1936-39: The Arab Revolt (the real al-Nakba)

The British were trying to balance two poles during the Revolt: minimising public disapproval and ending the violence. In October 1938 they decided to end the violence before the coming war and the Munich agrement of 30 September 1938 gave them the breathing space to send another division to Palestine and begin even more repressivee measures.

Shaykh Izzeddin al-Qassam was an ascetic activist, preacher, imam, and teacher known for his piety, simple lifestyle, and rejection of material comforts, even while serving as a prominent Muslim preacher who had Hajj Amin al-Husseini as a mentor. He was a Qadiriyya Sufi committed to militant jihad against British "infidels" violating the Arab and Islamic nature of Palestine. He formed a secret society, the "Black Hand" (al-Kaff al-Aswad). The name gives away its intentions. He recruited hundreds of peasants in northern Palestine and day labourers in Haifa. From 1930 to 1935 they killed 8 Jews in attacks on settlements and in October 1935 they took to the hills. On November 7th al-Quassam and his group killed a Jewish British police constable, Moshe Rosenfeld and within two weeks he was tracked down and killed by British police. He was a terrorist, though not a very successful one, or an unsuccessful revolutionary martyr depending on your point of view. He inspired the revolt against the British which left the Palestinians so weakened they were comprehensively defeated by the Jews in the 1948 war.

November 21 1935: al-Qassam's funeral was attended by as many 10,000 (or more) hysterical (by English standards) mourners. Despite his failure to seriously damage the British or the Jews he is revered as the patron saint of the 1936 "Great Arab Revolution" - a great Palestinian hero.

Many history books assert that Izz al-Din al-Qassam ignited the 1936 revolt by fusing Islamic dogmas with national ideology. But his recipe for revolution was welcomed only among a particular segment of the population. This was the poor of the cities and the unfortunate inhabitants of harat altanc, the shanty neighbourhoods that surrounded towns such as Haifa. In 1933, Izz al-Din al-Qassam initiated a guerrilla war in the north, recruiting fighters from around Haifa and leading them to the surrounding hills, attacking any Jews or British soldiers they encountered on the way. In 1933, al-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British army, but this was enough to make him a martyr and provide an example of a new kind of resistance. However, the brand of nationalism invented by al-Qassam failed to impress rural Palestine as a whole, where custom, not religion, determined daily morality, conduct and routine. - Ilan Pappé a fanatical anti-Zionist historian

April 1936: The revolt began in mid-April 1936 when followers of Qassam attacked a convoy of trucks between Nablus and Tulkarm, killing two Jewish drivers. The next day, the Irgun killed two Palestinian workers near Petah Tikva and on April 19, 1936, the "Bloody Day in Jaffa" Arab mobs enraged by a "rumour" that Jews had killed 2 or more Arabs in Tel Aviv killed 9 Jews and wounded dozens. An Arab National Committee in Nablus was formed on 20 April 1936 by local Palestinian leaders. It called for a general strike across Palestine to protest British policy. It lasted 6 months until October and paralyzed the Arab economy.

A strike movement spread rapidly among Arab towns and villages across Palestine in late April. The movement's overwhelming popularity compelled an otherwise bickering and mutually suspicious Arab notability to join forces in a new organization: the Arab Higher Committee (AHC). This group's formation, however, owed more to its members' concern to maintain their privileged status than it did to their desire to spearhead a politically subversive movement. - The Revolt of 1936: A Revision - Matthew Kraig Kelly

Unemployment was massive, tens of thousands of workers, particularly in the citrus industry and urban services, lost their jobs. Palestinian jobs in public works, transport and ports were gone for good as they were taken over by Jewish labour. On the other hand, with no work many returned to their villages and became part of the rebellion.

April 25 1836: Al-Husayni co-opted the revolt and took public control of it by forming the Arab Higher Committee. The al-Nashashibi and al-Khalidi families were also involved but the Grand Mufti's control became more dominant as time passed.

May 1936: The Peel Commission was appointed to investigate the causes of the 1936 Arab revolt although everyone knew the causes.

