1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
1936–1939 Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine | |||||||
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Part of the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, decolonisation of Asia, and the precursor to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict | |||||||
British soldiers on an armoured train car with two Palestinian Arab hostages used as human shields. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United Kingdom Jewish National Council Yishuv
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Arab Higher Committee (1936 – October 1937)
Central Committee of National Jihad in Palestine (October 1937 – 1939)
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Raghib al-Nashashibi (from 1937) |
Political leadership: Local rebel commanders: Ahmad Mohamad Hasan †
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (exiled) Wasif Kamal Abdul Khallik † Hamid Suleiman Mardawi † Ibrahim Nassar Mustafa Osta † Mohammad Mahmoud Rana'an Farhan al-Sa'di Hasan Salama Arab volunteer commanders: | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
25,000[1]–50,000[2] British soldiers 20,000 Jewish policemen, supernumeraries and settlement guards[3] 15,000 Haganah fighters[4] 2,883 Palestine Police Force, all ranks (1936)[5] 2,000 Irgun militants[6] |
1,000–3,000 (1936–37) 2,500–7,500 (plus an additional 6,000–15,000 part-timers) (1938)[7] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
British Security Forces: 262 killed c. 550 wounded[8] Jews: c. 500 killed[9] 2 executed |
Arabs: c. 5,000 killed[1] c. 15,000 wounded[1] 108 executed [8] 12,622 detained [8] 5 exiled [8] |
A
The uprising coincided with a peak in the influx of immigrant Jews,
The general strike lasted from April to October 1936. The revolt is often analysed in terms of two distinct phases.
According to official British figures covering the whole revolt, the army and police killed more than 2,000 Arabs in combat, 108 were
The Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine was unsuccessful, and its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 Palestine war.[30] It caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist militias like the Haganah, whereas on the Palestinian Arab side, the revolt forced the flight into exile of the main Palestinian Arab leader of the period, al-Husseini.[dubious ]
Economic background
World War I left Palestine, especially the countryside, deeply impoverished.[31] The Ottoman and then the Mandate authorities levied high taxes on farming and agricultural produce and during the 1920s and 1930s this together with a fall in prices, cheap imports, natural disasters and paltry harvests all contributed to the increasing indebtedness of the fellahin.[32] The rents paid by tenant fellah increased sharply, owing to increased population density, and growing transfer of land from Arabs to the Jewish settlement agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund, increased the number of fellahin evicted while also removing the land as a future source of livelihood.[33] By 1931 the 106,400 dunums of low-lying Category A farming land in Arab possession supported a farming population of 590,000 whereas the 102,000 dunums of such land in Jewish possession supported a farming population of only 50,000.[34] The late 1920s witnessed poor harvests, and the consequent immiseration grew even harsher with the onset of the Great Depression and the collapse of commodity prices.[13] The Shaw Commission in 1930 had identified the existence of a class of 'embittered landless people' as a contributory factor to the preceding 1929 disturbances,[35] and the problem of these 'landless' Arabs grew particularly grave after 1931, causing High Commissioner Wauchope to warn that this 'social peril ... would serve as a focus of discontent and might even result in serious disorders.'[35]
Economic factors played a major role in the outbreak of the Arab revolt.
