In April 1925, Lord Balfour formally inaugurated the Hebrew University Jerusalem, consisting, in its first stages, of three research devoted respectively to chemistry, microbiol ogy and tropical medicine, and Jewish and oriental studies.
In all these institutions the language is Hebrew, which has already become the Jewish vernacular in Palestine and is the mother-tongue of the whole of the new generation.
Including the expenditure of Jewish bodies, such as the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association, and the investments of private individuals as well as that of the Zionist Organiza tion itself and affiliated institutions, the Jewish capital brought into Palestine since the War was estimated at the end of 1936 at a total of at least £70,000,000.
As contemplated by the Mandate an enlarged Jewish Agency for Palestine, representing non-Zionist as well as Zionist Jews, was established in Aug. 1929. Almost immediately afterwards a long drawn out dispute between the Moslem and Jewish elements in Palestine about Jewish rights at the Kotel Maarivi (the "Wailing 'Wall") culminated in violent disturbances, which were not suppressed until troops and warships had been hurried to the scene. A Commission of Enquiry, under the Chairmanship of Sir Walter Shaw, was sent out by the Home Government. Its report was to the effect that the Arabs had been the aggressors but that various measures should be taken with a view to allaying the Arabs' fears as to their future. After a further enquiry on certain points had been carried out by Sir John Hope Simpson, the Home Government stated its intentions as to future policy in Palestine in a White Paper issued in Oct.
1930. The White Paper was ill received by the Jewish Agency and was severely criticized in Parliament. The Jewish Agency was subsequently re-assured as to the Government's intentions by an explanatory letter addressed to its President, Dr. Weizmann, by the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, on Feb. 13, 1931. The establishment of the National Socialist regime in Germany led in 1933 to a considerable influx into Palestine of German Jews, many of them of substantial means, and this was an important factor in the marked quickening of the pace which characterized the development of the Jewish National Home in the period 1933– 35. In the spring of 1936 unrest among the Arab population again broke out in the form of violent disturbances, which con tinued on an increasing scale until the autumn, when, the British forces in Palestine having been augmented by a Division hurriedly dispatched from home, order was at length re-estab lished, and a Royal Commission, under the Chairmanship of Lord Peel, was sent to Palestine for the purpose of enquiring fully into the whole situation. The Commission's report, published in July 1937, recqmmended a partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab States ; but this scheme was totally unacceptable to Arab opinion, and was found less than satisfactory by the Jews and was, indeed, rejected by the Zionist Congress at Zurich in August. On Aug. 23, the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations suggested two alternative plans; and on Sept. 14, Mr.
Eden told the League Assembly that a special body was to visit Palestine in an effort to find some satisfactory basis of partition.