ABSTRACT
In its efforts to implement the plans for the partition boundaries that it had formulated, the Jewish Agency Executive did not content itself with political activities (i.e. efforts targeted at the various British authorities and the international community). During the years 1937–38, the Jewish Agency Executive together with the JNF (Jewish National Fund) directed their land-purchase and settlement activity towards securing in the final outcome those partition boundaries coveted by the Jewish Agency Executive, which were detailed extensively in Chapter 2 of this book. The land-purchases and the settlement activity therefore concentrated on the one hand, on those areas that were not incorporated into the Jewish State according to the original recommendations of the Royal Commission, but which the Zionist Executive sought to include within the final boundaries of the Jewish State; on the other hand, efforts were lavished on the Galilee region, which was included in the areas of the Jewish State according to the Royal Commission Plan but where the Jews had only a sparse territorial foothold in terms of settlements. Alert to this weakness, and aware of the protests voiced in British governing circles against the Royal Commission's recommendation regarding the Galilee, the Executive feared that the recommendation of the Royal Commission regarding the Galilee would ultimately be rejected. The Executive assumed that Jewish-owned lands and especially Jewish settlements would play a decisive role in the recommendations of the Partition Commission and the decisions of the British government regarding the final boundaries of partition. 1 They could adduce evidence for this assumption from the Royal Commission's Report itself, which included the majority of the Jewish settlements within the boundaries of the Jewish State. As Dr Avraham Granovsky, the Managing Director of the JNF, emphasized in November 1937:
in the same fashion that the land which we previously settled influenced the demarcation of boundaries by the Royal Commission similarly the current enlargement of our territorial capital can prove decisive in defining the final boundaries. Therefore we must make haste and purchase lands in the Arab region [that is in the area of the region that was allocated to the Arab State according to the Royal Commission] … we have reached the final moment for these activities. Who knows if a year later it will not be too late … 2
