Excerpts from “Palestine and the Interwar” (1966: Abdullah Hassan, Nablus University Press)
…Hundreds of Arab residents are evicted from their Jaffa homes by the Durst Organization, an Americuban estate company – in a bid for development. This is but merely one incident among many in a wave of gentrification as American Jewish emigrates establish themselves. Indeed, the flight of Jewish capital following the Red May Revolution has only increased Palestinian Arab fears of a Zionist takeover of the Mandate, as rumors spread of the Haganah illegally channeling firearms through the ports of Tel Aviv. Already in the prior month of October 1935, British High Commissioner Arthur Grenfell Wauchope had written, in a report to Secretary J.H. Thomas, that one-fifth of the Arab villagers were already landless, the number of Arab unemployed workers in the towns was rising, and resentment against the Government was growing day by day.[…]
By the end of November, a strike was declared by the Arab workers of Jaffa, which is widely observed. Quick to capitalize on the action, the PKP organizes several demonstrations, provides assistance and funding for many of the strikers, in particular among the workers of the shipyards - allowing them to gain further weight as a political force.
The instigating organizations - Arab nationalist campaigners, and the PKP - are not even close to being done. Hot off the presses in Arab cities and in Metropolis, stories lead to donations lead to hundreds of thousands in $URD being amassed. Before they can transform that into aid for the evicted families however, British authorities crack down on the strikes and any transfer of currency into Palestine.
With tensions between the Arab and Jewish communities ramping up, a string of violent attacks begin in Jaffa. A dozen people die of shootings by the end of the year: the most famous incident involves the killing of a British policeman and three Jewish workers by members of the Black Hand guerrilla force. The force is led by the charismatic preacher, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a popular and exemplar icon of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Unlike many preachers, al-Qassam focused on the lower working classes and professed a deep care for them. He was struck by the affliction of many Palestinian Arabs in the cities, many of whom were landless, ex tenant farmers that had been proletarianized. In return, these became his greatest following. al-Qassam was the most radical out of all Arab nationalists, believing that cooperation with the British was impossible and would lead to nothing; in this he paralleled Revisionist-Zionist militant forces like Meyi.[…]
So far so good. The only problem? The British were never a fair enemy to begin with. Like their response to the strike, so would be their response to the shootings disproportionate too, igniting a massive manhunt for the Black Hand and al-Qassam.
In December of 1935, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was shot dead after a weeks-long manhunt, becoming a martyr for the Arab nationalist cause. The Black Hand disintegrates without its leader, though they had not necessarily failed - after all, it was al-Qassam who said “Die a Martyr”. True to this spirit, thousands of peasants had shown up at Sheikh al-Qassam’s funeral, showing that the fire of revolution was still alive and burning.
“Let us finish Qassam’s work! This is our project, too!”
“Against the British! Against the Jews! Take back what is rightfully ours!”
Flints smashed against each other, sending sparks flying across the hearts of the crowd. Poor peasants and the indebted. Proletarized fellaheen who had been driven out of their fields. Those who had little and those who had lost everything.
All of them heeded the nameless shouts and calls for rebellion. A man there yelled. A woman here shouted. Qassam was their false Vakulinchuk, an anti-Vakulinchuk, and they were the citizens of Odessa in 1905 all the same.
Like a wave of wind rippling across the grass, the call for rebellion spread and spread, from town to town and city to city.
The Istiqlalists were the first political movement to heed the call. […] Known as the Arab Independence Party in English, they were a Palestinian nationalist movement distinguished by their radicalism in action – peaking in popularity in 1933. They promised action without quarreling - a very appealing promise, for the movement had been long at odds due to the al-Husayni - Nashashibi family rivalry. Unlike the political notables and effendis, who promised reform - one tea party at a time, they called for noncooperation with the British authorities. Indeed, the revolt would initially take on a very anti-British character in particular.
Their slogan: “England is the root of the illness and the basis of all disaster” - a rhyming poem in Arabic…
Young students under the Istiqlalist banner formed National Committees in each locality, and the National Committee became the institutional unit, the indivisible which the revolution revolved around. Dozens of other groups and committees were as well spawned, and the rebellion had begun to seize much of Palestine. Their first action: to declare a national strike on 23 December, bringing the activity of the Mandate to a complete halt.
The Great Arab Revolt had begun, not on a centralized basis, but on mass spontaneity. Even the notables and the effendis, the old feudal leadership of the Arabs, had no choice but to ride the wave to survive. Hajj Amin al-Husayni - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Supreme Muslim Council, for the first time gave the movement official organization and structure under the “Supreme Arab National Committee”. Otherwise, he would have been buried by the wave, and drowned.