Although the Mandatory government introduced measures to limit the transfer of land from Arabs to Jews, these were easily circumvented by willing buyers and sellers.[35] The failure of the authorities to invest in economic growth and healthcare for the general Palestinian public and the Zionist policy of ensuring that their investments were directed only to facilitate expansion exclusively of the Yishuv further compounded matters.[36] The government did, however, set the minimum wage for Arab workers below that for Jewish workers, which meant that those making capital investments in the Yishuv's economic infrastructure, such as Haifa's electricity plant, the Shemen oil and soap factory, the Grands Moulins flour mills and the Nesher cement factory, could take advantage of cheap Arab labour pouring in from the countryside.[14] After 1935 the slump in the construction boom and further concentration by the Yishuv on an exclusivist Hebrew labour programme removed most of the sources of employment for rural migrants.[37] By 1935 only 12,000 Arabs (5% of the workforce) worked in the Jewish sector, half of these in agriculture, whereas 32,000 worked for the Mandate authorities and 211,000 were either self-employed or worked for Arab employers.[38]
The ongoing disruption of agrarian life in Palestine, which had been continuing since Ottoman times, thus created a large population of landless peasant farmers who subsequently became mobile wage workers who were increasingly marginalised and impoverished; these became willing participants in nationalist rebellion.[39] At the same time, Jewish immigration peaked in 1935, just months before Palestinian Arabs began their full-scale, nationwide revolt.[1][40] Over the four years between 1933 and 1936 more than 164,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, and between 1931 and 1936 the Jewish population more than doubled from 175,000 to 370,000 people, increasing the Jewish population share from 17% to 27%, and bringing about a significant deterioration in relations between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.[41] In 1936 alone, some 60,000 Jews immigrated that year – the Jewish population having grown under British auspices from 57,000 to 320,000 in 1935[13]
Political and socio-cultural background
The advent of
In 1930 Sheikh
The pressures of the 1930s wrought several changes,
Youth organisations emerged like Young Men's Muslim Association and the Youth Congress Party, the former anti-Zionist, the latter pan-Arab. The Palestinian Boy Scout Movement, founded early in 1936, became active in the general strike.[49] Women's organisations, which had been active in social matters, became politically involved from the end of the 1920s, with an Arab Women's Congress held in Jerusalem in 1929 attracting 200 participants, and an Arab Women's Association (later Arab Women's Union) being established at the same time, both organised by feminist Tarab Abdul Hadi.[49][52] Myriads of rural women would play an important role in response to faz'a alarm calls for inter-village help by rallying in defence of the rebellion.[53]
Inspiration from abroad
General strikes had been used in neighbouring Arab countries to place political pressures on Western colonial powers.
Prelude
On 16 October 1935 a large
The death of al-Qassam generated widespread outrage among Palestinian Arabs, galvanizing public sentiments with an impact similar to the effect on the Yishuv of news of the death of
The actual uprising was triggered some five months later, on 15 April 1936, by the
Jews and Palestinians attacked each other in and around Tel Aviv. Palestinians in Jaffa rampaged through a Jewish residential area, resulting in several Jewish deaths.[70] After four days, by 19 April, the deteriorating situation erupted into a set of countrywide disturbances. An Arab general strike and revolt ensued that lasted until October 1936.[1]
Timeline
Arab general strike and armed insurrection, April–October 1936
The strike began on 19 April in Nablus, where an Arab National Committee was formed,[72][73] and by the end of the month National Committees had been formed in all of the towns and some of the larger villages.[73] On the same day, the High Commissioner Wauchope issued Emergency Regulations that laid the legal basis for suppressing the insurgency.[70] On 21 April the leaders of the five main parties accepted the decision at Nablus and called for a general strike of all Arabs engaged in labour, transport and shopkeeping for the following day.[73]
While the strike was initially organised by workers and local committees, under pressure from below, political leaders became involved to help with co-ordination.[74] This led to the formation on 25 April 1936 of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC).[73] The Committee resolved "to continue the general strike until the British Government changes its present policy in a fundamental manner"; the demands were threefold: (1) the prohibition of Jewish immigration; (2) the prohibition of the transfer of Arab land to Jews; (3) the establishment of a National Government responsible to a representative council.[75]
About one month after the general strike started, the leadership group declared a general non-payment of taxes in explicit opposition to Jewish immigration.[76]
In the countryside, armed insurrection started sporadically, becoming more organized over time.
The measures taken against the strike were harsh from the outset and grew harsher as the revolt deepened. Unable to contain the protests with the two battalions already stationed in the country, Britain inundated Palestine with soldiers from regiments all over the empire, including its Egyptian garrison.[70] The drastic measures taken included house searches without warrants, night raids, preventive detention, caning, flogging, deportation, confiscation of property, and torture.[81] As early as May 1936 the British formed armed Jewish units equipped with armoured vehicles to serve as auxiliary police.[82]
The British government in Palestine was convinced that the strike had the full support of the Palestinian Arabs and they could see "no weakening in the will and spirit of the Arab people."