May 1936: The strike shut down the Jaffa Port, through which economically important Jaffa oranges were exported to Europe. The Yishuv, the Mapai Party and the Histadrut Union, requested British permission to build another port in north Tel Aviv. Naturally they agreed, as long as the Jews provided the funding, which it did. Imports and exports shifted from Jaffa to north Tel Aviv. Maritime experts and dockworkers from the Jewish community in Thessaloniki in Greece were imported to build and operate the doscks. No Muslim labourers worked there.

On 10 September 1936 Musa Alami, on sick leave from his position in the British Mandate government, met an agent of Mussolini. The Mufti begged for help else the Revolt might fail. They wanted 10,000 rifles, a million cartridges, grenades, machine guns and mortars.2 He was given £13,000 and two weeks later Ciano gave him another £20,000.

October 11, 1936: The Arab kings, Ghazi of Iraq, Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan called on the Arab Higher Committee to halt the uprising and trust the "good intentions of Great Britain." The AHC were promised another commission to investigate their grievances and the strike was ended.

November 11 1936: The Peel Commissioners arrived to investigate and after an initial boycot, Palestinian leaders including the Mufti gave evidence re what they believed the causes of the revolt to be. The commission published its final report on 7 July 1937. The British received a 9 month pause in their problems and the Commission proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. A totally unworkable and unacceptable (to the Arabs) solution.

September 1937: the Mufti urged the all-Arab Conference of Committees for the Defence of Palestine, to issue a warning to Great Britain that the continuation of its pro-Zionist policy would compel the Arabs to ally themselves with the powers opposed to Great Britain. Immediately afterwards he engaged in all-Arab campaigns to form an alliance between the Arab world and the Axis powers.

Shortly before, from September 8 to 10, a pan-Arab conference had taken place in Bludan, Syria. The conference participants recommended the renewed use of force, organized foreign arms purchases accordingly,92 and at the same time issued an open threat: Great Britain must choose between its friendship with the Arabs and its friendship with the Jews. It must withdraw the partition plan, "or we shall be at liberty to side with other European Powers whose politics are inimical to Great Britain."93 This attempt at blackmail, which would be repeated a year later at another conference in Cairo,94 was bound to elicit a reaction in London. But first, beginning on October 14, the British were confronted with a rapid surge in violence in Palestine that dwarfed the events of the previous year.95
 
This was not the time for a small national movement to fight against a mighty empire. On the eve of the Second World War, British policy makers had no scruples in quelling the rebellion. They saw it as a German - and Italian - inspired scheme to promote anti-British activity, against which they acted with all the force they possessed in the area. In Palestine, the assassination in September that year of Lewis Andrews - as the acting district commissioner for Galilee, the most senior British official in that region marked a turning point for the Mandate government; it used the assassination as an excuse for a general attack on the nationalist notables, arresting them and exiling many. Amin al-Husayni escaped before being arrested, and devoted his early months in exile to creating a network of volunteers and organizing, together with other members of his family, a large-scale arms-supply operation to the guerrillas. The further he was from Palestine, the closer he came to cooperating with Britain's new enemies in Europe, the Italians and the Germans. Ilan Pappé
 
The Arab Higher Committee for their part contented themselves with disowning any responsibility for the violence, without, however, displaying any zeal in endeavouring to put an end to it. It is no doubt true that they could not in any case have succeeded in doing so in view of the intensity of popular feeling, but, from the political point of view, they would have been well advised to try.
September 1937: The climax came when the newly appointed District Commissioner for the Galilee district, Mr. L.Y. Andrews, was shot dead by four armed men outside the Anglican Church in Nazareth in September 1937. From Haven to Conquest - ed. Walid Khalidi
 
September 1937: At one stage during the armed revolt that erupted all over the country in September 1937, British forces lost control of much of the countryside to armed bands and were briefly forced to withdraw from several of the major cities, including the Old City of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Acre, Jericho, and Bir Sabe' (Beersheva). The Iron Cage - Rashid Khalidi
 
