Roosevelt's decisions with regard to Palestine seem easy to follow because he appears to have adopted a shallow, traditional, Wilsonian, pro-Zionist approach at first. During the last two years of World War II, he adopted a rather reserved, if not negative, view of the Zionist endeavor, but on the face of it he promised everyone almost everything in this regard. This strategy was very much influenced by the delicate military and political situation in the Middle East, in Europe, and in other parts of the world that were Muslim to a considerable extent. Roosevelt was also influenced by opinions such as the expertise of a Lieutenant Colonel Harold B. Hoskins, the OSS-affiliated State Department adviser, and by reports (some already mentioned) made by Colonel William J. Donovan, the future director of OSS, who toured the Middle East early in 1941 and gained the impression that the Palestine “Jews wanted to push the Arabs back to the desert from which they had come,” an idea that FDR himself seemed to have endorsed for a while in favor of the Jews. The idea itself originated in a 1937 report on Palestine by the British Royal Commission, headed by Lord Peel, which had recommended the removal of Arabs – by force if necessary – from the territory of the Jewish state in a partitioned Palestine.