It was quickly evident that the only way to regain the initiative from the rebels was by initiating measures against the villagers from which the rebels and saboteurs came ... I therefore initiated, in co-operation with the Inspector-General of Police R. G. B. Spicer, village searches. Ostensibly, these searches were undertaken to find arms and wanted persons, actually the measures adopted by the Police on the lines of similar Turkish methods, were punitive and effective.[83]
In reality the measures created a sense of solidarity between the villagers and the rebels.
On 2 June, an attempt by rebels to derail a train bringing the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment from Egypt led to the railways being put under guard, placing a great strain on the security forces.[85] On 4 June, in response to this situation, the government rounded up a large number of Palestinian leaders and sent them to a detention camp at Auja al-Hafir in the Negev desert.[85]
The
During July, Arab volunteers from Syria and
A Statement of Policy issued by the Colonial Office in London on 7 September declared the situation a "direct challenge to the authority of the British Government in Palestine" and announced the appointment of Lieutenant-General John Dill as supreme military commander.[79] By the end of September 20,000 British troops in Palestine were deployed to "round up Arab bands".[79]
In June 1936 the British involved their clients in Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in an attempt to pacify the Palestinian Arabs and on 9 October the rulers made an appeal for the strike to be ended.[88] A more pressing concern may have been the approaching citrus harvest and the attractive, soaring prices on the international markets caused by the disruption to the Spanish citrus harvest due to the Spanish Civil War.[89]
On 22 August 1936, Anglo-Jewish Arabist scholar
Peel commission; break in hostilities (October 1936 – September 1937)
The strike was called off on 11 October 1936
Peel's main recommendation was for partition of Palestine into a small Jewish state (based on current Jewish land ownership population and incorporating the country's most productive agricultural land), a residual Mandatory area, and a larger Arab state linked to Transjordan.[93] A second and more radical proposal was for transfer of 225,000 Palestinian Arabs from the proposed Jewish state to a future Arab state and Transjordan.[93] It is likely that Zionist leaders played a role in persuading Peel to accept the notion of transfer, which had been a strand of Zionist ideology from its inception.[94]
The commission, which concluded that 1,000 Arab rebels had been killed during the six month strike, later described the disturbances as "an open rebellion of the Palestinian Arabs, assisted by fellow-Arabs from other countries, against Mandatory rule" and noted two unprecedented features of the revolt: the support of all senior Arab officials in the political and technical departments in the Palestine administration (including all of the Arab judges) and the "interest and sympathy of the neighbouring Arab peoples", which had resulted in support for the rebellion in the form of volunteers from Syria and Iraq.[95]
The Arab Higher Committee rejected the recommendations immediately, as did the Jewish Revisionists. Initially, the religious Zionists, some of the General Zionists, and sections of the Labour Zionist movement also opposed the recommendations.[93] Ben-Gurion was delighted by the Peel Commission's support for transfer, which he viewed as the foundation of "national consolidation in a free homeland."[94] Subsequently, the two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and Ben Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiation,[93][97][d] and to negotiate a modified Peel proposal with the British.[e]
The British government initially accepted the Peel report in principle. However, with war clouds looming over Europe, they realized that to attempt to implement it against the will of the Palestinian Arab majority would rouse up the entire Arab world against Britain.[f] The Woodhead Commission considered three different plans, one of which was based on the Peel plan. Reporting in 1938, the Commission rejected the Peel plan primarily on the grounds that it could not be implemented without a massive forced transfer of Arabs (an option that the British government had already ruled out).[101] With dissent from some of its members, the Commission instead recommended a plan that would leave the Galilee under British mandate, but emphasised serious problems with it that included a lack of financial self-sufficiency of the proposed Arab State.[101] The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable due to "political, administrative and financial difficulties".[102]
Resumed revolt (September 1937 – August 1939)
With the failure of the Peel Commission's proposals the revolt resumed during the autumn of 1937 marked by the assassination on 26 September of Acting District Commissioner of the Galilee
