrived at Haifa. The port area was isolated on August 11 by British military and naval units. The first deportation ship sailed for Cyprus with 500 Jews on board.

August 13, 1946
Three Jews were killed and seven wounded when British troops were compelled to fire on a crowd of about 1,000 persons trying to break into the port area of Haifa. Two Royal Navy ships with 1,300 illegal Jewish immigrants on board sailed for Cyprus. Another ship with 600 illegal immigrants was captured and confined in the Haifa harbor. .

August 26, 1946
British military units searched the coastal villages of Casera and Sadoth Yarn for three Jews who bombed the transport "Empire Rival" last week. Eighty-five persons, including the entire male population of one of the villages were sent to the Rafa detention center..

August 29, 1946
Jerusalem. the British Government announced the commutation to life imprisonment of the death sentences imposed on 18 Jewish youths convicted of bombing the Haifa railroad shops..

August 30, 1946
British military units discovered arms and munitions dumps in the Jewish farming villages of Dorot and Ruhama.

Sept. 8, 1946
Jewish underground members cut the Palestine railroad in 50 places..

Sept. 9, 1946
Tel Aviv. two British officers were killed in an explosion in a public building..

Sept. 10, 1946
British troops imposed a curfew and arrested 101 Jews and wounded two in a search for saboteurs in Tel Aviv and neighboring Ramat Gan. Irguntook the action against the railways on September 8, as a protest..

Sept. 14, 1946
Jewish underground members robbed three banks in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, killing three Arabs. Thirty-six Jews were arrested..

Sept. 15, 1946
Jewish underground attacks a police station on the coast near Tel Aviv but were driven off by gunfire. .

October 2, 1946
British military units and police seized 50 Jews in a Tel Aviv cafe after a Jewish home was blown up. This home belonged to a Jewish woman who had refused to pay extortion money to the Irgun. .

October 6, 1946
Jerusalem. An RAF man was killed by gunfire..

October 8, 1946
Two British soldiers were killed when their truck detonated a kind mine outside Jerusalem. A leading Arab figure was wounded in a similar mine explosion in Jerusalem and more mad mines were found near Government House..

October 15, 1946
Nazi Party leader Herman Goering committs suicide by ingesting a cyanide capsule the night before he is due to be hung following the Nuremberg Trials.

October 16, 1946
Executions of those convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.

October 23, 1946
.

October 25, 1946
20 German physicians are charged by the United States with war crimes and crimes against humanity, for their role in human experimentation at Nazi concentration camps.

October 31, 1946
The British Embassy in Rome was damaged by a bomb, believed to have been phased by Jewish underground members. Irgun took responsibility for the bombing on November 4..

November 3, 1946
Two Jews and two Arabs were killed in clashes between Arabs and a group of Jews attempting to establish a settlement at Lake Hula in northern Palestine. .

November 5, 1946
British authorities released the following eight Jewish Agency leaders from the Latrun concentration camp where they had been held since June 29: Moshe Shertok, Dr. Issac Greenbaum, Dr. Bernard Joseph, David Remiz, David Hacohen, David Shingarevsky, Joseph Shoffman and Mordecai Shatter. A total of 2,550 Haganah suspects have also been released as well as 779 Jews arrested in the wake of the King David bombing. .

November 7, 1946
Railroad traffic was suspended hr 24 hours throughout Palestine following a fourth Irgun attack on railway facilities in two days.

November 9-13, 1946
Nineteen persons, eleven British soldiers and policemen and eight Arab constables, were killed in Palestine during this period as Jewish underground members, using land mines and suitcase bombs, increased their attacks on railroad stations, trains and even streetcars. .

Nov. 14, 1946
London. The Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned Jewish underground groups who threatened to export their attacks to England. .

Nov. 18, 1946
Police in Tel Aviv attacked Jews, assaulting many and firing into houses. Twenty Jews were injured in fights with British troops following the death on November 17 of three policemen and an RAF sergeant in a land mine explosion..

Nov. 20, 1946
Five persons were injured when a bomb exploded in the Jerusalem tax office. .

Dec. 2-5, 1946
Ten persons, including six British soldiers, were killed in bomb and land-mine explosions. .

Dec. 3, 1946
A member of the Stern Gang was killed in an aborted hold-up attempt. .

Dec. 26, 1946
Armed Jewish underground members raided two diamond factories in Nathanya and Tel Aviv and escaped with nearly $107,000 in diamonds, cash and bonds. These raids signaled an end to a two-week truce during the World Zionist Congress..

1947
Partition of India and Pakistan.

January 1, 1947
Dov Gruner was sentenced to hang by a British military court for taking part in a raid on the Ramat Gan police headquarters in April of 1946. .

January 2, 1947
Jewish underground staged bombings and machine gun attacks in five cities. Casualties were low. Pamphlets seized warned that the Irgun had again declared war against the British. .

January 4, 1947
Jerusalem. British soldiers have been ordered to wear sidearms at all times and were forbidden to enter any cafe or restaurant. .

January 5, 1947
Eleven British troops were injured in a hand grenade attack on a train carrying troops to Palestine. The attack took place near Benha, 25 miles from Cairo..

January 8, 1947
British police arrested 32 persons suspected of being members of the Irgun's "Black Squad" in raids on Rishomel Zion and Rehoboth. .

January 12, 1947
One underground member drove a truck filled with high explosives into the central police station and exploded it, killing two British policemen and two Arab constables and injuring 140 others, and escaped. This action ended a 10-day lull in the violence and the Stern Gang took the credit for it. .

January 14, 1947
Yehudi Katz is sentenced to life in prison by a Jerusalem court for robbing a bank in Jaffa in September of 1946 to obtain funds for the underground..

January 22, 1947
Sir Harry Gumey, Chief Secretary, stated that the British administration was taxing Palestine $2,400,000 to pay for sabotage by the Jewish underground groups. .

January 22, 1947
Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones informed the House of Commons 73 British subjects were murdered by underground members in 1946 and "no culprits have been convicted." .

January 27, 1947
London. Britain's conference on Palestine, boycotted by the Jews, reconvened. Jamal el Husseini, Palestine Arab leader, declared that the Arab world was unalterably opposed to partition as a solution to the problem. The session then adjourned..

January 29, 1947
London. It was officially announced that the British Cabinet decided to partition Palestine. .

January 29, 1947
Irgun forces released former Maj. H. Collins, a British banker, who they kidnaped on January 26 from his home. He had been badly beaten. On January 28, the Irgun released Judge Ralph Windham, who had been kidnapped in Tel Aviv on January 27 while trying a case. These men had been taken as hostages for Dov Bela Gruner, an Irgun member under death sentence. The British High Commissioner, Lt. Gen. Sir Alan Cunningham, had threatened martial law unless the two men were returned unharmed. .

January 31, 1947
General Cunningham ordered the wives and children of all British civilians to leave Palestine at once. About 2,000 are involved. This order did not apply to the 5,000 Americans in the country..

February 3, 1947
The Palestine Govemment issued a 7-day ultimatum to the Jewish Agency demanding that it state "categorically and at once" whether it and the supreme Jewish Council in Palestine will call on the Jewish community by February 10 for "cooperation with the police and armed forces in bringing to justice the members of the terrorist groups." This request was publicly rejected by Mrs. Goldie Meyerson, head of the Jewish Agency's political department. .

February 4, 1947
British Oistrict Commissioner James Pollock disclosed a plan for military occupation of three sectors of Jerusalem and orders nearly 1,000 Jews to evacuate the Rehavia, Schneler and German quarters by noon, February 6.

February 5, 1947
The Vaad Leumi rejected the British ultimatum while the Irgun passed out leaflets that it was prepared to fight to the death against the British authority.

The first 700 of some 1,500 British women and children ordered to evacuate Palestine leave by plane and train for Egypt. British authorities, preparing for military action, order other families from sections of Tel Aviv and Haifa which will be turned into fortified military areas.

February 9, 1947
British troops removed 650 illegal Jewish immigranS from the schooner "Negev" at Haifa and after a struggle forced them aboard the ferry "Emperor Haywood" for deportation to Cyprus. .

February 14, 1947
The British administration revealed that Lt. Gen. Sir Evelyn Barker, retiring British commander in Palestine, had confirmed the death sentences of three Irgun members on February 12 before leaving for England. The three men, Dov Ben Rosenbaum, Eliezer Ben Kashani and Mordecai Ben Alhachi, had been sentenced on February 10 to be hanged for carrying firearms. A fourth, Haim Gorovetzky, received a life sentence because of his youth. Lt. Gen. G. MacMillian arrived in Jerusalem on February 13 to succeed Gen. Barker. .

February 15, 1947
The Sabbath was the setting for sporadic outbreaks of violence which included the murder of an Arab in Jaffa and of a Jew in B'nai B'rak, the kidnapping of a Jew in Petah Tikvah and the burning of a Jewish club in Haifa.

March 9, 1947
Hadera. A British army camp was attacked..

March 10, 1947
Haifa. A Jew, suspected of being an informer, was murdered by Jewish underground members..

March 12, 1947
The British Army pay corps was dynamited in Jerusalem and one soldier killed. .

March 12, 1947
British military units captured most of the 800 Jews whose motor ship "Susanne" ran the British blockade and was beached north of Gaza on this date. A British naval escort brought the "Ben Hecht," the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation's first known immigrant ship, into Haifa, and its 599 passengers were shipped to Cyprus. The British arrested the crew, which included 18 US. seamen..

March 13, 1947
British authorities announced 78 arrests as a result of unofficial Jewish cooperation, but two railroads were attacked, resulting in two deaths, and eight armed men robbed a Tel Aviv bank of $65,000. .

March 14, 1947
Jewish underground members blew up part of an oil pipeline in Haifa and a section of the rail line near Beer Yakou .

March 17, 1947
British authorities ended marshal law which had kept 300,000 Jews under house arrest for 16 days and tied up most economic activity..

March 17, 1947
A military court sentenced Moshe Barazani to be hanged for possessing a hand grenade. .

March 18, 1947
Underground leaflets admitted the murder of Michael Shnell on Mount Carmel as an informer. .

March 22, 1947
British officials announced the arrest of five known underground members, and the discovery near Petah Tikvah of the body of Leon Meshiah, a Jew presumably slain as a suspected informer. .

March 28, 1947
The Irgun blew up the Iraq Petroleum Co. pipeline in Haifa..

March 29, 1947
A British army officer was killed by Jewish underground membesr when they ambushed a party of horsemen near the Ramle camp. A raid on a Tel Aviv bank yielded $109,000. .

March 30, 1947
Units of the British Royal Navy, answering an SOS, took the disabled " Moledeth" with 1,600 illegal Jewish refugees on board under tow some 50 miles outside Palestinian waters. .

March 31, 1947
Jewish underground members dynamited the British-owned Shell-Mex oil tanks in Haifa, starting a fire that destroyed a quarter-mile of the waterfront. The damage was set at more than $1,000,000, and the British government in Palestine has stated that the Jewish community will have to pay for it. .

April 2, 1947
The "Ocean Vigour" was damaged by a bomb in Famagusta Harbor, Cyprus. The Haganah admitted the bombing. .

April 3, 1947
A court in Jerusalem sentenced Daniel Azulai and Meyer Feinstein, members of the Irgun, to death for the October 30 attack on the Jerusalemrailroad station. The Palestine Supreme Court admitted an appeal of Dov Bela Gruner's death sentence.

April 3, 1947
The transport "Empire Rival" was damaged by a time bomb while en route from Haifa to Port Said in Egypt. .

April 7, 1947
The High Court denied a new appeal against the death sentence of Dov Bela Gruner, and a British patrol killed Moshe Cohen. .

April 8, 1947
Jewish undergroud members killed a British constable in revenge for the Cohen death..

April 10, 1947
London. The British Government requested France and Italy to prevent Jews from embarking for Palestine. .

April 11, 1947
Jerusalem. Asher Eskovitch, a Jew, was beaten to death by Muslims when he entered the forbidden Mosque of Omar. .

April 13, 1947
Guela Cohen, Stern Gang illegal broadcaster, escaped from a British military hospital..

April 14, 1947
A British naval unit boarded the refugee ship "Guardian" and seized it along with 2,700 passengers after a gun battle in which two immigrants were killed and 14 wounded..

April 16, 1947
In spite of threats of reprisal from the Irgun, the British hanged Dov Bela Gruner and three other Irgun members at Acre Prison on Haifa Bay. Jewish communities were kept under strict curfew for several hours. Soon after the deaths were announced, a time bomb was found in the Colonial Office in London but was defused..

April 17, 1947
Lt. Gen. G. Macmillan confirmed death sentences for two more convicted underground members, Meier Ben Feinstein and Moshe Ben Barazani, but reduced Daniel Azulai's sentence to life imprisonment. .

April 18, 1947
Irgun's reprisals for the Gruner execution were an attack on a field dressing station near Nethanaya where one sentry was killed, an attack on an armored car in Tel Aviv where one bystander was killed and harmless shots at British troops in Haifa. .

April 20, 1947
A series of bombings by Jewish underground members in retaliation for the hanging of Gruner injured 12 British soldiers..

April 21, 1947
Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani killed themselves in prison a few hours before they were scheduled to be hanged. They blew themselves up with bombs smuggled to them in hollowed-out oranges. .

April 22, 1947
A troop train arriving from Cairo was bombed outside Rehovoth with five soldiers and three civilians killed and 39 persons injured.

April 23, 1947
The British First Lord of the Admiralty, Viscount Hall, defended the Labor Government's policy in Palestine and he acknowledged in the House of Lords that Britain would not "carry out a policy of which it did not approve" despite any UN action. He blamed contributions from American Jews to the Jewish Palestinians as aiding the underground groups there and cited the toll since August 1, 1945: 113 killed, 249 wounded, 168 Jews convicted, 28 sentenced to death, four executed, 33 slain in battles. Viscount Samuel urged increased immigration. .

April 23, 1947
The Irgun proclaimed its own "military courts" to "try" British troops and policemen who resisted them. .

April 25, 1947
A Stern Gang squad drove a stolen post office truck loaded with explosives into the Sarona police compound and detonated it, killing five British policemen. .

April 26, 1947
Haifa. The murder of Deputy Police Superintendent A. Conquest climaxed a week of bloodshed. .

May 4, 1947
The walls of Acre prison were blasted open by an Irgun bomb squad and 251 Jewish and Arab prisoners escaped after a gun battle in which 15 Jews and 1 Arab were killed, 32 (including six British guards) were injured and 23 escapists were recaptured. The Palestine Govemment promised no extra punishment if the 189 escapees still at large will surrender. .