Despite its grassy roots, the SANC was taking control and encouraged the spread of the rebellion, organizing dozens and dozens more national committees in the towns and cities. The program remained foremost the end of British rule in Palestine and the end of Zionist activities. Arab leaders at the SANC begin a dialogue with the British, telling High Commissioner Wauchope that they promised to bring order to the Mandate at once, if only they would immediately cease Jewish immigration.
Meanwhile, the nationalist-revolutionary machine continued to grow and unravel in its machinations. For example, the National Committee of Jerusalem had formed special organs of its own to help facilitate the general strike. Subcommittees were created for relief, fundraising, promotion of Arab industries and products, transport, legal and medical services. The rebellion here was of such a scale that spontaneously, a situation of dual power had emerged – and the nationalists were well on their way to forming a state within a state.
The Convention of the National Committees is held by the end of the first week of the year 1936 in Jerusalem. Once again, radicalism prevails – and the National Committees move to cease payment of taxes in the Mandate. The aim of the Palestinian struggle was declared to be ‘complete Palestinian independence within the framework of Arab Unity’.
Armed resistance began first in the rural areas and the countryside, as villages harbored newly formed armed bands, and the roads connecting Palestine were seized. An oil pipeline belonging to the Iraqi Petroleum Company, pumping the black gold from the Jordan River to Haifa, was sabotaged and bombed several times by rebels.
Soon, it wasn’t just the countryside but also the cities that had slipped out of British control. Barricades were erected in many of the cities’ roads – Nablus, Gaza and Jaffa. In Jerusalem, militants began to attack armored car patrols and Jewish buses – while, snipers sporadically fired shots at British patrolmen in their camps from the mountains.
The worst of it all was in Jaffa, where the ancient city had given way to a dense patchwork of alleys impassable to wheeled vehicles, and could be traversed only on foot. According to Wauchope, the city ‘formed a hostile stronghold into which the Government forces dare not penetrate’. Here, the conditions typical to urban warfare greatly favored the rebels, and they made no short work of taking potshots at British troops when they could. The military soon began demolition of large swaths of the city, in order to construct a large road - from which they could control Jaffa. Many were thus forced to move out of the old quarter, settling into impoverished sheds, constructed out of the most meager scraps of metal they could find – on the outskirts of the city.
Typical of colonial authorities, the military decided on a regime of punishment – collective and individual – to suppress the rebellion. Later on, the emergency regulations in Palestine had been amended to legalize even more punitive means. The death penalty was to be enforced for those who discharged a firearm or incurred damage with malicious intent – a harsh treatment that any good citizen in the imperial core would have taken to the streets against if it were to be applied to them!
Mass arrests, demolitions, the blowing up of houses the military believed were harboring rebels and collective fines became the norm throughout the year. Meanwhile, armed bands were only continuing to grow in size and had tripled by February of 1936.
[…]
Based on the growing number of intercepted arms shipments into Palestine, the military concluded that more resistance was to be expected. Meanwhile, later in March, the Supreme Arab National Committee affirmed that they would be unable to stop the strike until the Government had suspended Jewish immigration once and for all. Even Iraq’s beloved Foreign Minister walked away in failure after being invited to mediate negotiations between the SANC and the Government. That was understandable for however, he could not make any promises on the British’s behalf.
By April of 1936, the British Government had resolved to crush the rebellion with intensive measures, and to send additional troops and reinforcements to Palestine for this purpose. Meanwhile, martial law would be declared across Palestine. Lieutenant-General J.G. Dill would assume the supreme military command, and a division of troops was on its way from the home isles.
Syrian Arab revolutionary Fawzi al-Qawuqyi crossed into Palestine, declaring himself the leader of the revolution in “Southern Syria”; or, Palestine. Qawuqyi soon captured much of the rebellion’s attention, and as such, his designs were able to help organize and train the armed bands which were carrying out the hard work of the rebellion. By the end of the month, the number of British troops had surged to over 20,000, and battles between the Government and the rebellion increased in number and ferocity.
In the beginning of May, a joint letter was read in Palestine – authored by the Three Kings – Ali bin Hussein, Emir Abdullah and King Ghazi of Iraq. The strike had to be called off, they proclaimed, the rebellion had to be discontinued – and the Palestinians had to rely on the good intentions of their ‘friend Great Britain, who has declared that she will do justice’. This was the fruit of several consultations, conferences and interviews the feudal lord/bourgeois dominated SANC and the British Government had done with these ‘representatives’ of Arab success.