In November 1937, the Irgun formally rejected the policy of Havlagah and embarked on a series of indiscriminate attacks against Arab civilians as a form of what the group called "active defense" against Arab attacks on Jewish civilians. The British authorities set up military courts, which were established for the trial of offenses connected with the carrying and discharge of firearms, sabotage and intimidation. Despite this, however, the Arab campaign of murder and sabotage continued and Arab gangs in the hills took on the appearance of organised guerrilla fighters.[105] Violence continued throughout 1938.[1] In July 1938, when the Palestine Government seemed to have largely lost control of the situation, the garrison was strengthened from Egypt, and in September it was further reinforced from England. The police were placed under the operational control of the army commander, and military officials superseded the civil authorities in the enforcement of order. In October the Old City of Jerusalem, which had become a rebel stronghold, was reoccupied by the troops. By the end of the year a semblance of order had been restored in the towns, but terrorism continued in rural areas until the outbreak of the Second World War.[105]
Attacks and casualties in numbers
In the final fifteen months of the revolt alone there were 936 murders and 351 attempted murders; 2,125 incidents of sniping; 472 bombs thrown and detonated; 364 cases of armed robbery; 1,453 cases of sabotage against government and commercial property; 323 people abducted; 72 cases of intimidation; 236 Jews killed by Arabs and 435 Arabs killed by Jews; 1,200 rebels killed by the police and military and 535 wounded.[107]
Irgun anti-British attacks
Despite cooperation of the Yishuv with the British to quell the revolt, some incidents towards the end of the conflict indicated a coming change in relations. On 12 June 1939, A British explosives expert was killed trying to defuse an Irgun bomb near a Jerusalem post office. On 26 August, two British police officers, Inspector Ronald Barker and Inspector Ralph Cairns, commander of the Jewish Department of the C.I.D., were killed by an Irgun mine in Jerusalem.[108][109]
Response
Role of the Mandate Government and the British Army
Military law allowed swift prison sentences to be passed.[110] Thousands of Arabs were held in administrative detention, without trial, and without proper sanitation, in overcrowded prison camps.[110]
The British had already formalised the principle of collective punishment in Palestine in the 1924–1925 Collective Responsibility and Punishment Ordinances and updated these ordinances in 1936 with the Collective Fines Ordinance.[1] These collective fines (amounting to £1,000,000 over the revolt[111]) eventually became a heavy burden for poor Palestinian villagers, especially when the army also confiscated livestock, destroyed properties, imposed long curfews and established police posts, demolished houses and detained some or all of the Arab men in distant detention camps.[1]
Full martial law was not introduced but in a series of Orders in Council and Emergency Regulations, 1936–37 'statutory' martial law, a stage between semi-military rule under civil powers and full martial law under military powers, and one in which the army and not the civil High Commissioner was pre-eminent was put in place.[1][112] Following the Arab capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in October 1938, the army effectively took over Jerusalem and then all of Palestine.[1]
The main form of collective punishment employed by the British forces was destruction of property. Sometimes entire villages were reduced to rubble, as happened to
In addition to actions against property, a large amount of brutality by the British forces occurred, including beatings, torture and extrajudicial killings.[1] A surprisingly large number of prisoners were "shot while trying to escape".[1] Several incidents involved serious atrocities, such as massacres at al-Bassa and Halhul.[1] Desmond Woods, an officer of the Royal Ulster Rifles, described the massacre at al-Bassa:
Now I will never forget this incident ... We were at al-Malikiyya, the other frontier base and word came through about 6 o'clock in the morning that one of our patrols had been blown up and Millie Law [the dead officer] had been killed. Now Gerald Whitfeld [Lieutenant-Colonel G.H.P. Whitfeld, the battalion commander] had told these mukhtars that if any of this sort of thing happened he would take punitive measures against the nearest village to the scene of the mine. Well the nearest village to the scene of the mine was a place called al-Bassa and our Company C were ordered to take part in punitive measures. And I will never forget arriving at al-Bassa and seeing the
Monty said "All right but just go a wee bit easier in the future."[1]
As well as destroying the village the RUR and men from the Royal Engineers collected around fifty men from al-Bassa and blew some of them up with explosion under a bus. Harry Arrigonie, a policeman who was present said that about twenty men were put onto a bus; those who tried to escape were shot and then the driver of the bus was forced to drive over a powerful land mine buried by the soldiers which completely destroyed the bus, scattering the mutilated bodies of the prisoners everywhere. The other villagers were then forced to bury the bodies in a pit.[1]