May 4, 1947
The Political Action Committee for Palestine ran a series of advertisements in New York newspapers seeking funds to buy parachutes for young European Jews planning to crash the Palestine irnmigration barrier by air. .

May 8, 1947
A Jew was ambushed and shot to death by an Arab group near Tel Aviv, and three Jewish owned Tel Aviv shops whose owners refused to contribute money to Jewish underground groups were burned down. .

May 12, 1947
Jewish underground members killed two British policemen..

May 12, 1947
The British authorities announced that 312 Jewish political prisoners were held in Kenya, East Africa, 20 in Latrun and 34 in Bethlehem..

May 15, 1947
The Stern Gang killed two British lieutenants and injured seven other persons with two derailments and three badge demolitions..

May 16, 1947
Haifa Assistant Police Superintendent, Robert Schindler, a German Jew, was killed by the Stern gang, and a British constable was killed on the Mt Carmel-Haifa road near Jerusalem..

May 17, 1947
The 1,200 ton Haganah freighter "Trade Winds" was seized by the Royal Navy off the Lebanon coast and escorted into Haifa, and over 1,000 illegal immigrants were disembarked pending transfer to Cyprus. .

May 19, 1947
The British government protested to the United States government against American fund-raising drives for Jewish underground groups. The complaint referred to a "Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine" by playwright Ben Hecht, American League for a Free Palestine co chairman, first published in the New York "Post" on May 15. The ad said, "We are out to raise millions for you.".

May 22, 1947
Arabs attacked a Jewish labor camp in the south, retaliating for a Haganah raid on the Arabs near Tel Aviv May 20. Some 40,000 Arab and Jewish workers united the same day in a one day strike against all establishments operated by the British War Ministry..

May 23, 1947
A British naval party boarded the immigrant ship "Mordei Haghettoath" off South Palestine and took control of its 1,500 passengers. Two British soldiers were convicted in Jerusalem of abandoning a jeep and army mail under attack..

May 28, 1947
Syria. Fawzi el-Kawukji who spent the war years in Germany after leading the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine, told reporters in Damascus that an unfavorable decision by the UN inquiry group would be the signal for war against the Jews in Palestine. "We must prove that in case" of an Anglo-American war with Russia, "we can be more dangerous or useful to them than the Jews," he added. .

May 28, 1947
Jewish underground members blew up a water main and a shed in the Haifa oil dock areas and made three attacks on railway lines in the Lydda and Haifa areas..

May 31, 1947
The Haganah ship "Yehuda Halevy" arrived under British naval escort with 399 illegal Jewish immigrants; they were immediately transferred to Cyprus..

June 4, 1947
The Stern Gang sent letter bombs to high British governmental officials. Eight letter bombs containing powdered explosives were discovered in London. Recipients included Ernest Bevin, Anthony Eden, Prime Minister Attlee and Winston Churchill..

June 5, 1947
Washington. President Truman asked all persons in the US to refrain from helping Jewish underground groups. The American Jewish Committee and Jewish Labor Committee condemned Ben Hecht's campaign..

June 6, 1947
New York Secretary General of the UN, Trygve Lie has forwarded a request to all countries a request by the British that they guard their fronties against departure of illegal immigrants bound for Palestine.

June 18, 1947
Haganah disclosed that one of its men was killed by a booby trap which foiled an Irgun plot to blow up British Military Headquartes in Tel Aviv. .

June 28, 1947
The Stern Gang opened fire on British soldiers waiting in line outside a Tel Aviv theater, killing three and wounding two. Another Briton is killed and several wounded in a Haifa hotel. This action was claimed by Jewish underground members to be in retaliation for British brutality and the alleged slaying of a missing 16 year old Jew, Alexander Rubowitz while he was being held in an Army barracks on May 6. .

June 29, 1947
New York. The UN Committee votes 9-0 to condemn the acts as "flagrant disregard" of the UN appeal for an interim truce as Stern Gang wounded four more Bdtish soldiers on a beach at Herzlia. Major Roy Alexander Farran surrendered voluntarily after his escape from custody in Jerusalemon June 19. He had been arrested in connection with the Rubowitz case. .

June 30, 1947
The Palestine goverrunent permitted oil companies to raise paces of benzine nearly 10% to pay for $1 million damage suffered when Jewish underground members blew up oil installations at Haifa on March 31. .

July 2, 1947
lrgun members robbed a Haifa bank of $3,200 while both the Stem gang and the Irgun warned the British that their provocative acts in Palestine must end before a truce can be effected. The Guaternalan and Czech members of the UN Commission visited two Jewish convicts in Acre Prison..

July 12, 1947
Dr. Adem Altman, president of the United Zionist Revisionists, told a party rally in Jerusalem that the Revisionists would settle for nothing less than an unpartitioned free Jewish state in Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Irgun announced in Jerusalem that two British sergeants kidnaped in Nathanaya are being held in Tel Aviv and have been sentenced to death by Irgun courtmartial. .

July 14, 1947
Netanya. The British imposed mastial law and placed the 15,000 inhabitants of Netanya under house arrest. They made 68 arrests and sentenced 21 persons to 6 months each in the Latrun detention camp. .

July 17, 1947
Netanya. The Irgun in five mine operations against military traffic to and from Nathanya killed one Briton and injured 16. .

July 18, 1947
Steamer Exodus repelled by forces from shores of Palestine, (formerly the "President Warfield") was escorted into Haifa by British naval units after a battle, William Bernstein and two immigrants were killed and more than 30 injured.

The blockade runner itself was badly damaged. The remainder of the 4,554 passengers, the largest group of illegal immigrants to sail for Palestine in a sister ship, were put aboard British prison ships for removal to Cyprus. The American captain, Bernard Marks, and his crew were arrested. The ship sailed from France.

July 19, 1947
Haifa. Rioting, quickly suppressed, broke out among the passengess of the "Exodus 1947" when they learned they were to be resumed to France. .

July 19, 1947
The Palestine Government charges that a Jewish "campaign of lawlessness, murder and sabotage" has cost 70 lives and $6 million in damage since 1940. .

July 21, 1947
Before officially admitting that 4,529 passengers of the "Exodus 1947" who had been transferred to three British ships, were being sent not to Cyprus but back to France, the Palestine Government took the precaution of first placing Jesusalem's 90,000 Jews under nightly house arrest. .

July 23, 1947
Haganah sank the British tansport "Empire Lifeguard" in Haifa harbor as it was discharging 300 Jewish immigrants who had officiallyy been admitted to Palestine under quota. Sixty-five immigrants were killed and 40 were wounded. The British were able to refloat the ship..

July 26, 1947
Jewish underground members blew up the Iraqi Petroleum Co. pipeline 12 miles east of Haifa and destroyed a Mt. Carmel radar station..

July 27, 1947
An ambush and mines cost the British seven more casualties, all wounded..

July 28, 1947
Two small Haganah ships loaded with 1,174 Jews from North Africa were intercepted by British naval units off Palestine and brought into Haifa. The illegal immigrants were transshipped aboard British transports and taken to Cyprus..

July 29, 1947
The British authorities hanged three Irgunists in Acre prison despite appeals from Jewish leaders. The condemned, Myer Nakar, Absalom Habib and Jacob Weiss, had fought in the Czech underground during the war. They were convicted of blowing up Acre Prison on May 4 and liberating 200 Arabs and Jews. .

July 29, 1947
The 4,429 Exodus 1947 illegal immigrants who sailed from Sete, France, July 11 for Palestine only to be shipped back by the British aboard three transports, refused to debark as the vessels anchored off Port de Douc, France. Only a few who were aboard went ashore. The French government informed the refugees that they do not have to debark but will be welcomed if they do. The transports are the "Runnymede Park," "Ocean Vigour" and "Empire Valour.".

July 30, 1947
Irgun members announced that they have handed two British sergeants, Marvyn Paice and Clifford Martin, whom they had held as hostages since duly 12, for "crimes against the Jewish community." The two were seized when death sentences on the three Irgun members were confirmed by the British authorities. Two more British soldiers were killed by a land mine near Hadera. British troops attacked the Jewish colony of Pardes Hanna in revenge for the murders..

July 31, 1947
The bodies of the two murdered Bdtish sergeants were found hanging from eucalyptus trees one and a half miles from Netanya about 5:30 AM. A booby trap blew Martin's body to bits when it was cut down. Enraged British troops stormed into Tel Aviv, wrecked shops, attacked pedestrians and sprayed a bus with gunfire killing five Jews: two men, two women and a boy..

August 1, 1947
Thirty-three Jews are injured in an anti-British riot at Tel Aviv during the funeral procession of five civilians killed by British soldiers on July 31. In Jerusalem a Jewish underground attack on the British security zone in Rehavia was repulsed with one attacker killed and two captured..

August 2, 1947
The body of an unidentified Jew was found on a road near Tel Aviv. He was believed to have been kidnapped by men in British uniforms two weeks ago. Total casualties in Palestine since mid-July: 25 persons slain, 144 wounded. The dead include 15 Britons, two Jewish underground membmers, eight civilians. Anti-British slogans, swastikas and dollar signs are painted onto British consulates in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.

August 3, 1947
The Bank of Sharon in Ramat Gan was robbed by Jewish underground, $8,000 stolen..

August 4, 1947
An Irgun leader in Paris states that his organization has sentenced high British military and civilian offficials in Palestine to death "in absentia" and will hang them upon capture..

August 5, 1947
Striking at dawn, British security forces arrested 35 leading Zionists and sent them to the Latrun detention camp in an attempt to wipe out the Irgunleadership.In reprisal, Irgunists blew up the Department of Labor in Jerusalem, killing three British constables. Those arrested included Mayor Israel Rokach of Tel Aviv; Mayor Oved Ben Ami of Nathanya; Mayor Abraham Kdnitzki of Ramat Gan; Adeh Altman, president of the radical Revisionist Party; Menahem Arber, leader of the Revisionist youth organization, B'rith Trumpeldor, which is outlawed; Max Kritzman, Dov Bela Gruner's attomey, and David Stem, brother of the late founder of the Stern Gang. All those arrested except the three mayors were Revisionists. Among many papers confiscated was correspondence from Soviet Russian agents in Italy and Bulgaria and extensive plans to poison the water supply of the non-Jewish parts of Jerusalem with botulism and other bacteria. Bacteria was supplied by Soviet sources through Bulgaria.

August 15, 1947
A mine derailed a Cairo-Haifa troop train north of Lydda, killing the engineer, and Irgunist claimed the incident was part of its campaign to disrupt all the Palestine rail traffic. .

August 16, 1947
Arab-Jewish clashes have brought death to 12 Arabs and 13 Jews and heavy property destruction this week in the regions of Jewish Tel Aviv and Arab Jaffa. Strife was renewed on august 10 when Arabs killed four Jews in a Tel Aviv cafe, in reprisal for the deaths of two Arabs in a Haganahraid in Fega two months ago. Haganah responded to the Arab actions by bombing a house in an Arab orange grove near Tel Aviv, killing eleven Arabs, including a woman and four children. .

August 18, 1947
The shops of five Jewish merchants in Tel Aviv were destroyed by the Irgun because the owners refused to give money to that organization. .

Sept. 9, 1947
Hamburg, Germany. In a bitter three hour fight aboard the "Runnymede Park," 350 British troops completed a two-day forced debarkation of 4,300 "Exodus 1947" illegal Jewish refugees from three ships in Hamburg, Germany. First ashore yesterday were the "Ocean Vigour's" 1,406; a few put up token resistance and five passengers sustained minor injuries. Early today, the "Empire Rival's" 1,420 passengers debarked peaceably after a home made bomb was found in the ship's hold. .

Sept. 10, 1947
Washington D.C. Secretary of State George C. Marshall disclosed that the US had urged Britain to reconsider sending the "Exodus" group to Germany, but Britain replied tht there were no facilities for housing them elsewhere because the French did not want them and there were a number of vacant detention camps in Germany. .

Sept. 11, 1947
Paris. The French government has now announced tht it would admit the '`Exodus" refugees if they were not forcibly deported from Germany and on the understanding that they will be admitted eventually to Palestine. .

October 13, 1947
A terrorist bomb damaged the US. consulate general in Jerusalem, injuring two employees slightly. Similar bombings occurred at the Polish consulate general last night and at the Swedish consulate on September 27. .

Nov. 14, 1947
Jewish underground members killed two British policemen in Jerusalem and two soldiers in Tel Aviv to raise the total casualties in three days of violence to 10 Britons and five Jews killed, and 33 Britons and five Jews wounded. The outbreaks began after British troops killed three girls and two boys in a raid on a farmhouse arsenal near Raanana on November 12. The underground retaliated yesterday by throwing hand grenades and firing a machine gun into the Ritz Cafe in Jerusalem. .

Nov. 16, 1947
About 185 European Jews landed near Netanya from a small schooner and escaped before the British could intercept them. A larger vessel, the "Kadimah," was seized and brought to Haifa where 794 Jews were transshipped to a British transport for Cyprus..

Nov. 17, 1947
The British administration disclosed that it will sell state owned real estate along the Haifa waterfront, from which it expects to make $8 million. It will also invest in England about $16 million from bonds that had been sold to Palestinians. Zionists strongly protested this as they said it would denude Palestine of its assets. There was no comment from the administration to these charges. .

Nov. 22, 1947
An Arab was killed in Haifa by the Stern Gang following the killings of four other Arabs near Raanana on November 20..

Dec. 1, 1947
The Arab League announced on December 1 that premiers and foreign ministers of seven Arab states would meet in Cairo next week to plan strategy against partition. In Palestine: Jerusalem and the Jaffa Tel Aviv boundary zone were centers of week-long strife which began when seven Jews were killed throughout Palestine on November 30 and the mayor of Nablus, Arab nationalist center, proclaimed jihad or a holy war. British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham warned the Arab Higher Command on December 1 that Britain was determined to keep order so long as it held its mandate, and police stopped Arab agitators from raising crowds in Jerusalem..

Dec. 2, 1947
Arabs looted and burned a three block Jewish business district in Jerusalem on December 2, the first day of a three day Arab general strike during which 20 Jews and 15 Arabs were killed. When British troops failed to intervene, Haganah came into the open for the first time in eight years to restrain large scale Jewish retaliation and also guard Jewish districts. Some Haganah men were arrested for possessing weapons. The day's strife caused $1 million worth of damage and resulted in a 21 hour curfew being applied to Arab Jerusalem for the rest of the week. The curfew was extended to outlying roads on December 3 to stop stonings of Jewish traffic and keep rural Arabs out of the capital. Max Pinn, head of the Jewish Agency's Trade and Transfer Deparunent was killed on December 2 when Arabs stoned his auto near Ramleh On this day dews stoned Arab buses in Jerusalem. On December 2, Haganah claimed to have mobilized 10,000 men in the intercity trouble zone, and the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan reported on this date that it had reinforced Jaffa. Seven Jews were killed in Jaffa-Tel Aviv on this date. There were lesser attacks in Haifa this week. Also, the Syrian Parliament enacted a draft law and voted $860,000 for the relief of Palestinian Arabs. On the same day Arabs attacked the Jewish part of Aleppo. .