October 1937: Disorders recommenced all over the country in the second half of October 1937, and lasted for a year and a half, The rebellion reached its peak during the summer and autumn of 1938, while the Munich crisis in Furope was threatening another world war. As soon as the Munich crisis was past, measures of repression were tightened. Additional British troops were made available, and operations against gangs in the hills were underlaken. The general sirike, which had paralysed the towns for six months during 1936, was not repeated. All the fighting during the period from October 1937 to the spring of 1939 was done by the villagers, the urban population taking no actual part in the hostilities. The gangs would intercept vehicles on the roads, fire upon road convoys, sabotage the railways, cut telephone lines and attack police posts, Troops would drive to the scenc of such incidents, sometimes arriving in time to cngage the gang and at other times finding that the attackers had already vanished. Even where troops succeeded in engaging a gang, the action would normally be broken off at dusk, when the troops returned to their stations, The principal difficully encountered in dealing with the gangs, however, was due to the enthusiastic support which they received from the villages. The peasants not only acted as intelligence agents for the rebels, but they also harboured and concealed them when pursued and, above all, kept them supplied with food. - Britain and the Arabs - Sir John Bagot Glubb, Commander, Arab Legion

October 1937: Amin al-Husayni was officially stripped of his position as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British Mandate authorities following the escalation of the Arab Revolt and the assassination of the District Commissioner for the Galilee. In Ocober 1937 the British dissolved the Arab Higher Committee, removed al-Husayni as Mufti and President of the Supreme Muslim Council and he fled to Lebanon disguised as an old woman to evade arrest.

October 1938: The implementation of complete military control in Palestine. Some 25,000 troops were stationed in Palestine by the end of 1938, complemented by a strong RAF deployment.

high commissioner Wauchope having been replaced by the more subservient Sir Harold MacMichael in February 1938, civil-military tensions over security operations had evaporated and in October 1938 the secretary of state for the colonies was able to place the Palestine police force under the operational authority of the GOC.31 Military rule was thus extended to the whole of Palestine with the country now divided into four districts, each under the jurisdiction of a military commander.32 In addition to this, new regulations came into force after November 1938, allowing the military further to tighten its control over the country. These included a permanent night curfew and new travel restrictions requiring every male over 16 years of age to carry an identity card and a permit to travel.33 The ensuing military drive in late 1938 and early 1939 to crush the rebel movement achieved great succes. Repression and Rebellion:Britains Response - Jacob Norris

Early in the Revolt, the British formed the Jewish Settlement Police (JSP) and the Jewish Supernumerary Police (Notrim). They were armed, subsidised, and legally sanctioned by the British to protect Jewish agricultural settlements. These auxiliary forces lessened the load on the British forces and strengthened the Zionist defences. The JSP were an elite, mobile, and heavily armed branch of the Notrim that provided quick-response capabilities. The Jewish Supernumerary Police numbered 6 to 14,000 men during the Revolt and were authorised to conduct static defense, guarding, and patrolling around specific kibbutzim and villages. The Zionists were provided tactical training, weapons and experience. This was instrumental in the evolution of the Haganah, Palmach and the IDF.

November 9 1938: The Woodhead Commission found the Peel Commission partition map unworkable financially and administratively. It rejected large-scale "transfer" of populations and questioned the viability of the proposed Arab state as it would be dependent on subsidies. The proposed Jewish area would be self-supporting.

May 17, 1939: The MacDonald White Paper was the best deal offered to the Palestinians that the British could make. They hoped it would end the Great Revolt before the start of the inevitable war. On September 30 1938, the British government under Neville Chamberlain had tried appeasing Hitler over the Sudetenland and believed it had worked: peace in our time. On May 17, 1939 the MacDonald White Paper, was officially presented to Parliament. It rejected partitioning Palestine, limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over the following five years after which Arabs could veto further immigration and offered an independent Palestine state within 10 years in which the Arabs would have a greater than 2:1 majority population.

