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, 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."^[1] It determind that the cause of the violent oubtreak 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."^[2] They explained this in the context of increased Jewish immigration and land purchases, which were threatening to produce a significant Arab landless class. This was later reiterated in the Hope Simpson Enquiry and subsequent Passfield white paper, both which called for limited Jewish immigration to Palestine.