Despite these measures Lieutenant-General Haining, the General Officer Commanding, reported secretly to the Cabinet on 1 December 1938 that "practically every village in the country harbours and supports the rebels and will assist in concealing their identity from the Government Forces."[114] Haining reported the method for searching villages:
A cordon round the area to be searched is first established either by troops or aircraft and the inhabitants are warned that anybody trying to break through the cordon is likely to be shot. As literally hundreds of villages have been searched, in some cases more than once, during the past six months this procedure is well-known and it can be safely assumed that cordon-breakers have good reasons for wishing to avoid the troops. A number of such cordon-breakers have been shot during searches and it is probable that such cases form the basis of the propaganda that Arab prisoners are shot in cold blood and reported as "killed while trying to escape". After the cordon is established the troops enter the village and all male inhabitants are collected for identification and interrogation.[114]
The report was issued in response to growing concern at the severity of the military measures amongst the general public in Great Britain, among members of the British Government, and among governments in countries neighbouring Palestine.[114]
In addition to actions against villages the British Army also conducted punitive actions in the cities. In Nablus in August 1938 almost 5,000 men were held in a cage for two days and interrogated one after another.[115] During their detention the city was searched and then each of the detainees was marked with a rubber stamp on his release.[115] At one point a night curfew was imposed on most of the cities.[115]
It was common British army practice to make local Arabs ride with military convoys to prevent mine attacks and sniping incidents: soldiers would tie the hostages to the bonnets of lorries, or put them on small flatbeds on the front of trains.[1] The army told the hostages that any of them who tried to run away would be shot. On the lorries, some soldiers would brake hard at the end of a journey and then casually drive over the hostage, killing or maiming him, as Arthur Lane, a Manchester Regiment private recalled:
... when you'd finished your duty you would come away nothing had happened no bombs or anything and the driver would switch his wheel back and to make the truck waver and the poor wog on the front would roll off into the deck. Well if he was lucky he'd get away with a broken leg but if he was unlucky the truck behind coming up behind would hit him. But nobody bothered to pick up the bits they were left. You know we were there we were the masters we were the bosses and whatever we did was right ... Well you know you don't want him any more. He's fulfilled his job. And that's when Bill Usher [the commanding officer] said that it had to stop because before long they'd be running out of bloody rebels to sit on the bonnet.[1]
British troops also left Arab wounded on the battlefield to die and maltreated Arab fighters taken in battle, so much so that the rebels tried to remove their wounded or dead from the field of battle.[1] Sometimes, soldiers would occupy villages, expel all of the inhabitants and remain for months.[116] The Army even burned the bodies of "terrorists" to prevent their funerals becoming the focus of protests.[116]
Nevertheless, it has been argued that British behaviour overall was good compared to most other examples where a foreign army suppressed a popular insurgency.[1]
Tegart forts
Sir Charles Tegart was a senior police officer brought into Palestine from the colonial force of British India[1] on 21 October 1937.[117] Tegart and his deputy David Petrie (later head of MI5) advised a greater emphasis on foreign intelligence gathering and closure of Palestine's borders.[118] Like many of those enrolled in the Palestinian gendarmerie, Tegart had served in Great Britain's repression of the Irish War of Independence, and the security proposals he introduced exceeded measures adopted down to this time elsewhere in the British Empire. 70 fortresses were erected throughout the country at strategic choke points and near Palestinian villages which, if assessed as "bad", were subjected to collective punishment.[119][120] Accordingly, from 1938 Gilbert Mackereth, the British Consul in Damascus, corresponded with Syrian and Transjordan authorities regarding border control and security to counteract arms smuggling and "terrorist" infiltration and produced a report for Tegart on the activities of the Palestine Defence Committee in Damascus.[121] Tegart recommended the construction of a frontier road with a barbed wire fence, which became known as Tegart's wall, along the borders with Lebanon and Syria to help prevent the flow of insurgents, goods and weapons.[117] Tegart encouraged close co-operation with the Jewish Agency.[122] It was built by the Histadrut construction company Solel Boneh.[122] The total cost was £2 million.[122] The Army forced the fellahin to work on the roads without pay.[123]