A golden opportunity for creating an independent, unified Palestine was allowed to slip away. It was not the first blow inflicted by the Mufti on the cause he was supposed to be serving nor was it to be the last, but it was probably the most devastating. Through the stubborn maximalism which had by now come to dominate his political outlook, he squandered the chance to have his own state, a chance that had emerged out of a unique set of historical circumstances. Collusion Across the Jorda - Avi Shlaim

The reason for the Mufti's apparently inexplcable decision soon became obvious. He believed there was an opportunity for a much better ourcome, one that removed the Jews altogether and made him the ruler, of a new pan-Arab empire with Hajj Amin al-Husseini as the Sultan or even better the Caliph. He had already taken steps to be part of a new crusade to rid the world of Jews algether. He was going to Germany and joining Hitler's final solution.

The Great Revolt is arguably the seminal event of modern Palestinian history before 1948. Consisting of two primary phases, the first a half-year general strike and armed insurrection beginning in April 1936, and the second an insurgency from fall 1937 until the eve of World War II in 1939, the revolt was the most direct and sustained Palestinian challenge to both British and Zionist colonialisms during the fateful thirty-year period of British mandatory rule in Palestine. The uprising was, in its day, the largest mass mobilization in Palestinian history.
Conditions for revolt were not as propitious in late 1937 when the struggle was renewed as they had been in 1936. The strike was tremendously costly to the Palestinians in material and financial terms and was followed by economic depression and the threat of starvation for many.42 The national movement was also in disarray. The popular forces that had driven the general strike had lost their avenues of influence in its wake and the revolutionary upsurge had exacerbated tensions and fractures within Palestinian society. Among the elite, the resurgence of factionalism had turned bloody; some in the Opposition were subjected to assassination attempts after they were seen to have backed both partition (before its terms were unveiled) and the Peel Commission's recommendation of a union between Arab Palestine and Transjordan. - State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine - Charles Anderson

The "Great Revolt" is given hagiographic and heroic status in the Palestinian Myth. I've quoted Khalidi's conclusions of its outcome rather than that of a non-Palestinian.

Total Arab casualties during the revolt were approximately 5,000 killed and 10,000 wounded, while those detained totaled 5,679 in 1939. The number of those exiled or forced to flee is unknown, but is probably in the thousands. In an Arab population of about 1 million, these were considerable figures: they meant that over 10 percent of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. Although some of the casualties were simply bystanders, these figures give some indication of the extent of popular participation in the revolt, and of its all-encompassing national nature.
The repression of the revolt had an impact not only on the populace, but also on the Palestinians' ability to fight thereafter, and on the already fractured capabilities of their national leadership. A high proportion of the Arab casualties included the most experienced military cadres and enterprising fighters.° By the end of the revolt, most of the top Arab political leaders and thousands of other cadres, militants, and fighters were imprisoned, interned by the British in the Seychelles, in exile, or dead. The British also confiscated large quantities of arms and ammunition rom the Arabs during the revolt, and continued to do so during later years.' By the end of the revolt, existing political divisions within the Palestinian polity had become envenomed, leading to profound rifts between the majority supporting the revolt and a minority that had become alienated from the leadership: the consequence was assassinations, infighting, and further weakening of the Palestinian position. The impact of the revolt on the Palestinian economy was also severe, although some of that damage was self-inflicted, as a boycott of British and Jewish goods and of the mandatory government during the strike and the revolt simply opened up opportunities for the already larger Jewish-controlled sector of the economy of Palestine to expand further. - The Iron Cage: The Revolt, 1948, and Afterward - Rashid Khalidi

The notables were not hoping for the fellaheen to begin a guerilla war against the British in 1937. However, they had been the source of information for the fellaheen about the British, they had been the source of the rumours of attacks on Muslim Holy Ground that drove outraged mobs into attacking Jews, they were the usurers who helped slowly grind them further down in perpetual poverty and they had sold the land to allow themelves to continue to live in luxury while reiterating the the Jews were taking the land. The notables led the fellaheen into the war but took their families into safety. No notable had to ride the rails tied to the front of a train as a human mine detector.

