Shaw Commission

The Shaw Report, officially the Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929, commonly known as the Shaw Commission, was the result of a British commission of inquiry, led by Sir Walter Shaw, established to investigate the violent rioting in Palestine in late August 1929. The commission's report was issued in March 1930 and led to the establishment of the Hope Simpson Enquiry in May 1930.

While the violence was the direct result of an ongoing dispute over the Jews' ability to worship freely at the Western Wall, and the fear of obstruction of Palestinian Natives in their ability to access their residences in the Maghribi Waqf. The Commission concluded that the conflict was not religious in nature, and that the holy site had become a "symbol of racial pride and ambition." It determined that the cause of the violent outbreak was "racial animosity on the part of the Arabs, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future." Additionally, the Report specifically stated that disappointment "attached to the various promises made" by the British to both the Arabs and Zionists during the first World War, played a role in creating tensions between the two groups. Those promises being the McMahon-Hussein correspondence promising Arab sovereignty of the region after the first World War and the Balfour declaration promising a national home for the Jewish people. The contributors to the commission explained this in the context of increased Jewish immigration and land purchases, which were threatening to produce a significant Arab landless class. The Report states of the economic impact of increased Jewish immigration and enterprise in the area that "the direct benefit to individual Arabs...has been small, almost negligible, with comparison to what it might have been had the pre-war methods of settlement been continued." This was later reiterated in the Hope Simpson Enquiry and subsequent Passfield white paper, both which called for limited Jewish immigration to Palestine.