World News

Palestinian politics was driven not only by poverty but also by religion, particularly in Jerusalem. The religious nature of al-Husayni’s own leadership as the highest religious dignitary in the land, whose authority stemmed from a Jerusalemite genealogy, turned the attention of many Palestinians to Zionist activity in that city. In 1929, when sporadic acts of violence surrounding the issue of holy places in Jerusalem turned into days of rioting, al-Husayni was unprepared. He had sensed rising tension in Jerusalem in 1928, in the face of a suspected Jewish drive to expand the Wailing Wall area, which would have undermined the holiest place for Islam in Jerusalem, Haram al-Sharif, the site of the al-Aqsa mosque. He hoped to exert control by establishing a committee for the defence of Jerusalem in 1928, to counteract any Zionist attempts to build a third Temple there.

Ironically, al-Husayni lost control because he was now trusted by a wider range of Palestinians than anyone in his family before him. The a’ayan traditionally valued ambiguity and caution as the best means of navigating their communities through times of trouble. In 1928, this meant simultaneously calling for the defence of Jerusalem and discouraging direct action on the ground. But the Palestinian masses found this kind of co-opted nationalism impossible. They lived near the holy places and saw Jews praying there in unprecedented numbers, which they saw as part of a larger scheme to ‘de-Islamize’ Palestine. A minor incident concerning prayer arrangements near the Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Haram, sparked violence that soon swept through Palestine as a whole in 1929. In all, 300 Jews and a similar number of Palestinians were killed.

The spillover of anger from Jerusalem into the countryside and other towns was not a co-ordinated plan by the leadership. Rather, it started with uprooted Palestinians who had lost their agricultural base for various reasons, including the capitalization of crops and the Jewish purchase of land. These former peasants lived on the urban margins, from where they participated in what to them was their first ever political, and violent, action. Their dismal conditions were not the fault of Zionism, but it was easy to connect Zionist activity in Jerusalem with the purchase of land or with an aggressive segregationist policy in the labour market.

• pg 138

The Palestinian leadership went through very different experiences during the Second World War. Amin al-Husayni was wandering as an exile from one Arab capital to the other, but made his way to Berlin, where he served the Nazi propaganda war machine and alienated the cause of his national movement in the eyes of the victors. He was accompanied by other members of the Arab Higher Committee, some having served terms in British prisons, where, ironically, they met extremist Jewish terrorists who had fought the British. In their absence, others had replaced them. The political scene had already been affected by politicians from neighbouring Arab countries and their local protégés. The result was the establishment of two conflicting official leaderships of the community: the old Arab Higher Committee, sanctioned by the Arab League and still dominated by the Husaynis (headed by Jamal al-Husayni), and the National Authority, headed by Raghib al-Nashashibi and supported by the Hashemites. This disunity affected the political structure from top to bottom, and was evident in every sphere of life. It crippled the financial organization which had recently been erected to counter Zionist economic power; it weakened the paramilitary outfits, which were in any case poorly armed and totally outnumbered by the Zionists; and it prevented solidarity within the national committees established to run local communities. These committees were particularly active in urban areas, and tried to prepare their communities for autonomous life during the transition at the end of the Mandate. The committees were, however, less loyal to their communities, and much more in debt to their clans or political groups, rendering the communities defenceless before a Zionist determination to take over Palestine, should the diplomatic solution offered by the British, or later by the UN, allow it, or an ensuing war enable it to do so. Had it not been for the military intervention of the Arab armies on 15 May 1948, not one fragment of Palestine would have remained outside Jewish control.

• pg 172