Beschreibung:

PALESTINE ROYAL COMMISSION -- WILLIAM ROBERT WELLESLEY PEEL, 1ST EARL PEEL (1867-1937)
PALESTINE ROYAL COMMISSION -- WILLIAM ROBERT WELLESLEY PEEL, 1ST EARL PEEL (1867-1937) Report . [Cmd. 5479.] London: HMSO, 1937. 8° (245 x 152mm). 404pp, 10 folding maps, all but one colour-printed. (Maps at rear with staples rusting.) Original blue printed wrappers (extremities lightly rubbed and soiled, with faint creasing to extremities). Provenance : O.R.P. Greening (contemporary ink ownership inscription on inside front wrapper). [With:] -- Harzaat Havaada HaMamlachtit lePalestina (E[retz] I[srael]) [Peel Commission Report]. Jerusalem: Goldberg and Azriel, 1937. 8° (245 x 152mm). 296pp, text in Hebrew. 10 folding maps, all but one colour-printed. (Light spotting on fore-edge sometimes extending into margins and maps, heavier to title and first few contents leaves, title with marginal staining, tape marks on verso of final map.) Original blue-green wrappers (soiled and with tape marks). Provenance : institutional stamp in Hebrew on title and first contents leaf with biro serial numbers. FIRST EDITIONS OF THE PEEL REPORT ON THE PARTITION OF PALESTINE IN ENGLISH AND HEBREW . The Royal Commission was initiated in response to the Arab Rebellion which started in April 1936. A catalyst for this was the increased Jewish immigration after 1933 as German Jews sought escape from Nazi persecution. Headed by William Peel, 1st Earl Peel, the Royal Commission was 'the most high-powered of the various commissions of enquiry which had visited Palestine, and its report, published in July 1937, was a model of insight, precision and lucidity' (Laqueur, A History of Zionism , 1989, p.514). 'The Significance of the Peel Report lay first in its exceptionally clearheaded exposition of the Palestine problem; secondly ... for the first time under the British Mandate, the establishment of a sovereign Jewish State was placed on the political agenda; thirdly in its revelation of severe internal differences among the Zionists over the issue of Partition and finally in its initiation of the process whereby ... British rule in Palestine came to an end' (Wasserstein, Enc. Zionism & Israel ). Royal Commission reports relating to Palestine were translated and published into Arabic and Hebrew, which were printed in small runs and are consequently rare. A comparison of the maps between the two editions here show there are small, but distinct, differences mainly of a minor typographical nature, with maps 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 in the Hebrew edition with the imprint of the Government Printing Press, while those in the English edition have the imprint of Malby & Sons. Khalidi & Khadduri 1659 (English edition only).