Implications of the Peel Commission

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a whole, can be broken down into a family dispute. Two brothers fighting over ancestral land, all the while the uncle, who oversteps his, limits all the time, and then claims to put the fighting to the end by taking over the responsibilities for a time. Britain, the uncle, was very keen on partitioning the land of Palestine, into Palestine and Israel, by dividing the territory around the settlements. No one was happy with this decision, and therefore it was scrapped. Hypothetically, many have wondered, David Ben-Gurion himself concluded,1 that if the Peel Commission was accepted, would those 6 million Jews have survived, or would they have the same fate?2 I cannot give an answer to this question, as the whole state of the conflict is a what-if scenario from the first thought of granting land from mandated Palestine to the Jews, so they could create homes in proper settlements on what they claimed to be the ancestral land to today, when there is still a constant bitterness between the Israelis and Palestinians. Except, no matter where you look on this matter, no matter how many books are written and read, debates on articles, or bombs on busses, the central question to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is; would the Peel Commission succeeded had it been passed in 1937? Lord William Peel, 1st Earl Peel, was the youngest son of Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert Peel was Britain’s Prime Minister from 1834-1835, and then again, 1841-1846. During his second term he re-introduced Income Tax into the Federal Budget, to help with the economic recession that was happening in 1942. Perhaps this is where Lord William Peel gets inherited his willingness to solve problems; to see everyone at peace with each other, ... ... middle of paper ... ... in opinions. 15 Caplan, Neil; Israeli- Palestinian Conflict: Shoah, Atzma’ut, Nakba: 1939’, pg 119 knowledge of what happened, but speaking with more of an, if anyone took a moment to think about this, how wouldn’t have they noticed an indication to the coming terror. Hitler never hid his intention and neither did the events of operation hummingbird16. So were these all just repercussions to not accepting the Partition plan of 1939, and instead accepting a version of it in 1947? No matter how many questions are answered, there will always be many more to take its place. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem to be just another what-if, and understandably, it’s hard to look at what happened without the knowledge of what happened, and maybe for that reason, the Peel Commission, is still silently being persistent, even after falling between the cracks of history. 16

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