Tegart introduced
Role of the Royal Air Force
The
This use of air power was so successful that the British were able to reduce the regular garrison.[125]
In 1936 an Air Staff Officer in
Aircraft of the RAF were also used to drop propaganda leaflets over Palestinian towns and villages telling the fellahin that they were the main sufferers of the rebellion and threatening an increase in taxes.[123]
Low flying RAF squadrons were able to produce detailed intelligence on the location of
Although the British Army was responsible for setting up the Arab counter-insurgent forces (known as the peace bands) and supplying them with arms and money these were operated by RAF Intelligence, commanded by Patrick Domville.[132][133]
At the beginning of the revolt RAF assets in the region comprised a bomber flight at RAF Ramleh, an RAF armoured car flight at Ramleh, fourteen bomber squadrons at RAF Amman, and a RAF armoured car company at Ma'an.[5]
At the beginning of the Revolt crew from the Haifa Naval Force's two
Following publication of the Peel Commission's report in July 1937 HMS Repulse sailed to Haifa where landing parties were put ashore to maintain calm.[134] Various other naval vessels continued with this role until the end of the revolt.[134]
Following the Irgun's detonation of a large bomb in a market in Haifa on 6 July 1938 the High Commissioner signalled the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, requesting the assistance of naval vessels capable of providing landing parties.[134] Pound dispatched HMS Repulse and diverted HMS Emerald to Haifa, which arrived the same day and landed five platoons, one to each police district.[134] HMS Repulse relieved HMS Emerald the following day and after another bomb was detonated on 10 July five platoons from the ship, made up of sailors and Royal Marines, dispersed mobs and patrolled the city.[134]
On 11 July provision of three platoons from Repulse released men of the
The Repulse,
Strategic importance of Haifa
Britain had completed the modern deep-sea port in Haifa in 1933 and finished laying a pipeline from the Iraqi
These facilities enhanced the strategic importance of Palestine and of Haifa in particular in Britain's control of the eastern
Role of the British intelligence services
The Arab Revolt was the last major test of Britain's security services in the Middle East before World War II.
In response to these challenges the British army command ("I" Branch) and battalion headquarters across Palestine issued a daily intelligence bulletin every afternoon detailing political developments.[137] Special Service Officers (SSOs) assigned to intelligence gathering reported directly to their local command headquarters and their cars were equipped with wireless transmitters so that high grade intelligence could be reported directly to "I" Branch immediately.[137] These sources of intelligence gradually became more important than those of the C.I.D. in Palestine, which had been dependent on Arab informers, and which were no longer reliable.[137]
In September 1937, the Jewish Agency appointed Reuven Zaslany liaison officer for intelligence and security affairs between the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and the intelligence arms of the Royal Air Force and the C.I.D.[138] Zaslany sifted through intelligence collected by Jewish-controlled field operatives and forwarded it to the British military.[138] He was a frequent visitor at the headquarters of British intelligence and the army, the police and C.I.D. and he also travelled to Damascus to liaise with the Arab opposition's peace bands and with the British Consul in Iraq.[138] Colonel Frederick Kisch, a British army officer and Zionist leader, was appointed chief liaison officer between the British army and the Jewish Agency Executive with Zaslany as his deputy.[138] Zaslany also worked as interpreter for Patrick Domville, head of RAF Intelligence in Palestine (who was described by Haganah leader Dov Hos as the "best Zionist informer on the English"), until the latter was posted to Iraq in 1938, and through him became acquainted with many of the British intelligence officers.[139]
In 1937 the Jewish Agency's intelligence groups were responsible for bugging the Peel Commission hearings in Palestine.[140] Eventually, the Arab Revolt convinced the Agency that a central intelligence service was required and this led to the formation of a counter-intelligence agency known as the Ran (headed by Yehuda Arazi, who also helped to smuggle rifles, machine guns and ammunition from Poland to Palestine) and thereafter in 1940 to the creation of SHAI, the forerunner of Mossad.[141][142]
British and Jewish co-operation
The
The British authorities maintained, financed and armed the Jewish police from this point onward until the end of the Mandate,[143] and by the end of September 1939 around 20,000 Jewish policeman, supernumeraries and settlement guards had been authorised to carry arms by the government,[3] which also distributed weapons to outlying Jewish settlements,[144]and allowed the Haganah to acquire arms.[145] Independently of the British, Ta'as, the Haganah's clandestine munitions industry, developed an 81-mm mortar and manufactured mines and grenades, 17,500 of the latter being produced for use during the revolt.[29][146][147]