The British Government is required to make decisions that it believes will benefit Great Britain and its citizens, not the Arabs nor the Zionist Jews of Palestine. In 1917 the British "sold out" the Palestinians in favour of the Zionist Jews and received no discernable military or economic benefit from it. They did receive 20 years of problems governing Palestine which in the end required 20,000 soldiers and extremely harsh measures to put down the Palestinian Revolt. In 1939 the British sold out the Zionist Jews and received no discernable military or economic benefit from the Arabs in return. The British knew war with Germany was coming, the White Paper was Realpolitik as MacDonald (a second generation Zionist sympathiser) admitted. An argument can be made that the Arabs might otherwise have created problems during the war but judging from their contributions in 1948 and later its unlikely. As in 1917, the British had once again over-rated the military capacity of the Arabs, these were not the British Empire's finest hours.

1939: There are 449,000 Jews living in Palestine in 1939.

Further information:

Important Books and Articles

  • Palestine 1936:The Great Revolt - Oren Kessler
  • Palestine 1936 Sheds New Light on Arab-Israeli Conflict - Brett Kline
  • The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine - Ghassan Kanafani
  • The Revolt Of 1936: A Revision - Matthew Kraig Kelly
  • The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine - Ghassan Kanafini
  • The Struggle For Palestine: 1936-48 - J. C. Hurewitz
  • The Suppression of the Great Revolt and the Destruction of Everyday Life in Palestine - Charles Anderson
  • Zionism and the Arabs 1936-39 - Ian Black
  • Zionist Visions of Palestine: 1917-1936 - The Muslim World

Important Information

State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine - Journal of Palestine Studies

Conditions for revolt were not as propitious in late 1937 when the struggle was renewed as they had been in 1936. The strike was tremendously costly to the Palestinians in material and financial terms and was followed by economic depression and the threat of starvation for many.42 The national movement was also in disarray.

The popular forces that had driven the general strike had lost their avenues of influence in its wake and the revolutionary upsurge had exacerbated tensions and fractures within Palestinian society. Among the elite, the resurgence of factionalism had turned bloody; some in the Opposition were subjected to assassination attempts after they were seen to have backed both partition (before its terms were unveiled) and the Peel Commission's recommendation of a union between Arab Palestine and Transjordan.43

By contrast, the Mandate government was more prepared for the recurrence of rebellion. When Acting District Commissioner-Galilee Lewis Andrews was killed in September 1937, signaling the Palestinian return to arms, the colonial authorities preempted a renewal of the strike's urban infrastructure by banning the national committees and the AHC and quickly arresting hundreds of known activists and notables.44 Some elite and middle-class nationalists who evaded capture relocated to Syria and Lebanon, where, with the Mufti as figurehead of the movement, they attempted without great success to establish control over the rebellion.45

A History of Modern Palestine: One Land Two Peoples - Ilan Pappé

In the early 1930s, the nationalist notables widened their scope of activity, and thus politics, i.e. nationalism, infiltrated the world of the uprooted, unemployed peasants living near Jewish settlements and in the shanty towns encircling cities such as Haifa and Jaffa. The notables also made an effort to recruit support from rural Palestine. This proved very difficult, however. For one, the notables were themselves either exploitative landowners or liberal professionals, whose world had very little in common with that of the peasant. The former rural chieftains had exercised a semi-feudal system that bonded owners and tenants, but was based not only on exploitation but also on mutual commitment. Nothing of that was left in the 1930s.

Economic exploitation continued, even after the urban notables succumbed to the lure of nationalism, and adopted its discourse of solidarity and concern for the people as a whole. Few recognized that their control over the economic life of rural Palestine gave them a role in rural social structure that could have been a basis for a new kind of solidarity. Only the Nashashibi family, in 1934, made an apparent effort to take a greater interest in rural Palestine and its predicaments when it established a 'peasants' party'; but this was not a serious or significant bid to create a new common identity.32

This lack of identification with the rest of the population made the nationalist notables leaders, but not representatives, of their community, as the situation in Palestine became polarized. They were unable to advise their people on how best to confront the Jewish community and its ambitious expansionist plans. They failed to curtail Zionist expansion, but encouraged their rural, peasant communities to clash, unprepared and disorganized, with the Jewish settlers. Open confrontation occurred twice. The first, in 1936, was momentous but not disastrous, as the Zionist movement was still weak. The second, in 1948, when the Zionist movement was stronger and already well established, was catastrophic.