Dec. 3, 1947
On the Jaffa-Tel Aviv boundary, which also is under around-the clock curfew, the week's heaviest battle was a six-hour clash between Haganah and Arabs on December 3 in which seven Jews and five Arabs were killed and 75 persons injured. .

Dec. 5, 1947
The United States Department of State announced on December 5,1947 that they were placing an embargo on all American arms shipments to the Middle East. On December 5, British military reinforcements were sent to Aden after four days of Arab-Jewish fighting in which 50 Jews and 25 Arabs were killed. .

Dec. 13, 1947
On December 13, bombings by the Irgun killed at least 16 Arabs and injured 67 more in Jerusalem and Jaffa and burned down a hundred Arab houses in Jaffa. In Syria, an anti-Jewish attack in rebaliation for the Irgun actions burned down a 2,750-year old synagogue in Aleppo and destroyed the priceless Ben-Asher Codex, a 10th century Hebrew Bible of original Old Testament manuscripts. .

Dec. 14, 1947
Regular troops of the Arab Legion of the Trans-Jordan Army killed 14 Jews and wounded nine Jews, two British soldiers and one Arab when they atbcked a bus convoy approaching their camp near Lydda. The Arabs said the Jews attacked them first. .

Dec. 17, 1947
British troops came to the aid of police sending off a raid by 100 Arabs on the Jewish settlement of Nevatim, seven miles west of Beersheba..

Dec. 18, 1947
Haganah killed 10 Arabs in a reprisal raid on Khisas in the north of the country..

Dec. 19, 1947
Reliable reports from Damascus state that Arab guerrillas are massing there in preparation to launching an attack into Palestine before the first of the year. .

Dec. 20, 1947
Haganah carried out another said on Arabs by atbcking the village of Qazasa near Rehovoth. One Arab was killed and two were wounded. .

Dec. 25, 1947
Emir Mohammed Zeinati, an Arab landowner, was killed in Haifa for selling land to the Jews. Stern gang members machine-gunned two British soldiers in a Tel Aviv cafe. .

Dec. 26, 1947
Armed Jewish underground members raided two diamond factories in Netanya and Tel Aviv and escaped with $107,000 in diamonds, cash and bonds. The Stern gang distributed leaflets reporting that Israel Levin, a member, was killed in Tel Aviv on December 24 for trying to betray a Stern Gang member. .

Dec. 29, 1947
Irgun members kidnaped and flogged a Briitish major and thzee sergeans in rebliation for the flogging of Benjamin Kimkhim who was also sentenced to 18 years in prison on December 27 for robbing a bank. The major, E. Brett, was seized in Netanya and the sergeants in Tel Aviv and Rishon el Siyon. Each got 18 lashes, the same number Kimkhim seceived. An Irgun bombing at the Damascus Gate in Jesusalem killed 11 Arabs and two Britons. .

Dec. 30, 1947
The Dollis Hill Synagogue in London was set on fire and 12 sacred scrolls wese destroyed by argry British citizens..

1947
UN in the Land.

1947
Arab Higher Committee for Palestine rejects UN Partition Plan.

1947
Three Jews are hanged for involvement in Acre Prison break and two British sergeants are executed in reprisal.

1947
Scrolls dating from approximately 22 B.C.E. are discovered at Qumran, near the Dead Sea.

1947 Construction begins on Tapline for Saudi oil.

January 4, 1948
A series of bombings inflicted heavy Arab casualties.14 were killed and 100 injured when the Stern gang destroyed the Arab National Committee headquarters in Jaffa. .

January 5, 1948
Jerusalem. 15 Arabs were killed after Haganah bombed the Semirarnis Hotel..

January 7, 1948
14 Arabs were killed by two Irgun bombs at Jerusalem's Jaffa gate.

January 12, 1948
Stem gang members looted Barclay's Bank in Tel Aviv of $37,000.

January 13, 1948
The U.S. War Assets Administration received orders from Army Secretary Kenneth Royal to cancel its sale of 199 tons of M-3 explosive to a purchasing agent of the Jewish Agency, which got 73 tons out of the country before the rest was seized

Jan. 14-15, 1948
The FBI arrested six New York men on charges of trying to ship Haganah 60,000 pounds of TNT, which was seized in Jersey Gty after having been bought from the Letterkenny Arsenal Ordnance Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

January 25, 1948
Following the deaths of ten Jews and two Arabs killed in a battle outside Jerusalem, British authorities stated that 721 Arabs, 408 Jews, 19 civilians and 12 British policemen (a total of 1,160) had been killed in an eight-week period that 1,171 Arabs, 749 Jews, 13 civilians and 37 British officers had been wounded.

1948 Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum (both now ExxonMobil) buy interest in Aramco; company headquarters moved from San Francisco to New York.

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The Munich agreement (September 29-30, 1938) is regarded today as the apex of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. At the summit in Munich, Adolf Hitler, Italy's Benito Mussolini, Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Édouard Daladier decided to hand over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany in order to prevent war in Europe. The Munich agreement went down in history as a symbol of cowardice and incompetence against cruel tyranny and of the peaceful delusions of the 30's.

The Munich Summit, September 29, 1938
(Wikicommons/Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R69173)

Nevertheless, it seems that the British government (or at least the government of Palestine) saw the Munich crisis as a wake-up call and a sign to prepare for the eventuality of war. Immediately after the Munich crisis, the Jerusalem district commissioner, Edward Keith-Roach, wrote to the Chief Secretary of the Palestine government (the head of the British administration in Palestine) and reported that he had conducted a survey in the stores of his district, and found that they were not adequate and ready for an eventuality of war, in terms of foodstuffs and other essential supplies.

Eduard Keith-Roach (Wikipedia)

The Palestine government responded quickly. The High Commissioner, Harold MacMichael (March 1938 – August 1944) regarding the limited stocks of wheat and maize under the supervision of the Palestine government. Due to Palestine's economic stagnation, and estimates that a rise in taxes and tariffs would worsen the economic situation, MacMichael asked for financial help from Britain in order to prepare Palestine for an emergency situation. The reason for the declining economic situation was the Arab revolt of 1936-39, which damaged the economy of Palestine, one of the few regions in the world that was least hurt by the economic depression of the 30s.

Harold MacMichael (Wikipedia)

The next stage was forming supervision on supplies in Palestine. John Shaw, senior assistant to the chief secretary (later he became chief secretary and was known for his involvement in the controversy concerning the warning given before the bombing of the King David hotel in July 1946) wrote to Jeffrey Walsh, the economic adviser to the Palestine government (later killed in the King David hotel bombing) and asked him to conduct a survey of the situation of the supply of essential foodstuffs. A committee was formed to control supplies to Palestine and the director of Medical Services, Colonel George Heron was appointed as the Controller of Supplies, Walsh was appointed as his deputy. Other members of the committee were Keith-Roach; Frank Mason – Deputy Director of department of Agriculture and Fish; Donald Finlayson – Deputy Director of department of Customs, Excise & Trade; Donald Gumbly - Director of Civil aviation; Michel Abcarius – Senior Assistant Treasurer, the Arab representative in the committee; Bernard Dov Joseph – Head of the Political department of the Jewish agency, was the Jewish representative in the committee and Arthur Rawdon Spinney – as the representative of the merchants and distributers. An army officer was appointed by the General officer commanding in Palestine to liaison with the army.

The committee researched the supply problems of different foodstuffs to Palestine and contacted different governments (such as Australia, Burma, Siam and other) in regard of supplying food and other essential supplies, studied the possibilities of supplying fuel of different types (following Joseph's warning to Walsh that supplying fuel must be of the highest priority – transportwise and regarding the operating of agricultural machinery), considered options of rationing of food and other supplies and started to form a special administration for the controlling the supplies. From the different reports it can be seen that the Palestine government was not the only British colonial government (although Palestine was not a colony but a League of Nations mandate) – the Ceylon (Sri Lanka today) and the Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore today) are also mentioned as beginning to store food in preparation for war.

The Middle East map during WWII (Wikipedia)

The basic premises for the work of the committee are also interesting: the committee agreed that the Mediterranean Sea would be closed to shipping, and so would be the entrance to the Suez Canal from the north. The southern approaches to the Canal would be open as well as sea lanes to India, China and Australia. Overland highways and train lines to Syria, Iraq and Egypt would remain open and not hampered. These were very logical ideas – Italywas seen as a potential enemy (although it is strange that the ability of Italy to block the horn of Africa from her bases in Somalia and Ethiopia and Eritrea was not mentioned). Japan's entry to the war was not envisioned – but Japan itself did not plan to enter the war in 1939, and only her defeat in the Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 caused her to change its strategy and turn to south-east Asia and against the USA. The planners also could not envision the fall of France on June 1940 or the Iraqi revolt in May 1941.

In April 1939, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm MacDonald,explained in his letter to high commissioner MacMichael (regarding MacMichael's letter from October 1938) that he must expect problems of supply also in the Red sea (not only in the Mediterranean) – probably an indication that there was a threat that Italy would try to block the sea lanes in the horn of Africa. MacDonald also wrote that there was no guarantee that Britain would be able to assist the Palestine government financially and it would have to organize its own purchase of food; Colonial office would try to assist. While preparedness for war was regarded a theoretical but possible in October-November 1938, the annexation of Czechoslovakia (or what remained of it) in March 1939, made war look inevitable.

Another sign of the gathering storm was the forming of a new organization –Air Raid Precautions (ARP). The ARP started initiating preparedness for air raids – installing sirens, preparing bomb shelters and other measures. The ARP issued orders for preparing the Haifa harbor against air raids – a possibility that became a reality a year later when the harbor was attacked by Italian, German and also Vichy-French bombers.

On September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, the Posts and Telegraphs department in the Palestine government issued a series of instructions on exporting records, films and restrictions on sending and receiving telegrams and letters to and from places abroad. Although Britain declared war on September 3, these instructions were for war time in the knowledge that war had just broken out.

The supply committee later evolved into the War Supply Board. Its director was Sir Douglas Harris, a member of the Palestine government's executive council and a veteran and well respected colonial office officer. The board was responsible on a series of different control offices, responsible for industry, food, medical supplies etc. The citrus control board was formed to help market one of Palestine's most important exports – the citrus fruit, which was hurt from war. Another interesting office was the controller of salvage – an office responsible for recycling and repairing broken or derelict equipment of different kind. The War supply board cooperated with similar groups in the British Empire – one in east Africa, India and the Spears mission, a supply group attached to the Free French government in Syria and Lebanon after they were conquered form Vichy France in May 1941 (named after General Edward Spears, the British laision officer with the Free French government in Syria and Lebanon). The War Supply Board also cooperated with Middle East Supply Center (MESC) – the main Allied supply center outside Europe, situated in Cairo.

Source: Israel State Archives

Modern Israel & the Diaspora

Living Under the Mandate

The Arab Community

The British Mandate and the intensification of Jewish settlement in Palestine significantly altered Palestinian leadership structures and transformed the socioeconomic base of Palestinian Arab society. First, British policy in Palestine, as elsewhere in the Middle East, was based on patronage. This policy entailed granting wide powers to a small group of competing traditional elites whose authority would depend upon the British high commissioner. In Palestine, Herbert Samuel granted the most important posts to two competing families, the Husaynis (also seen as Husseinis) and the Nashashibis. Of the two clans, the Husaynis were given the most powerful posts, many of which had no precedent under Ottoman rule. In 1921 Samuel appointed Hajj Amin al Husayni, an ardent anti-Zionist and a major figure behind the April 1920 riots, as mufti (chief Muslim religious jurist) of Jerusalem. In 1922 he augmented Hajj Amin's power by appointing him president of the newly constituted Supreme Muslim Council (SMC), which was given wide powers over the disbursement of funds from religious endowments, fees, and the like.

By heading the SMC, Hajj Amin controlled a vast patronage network, giving him power over a large constituency. This new patronage system competed with and threatened the traditional family-clan and Islamic ties that existed under the Ottoman Empire. Traditional Arab elites hailing from other locales, such as Hebron and Haifa, resented the monopoly of power of the British-supported Jerusalem-based elite. Furthermore, as an agricultural depression pushed many Arabs westward into the coastal cities, a new urbanbased elite emerged that challenged the Nashashibis and Husaynis.

Tension between members of Arab elites was exacerbated because Hajj Amin, who was not an elected official, increasingly attempted to dictate Palestinian politics. The competition between the major families and the increased use of the Zionist threat as a political tool in interelite struggles placed a premium on extremism. Hajj Amin frequently incited his followers against the Nashashibis by referring to the latter as Zionist collaborators. As a result, Palestinian leadership during the Mandate was fragmented and unable to develop a coherent policy to deal with the growing Zionist movement.

The other major transformation in Palestinian Arab society during the Mandate concerned the issue of land ownership. During the years of Ottoman rule, the question of private property rights was never fully articulated. The tenuous nature of private property rights enabled the Zionist movement to acquire large tracts of land that had been Arab owned. The sale of land to Jewish settlers, which occurred even during the most intense phases of the Palestinian Revolt, reflected the lack of national cohesion and institutional structure that might have enabled the Palestinian Arabs to withstand the lure of quick profits. Instead, when increased Jewish land purchases caused property prices to spiral, both the Arab landowning class and absentee landlords, many of whom resided outside Palestine, were quick to sell for unprecedented profits. In the 1930s, when Palestine was beset by a severe economic depression, large numbers of Arab peasants, unable to pay either their Arab landlords or taxes to the government, sold their land. The British did not intervene in the land purchases mainly because they needed the influx of Jewish capital to pay for Jewish social services and to maintain the Jewish economy.

Sources:Library of Congress

The Jewish Community
The greatest asset brought by the Zionists settling Palestine was their organizational acumen, which allowed for the institutionalization of the movement despite deep ideological cleavages. The WZO established an executive office in Palestine, thus implementing the language of the Mandate prescribing such an agency. In August 1929, the formalized Jewish Agency was established with a council, administrative committee, and executive. Each of these bodies consisted of an equal number of Zionist and nominally non-Zionist Jews. The president of the WZO was, however, ex officio president of the agency. Thereafter, the WZO continued to conduct external diplomatic, informational, and cultural activities, and the operational Jewish Agency took over fundraising, activities in Palestine, and local relations with the British Mandate Authority (administered by the colonial secretary). In time, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency became two different names for virtually the same organization.

