Partner to Partition: The Jewish Agency's Partition Plan in the Mandate Era

In 1937 the British Royal Commission headed by Lord Peel proposed solving the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two nation-states. The concept of partition in exchange for a state was acceptable to the Jewish Agency Executive, but not the details set out by the Royal Commission, and thus in 1937-38 the Agency formulated an alternative plan for consideration by the British authorities. At the core of the proposal was the issue of borders - a key factor in every partition plan - but the Agency's suggestions and preparations for a Jewish state addressed additional elements including the question of Jerusalem; population transfer; the status of the Arab minority in the future Jewish state; stages in the establishment; and plans covering governance, foreign policy, immigration and development, religion and state, finance and security. In this work Yossi Katz shows that the Jewish Agency Executive's partition plan, though never implemented, was not an isolated episode, but had short-and long-term implications from the Jewish perspective - that as well as having an impact on the immediate settlement policies, it also had significant effect on the partition of Palestine in the late 1940s, and on shaping the state-in-formation.