Woodhead Commission

The Woodhead Commission was established in 1938 in the British Mandate of Palestine after the Peel Commission failed to achieve resolution to the Arab Revolt and the rejection of its recommendations by the three major parties in the conflict: Zionist Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and the British government.

The Commission was intended to "examine the Peel Commission plan in detail and to recommend an actual partition plan" NamedRef|purpose|1; in some views, its purpose was to absolve Great Britain of its responsibilities in Palestine so that it could focus its attention to the growing threat in Europe.

The Commission was headed by Sir John Woodhead, who was charged with identifying the circumstances leading to the failure of the Peel Commission. He was instructed to reject the Peel Commission's findings and to attempt to placate the Arab side in the argument, since they constituted a majority in the country.

The members of the Commission arrived in Palestine in 1938 to research the problems there. In their report, they proposed two separate plans for partition of Palestine into two states and a British Mandatory Zone, "Plan B" and "Plan C" ("Plan A" having been that of the Peel Commission). The majority of the commission supported Plan C, which recommended:

* A Jewish state of only 1,250 sq. km., less than 5% of the area of Palestine, which would consist of just a coastal strip of land, no more than twenty kilometers in width. It would extend from the town of Rehovot to Kibbutz Nachsholim, adjacent to the town of Zichron Yaakov.

* An Arab state to occupy most of the remaining territory of central Palestine, south of a line extending across from the northern edge of the Jewish state, and north of a line running approximately from the south end of the Dead Sea to Gaza.

The remainder of the territory of Palestine (south of the Gaza-Dead Sea line; north of the Jewish and Arab states; and an enclave around Jerusalem) was to remain a British Mandatory Zone.

The Jews of Palestine were sharply opposed to the findings as were the Arabs who feared it would have led to large numbers of Jews escaping into Palestine leading to the Commission's failure.In consequence, Britain invited the parties to London in 1939 to participate in a third attempt to resolve the crisis, the St. James Conference (also known as the Round Table Conference of 1939), to investigate the results of the Peel Commission of 1936. The recommendations were eventually rejected by both Jews and Arabs.

Notes

* Cohen, "Israel and the Arab World", pp. 211

External links

* Maps of the three partition proposals: [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/wood-part-1939A.gifA] [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/wood-part-1939b.gifB] [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/wood-part-1939C.gifC]

Further reading

* Aharon Cohen, "Israel and the Arab World" (Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1970) pp. 210-213