Other landmark developments by the WZO and the Jewish Agency under the Mandate included creation of the Asefat Hanivharim (Elected Assembly) and the Vaad Leumi (National Council) in 1920 to promote religious, educational, and welfare services; establishment of the chief rabbinate in 1921; centralized Zionist control of the Hebrew school system in 1919, opening of the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa in 1924, and dedication of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925; and continued acquisition of land--largely via purchases by the Jewish National Fund--increasing from 60,120 hectares in 1922 to about 155,140 hectares in 1939, and the concurrent growth of Jewish urban and village centers.

The architect of the centralized organizational structure that dominated the Yishuv throughout the Mandate and afterward was Ben-Gurion. To achieve a centralized Jewish economic infrastructure in Palestine, he set out to form a large-scale organized Jewish labor movement including both urban and agricultural laborers. In 1919 he founded the first united Labor Zionist party, Ahdut HaAvodah (Unity of Labor), which included Poalei Tziyyon and affiliated socialist groups. This achievement was followed in 1920 by the formation of the Histadrut, or HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael (General Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel).

The Histadrut was the linchpin of Ben-Gurion's reorganization of the Yishuv. He designed the Histadrut to form a tightly controlled autonomous Jewish economic state within the Palestinian economy. It functioned as much more than a traditional labor union, providing the Yishuv with social services and security, setting up training centers, helping absorb new immigrants, and instructing them in Hebrew. Its membership was all-inclusive: any Jewish laborer was entitled to belong and to obtain shares in the organization's assets. It established a general fund supported by workers' dues that provided all members with social services previously provided by individual political parties. The Histadrut also set up Hevrat HaOvdim (Society of Workers) to fund and manage large-scale agricultural and industrial enterprises. Within a year of its establishment in 1921, Hevrat HaOvdim had set up Tenuvah, the agriculture marketing cooperative; Bank HaPoalim, the workers' bank; and Soleh Boneh, the construction firm. Originally established by Ahdut HaAvodah after the Arab riots in 1920, the Haganah under the Histadrut rapidly became the major Jewish defense force.

From the beginning, Ben-Gurion and Ahdut HaAvodah dominated the Histadrut and through it the Yishuv. As secretary general of the Histadrut, Ben-Gurion oversaw the development of the Jewish economy and defense forces in the Yishuv. This centralized control enabled the Yishuv to endure both severe economic hardship and frequent skirmishes with the Arabs and British in the late 1920s. The resilience of the Histadrut in the face of economic depression enabled Ben-Gurion to consolidate his control over the Yishuv. In 1929 many private entrepreneurs were forced to look to Ahdut HaAvodah to pull them through hard economic times. In 1930 Ahdut HaAvodah was powerful enough to absorb its old ideological rival, HaPoel HaTzair. They merged to form Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael (better known by its acronym Mapai), which would dominate political life of the State of Israel for the next two generations.

The hegemony of Ben-Gurion's Labor Zionism in the Yishuv did not go unchallenged. The other major contenders for power were the Revisionist Zionists led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who espoused a more liberal economic structure and a more zealous defense policy than the Labor movement. Jabotinsky, who had become a hero to the Yishuv because of his role in the defense of the Jews of Jerusalem during the riots of April 1920, believed that there was an inherent conflict between Zionist objectives and the aspirations of Palestinian Arabs. He called for the establishment of a strong Jewish military force capable of compelling the Arabs to accept Zionist claims to Palestine. Jabotinsky also thought that Ben-Gurion's focus on building a socialist Jewish economy in Palestine needlessly diverted the Zionist movement from its true goal: the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The appeal of Revisionist Zionism grew between 1924 and 1930 as a result of an influx of Polish immigrants and the escalating conflict with the Arabs. In the mid-1920s, a political and economic crisis in Poland and the Johnson-Lodge Immigration Act passed by the United States Congress, which curtailed mass immigration to America, spurred Polish-Jewish immigration to Israel. Between 1924 and 1931, approximately 80,000 Jews arrived in Palestine from Central Europe. The Fourth Aliyah, as it was called, differed from previous waves of Jewish immigration. The new Polish immigrants, unlike the Bolshevik-minded immigrants of the Second Aliyah, were primarily petty merchants and small-time industrialists with their own capital to invest. Not attracted to the Labor Party's collective settlements, they migrated to the cities where they established the first semblance of an industrialized urban Jewish economy in Palestine. Within five years, the Jewish populations of Jerusalem and Haifa doubled, and the city of Tel Aviv emerged. These new immigrants disdained the socialism of the Histadrut and increasingly identified with the laissez-faire economics espoused by Jabotinsky.

Another reason for Jabotinsky's increasing appeal was the escalation of Jewish-Arab violence. Jabotinsky's belief in the inevitable conflict between Jews and Arabs and his call for the establishment of an "iron wall" that would force the Arabs to accept Zionism were vindicated in the minds of many Jews after a confrontation over Jewish access to the Wailing Wall in August 1929 turned into a violent Arab attack on Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem. By the time the fighting ended, 133 Jews had been killed and 339 wounded. The causes of the disturbances were varied: an inter- Palestinian power struggle, a significant cutback in British military presence in Palestine, and a more conciliatory posture by the new British authorities toward the Arab position.

The inability of the Haganah to protect Jewish civilians during the 1929 riots led Jewish Polish immigrants who supported Jabotinsky to break away from the Labor-dominated Haganah. They were members of Betar, an activist Zionist movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, under the influence of Jabotinsky. The first Betar congress met at Danzig in 1931 and elected Jabotinsky as its leader. In 1937, a group of Haganah members left the organization in protest against its "defensive" orientation and joined forces with Betar to set up a new and more militant armed underground organization, known as the Irgun. The formal name of the Irgun was the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), sometimes also called by the acronym, Etzel, from the initial letters of the Hebrew name. The more extreme terrorist group, known to the British as the Stern Gang, split off from the Irgun in 1939. The Stern Gang was formally known as the Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters for Israel's Freedom), sometimes identified by the acronym Lehi. Betar (which later formed a nucleus for Herut) and Irgun rejected the Histadrut/Haganah doctrine of havlaga (self-restraint) and favored retaliation.

Although the 1929 riots intensified the Labor-Revisionist split over the tactics necessary to attain Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, their respective visions of the indigenous Arab population coalesced. Ben-Gurion, like Jabotinsky, came to realize that the conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalisms was irreconcilable and therefore that the Yishuv needed to prepare for an eventual military confrontation with the Arabs. He differed with Jabotinsky, however, on the need to make tactical compromises in the short term to attain Jewish statehood at a more propitious time. Whereas Jabotinsky adamantly put forth maximalist demands, such as the immediate proclamation of statehood in all of historic Palestine — on both banks of the Jordan River — Ben-Gurion operated within the confines of the Mandate. He understood better than Jabotinsky that timing was the key to the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. The Yishuv in the 1930s lacked the necessary military or economic power to carry out Jabotinsky's vision in the face of Arab and British opposition.

Another development resulting from the 1929 riots was the growing animosity between the British Mandate Authority and the Yishuv. The inactivity of the British while Arab bands were attacking Jewish settlers strengthened Zionist anti-British forces. Following the riots, the British set up the Shaw Commission to determine the cause of the disturbances. The commission report, dated March 30, 1930, refrained from blaming either community but focused on Arab apprehensions about Jewish labor practices and land purchases. The commission's allegations were investigated by an agrarian expert, Sir John Hope Simpson, who concluded that about 30 percent of the Arab population was already landless and that the amount of land remaining in Arab hands would be insufficient to divide among their offspring. This led to the Passfield White Paper (October 1930), which recommended that Jewish immigration be stopped if it prevented Arabs from obtaining employment and that Jewish land purchases be curtailed. Although the Passfield White Paper was publicly repudiated by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, it served to alienate further the Yishuv from the British.

The year 1929 also saw the beginning of a severe economic crisis in Germany that launched the rise of Adolf Hitler. Although both Germany and Austria had long histories of anti-Semitism, the genocide policies preached by Hitler were unprecedented. When in January 1930 he became chancellor of the Reich, a massive wave of mostly German Jewish immigration to Palestine ensued. Recorded Jewish immigration was 37,000 in 1933, 45,000 in 1934, and an all- time record for the Yishuv of 61,000 in 1935. In addition, the British estimated that a total of 40,000 Jews had entered Palestine without legal certificates during the period from 1920 to 1939. Between 1929, the year of the Wailing Wall disturbances, and 1936, the year the Palestinian Revolt began, the Jewish population of Palestine increased from 170,000 or 17 percent of the population, to 400,000, or approximately 31 percent of the total. The immigration of thousands of German Jews accelerated the pace of industrialization and made the concept of a Jewish state in Palestine a more formidable reality.

Sources:Library of Congress
- The Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine (Israel Anthology)
- Israel Studies An Anthology :
  
  I. Introduction
  
  At the end of World War I, tens of thousands of Jews were living in Palestine. They constituted a heterogeneous community in a remote part of a declining empire, having neither institutional infrastructure nor recognized leadership. Within 30 years, however, this community, known as theYishuv, evolved into an autonomous society; “a state in the making,” ready for independence. This transformation took place under difficult circumstances as the Yishuv was subject to foreign rule and was involved in an escalating confrontation with Palestine’s Arab inhabitants (who were, throughout the period, the majority in the country). The Yishuv grew rapidly, absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants and, within these 30 years, the Jewish population increased from 56,000 to 600,000.
  
  The Yishuv was a national liberation movement aspiring to establish an independent Jewish entity in Palestine, though, unlike other such movements, it had to gather its constituency from all over the world. In 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Britain as the Mandatory Power with “full powers of legislation and of administration” over Palestine and it also made the British “responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home,” according to the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 [The Council of the League of Nations, “The Palestine Mandate,” 24 July 1922]. Indeed, the Zionist leadership and the leaders of the Yishuv viewed the mandate regime as a protective umbrella, designed to enable the development and growth of the national home.
  
  Until the late 1930s, the Yishuv leadership conducted a policy of cooperation with Britain. On the eve of World War II, after Britain abandoned the National Home policy in favor of establishing one Palestinian state with the Jews constituting a permanent minority, the policy of cooperation was replaced by confrontation. By the end of the war, after a period of renewed cooperation in the common struggle against the axis powers, relations between the Yishuv and Britain deteriorated and turned into open and sometimes violent conflict.
  
  On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 that called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The resolution sparked violent measures between the Arab and Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, which turned into a full-scale war between the State of Israel and its Arab neighbor states the day after Israel was established on May 14, 1948.
  
  The main purpose of this article is to describe and analyze how the Yishuv was transformed from a marginal, passive body into an active element whose activity largely determined the nature of Palestine and its history. A major question to be resolved is how, in spite of external obstacles and internal rivalries and conflicts between political parties, movements and sectors, the unifying forces in the Yishuv were stronger than the divisive ones and how the Yishuv, as a national liberation movement, succeeded in achieving independence without its own internal civil war.
  
  II. The Yishuv: Some Basic Definitions and Characteristics
  
  The term Yishuv, which is usually defined as “the Jewish community in pre-State Palestine,” actually relates only to those Jews who aspired to the national revival of the Jewish people in Palestine or Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The Yishuv was made up of those who were involved in the political life of the Jewish community through elections, who accepted the authority of the elected leadership and who took part in the cultural life, based on the Hebrew language. From the early 1920s, two groups of Jews excluded themselves from the Yishuv: the ultra-orthodox and the communists.
  
  The Jews living in Mandatory Palestine constituted only a tiny minority of the entire Jewish people. At the beginning of the 20th century, less than 1 percent of Jews lived in Palestine and on the eve of World War II, the weight of Palestine in the world Jewish population was 2.84 percent. This proportion, of course, increased enormously after the extermination of approximately one third of world Jewry during the Holocaust.
  
  It is estimated that by the end of World War I, about 56,000 Jews and about 600,000 Arabs were living in Mandatory Palestine; a ratio of 1:11. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Jews constituted 17 percent of the total population and by the eve of World War II, they numbered 450,000 – about one third of the population in Palestine. This proportion remained until the outbreak of the 1948 War, with about 600,000 Jews and twice as many Arabs (both Muslim and Christian).
  
  The main source of demographic increase of the Yishuv during the Mandate period was immigration. Therefore, the Yishuv's history was influenced by the whereabouts of Jews around the world, which affected not only the influx of immigrants but also that of financial resources, i.e. investments both by Jews who moved to Palestine and by many others who remained abroad. Furthermore, as an immigrant society, most of whose members were newcomers, the Yishuv had diverse ties with Jews in the Diaspora, and many of the Yishuv members retained a deep attachment to relatives and friends whom they had left behind.
  
  III. The Yishuv and the Arabs: Mandatory Palestine as a Dual Society
  
  Officially, all the inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine were subjects of the same political entity, but this fact had almost no practical significance. The British Royal Commission, better known as the Peel Commission, which investigated the Palestine question in 1936/37, came to the conclusion that Arabs and Jews living in the same country were two distinct and separate communities:
  
  There is no common ground between them. The Arab community is predominantly Asiatic in character, the Jewish community predominantly European. They differ in religion and in language. Their cultural and social life, their ways of thought and conduct, are as incompatible as their national aspirations [Peel Report, Ch XX, Pr. 5].
  
  Cultural differences between Jews and Arabs existed from the beginning of the Mandate period. As time went on, the gap between the two populations widened and deepened. To quote again from the Peel Report:
  
  With every year that passes, the contrast between this intensely democratic and highly organized modern community [the Jewish one] and the old-fashioned Arab world around it grows sharper, and in nothing, perhaps, more markedly than on its cultural side . The literary output of the National Home is out of all proportion to its size. […] The Hebrew Press has expanded to four daily and ten weekly papers. […] Two periodicals are exclusively concerned with literature and one with dramatic art. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the culture of the National Home is its love of music. It was while we were in Palestine, as it happened, that Signor Toscanini conducted the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews, in six concerts […] On each occasion every seat was occupied, and it is noteworthy that one concert was reserved for some 3,000 workpeople at very low rates […] All in all, the cultural achievement of this little community of 400,000 people is one of the most remarkable features of the National Home.
  
