The Case against a Jewish State in Palestine: Albert Hourani’s Statement to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry of 1946

Albert Hourani (1915–1993), associated for over thirty years with Oxford University (Magdalene College, St. Antony’s College), was one of the leading historians of the Middle East in the postwar period and the author of many books, including Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Europe and the Middle East, and A History of the Arab Peoples. Before embarking on his Oxford career, Hourani was director of research at the Arab Office in Jerusalem, and in 1946 was one of four Arabs (the others being Jamal Husayni, `Awni `Abd al-Hadi, and Ahmad Shukayri) to testify before the full committee of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry called upon to review the Palestine Problem in the light of Jewish refugee situation in Europe. For a detailed background of the politics—local, regional, and international—leading up to the testimony, see Walid Khalidi’s “On Albert Hourani, the Arab Office, and the Anglo-American Committee of 1946” in this issue. What follows is the full transcript of Hourani’s oral testimony—the last to be presented for the Arab side—as issued in the proceedings “Public Hearings before the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, Jerusalem (Palestine), 25 March 1946” (IPS Archives).