Hope Simpson Report

The Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, commonly referred to as the Hope Simpson Enquiry or the Hope Simpson Report, was a British Commission managed by Sir John Hope Simpson, established during August 1929 to address Immigration, Land Settlement and Development issues in British Mandate of Palestine, as recommended by the Shaw Commission, after the widespread 1929 Palestine riots.

The report was dated October 1, 1930, but was released on October 21, 1930. The report recommended limiting Jewish immigration based on the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine. The Passfield White Paper was also dated October 1, 1930, and recommended similar limiting of Jewish immigration.

The mandate and ambition of the Hope-Simpson Commission was to associate the issues of immigration, land settlement, and agricultural development in a way that would allow the government to deploy policies that could serve the country as a whole. The Report emphasized the need to develop a national water regime as the basis of the system it wished to create. Relying on this advice and on colonial experience elsewhere, the government later established a Water Board and drafted its first irrigation bill.

The commission reported the real estate price growth and availability to the Arabs:

"They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."

(p. 56:) "Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land became extra territorial. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived forever from employment on the land."

It concluded that Arab fears of the destructive impact of Zionist colonization were well-founded, and thus called for controls:

(p. 135:) "It is impossible to view with equanimity the extension of an enclave in Palestine from which the Arabs are excluded. The Arab population already regards the transfer of lands to Zionist hands with dismay and alarm. These cannot be dismissed as baseless in light of the Zionist policy described above."

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