  There is Arab literature, of course, and Arab music, but the culture of Arab Palestine is the monopoly of the intelligentsia and, born as it is of Asia, it has little kinship with that of the National Home, which, though it is linked with ancient Jewish tradition, is predominantly a culture of the West . Nowhere, indeed, is the gulf between the races more obvious. Anyone who attended the Toscanini Concerts at Jerusalem might have imagined, if he closed his eyes, that he was in Paris , London, or New York. Yet, almost within earshot was the Old City, the Haram-esh-Sharif, and the headquarters of the Arab Higher Committee. It is the same with science. The Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot [later named the Weizmann Institute for Science] is equipped with the most delicate modern instruments; the experiments conducted there are watched by chemists all over the world: yet from its windows can be seen the hills inhabited by a backward peasantry who regard it only as the demonstration of a power they hate and fear and who would like, no doubt, when their blood is up, to destroy it [Peel Report, Ch. V. Prs. 7-8].
  
  The separation between Jews and Arabs originated with the renewal of Jewish settlement in Palestine at the end of the 19th century; that is, the beginning of Zionist activity in the country. It was caused not only by the wide gulf between the two populations, but was also largely the result of intentional and conscious activity on the part of the Jews, who aspired to live apart from the Arab population. In mixed cities, Jews resided mostly in their own quarters and neighborhoods; while the new settlements founded by Jews, both urban and agricultural, were made up of Jews only. From the very beginning of the Mandate period, the Jews built their own political institutions to advance their autonomy, with the aspiration for full independence. In short, the Yishuv had a clear self-perception of being a distinct and separate entity and it acted on both the political and the practical levels to make this vision real.
  
  The Mandatory government contributed to the reality of a dual society. English, Arabic and Hebrew were recognized by the League of Nations and the Mandatory Power as the official languages of the country, thus formally approving and encouraging the existence of a “tower of Babel,” including the preservation of separate education systems; each nourishing the national values and aspirations of its own group. Since the Mandatory government never set up common governing institutions for all of the country's inhabitants, there was no official framework encompassing Jews and Arabs, except for a few municipalities in mixed cities and towns.
  
  The economic sphere was somewhat different from the cultural, geographic and political spheres. Yishuv institutions took active steps to close the Jewish economy to Arab workers to ensure employment for Jewish immigrants, thereby fulfilling two basic goals of Zionism. The primary one was to increase the Yishuv's population with the ultimate goal of having a Jewish majority in Palestine. Achieving this objective was dependent on the supply of jobs for new immigrants, and the closure of the Jewish market to Arab labor was intended to defend Jewish workers from unfair competition with the Arab workers for the limited supply of jobs (most Arab workers were employed in the citrus orchards and construction). It was much cheaper to employ Arab workers than Jewish ones, not only due to the Arabs' lower standard of living but also because working in the Jewish market was not, as a rule, the primary source of income for the Arab worker, who had his own farm or enterprise in his village or town.
  
  Most of the jobs in Jewish workplaces were made available by Jewish capital, i.e., money invested by Jews – living either in Palestine or abroad – for the specific purpose of supplying jobs for Jews to stimulate Jewish population growth in Palestine. The Mandatory government admitted the right for exclusive Jewish labor in such enterprises.
  
  Another goal of exclusive Jewish labor was to turn the Jews into productive workers, which was considered a crucial condition for building a “normal” and “healthy” Jewish society, with a full stratification structure including manual workers in agriculture and industry.
  
  It was more difficult to sustain the separation between Jews and Arabs in the economic sphere than in others since this involved a clash between national interests (dictating the employment of Jews only) and economic interests (commanding employing more skillful and lower paid Arab workers). By and large, the economic considerations had the upper hand, though they were somewhat moderated by political pressure utilized by both sides. Yishuvinstitutions and organizations campaigned for exclusive Jewish labor while the Arab leadership declared sporadic boycotts of Jewish commodities and services. Eventually the issue was determined by the security situation, which overwhelmed the economic interests and accelerated the processes of separation along national lines. Hostile events in the late 1920s and the second half of the 1930s deepened the segregation of Jews and Arabs in mixed cities, decreased the scope of Arab labor in the Jewish sphere and sped up the creation of an independent Jewish economic infrastructure. For example, when the Arabs launched a general strike and closed the Jaffa port to Jewish commodities in the spring of 1936, the Jews inaugurated an alternative port in nearby Tel Aviv.
  
  In general, there was a great deal of separation between the Jewish and Arab economies in Mandatory Palestine; contact, to the extent that it existed at all, worked in one direction only: The Yishuv transferred money to Arabs in exchange for land, labor and consumption products. Jewish employment in the Arab sphere was negligible. Thus, two distinct economic units existed in Mandatory Palestine, each having its own ethnic-national character, differing in their state and pace of development. In other words, there is almost no way of relating to a Palestinian economy as such, but rather to two separate national units functioning within the framework of Mandatory Palestine (Metzer, The divided economy of Mandatory Palestine; Horowitz, Lissak, Origins of the Israeli polity: Palestine under the Mandate).
  
  This paradigm of Mandatory Palestine as a dual society is prevalent in most of the literature published to this day. It is disputed only by a few historians, commonly labeled “New Historians” who attempt to portray the relations between the two societies in Mandatory Palestine as a colonial situation, assigning the role of the colonizer not to the British but rather to the Zionists.
  
  IV. Institutions, Political Parties and Organizations
  
  The Yishuv had already acquired its basic features as an autonomous, vibrant society early in the Mandate period, as depicted in an official British document issued in 1922:
  
  During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one-fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organisation for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity [Cmd. 1700].
  
  Institutions
  
  The Yishuv was headed by a two-winged system of national institutions – those elected by the Yishuv and those of the Zionist Organization. These two sets of institutions complemented each other and were based upon the common push for the independence and sovereignty of the Jews in Palestine. They fulfilled the dual role of conducting day-to-day life in an autonomous setting (through the Yishuv institutions) and constructing the infrastructure for an independent Jewish state (through the Zionist institutions). The umbrella of the Zionist organizations, recognized by the League of Nations and the Mandatory Power as the sole representative of the Jewish people in all matters relating to Palestine, transcended those of the Yishuv. The most powerful and influential body in the Yishuv was the Palestine Zionist Executive and, as of the early 1930s, the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem.
  
  The Yishuv functioned as a parliamentary democracy, formally having all three branches of government: (1) the parliament: Asefat ha-Nivharim (the "National Assembly"); (2) the executive organ: ha‑Va'ad ha-Le'umi (the national council or committee); and (3) the judicial system: Beit Mishpat ha-Shalom ha-Ivri (lit. the Hebrew Court of Peace). Within a few years, the stature of the Hebrew legal system declined for several reasons: Its limited scope of jurisdiction (the British government granted rabbinical courts exclusivity over personal matters), the opposition of the Jewish legal profession (Shamir, Colonies of Law), its voluntary character and lack of coercive means for enforcement of decisions, and the reliance of the Jews on the efficient Mandatory judicial system.
  
  The first elections to the National Assembly were held in April 1920, after resolving the issue of the women's right to vote (at a time when women's suffrage was quite rare around the world). The Orthodox community and the "Mizrahi" (the religious Zionist party) opposed the participation of women in the elections. After much deliberation, it was agreed that only men would cast their votes in the orthodox quarters, but each vote would count as two, to compensate for the women. This was, however, only a temporary solution and eventually the religious Zionist parties complied with the inclusion of women in the democratic process, while the ultra-orthodox, who were never members of the Zionist Organization in the first place, quit Knesset Yisrael (the single Jewish Community officially recognized by the Mandatory authorities) and did not take part in its elections and institutions (and thus are not considered part of the Yishuv as defined in this article). Though elections to the National Assembly should have been held every four years, they were held only in 1920, 1925, 1931 and 1944.
  
  The Mandatory government granted the Zionist Organization (and, from the early 1930s, the Jewish Agency) partial authority over matters that are customarily handled by the government in independent states, such as immigration, settlement, economic development and even some military issues. The Yishuv institutions dealt with internal matters (education, health, welfare). By definition, the Zionist organs had the upper hand in leading the Yishuv and they cast their shadow over the local institutions.
  
  The weakness of the Yishuv institutions was also a result of its political factionalism, which prevented the crystallization of a power center with strong public backing. In the first election to the National Assembly, for instance, no fewer than 20 lists competed for 28,765 potential voters (with 77 percent participation).
  
  The Rabbinical Council, headed by two chief rabbis, one Sephardic and one Ashkenazi, was the religious organ of the Yishuv, officially recognized by the Mandatory power. There were local Rabbinical Councils in the all-Jewish cities and towns, and in those with a substantial Jewish population, as well as a network of Rabbinical courts with jurisdiction over matters of personal status – marriage, divorce and inheritance.
  
  The Political Parties
  
  A basic consensus prevailed in the Yishuv over the goal of striving for a Jewish majority in the country and the eventual establishment of an independent Jewish entity in Palestine. Another widely agreed upon aspiration was the molding in Palestine of a new collective Jewish identity; one that would not be only a mixture of the specific traditions and heritages of the various components of the Yishuv population but, rather, a new amalgamation based on the Hebrew language and culture.
  
  Beyond these consensual ideas, the Yishuv was divided on a wide range of issues that can be grouped into four topics:
  
  (1) The territorial dimension of the Zionist enterprise
  
  (2) The social order: what kind of a society does Zionism aspire to build in Palestine? Does the Zionist enterprise contain only national aspects or does it also embrace social goals such as building a just society? The right and center parties were of the opinion that the object of Zionism should be limited to establishing an independent Jewish national entity while the left wing parties expected it also to have attributes of social justice and equality.
  
  (3) Respect for the authority of the elected institutions.
  
  (4) The “Arab Question”: the wide spectrum of practical, political, and moral dilemmas confronting Zionism and the Yishuv due to the existence of Arab population in Palestine.
  
  The Yishuv was a very politically oriented and motivated society and its members were involved in intensive political activity. Political parties played a central role in the Yishuv not only in the conventional spheres of political party activity but in almost all aspects of public life. Political affiliation had a significant role in everyday life and was essential for gaining access to services such as medical care, housing, employment and education. For Jews abroad wishing to immigrate to Palestine, the party key was influential in obtaining immigration certificates.
  
  The Yishuv political map, shaped in the first decade of the Mandate period, was composed of the bloc of workers' parties (left), the civic bloc (center), the Revisionist party (right) and a bloc of religious parties. The basic division of power was determined in the early 1930s and the main features remained intact for many years (until the establishment of the State of Israel and, in many respects, until the defeat of the Labor Party in the 1977 election). The left of center Labor Party (Mapai), headed by David Ben-Gurion, enjoyed hegemonic status as the largest party. Since it received less than 50 percent of the vote, however, it had to form a coalition with at least one other party. In the 1930s, Mapai forged “a historic alliance” with a religious party (Mizrahi) and the two formed the core of the governing coalitions, which also included part of the center party, the General Zionists.
  
  The Revisionist party, headed by Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, advocated the "One Banner" or monistic attitude, claiming that the aspirations of Zionism were solely national while he rejected the socialist component of Labor Zionism. The Revisionists withdrew from the Zionist Organization in 1935, after realizing that they had no chance of becoming its leading force. They advocated a hard-line policy on the Zionist-British front and in relations with the Arabs. The Revisionists founded the New Zionist Organization, which conducted its own policy, repudiating the legitimacy of the "old" Zionist Organization and defying its decisions and authority. The Revisionists set up their own institutions (health, employment, trade union and fundraising) and even had their own military organization – the Etzel (an acronym for Irgun Tzva'i Leumi: National Military Organization, or the Irgun), which conducted military and terrorist activities against Arabs and the British. After 1940, a splinter group of Etzel formed another underground group – Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael: Fighters for Israel's Freedom, the Stern Gang). After 1935, there were actually three groups of Jews in Palestine: The "Organized Yishuv" (the labor Zionists, the General Zionists and the religious Zionists), the "Porshim" (dissenters, i.e., the Revisionists) and the ultra-orthodox.
  
  The Histadrut: The General Federation of Jewish [Hebrew] Laborers in Palestine
  
  In late 1920s, Jewish workers in Palestine founded the Histadrut, a unique organization that played a central role in the history of the Yishuv at large, not only that of the workers and left wing parties. The Histadrut was a country-wide labor organization that fulfilled a wide range of functions: It operated as a trade union and as an employer; ran a job placement agency (lishkat avoda), was involved in settlement activity, had its own economic institutions (including a bank, an insurance company and a pension fund) and also provided health care. It had its own education system, a daily newspaper, a publishing house and a theatre group and conducted a variety of cultural activities. For many years, the Histadrut was in charge of the military arm – the Hagana (defense) – and it played a central role in organizing illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine in defiance of Mandatory laws. In short, the Histadrut was "a state within the state in the making." The leadership that headed the Histadrut also became the dominant political force in the Yishuv, and in the Zionist organization, starting in the 1930s, so the Histadrut’s activity complemented rather than challenged the authority of the Yishuv leadership. Founded with about 4,500 people, by 1947, Histadrut membership had grown to 175,000.
  
  V. The Yishuv as a Democratic Society
  
  The Yishuv featured almost all the attributes of a democratic state except sovereignty. It was organized and functioned along the lines of a parliamentary democracy and even its underground paramilitary arm, the Hagana, was subject to the control and authority of the democratically elected civil leadership. This impressed the various committees that investigated the situation in Palestine, such as the Peel Commission in 1937 and the (UNSCOP) ten years later. The strong institutional structure established by the Yishuv was later manifested in the smooth transfer from foreign rule to becoming an independent state in May 1948.
  
  What were the sources of inspiration for the Yishuv's democratic practices? Some roots can be traced to the self-governing tradition of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora for many generations. The Zionist Organization had functioned in a democratic manner since its inception in 1897. Another source of influence was the Mandatory power – Britain, the parliamentary democratic state par excellence. The fact that Palestine was under British rule exposed the heads of the Yishuv and the leaders of the Zionist movement to the conduct of a democratic regime and encouraged them to use methods acceptable to the decision makers in London. Many of the Yishuv leaders admired Western democracy British and later American.
  
  Fostering democracy in the Yishuv can also be explained by the need of the Zionist movement to gain the support of public opinion in democratic states, thus obligating it to be attuned to the values of those states and to the view of the Jewish communities that supported the Yishuv both politically and financially.
  
  A crucial factor in molding the Yishuv as a democratic society was its voluntary character. Unlike a sovereign government with coercion authority, voluntary organizations are based on free will and persuasion.
  
  Nevertheless, there were other, countervailing sources of influence. To begin with, most of the Yishuv members and leaders had no experience with democratic practices in their former countries of residence. On the contrary, most of them lived under totalitarian regimes. In addition, certain circles in the Yishuv admired the Soviet Revolution and accepted the notion of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and the arbitrary role of the avant-garde in times of turmoil and change. Furthermore, the Jewish religion itself contains non-democratic elements, such as unequivocal reliance on the Halacha (Jewish religious law).
  
