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July 1 1937 Leniency towards Arabs

Peel CommissionThe Royal (Peel) Commission here characterize the Palestine government’s policy as having “from first to last been conciliatory (e.g. To the Arabs),” and that:

“If one thing stands out clear from the record of the Mandatory administration, it is the leniency with which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point of violence and murder, has been treated. . . . After each successive outbreak, punishment was sparing and clemency the rule; there was no real attempt at disarmament, nor any general repression: freedom of speech was not curtailed. On the government’s handling of the last outbreak [1936] it is not our duty to express opinions: the matter was implicitly ruled out from our terms of reference; but we feel bound to say, and we think the government itself would be the first to admit, that it carried the policy of conciliation to its farthest possible limit. Again we are not discussing the wisdom of the policy. . . . Our point, once more is that conciliation, like impartiality, has failed.

Source: January 1937 Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission Summary of Report (pg 10.) (Cmd.5479)

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