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.

The British Commission of Inquiry was chaired by Sir Walter Shaw, a distinguished jurist, and consisting of three members of the British parliament, Sir Henry Betterton (Conservative), R. Hopkin Morris (Liberal) and Henry Snell (Labour). The aim of the Commission was to look into the reasons for the violent rioting in Palestine in late August 1929, which caused the deaths of 243 Jews and Arabs.

The commission of enquiry took public evidence for several weeks, from the first hearing on 25 October to 29 December, hearing 120 witnesses in public testimony, and 20 behind closed doors. Though hearing the claims of both sides, the Commission made its recommendations primarily on the basis of material submitted by Mandatory officials

The Commission addressed two aspects of the disturbances, the immediate nature of the riots and the causes behind them. In the words of Naomi Cohen:

‘Delving beneath the immediate causes – i.e., the Western Wall dispute, inflammatory publications on both sides, the enlargement of the Jewish Agency, inadequate forces to maintain order, the report called attention to the underlying causes of friction in England's wartime pledges and in the anti-Jewish hostility that had resulted from the political and economic frustrations of the Arabs. It went on to criticise the immigration and land-purchase policies that, it said, gave Jews unfair advantages. The commission also recommended that the British take greater care in protecting the rights and understanding the aspirations of the Arabs. The Shaw report was a blow to Zionists everywhere,’

It found that the purchase of lands by Jewish Companies had been legal and fair to the tenants, but, at the same time, concluded that there was substance to the Arab claim that Jewish land purchase did constitute a present danger to the Arabs' national survival, since highly productive land was being bought, suggesting that 'immigrants would not be content to occupy undeveloped areas', with the consequence that 'the economic pressure upon the Arab population was likely to increase'

With regard to the conflict arising from the land settlement and purchase problem, it concluded that 'taking Palestine as a whole, the country cannot support a larger agricultural population than it at present carries unless methods of farming undergo a radical change'.