Lest I read history from the present backwards, I would hasten to caution that at the time of the dramatic events of the 1930s, rural Palestine was off the national stage. Rural society, at least half the Palestinian population at the time, did not anticipate the catastrophe awaiting it in 1948, and continued to live more or less according to an unchanging rhythm and routine. One of the problems was the leadership vacuum in rural Palestine, and the failure of most attempts to fill it. One of these attempts was that of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian preacher who settled in Haifa in the mid 1920s.

Many history books assert that Izz al-Din al-Qassam ignited the 1936 revolt by fusing Islamic dogmas with national ideology. But his recipe for revolution was welcomed only among a particular segment of the population. This was the poor of the cities and the unfortunate inhabitants of harat altanc, the shanty neighbourhoods that surrounded towns such as Haifa. In 1933, Izz al-Din al-Qassam initiated a guerrilla war in the north, recruiting fighters from around Haifa and leading them to the surrounding hills, attacking any Jews or British soldiers they encountered on the way. In 1933, al-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British army, but this was enough to make him a martyr and provide an example of a new kind of resistance.

However, the brand of nationalism invented by al-Qassam failed to impress rural Palestine as a whole, where custom, not religion, determined daily morality, conduct and routine. Moreover, despite al-Qassam's short-lived success with some inner-city migrants around Haifa, most of these had not cut their ties with their clans and villages, which made them less receptive to his preaching. The hierarchy in the village was clear: first the clan, then the village, then everything else.33

Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt - Oren Kessler

In October 1937, five months after Peel had published his report, partition had become Crown policy. Rendel felt compelled to register his dissent.66 "I am more and more convinced that our present policy can only lead to disaster," he wrote colleagues.

The Arabs are not a mere handful of aborigines who can be disregarded by the "white colonizer." They do not represent a dying civilization. They have a latent force and vitality which is stirring into new activity. They have produced, and are still producing, great leaders, and are capable of patriotism, which it may be unwise to ignore and difficult to suppress … the ultimate importance of Arab patriotism and Moslem religious sentiment should not be underestimated.

The entire Arab world had reacted violently to partition. "Are we not, then, by creating this little Jewish state, simply placing on the coast of Asia a kind of time-bomb, which must inevitably explode?"67

In later decades, Rendel's perspective would be known as "linkage" - the conviction that Palestine is central to the Arab and Islamic worlds, and that trouble there could mean trouble wherever Arabs and Muslims predominated. But in 1937 it was an unorthodox, nearly radical proposition; Britain ran Palestine policy through the Colonial Office, not as part of any wider regional strategy. Now, with Hitler and Mussolini ascendant and Palestine's neighbors moving toward independence, Rendel believed that paradigm was not just outdated but strategically calamitous. "It is a thankless task to prophesy disaster, but I have seldom seen a case where disaster is approaching more inexorably."68

He maintained the pressure over the following months. The Peel report's call for population transfer was particularly dangerous-he had not forgotten the Greek tragedy in Anatolia; he knew such mass removals were rarely "clean cuts." The report had to be binned, he argued, and the only feasible solution was keeping the Jews a perpetual minority, preferably under 40 percent.69 In Jerusalem, Acting High Commissioner Battershill thought otherwise. Yes, he acknowledged, virtually the only Arab leader backing partition was Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. But if Britain showed determination, the Arabs would acquiesce. "Fractious infants have to swallow unpalatable medicines. … The East does not understand compromise but merely accounts it as weakness."70

But Rendel's entreaties were winning over Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, just forty and in his first Cabinet role. Rendel's memos soon became Eden's. A paper war ensued between Eden's Foreign Office and the Colonial Office led by Ormsby-Gore, the longtime Zionist ally who still clung to partition.71

Eden told the Cabinet that Palestine's Arabs uniformly opposed partition, and worse, so did the entire Arab world. Such a policy must not be pursued against the inhabitants' will-that was neither Balfour's intention nor Peel's -and it was imperative the Arabs be persuaded the Jews would never form a majority. The alternative was too grim to contemplate: earning the "permanent hostility" of the Arab and Muslim worlds.72

