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" ; 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, 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 Zionists and Palestinian Arabs.
* Cohen,
Israel and the Arab World, pp. 211
* Maps of the three partition proposals:
A B C* Aharon Cohen,
Israel and the Arab World (Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1970) pp. 210-213
