Palestine 1936: A Peasant Army vs the British Empire
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1937: Possession of a weapon could now result in the death penalty. On November 27, 1937, 80-year- old Sheikh Farhan al-Sadi was hanged by the British after being convicted under the Mandate's Firearms Law. Multiple accounts say the charge amounted to possession of a single bullet. In an editorial published the next day, Falastin ran the headline, Sheikh Farhan al-Sadi, Martyr of the Homeland. The paper wrote, The British authorities, thinking to extinguish the flame by hanging its bearer, have only fanned it. The blood of martyrs is never lost.
It nourishes the Tree of Liberty, whose roots lie deep in the soil of Palestine. Outraged by the Sheikh's execution, thousands of fellaheen poured into the hills to join the rebellion. The center of gravity of resistance shifted from cities to the countryside as rural guerrilla bands launched a full- scale armed insurrection.
To survive the systematic counterinsurgency of a brutal colonial empire, the rebellion needed organization, discipline, and a leader with a mind as sharp as its spirit. It found its leader in Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad, an Ottoman army veteran who forged village guerrilla bands into an army. He established military ranks in a strict code of honor, commanding his men to pay for every loaf of bread and forbidding executions without trials.
Abd al-Razik was the movement's enforcer, coordinating urban ambushes and destroying railway lines and the Iraq petroleum pipeline. He operated a ruthless intelligence service to root out informers. Despite friction between the two leaders, they became the twin pillars of the resistance.
By the summer of 1938, the British had lost effective control over much of the hill country. A shadow government emerged. Al-Hajj Muhammad established rebel courts, postal networks, and systems of national taxation.
For a brief period, a de facto free Palestine existed in the Triangle of Jenin, Nablus, and Tolkom. But the ultimate blow to British prestige came in October. In a daring assault, rebels seized control of large parts of Jerusalem, briefly taking the old city itself.
To retake the city, British troops used the local Arab population as human shields. To crush the Palestinian revolt once and for all, they brought the full force of the empire to bear. Britain deployed two full divisions, nearly 25,000 regular troops, alongside heavy artillery and the Royal Air Force.
By the end of 1938, there was one British soldier for every 37 Palestinian Arabs. Villages were blown up. Whole sections of Arab Jaffa were leveled.
Villagers were herded into barbed wire cages for days without food or water. In the cages of Halhul, 13 people died of dehydration. When the Royal Ulster Rifles lost four of their own to a Palestinian landmine, they descended on the village of Al-Basa, along with the 11th Hussars. They torched the village, rounded up 50 men, forced them onto a bus, then ordered the driver to run over a landmine. Survivors were cut down by machine-gun fire. The British sidelined Arab police and recruited some 3,000 Jews into a new supernumerary police force, integrating them directly into the bloody counterinsurgency apparatus.
In addition, the British recruited Zionist Haganah fighters into the special night squads, led by the British officer Orde Wingate, a fanatical Christian Zionist.
Others cut deals with the British. The Nashashibi clan, early British collaborators, organized the Peace Bands, an anti-resistance militia. Al-Haj Muhammad refused to abandon his men and the villages that sustained them.
He was cornered in the village of San Iria. British forces, supported by aircraft, surrounded the village. Refusing to surrender, he was martyred in the ensuing battle. His death is widely considered the effective end of the military revolt. By mid-1939, the revolt was crushed. There was no surrender, no ceasefire, no negotiated end.
It had been drowned in blood. More than 10% of the adult male Palestinian population had been killed, wounded, exiled, or incarcerated. Ironically, the British did reverse their policy on Zionism. War with Nazi Germany was imminent, and a continued pro-Zionist policy risked pushing the entire Arab world into the arms of the Axis powers. The 1939 White Paper, issued in May, sharply restricted Jewish immigration and promised Palestinian independence within 10 years. For Palestinians, it was a Pyrrhic victory.