Promptly, the Great Arab Revolt had been called off. Bands were permitted to disband, the borders of Palestine opened, and things had begun to cool down. The rebellion had killed dozens of security forces, Jews, and hundreds of Arabs. It wounded even more. Tens of thousands of fruit trees, lumber, and many thousand acres of crops had been destroyed by the rebellion. It didn’t help matters that the military’s extremely harsh and punitive measures against the population had served only to incite more anger and resentment in the Arabs. In the end, it was collusion, between the strike leaders, collusion that put an end to the strike: even the effendis and the notables were seeing an impact on their own profits from the rebellion.[…]
Later that month, Lord Peel arrives in the land of Palestine. Mandated by the British Government, he and his Commission would be tasked with investigating the rebellion itself and the causes – as well as potential solutions…
The controversy over the Arab boycott of the Commission finally boils over among leaders, and the boycott is called off in July. Arab authorities begin to cooperate with the Government. In the trials, they stressed the inclusion of Palestine in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence[1], the baselessness of the Balfour Declaration, and the inconsistency of the entire affair with the League of Nations’ enshrined principle of self-determination for peoples. In addition, they demanded the end of the Mandate and for Palestine to be established under an independent Arab government.
[…]
On 11 April 1937, the Peel Commission concluded, in their publication of the official report, that Palestine is to be granted independence in ten years’ time as an Arab majority state. Lord Peel remarks:
“We have thoroughly investigated and discussed the idea of partition. Partition is both unpopular among the Arabs and the Jews, although for the latter, a fair amount are amenable to it. The challenges with partition are thus: financial difficulties and the foreseeable dependency of the Arab state, political and religious issues, and the necessity of enacting population exchanges on a mass scale. Indeed, these transfers are not unprecedented, but suffice it to say they would be extremely unpopular with the Arabs.” [2]
Based on the recommendation of the Commission, as well as mounting geopolitical concerns in Europe and the Americas with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and the Revolutions of America, the British Government published the White Paper of 1937, calling for the establishment of an Arab majority independent state with rights secured for a Jewish national home.[3] The mandatory government additionally declared that Jewish immigration would be limited to 75,000 for 5 years, with further immigration to be determined by the Arab majority.
The reaction was overall mixed across the board. First of all, among those who supported it, it was principally the students’ committees and the lower ranks of the nationalist revolutionary movement on the Arabs’ side. “This is a hard-fought victory, and the realization of our aspirations, our brothers’ blood. We can’t ask for much more.”, wrote one of the newspapers. The Palestine Communist Party also cautiously threw their support behind the White Paper, calling it a ‘step in the right direction’ even if it was ultimately a bourgeois democracy.
The al-Husaynis were pissed off. The White Paper didn’t envision a state governed solely by the Husayni family; the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem masked his seething behind a maximalist position.
What was surprising was that even the Nashashibis initially rejected the White Paper, indubitably for the same reason as the Husaynis. Later, after backdoor meetings with the British, they had become supporters of the White Paper, it seemed. And what of the Zionists? Unilateral rejection across the board, except for the most leftist of them, the Borochovists who could maybe tolerate an Arab majority. Ze’ev Jabotinsky denounced the White Paper as an “utter betrayal, a trampling on their promises, the death of the Balfour Declaration!”. Ben-Gurion, would express his disappointment and promised to fight the White Paper “on every word”.
[…]
Amin al-Husayni would attempt to convince the Supreme Arab National Committee to reject the White Paper and resume their rebellion. In response, the British authorities would attempt to arrest him for his part in the rebellion. al-Husayni managed to escape, fleeing to Beirut. From there, he would issue directives to those stragglers who still supported him. However, their power was now seriously lacking, and in light of their waning, the Husaynis from there on became quiet.
The Arab Emergency of 1936 was over. But the troubles weren’t, no, because the Jewish rebellion would soon start…
[1] The McMahon-Hussein correspondence was a mail exchange between British diplomat Sir McMahon and King Hussein, during World War I. The correspondence was instrumental in securing British support for the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
[2] OTL, the Peel Commission famously recommended partition for Palestine. With greater funding and a longer investigation, they might end up like the Woodhead Commission which rejected it.
[3] It’s simply just part of a greater move towards collaboration with local anticommunist nationalists, and dominionization to stem the Red Tide. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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