  All in all, the democratic sources of influence toned down the opposing factors and the Yishuv acted as a formal democracy and was conducted according to the decisions of the majority. The Yishuv was spared dilemmas faced by liberal democracies, mainly relating to the rights of the individual and of the minority, since those issues were outside the authority and control of the Yishuv while it was under foreign rule.
  
  Somewhat paradoxically, the very lack of sovereignty had a positive influence on sustaining the democratic character of the Yishu. Though the Mandatory government curbed the authority and power of the national institutions, it also relieved them of the burden of building and maintaining a physical infrastructure – roads, railways, sea and airports, postal and telegraphic services, a basic health system – and guaranteed internal and external security provided by the army and the police force. The Mandatory regime also provided a protective umbrella that enabled the national institutions, and the Yishuv as a whole, to gradually expand and strengthen, prior to shouldering full governing responsibilities.
  
  The lack of political sovereignty also meant that many issues were conducted according to Mandatory regulations, thus relieving the Yishuv of the need to deal with controversial issues at the heart of the tension between religious and secular factions in the State of Israel. Along with the many disadvantages of being under foreign rule, the Mandate had the positive effect of increasing internal cohesiveness in the Yishuv which was strengthened by the continuous and intensifying conflict with the Arabs.
  
  VI. Major Spheres of Yishuv Activity
  
  Functioning as a state in the making, the Yishuv, in spite of being under foreign rule, was involved in many activities usually dealt with by sovereign states. This section discusses the issues of immigration, settlement, education and the political and military struggle.
  
  Immigration
  
  The Yishuv was an immigrant society, the majority of whose members were first generation immigrants, many with relatives abroad whom they were eager to bring to Palestine. In addition, Zionist ideology had conditioned the Yishuv to adopt a favorable attitude toward Jewish immigration to Palestine and made it an integral component of the Zionist ethos. From the Zionists’ point of view, immigration to Palestine was the ultimate realization of Zionist ideology and all Jews were welcome to settle in the country.
  
  Ideological commitment and personal obligation to continuous immigration prevailed even when the flow of newcomers harmed the Jewish “natives” in the short run, and countered their immediate interests. Unlike other immigrant states where, in times of economic depression, trade unions were among the leading restrictive forces, as was the case in the United States in the 1930s, the Histadrut supported large-scale Jewish immigration even when unemployment was high.
  
  The Yishuv went through short periods of vibrant economic activity, even prosperity (the mid-1920s and 1933-1935), and long periods of recession and economic crisis. During most of the mandatory period, with the exception of the years 1925 and 1933-1935, Palestine suffered from chronic unemployment. It recovered from the economic crisis of the second half of the 1930s only during World War II, when the British war effort supplied new sources of employment.
  
  The League of Nations made Britain “responsible for placing Palestine under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.” Britain proclaimed that “for the fulfillment of this policy it is necessary that the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration,” but added that "it is essential to ensure that the immigrants should not be a burden upon the people of Palestine as a whole, and that they should not deprive any section of the present population of their employment" (Cmd. 1700). Until 1937, officially, immigration to Palestine was conducted according to the economic absorptive capacity of the country, a yardstick defined as the annual rate at which a country can receive immigrants without being subject to friction and serious economic derangement.
  
  Mandatory immigration regulations divided immigrants into four groups: Persons of independent means (Category A, "Capitalists"); Students and persons of religious occupations whose maintenance is assured (Category B); Persons who have a definite prospect of employment (Category C, "Labor"); Dependants of permanent residents of Palestine or of immigrants in other categories (Category D). Only category C, Labor, was subject to the economic absorptive capacity principle, as the immigrants of categories A, B and D were not expected to enter the labor market. Therefore, until 1937, there was no limit on the number of immigrants in these categories (A, B and D), and most importantly, on that of persons of independent means (A).
  
  Britain alone regulated the immigration of categories A, B and D, granting the Zionist Organization partial authority over category C in return for undertaking to guarantee the maintenance of the immigrants during their first year in Palestine. The Zionist Organization had no influence over the volume of immigration; Britain determined the rules of the game and always had the final say. Thus, the maneuverability of the Zionist Organization in the area of immigration was very limited.
  
  Nonetheless, even this limited authority over immigration matters constituted one of the few bases of power of the Zionist leadership. The labor certificates were the most precious resource that the Zionist Organization controlled and could divide among its citizens. In the 1930s, the certificates were primarily distributed according to party affiliation; the various Zionist parties in the Diaspora made promises regarding the prospect of immigration and competed in providing this benefit to their members. The chance to receive a labor certificate was a weighty incentive for joining the Zionist Organization and speculation as to the probability of getting one had some bearing on the decision regarding which party to join. Consequently, the distribution of the certificates had some effect on determining the balance of power in Zionist institutions, and since immigration was the main source of growth for the Yishuv, distribution of the certificates played a role in shaping its political structure.
  
  Immigration in the 1930s was governed primarily by political rather than economic considerations. The main concern of the British authorities was law and order in the country and they were attuned to the complaints of the Arabs that Jewish immigration was both economically harmful and threatened their status as the majority in the country. The Peel Commission found, however, that Jewish immigration actually increased the economic absorptive capacity of the country as a whole [Peel Report, Ch. III. Pr. 82].
  
  Following the Arab Revolt, which broke out in 1936 and continued until late 1939, Britain acted to maintain the existing demographic balance of Palestine (about one-third Jews and two-thirds Arabs). In July 1937, it formally abandoned the principle of economic absorptive capacity as the yardstick for Jewish immigration, replacing it with the “political high level” principle, aimed at preventing the growth of the Jewish population beyond the one-third limit. The “political high level” principle fixed a ceiling on immigration of all types and was determined by political and demographic considerations, regardless of the country's economic ability to absorb immigrants. In 1937, this ceiling was set at 12,000 Jewish immigrants annually (Cmd. 5513, par. 6). In May 1939, the number was raised to 15,000 (Cmd. 6019, par. 14 [1]), which reflected the rapid natural growth of the Arab population in Palestine.
  
  Settlement
  
  Most of the Yishuv population was urban (80 percent), living in four types of cities and towns: Tel Aviv, an exclusively Jewish city; Jerusalem, a mixed city with a Jewish majority; Haifa, Tiberias, Safad, and Jaffa, mixed cities with a substantial (up to 50 percent) Jewish minority; Hebron, Beersheba, Gaza, Tul Karem and Nablus, some of which were totally abandoned by the Jews after the 1929 disturbances and others mixed towns with a significant Arab majority.
  
  The majority of Jewish agricultural settlements were privately owned. The location of these settlements and their sources of livelihood were chosen according to universal rules of economic profitability. The different types of collective settlements, Kvutza,Kibbutz and Moshav, were founded on national land, financed by national funds with their location and economic activity determined by the Zionist Organization and the Histadrut in keeping with a complex set of considerations. The agricultural settlements had a dual role in achieving Zionist goals: To increase the number of Jews in Palestine and to expand the Jewish territorial base. The Zionist settlement activity was, at first, dependent on the supply of land for sale, the economic-agricultural feasibility of that land and the financial resources of the Zionist Organization. Later, after the 1929 disturbances, a new element of security considerations was introduced and, in the mid-1930s, yet another aspect, the political-strategic one, was increasingly being taken into account.
  
  Jewish casualties in the August 1929 disturbances occurred mostly among those who lived in mixed cities, in the mountain area villages and in isolated settlements, while the dense Jewish population concentrations in the shore and valley areas remained unharmed. Consequently, the architects of settlement policy decided to refrain from founding isolated villages and focused on creating blocks of settlements within view of one another; with decent roads paved between them and accessible routes connecting them to the major Jewish population clusters. Old and new settlements were surrounded by fences and took other security measures so as to enable them to endure Arab attacks until the arrival of reinforcements. As a result of these measures, after 1929, no Jewish settlement was abandoned until the invasion of the regular Arab armies in 1948.
  
  A conceptual change in settlement policy began to take place after the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936 and, even more so, after the public became (unofficially) aware of the conclusions of the Peel Commission, which recommended in 1937 the partitioning of Palestine. Thereafter, the nationally funded settlements were located according to political-strategic considerations, directed by the assumption – or rather, the hope – that the borders of the future Jewish state would be determined by the last furrow plowed by a Jewish farmer. Settlements were positioned so as to have an impact on the final partition map in two ways: Strengthening the Jewish hold on areas designated by the committee for the Jewish state but sparsely populated by Jews; and further populating areas already settled by Jews that were to be assigned to the Arab state. The settlement activity continued to be politically motivated through the 1940s with the aim of stretching the borders of the State of Israel to include the Negev and other areas considered vital for guaranteeing a viable Jewish state.
  
  Education
  
  The Yishuv operated an educational system on all levels from kindergartens, through elementary and secondary schools as well as higher education. Despite the fact that the Yishuv was a voluntary society lacking the authority to impose taxes and enforce laws and particularly without a compulsory education law in Palestine at the time, “practically every Jewish boy and girl attends a primary school. A substantial proportion of them go to a secondary school” [Peel Report, Ch. V, Pr. 12].
  
  At the beginning of the Mandate period, the Zionist Organization resolved to maintain the Hebrew education system independent of Mandatory government control to avoid any intervention or supervision of the content of its curricula. This ideological decision had a price: The Yishuv relinquished most of the Mandatory government’s financial support. Initially, the Zionist Executive took financial responsibility for the Yishuv education system, but gradually the financial burden was transferred to Yishuv institutions, the municipalities and the pupils' parents. The Yishuv delegates continued to negotiate with the British government to increase its share in the Jewish education budget.
  
  The decision to maintain the independence of the education system was motivated by the perception that Hebrew education was the flagship of the national revival process and that it played an essential role in conveying Zionist values to the younger generation. The various ideological and political bodies of the Yishuv viewed the schools as primary agents of socialization and education and each of the major ideological streams wished to have its own education system, instilling its particular values along with the common Zionist values shared by all.
  
  At the beginning of the Mandate period, there was one general Hebrew education system, with about 20 percent of the pupils attending schools having a religious Jewish inclination. These schools later formed the basis for a separate religious education stream, directed by the religious Mizrahi party. In 1926, a third education stream was recognized – "the Labor stream," including schools in cities, towns and agricultural cooperative settlements (Kibbutzim and Moshavim) and directed by the Histadrut. Thus, there were three distinct education streams in the Yishuv (with a fourth belonging to the ultra orthodox). By 1948, about 50 percent of the Yishuv's children went to schools of the General stream, 30 percent to the Labor stream and 20 percent to the Mizrahi stream.
  
  Though the three educational streams were free to prepare their own curricula and select their teachers, they still had much in common. Throughout the educational system, teaching was conducted exclusively in Hebrew, an emphasis was placed on the national dimension of Jewish history and culture and a difference was stressed between the Jewish society emerging in Palestine and the Jews living in the Diaspora.
  
  The streams had their share of differences as well. The General stream, affiliated with civic circles and municipalities in cities, towns and Moshavot, held a liberal orientation and a positive attitude toward Jewish tradition. The Mizrahi stream emphasized religious education through the teaching of Jewish sources and observing the commandments. The Labor stream encouraged and instilled socialist values in addition to the national ones. Its schools were called "Education Houses for Laborers' Children." According to a report of the Mandatory government's Education Department, the Mizrahi stream was educating in the spirit of yesterday that would probably never return while the Labor stream was educating for a tomorrow that most likely would never arrive.
  
  The Political and Military Struggle
  
  Initially, the Yishuv expected the Mandatory Power to maintain law and order in Palestine and to protect its inhabitants' lives and property. However, violent clashes with Arabs in the upper Galilee in the winter of 1920 (including the famous Tel Hai incident), and in Jerusalem (Passover of the same year), made it clear to the Jews they could not depend solely on the Mandatory security forces but that they would have to play a more active role in defending themselves. In June 1920, the workers’ party called Ahdut ha-Avoda laid the foundations for the Hagana, an underground paramilitary organization which, from its inception until the end of the Mandate operated along a number of principles: Every Jew could join, it was subject to the authority of elected civil institutions (first those of the party, then of the Histadrut and, from the early 1930s, of the national institutions), it was a country-wide organization, it was illegal according to the prevailing laws of the country and therefore an underground organization (although its existence was well known to all). Members of the Hagana were volunteers. They continued to hold their jobs and took part in training during off-work hours in the afternoons, Saturdays and holidays and were summoned for duty when the need arose.
  
  The 1929 disturbances put the Hagana to the test, revealing its advantages as well as its weaknesses and provoking a number of changes. The organization was enlarged, its units were better spread throughout the country, training was intensified, more equipment was purchased and an overall command was established that was composed of representatives of the Histadrut and the civic circles on a party basis.
  
  The Arab revolt (1936-1939) intensified the cooperation between the Yishuv and the British, including operating joint military units and all-Jewish paramilitary units armed by the British, who also paid full or partial salaries to the members. The military cooperation between the Yishuv and the British reached a peak during World War II, when about 30,000 men and women (out of a population of about 450,000) volunteered to serve in various units of the British army, including a Jewish Brigade, which was formed toward the end of the war as an integral part of the British army. Thus, the Mandatory Power was the chief factor in training the military force of the Yishuv and, unintentionally, preparing it for its eventual war with the Arabs.
  
  The Arab Revolt put the Yishuv and its leadership to a severe test regarding the appropriate ways to react to the escalating violence. The Yishuv's political leadership and the command of the Hagana advocated a policy of restraint while the Revisionists and other extreme elements were in favor of a policy of retaliation. Restraint did not mean passive acceptance of Arab attacks, but, rather, represented opposition to a line of counter-terrorist actions and blind attacks on innocent individuals with no proven connections to anti-Jewish violence. There were a number of moral grounds for the policy of restraint, but the main reasons were predominantly political-pragmatic ones and above all, the wish to preserve British goodwill and cooperation in the political and military areas. The Yishuv leadership insisted on conducting all military activity according to the decisions of the elected institutions and on preventing uncontrolled actions that had the potential of being counterproductive.
  
  National unity in defining both the ultimate goal and the tactics used to achieve it was of utmost importance at the final stage of the struggle for independence in the years 1945-1948. From late 1945 until summer 1946, the Yishuv conducted a multi-front struggle against the Mandatory Power: It organized illegal immigration (Ha'apala) and military operations against various British targets in Palestine, founded new settlements and engaged in a variety of diplomatic and political activities in London, New York, Washington and around the world aimed at winning support for statehood.
  
  The struggle in Palestine reached its peak in the summer of 1946 with some impressive military successes for the Jewish side; however, in the political arena, the Zionists did not move one inch forward. It was decided, therefore, in August 1946, to tone down the armed struggle, to put an end to sabotage activity and to turn the Ha’apala into the main – and virtually only – front against the British. At the same time, it was decided to pursue mainly political measures for independence while secretly preparing for the inevitable and decisive battle expected with the Arabs.
  