On December 8 the Cabinet convened in secret. Each minister received a stack of five memos: One from the colonial secretary pushing partition, another from the foreign secretary urging its reversal, then a rebuttal to that rebuttal and so on. Neville Chamberlain opened the proceedings. Even more than Eden he was green, having occupied the prime minister's office for just half a year. Palestine was for him a footnote; his foreign agenda centered on conciliating the FOhrer and Duce to avoid another war. But as the meeting opened, he made clear he had adopted Eden's (that is, Rendel's) view: Palestine was key to the region, partition would likely antagonize the Arabs without even satisfying the Jews, and it would let Fascism expand its influence in the Levant by exploiting Arab outrage. Eden heartily agreed: Without the Palestine troubles, he could envision "the whole of the Middle East as being in a peaceful condition." Still, Chamberlain cautioned that summarily announcing the abandonment of partition would look like capitulation to violence. If Britain were to renounce a two-state solution, it had to make a compelling case why.73

The Peel report had recommended sending a follow-up delegation, a so-called technical commission, to draw Palestine's new borders and address the manifold logistical issues that partition entailed. Half a year had passed and nothing had yet been done. The Cabinet was now ready to appoint just such a body, but its task would be not to prepare the ground for division but to decide whether to pursue it at all. All present understood the answer was expected to be "no."74

At Eden's insistence the statement on the technical commission's appointment made clear that "His Majesty's Government are in no sense committed" to partition, and that the new deputation would be reviewing the "practical possibilities" of any such scheme.75

Years later, MacDonald acknowledged the motives that underlay his White Paper. "The Jews would be on our side in any case in the struggle against Hitler," he said. "Would the independent Arab nations adopt the same attitude?" If the Arab states opposed Britain, "we would probably lose the war and the Jews would lose the National Home. There may have been an element of cynicism in all this … but it was an attempt to … look far ahead."76

In the Filastin newsroom, Yusuf Hanna marveled at the change. "Who among the Arabs ever dreamt to get so much?" he wrote in a letter. "Immigration finished. Sale of lands finished. Dangers of Jewish predominance and such nonsense finished." The force of arms had been necessary at first, three years earlier, "when the nation was slumbering" and the Arab states shut their eyes to Palestine. Now, he considered it "a crimeagainst this beloved country that I should use my pen anymore for any further troubles." Nine Arabs out of ten welcomed the White Paper, he reckoned, and anyone rejecting it must be "an Arab ass or an Arab traitor."77 Others agreed. The Nashashibi opposition privately commended the new policy as a "good augury" that had earned their "almost unanimous welcome." Antonius judged it a reasonable basis for discussion, a "startling advance" from earlier plans.78 Rebel leaders in Damascus said the same, castigating Hajj Amin for having "desecrated the holy rebellion" for his own selfish aims. The fighter-chronicler Subhi Yasin wrote that there was "not even one loyal and perceptive Arab who did not approve of the White Paper."79

Yet on May 30, a week after Parliament gave its blessing, the mufti's Arab Higher Committee announced its formal rejection. "The National Home has always been the fundamental cause of the calamities, rebellions, bloodshed and general destruction which Palestine has suffered," it said. The Arabs appreciated the government's newfound understanding on immigration, but could see no reason for not ceasing it immediately. The contention that such a step would be unjust to the Jews was absurd: The national home was itself built on injustice, and they could not see "how an unjust cause can invoke justice." Any further bloodshed would, "before God, history and humanity," fall on Britain's head. "The Arab people have expressed their will and said their word in a loud and decisive manner, and they are certain that with God's assistance they will reach the desired goal: PALESTINE SHALL BE INDEPENDENT WITHIN AN ARAB FEDERATION AND SHALL REMAIN FOREVER ARAB."80

The White Paper did not resolve Britain's Palestine predicament, but it did postpone its reckoning. That, after all, was the objective: providing the diplomatic backing that, combined with military force and the Arabs' own dissension, would bring the Great Revolt to a close before the start of a world war. For it was now evident to everyone - even to Neville Chamberlain himself - that a global confrontation was inevitable. The only question was when.

