There is no genuine enthusiasm to be observed in Palestine for Palestinian citizenship,’ wrote the members of the Royal Commission in 1937 after their return from Palestine where they had been sent by the Government of Great Britain in order to investigate the causes of the general strike, adding that ‘it is only the Arabs in South America who are really anxious for it. And under present conditions this does not surprise us … To the educated Palestinian Arab, who has always resented the separation of Palestine from Syria, the very idea of Palestinian citizenship is obnoxious as being associated with the Mandate and all it involves.’ The Palestine Royal Commission of 1937, known as the Peel Commission after its appointed chairman, is most often remembered as the first official British investigative body to suggest the partition of Palestine. The Commission recommended more than simply partition: Sir Earl Peel validated the long-standing demand of a number of Arab nationalist and local leaders and Arab Executive Committee members that Arab emigrants be given Palestinian citizenship in order to return to Palestine if they wished. Although the report is important in that it suggested that the tense situation in Palestine could be solved by partition, it can also be read as providing a broader understanding of the socio-political and legal institution of citizenship and its importance to the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine in the mid-1930s. In particular, the report offers clear hints at contemporary notions and meanings of, and the vocabulary associated with, nationality and citizenship. It also offers suggestions for the future of an internationally recognised Palestinian citizenship. The Commission heard evidence between the end of 1936 and January 1937 as part of its attempt to uncover the reasons for the ‘disturbances’, or the early years of the Great Revolt (al-thawra al-kubra) in Palestine. As part of the investigation, a number of Arab witnesses testified on the issue of Palestinian citizenship and its inclusion in anti-Mandate protest demands – an opportunity that the authorities had never made available to the Arab population of Palestine.