  Not all members of the Yishuv understood the tactical restraint needed at that stage of the struggle for the Jewish state, particularly when the dissident organizations continued to attack the British and boasted of their successes. The primary aim of the Zionist movement at that juncture was to prove that its elected leadership was capable of imposing its authority on the Yishuv. The terrorist activities of the dissident organizations (Etzel and Lehi) jeopardized this claim and threatened to infringe on the line of restraint adopted by the leadership. At that delicate point, the Ha’apala proved to be a useful tool in capturing the hearts of the Yishuv’s young people and persuading the public that national obedience was the order of the day. Following the summer of 1946, the Ha’apala was largely responsible for the closing of ranks in the Yishuv and for proving that not only the dissenters were capable of beating the British. A national consensus approved of the elected leadership’s policy of rescuing Holocaust survivors. The British, meanwhile, made sure that certain ground rules were maintained in their efforts to curb it, thus they never attempted to drown an immigrant ship and very rarely open live fire at the immigrants.
  
  When the United Nations’ Special Committee on Palestine arrived in the region in the summer of 1947, it was most impressed by the Jews’ internal organization and the fact that most of them conformed to the rules set by the elected political leadership. These facts were decisive in convincing the international committee that the Jews were mature enough for independence and were able to undertake the responsibility of managing their own lives without British supervision. The broad consensus that united the Jewish population in Palestine around its leadership was a major factor in the Yishuv's ability to engage in the war with the Palestinian Arabs, which broke out at the end of 1947, and why Zionism, unlike many other national liberation movements, was spared a civil-war stage on its road to independence.
  
  VI. Conclusion
  
  A few times during the Mandatory period, the Yishuv was on the verge of civil war, but once the differing sides realized the depth of the abyss they might fall into, they found ways to bridge the gulf and avoid catastrophe. Thus, even the bitterest conflicts never turned into a total and irreversible schism. The common goals and interests were stronger than the disputes and the controversies. The presence of an external power, the British, forced the parties to find a compromise, without external intervention or internal bloodshed. The presence of hostile neighboring people further cemented the Yishuv's cohesion.
  
  VII. Epilogue
  
  About a month before the scheduled end of the Mandate, the Yishuv formed two governing organs: (1) a parliament (Mo'etzet ha-Am - The People’s Council), a 37-member temporary legislative body, representing the full spectrum of the Jewish population of Palestine, including all the Yishuv parties as well as the Communists, the Revisionists and the ultra-orthodox Agudat Yisrael; and (2) a 13-member cabinet (Minhelet ha-Am - The People's Administration). This executive body convened on May 12, 1948, to decide whether to declare independence. Ten members attended the crucial meeting (with two members stuck in besieged Jerusalem and one on a mission in the United States) with six voting in favor of declaring independence when the Mandate ended and four against. Two days later, on Friday May 14, 1948, the independent State of Israel was declared. All the members of Mo'etzet ha-Am, converted into the Provisional State Council (Mo'etzet ha-Medina ha-Zmanit), signed the scroll of the Declaration of Independence. Minhelet ha-Am became the Provisional Government (ha-Memshala ha-Zmanit). About two weeks later, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces; Tzahal: Tzva Hagana l'Yisrael) was officially formed out of the Hagana, incorporating the Etzel and Lehi as well. The official and practical transformation of the Yishuv into a sovereign independent state was completed.
  
  Bibliography/Sources:
  Itamar Even-Zohar, "The emergence of native Hebrew culture in Palestine, 1882-1948,” in: Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism, New York 1996, pp. 727-744.
  Yosef Gorny, Zionism and the Arabs 1882-1948: A study of ideology, Oxford 1987.
  Aviva Halamish, From National Home to a State in the Making: History of the Jewish Community in Palestine between the World Wars, Vol. I, Tel Aviv 2004; Vol. II, Ra'anana 2004 [Hebrew].
  --- "Zionist Immigration Policy Put to the Test: Historical analysis of Israel's immigration policy, 1948-1951", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Volume 7, Issue 2, July 2008 , pp. 119 – 134.
  Ben Halpern and Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Creation of a New Society, New York 1998.
  Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945-1949: Ben Gurion and His Critics, Gainesville (Florida) 2000.
  Dan Horowitz, Moshe Lissak, Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine under the Mandate, Chicago 1978.
  Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, Berkeley 1983.
  Israel Kolatt, "The Zionist movement and the Arabs," in Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism, New York 1996, pp. 617-647.
  Jacob Metzer, The divided economy of Mandatory Palestine, Cambridge 1998 .Jehuda Reinharz, "Building a national home under the Palestine Mandate," Bar-Ilan Studies in History, III (1991), pp. 51-66.
  Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, New York 1991, pp. 89-314.
  Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914, Cambridge 1989.
  Ronen Shamir, The Colonies of Law: Colonialism, Zionism and Law in Early Mandate Palestine, Cambridge 2000.
  Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, New York, 1992.
  Ze’ev Tzahor, "The Histadrut: From marginal organization to 'state-in-the-making'”, in Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (eds.), EssentialPapers on Zionism, New York, 1996, pp. 473-508.
  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation, June 1922, Cmd. 1700, London 1922.
  The Council of the League of Nations, “The Palestine Mandate,” 24 July 1922.
  Report of the Palestine Royal Commission. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the United Kingdom Parliament by Command of His Britannic Majesty (July 1937), Cmd. 5479 [=Peel Report].
  Great Britain, Colonial Office, Palestine: Statement by His Majesty Government, Cmd. 5513, London July 1937.
  Cmd. 6019 = Great Britain, Colonial Office,Palestine: Statement of Policy by His Majesty's Government, London 1939.
British White Papers
- Restrictions on Jewish Immigration

Commissions & Reports

San Remo Conference (1920)
The San Remo Conference was an international meeting held following the conclusion of World War I that determined the precise boundaries for territories captured by the Allies.

The conference, attended by Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan- with the United States as a neutral observer, was held in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920. The conference was a continuation of a previous meeting between these Allied powers that had been held in London in February 1920, where it was decided, among other things, to put Palestine under British Mandatory rule. At San Remo, the Allies confirmed the pledge contained in the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

The British delegation to San Remo was headed by Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Lord Curzon, who had replaced Lord Balfour as foreign minister in 1919. Balfour, however, was also present at the conference as a consultant for final settlement issues. At both meetings the French expressed many reservations about the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the peace treaty, and it was only after the exertion of British pressure that they were gradually persuaded to agree to it.

The Conference was also attended by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, and Herbert Samuel, who presented a memorandum to the British delegation on the final settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The article concerning Palestine was debated on April 24 and the next day it was finally resolved to incorporate the Balfour Declaration in Britain's mandate in Palestine. Thus Britain was made responsible "for putting into effect the declaration made on the 8^th[sic.] November 1917 by the British Government and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people; it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The resolution at San Remo was celebrated by mass rallies throughout the Jewish world.

Sources:Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.

L. Stein, The Balfour Declaration (1961), 652–63; C. Weizmann, Trial and Error (1949), 321–5; D. Lloyd George, The Truth About the Peace Conference, 2 (1938), 1167–75, 1182–90; J. Nevakivi, Britain, France and the Arab Middle East (1969), 240–54 and index.
Shaw Commission (1930)
- Hope-Simpson Report
Peel Commission (1937)
- Peel Commission Report
St. James Conference (1939)
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946)
- Report of the Anglo-American Committee

War & Fighting

Reference

Defense Organizations

Deportation of the 251

On Thursday, October 19, 1944, at 4:30 am, a large British military force surrounded the Latrun internment camp. At 6 am, a list of 239 internees was read out. They were handcuffed, searched, and taken out of the camp without being permitted to take anything with them. Loaded onto trucks which formed a convoy, they were escorted by armored cars to the Wilhelma airfield. There they were joined by 12 inmates from Acre prison, who had arrived an hour earlier.

The 251 detainees were divided into 12 groups, and each group boarded an aircraft, accompanied by armed guards. When it became clear to the prisoners that they were being deported, they burst into a mighty rendering of Hatikva. The 12 planes flew to Asmara, capital of Eritrea; the following day the internees were taken from the airfield to their first place of exile in Africa - Sambel camp, two kilometers north of Asmara.

The Mandatory government continued to exile persons suspected of terrorist affiliation. In all, 439 people were deported by the end of the Mandate.

The Yishuv reacted with restraint to news of the deportation. The Jewish Agency Executive kept silent and the Vaad Le'umi responded with quiet protest. The Hebrew press did not take up arms, and Davar (the Histadrutnewspaper) wrote that if the underground was unwilling to abandon its separate path "it should not wonder at the fact that the Yishuv is reacting in this way." It will be recalled that in May 1944, about six months before the deportation, the Jewish Agency had resumed its collaboration with the Mandatory government and was once again informing on underground fighters and foiling Irgun and Lehi operations. Eight days after the deportation of the 251 fighters, the Yishuv was shocked by the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo, and cooperation with the British police, the so-called Season, was now overt and extensive.

Sambel Camp, Eritrea

Sambel camp in Erritrea had served in the past as a recreation center for Italian fascist youth and the living conditions were no worse than in Latrun. But, despite the good conditions and comfortable climate, the internees suffered in the first few months from lack of clothing and everyday necessities, from the absence of books and religious articles. Two months after their arrival at Sambel, food rations were cut drastically. The move apparently stemmed from the general wartime shortage of food, but this fact did not appease the prisoners, who launched a partial hunger strike. Several weeks later, the rations were restored to their former size.

On January 21, 1945, three months after their arrival in Eritrea, the internees made their first escape attempt. The weak spot was the sports ground outside the camp, which was open to the internees all day, but locked in the evening and unguarded all night. The rain had created a trench in one corner of the sport ground, which was the inmates excavated further. On the day of the escape, Benyamin Zeroni, Haggai Lev and Shimon Sheiba hid in the trench and covered themselves with soil. When the sports ground had been locked and darkness fell, they emerged from their "tomb," climbed the fence and headed for Asmara. They spent the first night in a field near the town and the next day boarded a bus and asked the driver to let them off at the synagogue (there was a Jewish community in Asmara, consisting of fifty families of Yemenite origin). There they met Haim Gamliel, who gave them money, and hid them in his house. The aim of the three fugitives was to reach Ethiopia. Near the border, a local patrol checked the identity of the passengers; the three came under suspicion, and were handed over to the British, who returned them to the camp and imposed a month's solitary confinement on them.

Three days after the escape the internees were evacuated from Sambel and taken to Massawa port. There they were put aboard an Italian vessel and, under intolerably crowded conditions, transferred to Carthage in the Sudan.

Carthage Camp, Sudan

The internment camp at carthage was located in the heart of the desert and endured a harsh climate. Water was in short supply - drinking water was transported in scant quantities by car from dozens of kilometers away. The piped water was salty, and its consumption restricted. Khartoum, the nearest town with a military hospital, was 600 kilometers away. Carthage was much tougher than Sambel in terms of accommodation, sanitation and climate.

In addition to the problem of poor nutrition, a controversy raged on the issue of kosher food. At the beginning of November 1944, the authorities cancelled the supply of kosher meat which they had been purchasing from the Jewish community in Asmara, and offered instead canned non-kosher meat from British army rations. The internees launched a protest against this change, which offended both the religious and secular alike. Echoes of the protest reached Palestine, and the chief rabbinate, with the aid of the Jewish Agency, appealed to the High Commissioner to send a rabbi and a ritual slaughterer (shohet) to the camp. On March 15, Rabbi Yaakov Shraibom and the shohet, Rabbi Rosenberg, reached the camp. They were housed outside the fence and were permitted to come and go at will. Their free movement was exploited by the interneess to get information from, and establish contact with, the outside world, which was vital to their escape plans.

Yaakov Meridor

On September 26, 1945, three Irgun members (Yaakov Yundof, Yaakov Meridor and Shimon Sheiba) left the camp concealed in a tanker which had brought in water. The driver, who had been bribed, brought them to a spot close to the railroad station, and left them there. They spent the night in a field, and the next day boarded a train for Port Sudan, where they planned to rent a boat to take them to Aqaba. They posed as Polish intelligence officers working for the British, and were equipped with wooden revolvers (which looked just like the real thing) and forged documents. Their comrades in the camp covered their escape and hindered the search after their absence was discovered. As was customary in internment camps, all the inmates were counted every evening. The count was not conducted simultaneously in all the huts, but consecutively. The interval between the counts enabled three inmates to slip out of a hut which had already been inspected, and to be counted again in other huts. They moved from hut to hut through windows whose bars had been sawn through in such a way that they could be lifted out and replaced without detection.

The escapees reached Port Sudan as planned, and spent three days searching for a vessel which would transport them to Aqaba (the Irgun General Headquarters had sent them a considerable sum of money). However, they aroused the suspicion of the hotel owner where they were staying, and were forced to leave. They contacted a Jewish merchant, but he was unwilling to risk helping them. They had no alternative but to travel to Khartoum by train. At one of the stations, British officers boarded the train and recognized them. On September 26, six days after their escape, they were handed back to the authorities.

Back to the Sambel Camp

The internees spent nine months in the Sudan; on October 9, 1945, they were evacuated from Carthage and, after a four-day journey by train and truck, found themselves back at Sambel. Two months later, 35 new internees joined them and were housed in a special camp several hundred meters from the veterans. On January 17, 1946, a dispute broke out between one of the internees, Eliyahu Ezra, and a Sudanese sentinel, resulting in Ezra being shot and wounded. The injured man was carried to the gate for transfer to the first aid station outside the camp. When the guards refused to let them out, the internees began banging on the gate, and fire was opened on them from all sides. Eliyahu Ezra and Shaul Haglili were killed, and 12 others were injured. Only then was the gate opened. The medical officer and several medical orderlies hastened to the aid of the injured, who were then taken to a military hospital. Ezra and Haglili were buried in the cemetery of the Jewish community in Asmara.

The incident caused great agitation among the prisoners, who demanded that an external committee of enquiry be set up to investigate the events. The Yishuv, which was united at that time within the framework of the United Resistance, was in uproar. In contrast to previous occasions, the Hebrew press was unanimous in its demand for an investigation into the murder, and the return of the internees to Eretz Israel. The Irgun, as well as Lehi, refrained from initiating reprisals in order to avoid undermining the solidarity of the United Resistance.

A month after the return to Sambel, on November 10, 1945, four internees (Yaakov Gurevitz, Benyamin Zeroni, Eliyahu Lankin and Rahamim Mizrahi) escaped at night via the unguarded sports ground. Their objective was to seek out escape routes for a larger group, which would break out by digging a tunnel.