Collusion Across the Jordan - Avi Shlaim

The British, in need of stability in the Middle East in order to concentrate on the challenge posed by Nazi Germany in Europe, hurriedly retreated from the three main prescriptions of the Peel Commission: partition, an independent Jewish state, and a direct role for Transjordan. Instead, they now offered to grant independence to a federal state after a transition period of five years, with restriction on Jewish immigration and on the sale of land to the Jews. The Jewish representatives were desperately opposed to the British plan and even considered walking out of the conference. The Arab statesmen and some of the mufti's own supporters urged him to accept it, underlining the magnitude of the British concessions, the value of having Britain on the side of the Palestinians in this struggle against the Jews, and the bright prospects it held out for further gains. But at this critical moment, when Arab leverage was at its peak, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs in effect rejected the British plan by insisting on a shorter transition period. A golden opportunity for creating an independent, unified Palestine was allowed to slip away. It was not the first blow inflicted by the Mufti on the cause he was supposed to be serving nor was it to be the last, but it was probably the most devastating. Through the stubborn maximalism which had by now come to dominate his political outlook, he squandered the chance to have his own state, a chance that had emerged out of a unique set of historical circumstances. The London conference dispersed amid confusion and with an inaudible sigh of relief on the part of Abdullah and the Jewish representatives.

Disappointed with the failure of the Arab delegates to exercise a moderating influence on the Mufti and his hard-line faction, the British government proceeded to issue, on 17 May, a White Paper on Palestine, based on the proposals which had just been spurned by both sides to the dispute. The White Paper represented the best deal that the Arabs could realistically hope for at that time and it conceded their most important demands: a unitary state which would be granted full independence after ten years, the prohibition of land sales to Jews in large areas of Palestine; and a drastic cut-back in immigration for five years, after which the Arabs would have exclusive control over the immigration policy and would thus be in a position to terminate Jewish immigration altogether. The 1939 White Paper also implied retreat from the mandate and the Balfour Declaration, and recognition instead of the Arab right to self-government in Palestine. Small wonder that the 17th of May went down as one of the blackest days in Jewish history and that the Yishuv prepared to fight the White Paper tooth and nail. Incredible as it may seem, the Arab Higher Committee headed by the Mufti also came out against the White Paper, in a move which was as damaging to its own cause as it was consistent with the pattern of senseless rejectionism for which it was becoming notorious. Of all the Arab statesmen, many of whom conceded in private that the White Paper was the greatest victory in the struggle for Palestine scored by their side since the beginning of the mandate, Abdullah alone had the courage to welcome the White Paper publicly as a sound basis for cooperation between Britain and the Palestine Arabs.

In his home outside Beirut, Hajj Amin al-Husseini convened members of the AHC. For several weeks they held daylong meetings, broken up only by generous lunches served at the mufti's table. Izzat Tannous, a doctor of Christian origin who lived in Jerusalem's Talbiya quarter, headed the Arabs' public-relations office in London. He recalled the scene:

The morale was high and the expectation for a brighter future was higher. … But this sweet dream did not last long. The discussion became more strained as some of us began to realize that Hajj Amin was not in favor of accepting the White Paper. … The remaining fourteen members were not only strongly in its favor, but were determined to put an end to the negative policy the Arab leadership had been adopting heretofore. … Consequently, the sole concern of the Committee was now concentrated on convincing Hajj Amin that his negative stand was extremely detrimental to the Arab cause and was serving, unintentionally, the Zionist cause.

Mohmsen Mohammed Saleh: 483,000 Jews migrated to Palestine during the British Mandate period and by 1948 they were 646,000 (31.7% of the population) and controlled 6% of the land holding 291 settlements. All the land the Jews purchased was sold by Arabs or Ottomans. Every large landowner knew he was making his tenants, the long-term clients of his family, landless. The fellaheen had already been steadily losing "their" land due to debt, drought and poor farming practices. The patron-tenant relationship was a one-way power relationship.

At the end of the British Mandate period only 25% of the land was registered for private ownership

  • 12% of the land was owned by Palestinian Arabs
  • 7.5% of the land was owned by Jews