Two months after their escape, on January 13, 1946, Gurevitz and Zeroni set out by bus for Ethiopia. They were disguised as veiled Arab women, and were accompanied by a Jew who lived in Asmara and posed as an Arab travelling with his two wives. At one of the Ethiopian border towns, the three entered a hotel to rest, but aroused the suspicion of the bellboy, who summoned the police. The three men were arrested and interrogation revealed their true identity. The British asked the Ethiopian authorities to extradite them, but encountered objections. After seven months of negotiations, they were finally handed over and sent back to Sambel.

Eliyahu Lankin, who set out in mid-June (about six months after the escape) from Asmara to Addis Ababa, was more fortunate. After five adventurous months he reached Djibouti by plane and on January 7, 1947, sailed aboard a French boat to Marseille and from there travelled to Paris. Lankin was the first escapee to succeed in reaching his destination.

Rahamim Mizrahi remained in Asmara, where he tried to create suitable conditions for the absorption of the large group scheduled to escape via the tunnel.

The Escape of the 54

The inmates spent five months digging two tunnels: the first 32 meters and the second 70 meters long. Both had a diameter of 45 cm, sufficient for a man to crawl through. The work was carried out in three shifts, and two-thirds of the internees took part. The problem of disposing of the sand was solved by packing it in cloth bags and scattering it during the exercise walk in the sports ground. The excavation created numerous technical problems, such as introducing an electrical wire for illumination, supports for the roof to prevent a cave-in, ventilation etc. However, the main problem was how to conceal the work in the tunnel from the camp guards, who conducted routine checks of the huts.

The internees managed to overcome all these obstacles and on Saturday night, June 29, 1946, they were ready for action. That evening, 54 inmates escaped from the camp in two groups: 30 through the large tunnel, and 24 through the smaller one. The two groups emerged from the tunnels equipped with maps, and knapsacks packed with food and first aid kits. The larger group was disguised in British army uniform - sewn by the inmates, who scrupulously copied every detail, from insignia to rank. The "soldiers" took over an Italian bus which was returning soldiers to the camp, and drove off towards the Ethiopian border. An engine problem forced them to continue their journey on foot, and the following day they were discovered by armed villagers and handed over to the authorities. The second group, in civilian clothing, succeeded in reaching a pre-designated hiding place in Asmara. For three months they sought further escape routes, but all their attempts to leave Asmara were unsuccessful. Finally, on September 24, their hiding place was surrounded by British security forces, and the last escapees were returned to the internment camp.

The prisoners made further escape attempts, but all ended in failure. As a result of these attempts, which greatly embarrassed the camp command and army headquarters in Eritrea, the British government decided to transfer the prisoners to Kenya.

Gilgil Internment Camp, Kenya

On March 2, 1947, all the internees were evacuated from Sambel, loaded onto trucks and transferred under heavy guard to Massawa port. There they boarded a ship and sailed to Mombasa, Kenya, under conditions of intolerable heat and overcrowding. From the port they were taken on a twenty-hour train journey in freight cars to the internment camp at Gilgil.

The internment camp at Gilgil

Gilgil camp had been used in the past as a jail for soldiers serving sentences for criminal offences and the living conditions and sanitation were very poor. There were no windows in the dormitories, apart from a tiny barred aperture under the roof, and the sewage conduits were open and crisscrossed the camp. The climate was harsh and mosquitoes swarmed everywhere. The internees refused to accept the situation and some two weeks after arriving, they rebelled. They tore openings in the walls and covered the sewage conduits with stones which they had removed from the walls. The camp commander subsequently improved conditions and the camp became tolerable.

The British authorities hoped, vainly, that the remote location of the camp would preclude escape attempts. Shortly after their move to Gilgil, however, the prisoners began to excavate a tunnel and made various further attempts.

The last successful escape took place on March 29, 1948. During the evening, six inmates (Yaakov Meridor, Nathan Germant, Reuven Franco and Yaakov Hillel of the Irgun, and Shlomo Ben Shlomo and David Yanai of Lehi) crawled through an eighty-meter tunnel and emerged on the other side of the camp fence. They proceeded towards their meeting place with "Wilson" (one of the two emissaries who had come specially from South Africa to help them), who was waiting for them in a rented car. They crossed the border to Uganda with passports brought from South Africa and, after a short rest, approached the Belgian consul for visas to Belgian Congo. From there they flew to Brussels, arriving two days later.

Lengthy imprisonment anywhere, but especially in a remote location, can cause physical and emotional illness. In order to preclude these, the internees began, from the very first days of exile, to organize social and cultural activities. A library was set up, which in Gilgil contained some three thousand volumes. A daily newspaper and a philosophical and literary journal were produced. Various courses were held, and lectures given on literature, the natural sciences and contemporary affairs. Many of the internees took correspondence courses at secondary and university levels, most of them at British institutions, and studied economics, law, accountancy and even architecture and engineering. In addition to their academic pursuits, the detainees played sport and exercised.

In one of his letters, Aryeh Ben-Eliezer (a member of the Irgun General Headquarters before his arrest) described the cultural and social activities in the camp, but concluded as follows:

From the diverse activities mentioned in my letter, you could gain the impression that we are living in a paradise. Nonetheless, I pray to the Lord above to take pity on me and send me Eve, so that I can sin and be banished from Eden.

On the morning of July 12, 1948, the drama of African exile ended, when the British ship Ocean Vigour, with 262 exiles aboard, reached Israeli territorial waters. An Israeli Navy vessel came out of Tel Aviv port to greet them, and the captain, Mila Brenner, hailed them:

"This is the captain speaking.
Welcome home!
We have been sent to greet the exiles who are returning home.
From now on, you are free citizens of the State of Israel".

Sources:The Irgun Site

The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division (CID). The Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.

A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain's restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.

Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.

On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. Adina Hai-Nisan said she called the hotel switchboard 30 minutes before the explosion. That call was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: "We don't take orders from the Jews."¹ The Irgun also detonated a bomb nearby, which broke windows, but did not cause any injuries, and may have been intended to cause panic and encourage evacuation of the building. As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.²

the Irgun carried out a diversion bombing minutes after the bombs were planted in the King David Hotel, in which a wagon with explosives was blown outside shops next to the hotel. The CID's assessment was that this second bombing (hurt anyone) was One of the CID officers Harouvi interviewed for his book flatly blames Shaw for the death of so many, since he could have evacuated the building on time (pages 293-297).

In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which were widely hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David.³

For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.⁴

Citing a book by Dr. Eldad Harouvi, the Israel State Archives noted, the CID had intelligence showing the Hotel as a possible target for attack by the Irgun in December 1945 – 6 months prior to the attack. The CID asked to raise security in the hotel, including putting armed soldiers at the ‘Regence’ restaurant at the entrance of the hotel. The Chief Secretary [Sir John Shaw] refused to consider these suggestions, with the justification that there were not many places for recreation and fun in Palestine, and he did not want to foreclose another. He continued to refuse to take action (or even to pass on the information to the High Commissioner of Palestine) when the CID approached him again with newer information on the attack plan (the CID had the plan of attack, but did not know exactly when it would be carried out).⁵ Shaw was blamed by one former CID officer interviewed by Harouvi for the failure to evacuate the building.

Sources: Israeli Government National Photo Collection

1. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), p. 224.
2. J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out Of Zion, (NY: St. Martin's Press), p. 172.
3. Anne Sinai and I. Robert Sinai, Israel and the Arabs: Prelude to the Jewish State, (NY: Facts on File, 1972), p. 83.
4. Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., "International Terrorism: Challenge And Response," Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, July 25, 1979, (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute, 1980), p. 45.
5. Israel State Archives.

Between 1936 and 1947, when the Jewish National Fund sought to both establish "facts on the ground" and settle land it purchased in Mandatory Palestine far from other Jewish populations, a major concern was vulnerability to Arab attacks. In response, Jews established the strategy of erecting "Stockade and Watchtower" settlements (also called "Wall and Tower" or Chomah V'Migdal in Hebrew) using an old Ottoman rule which prohibited the demolition of roved structures on landowners property.

To build such settlements, convoys of hundreds of volunteers carrying prefabricated dwellings and fortifications set out for the new location during the middle of the night. Before morning, the entire settlement construction - including a surrounding double wall filled with earth and stones, searchlights, and a central watchtower - would be completed.

All told, 118 settlements including 52 new kibbutzim, spanning the Jordan Valley and the Galilee regions, were erected in this manner.

A museum and model of the first Stockade and Watchtower can be found at Tel Amal near the city of Bet She'an.

Reference

United Nations

Official Positions

The U.N. is a useless organization and counter-productive – Issues Non-binding resolutions with no legal standing.

The U.N. cannot create State or modify borders, they have no such authority.

In a Democratic legal system if you have decision that you think is erroneous or unjust you can appeal that decision and many times it is reversed.

U.N. opinions and or resolutions are (non-binding) biased, unjust, arbitrary and capricious (the same apply to the ICJ – International Court of Justice).

The U.N. has issued numerous opinions and non-binding resolutions that are biased, unsubstantiated and contrary to historical and factual evidence. This U.N. collusion with corrupt and biased countries and the issuance of non-binding egregious opinions and resolution has eroded the credibility of the U.N. beyond repair.

This has raised the ire and an outcry by many nations, politicians and institutions to de-fund the U.N. and dismantle it.

It is well known that the U.N. and the ICJ can only offer and issue a non-binding advisory recommended opinions and resolutions which carry no legal standing or affect. They can only issue a non-binding recommendation and resolution and if it is accepted by all parties in writing, then their recommended opinion and resolution is applicable (Provided the parties abide by the terms). Otherwise it has no meaning, validity, and no legal standing.

Therefore, my suggestion is stop panicking and aggrandizing these biased criminal organizations. Their recommended non-binding opinion has no meaningful value and no legal standing.

By reacting to and citing the non-binding recommendations of this criminal organization as having any validity, you are misleading the public that the recommended opinions by these criminal organizations might have some validity, which it does not.

It is time to expose the fraud and deception by these unethical, corrupt and unjust organizations and dismantle them completely.

It will also save a substantial amount of money and resources that could be put to a better use.

YJ Draiman

P.S. The League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations, since the league did not accomplish its purpose. The U.N. has not accomplished its purpose for what it was created to perform ethically and honestly.

In today's society the Nations of the world can function without an organization such as the U.N.

(1922 - 1948)

3 comments:

YJ Draiman ArticlesOctober 1, 2017 at 4:55 PM
No Arab-Palestinian state west of the Jordan River
If you read the 1917 Balfour Declaration (Which emulated Napoleons 1799 letter to the Jewish community in Palestine promising that The National Home for The Jewish people will be reestablished in Palestine, as the Jews are the rightful owners). Nowhere does it state an Arab entity west of The Jordan River. The San Remo Conference of 1920 does not state an Arab entity west of The Jordan River, confirmed by Article 95 in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. The Mandate for Palestine terms does not state an Arab entity west of the Jordan River. It specifically states a Jewish National Home in Palestine without limiting the Jewish territory in Palestine. It also states that the British should work with the Jewish Agency as the official representative of the Jews in Palestine to implement the National Home of the Jewish people in Palestine. I stress again; nowhere does it state that an Arab entity should be implemented west of the Jordan River.
As a matter of historical record, The British reallocated over 77% of Jewish Palestine to the Arab-Palestinians in 1922 with specific borders and Jordan took over additional territory like the Gulf of Aqaba which was not part of the allocation to Jordan.

No where in any of the above stated agreements does it provides for an Arab entity west of the Jordan River. The U.N. resolutions are non-binding with no legal standing, same applies to the ICJ. The Oslo Accords are null and void.

It is time to relocate the Arabs in Israel to Jordan and to the homes and the 120,000 sq. km. the Arab countries confiscated from the over a million Jewish families that they terrorized and expelled and those expelled Jews were resettled in Israel. They can use the trillions of dollars in reparations for the Jewish assets to finance the relocation of the Arabs and help set-up an economy and industry instead of living on the world charity.
YJ Draiman
YJ Draiman ArticlesOctober 1, 2017 at 5:15 PM
No Arab-Palestinian state west of the Jordan River
If you read the 1917 Balfour Declaration (Which emulated Napoleons 1799 letter to the Jewish community in Palestine promising that The National Home for The Jewish people will be reestablished in Palestine, as the Jews are the rightful owners). Nowhere does it state an Arab entity west of The Jordan River. The San Remo Conference of 1920 does not state an Arab entity west of The Jordan River, confirmed by Article 95 in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. The Mandate for Palestine terms does not state an Arab entity west of the Jordan River. It specifically states a Jewish National Home in Palestine without limiting the Jewish territory in Palestine. It also states that the British should work with the Jewish Agency as the official representative of the Jews in Palestine to implement the National Home of the Jewish people in Palestine. I stress again; nowhere does it state that an Arab entity should be implemented west of the Jordan River.
As a matter of historical record, The British reallocated over 77% of Jewish Palestine to the Arab-Palestinians in 1922 with specific borders and Jordan took over additional territory like the Gulf of Aqaba which was not part of the allocation to Jordan.

No where in any of the above stated agreements does it provides for an Arab entity west of the Jordan River. The U.N. resolutions are non-binding with no legal standing, same applies to the ICJ. The Oslo Accords are null and void.

It is time to relocate the Arabs in Israel to Jordan and to the homes and the 120,000 sq. km. the Arab countries confiscated from the over a million Jewish families that they terrorized and expelled and those expelled Jews were resettled in Israel. They can use the trillions of dollars in reparations for the Jewish assets to finance the relocation of the Arabs and help set-up an economy and industry instead of living on the world charity.
YJ Draiman
YJ Draiman ArticlesOctober 1, 2017 at 5:18 PM
When you can’t make the Arab/Palestinians see the light, make the Arab/Palestinians feel the heat. That is the only method they understand and respond to its demands.

We must maintain peace through our strength, weakness and concession invites violence and aggression.

I am concerned for the security of our great country, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.

“Leadership is not only having a vision, but also having the courage, the discipline, and the resources to get you there.”

Napoleon said, "If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna."

Napoleon said, "if you start to take Vienna, take Vienna."
Israel must take over our Jewish land west of the Jordan River no delay, just do it. Wake up and face reality once and for all, stop dreaming and deluding yourselves, the Arab-Palestinians do not want peace, their action to date verify their intention and their Charter state the same. You are dealing with a Arab barbarian mentality that know only terror and violence. They educate and train their children from infancy to commit terror and violence.
They have Jordan which is on Jewish land.
YJ Draiman

The Mandate for Palestine aka Greater Israel by fact and law 1920

Sunday, October 1, 2017