In June 1937, the British imposed the death penalty for unauthorised possession of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, but since many Jews had permission to carry weapons and store ammunition for defence this order was directed primarily against Palestinian Arabs and most of the 112 executed in Acre Prison were hanged for illegal possession of arms.[148]
In principle all of the joint units functioned as part of the British administration, but in practice they were under the command of the Jewish Agency and "intended to form the backbone of a Jewish military force set up under British sponsorship in preparation for the inevitable clash with the Arabs."[149] The Agency and the Mandate authorities shared the costs of the new units equally.[122] The administration also provided security services to Jewish commercial concerns at cost.[122]
Jewish and British officials worked together to co-ordinate manhunts and collective actions against villages and also discussed the imposition of penalties and sentences.[149] Overall, the Jewish Agency was successful in making "the point that the Zionist movement and the British Empire were standing shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy, in a war in which they had common goals."[150]
The rebellion also inspired the Jewish Agency to expand the intelligence-gathering of its Political Department and especially of its Arab Division, with the focus changing from political to military intelligence.
Forces of the Jewish settlement
Table 1: Security forces and infrastructure created during the Arab revolt Joint British-Yishuv Independent Yishuv Other Yishuv defence infrastructure Jewish Supernumerary Police Mobile units (mobile arm of the Haganah) Ta'as † (weapons manufacture) Jewish Settlement Police Fosh(field companies)Rekhesh † (arms procurement) Mobile Guards (mobile arm of the Settlement Police) Hish (field corps) Ran (counter intelligence) Special Night Squads Special Operations Squads Community ransom (defence tax) Tegart's wallGuards Tower and stockadesettlement
† Ta'as and Rekhesh were developed and expanded during the Arab Revolt but already existed before 1936 and the Haganah had been in operation from the earliest days of the Mandate.
Haganah intelligence services
There was no single body within the Jewish settlement capable of co-ordinating intelligence gathering before 1939.[152] Until then there were four separate organisations without any regular or formal liaison.[152] These were an underground militia, forerunner of the first official information service, Sherut Yediot (Shai); the Arab Platoon of the Palmach, which was staffed by Jews who were Arab-speaking and Arab-looking; Rekhesh, the arms procurement service, which had its own intelligence gathering capabilities, and likewise the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, the illegal immigration service.[152] In mid-1939 the effort to co-ordinate the activities of these groups was led by Shaul Avigur and Moshe Shertok.[152]
Role of the Revisionist Zionists
In 1931, a Revisionist underground splinter group broke off from Haganah, calling itself the Irgun organisation (or Etzel).[153] The organisation took its orders from Revisionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky who was at odds with the dominant Labour Zionist movement led by David Ben-Gurion.[154] The rift between the two Zionist movements further deteriorated in 1933 when two Revisionists were blamed for the murder of Haim Arlosoroff, who had negotiated the Haavara Agreement between the Jewish Agency and Nazi Germany.[154] The agreement brought 52,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939, and generated $30,000,000 for the then almost bankrupt Jewish Agency, but in addition to the difficulties with the Revisionists, who advocated a boycott of Germany, it caused the Yishuv to be isolated from the rest of world Jewry.[155][156][157]
Ultimately, however, the events of the Arab Revolt blurred the differences between the gradualist approach of Ben-Gurion and the Maximalist Iron Wall approach of Jabotinsky and turned militarist patriotism into a bipartisan philosophy.[158] Indeed, Ben-Gurion's own Special Operations Squads conducted a punitive operation in the Arab village of Lubya firing weapons into a room through a window killing two men and one woman and injuring three people, including two children.[159]
From October 1937 the Irgun instituted a wave of bombings against Arab crowds and buses.[160] For the first time in the conflict massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab public places, killing and maiming dozens.[160] These attacks substantially increased Arab casualties and sowed terror among the population.[160] The first attack was on 11 November 1937, killing two Arabs at the bus depot near Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and then on 14 November, a day later commemorated as the "Day of the Breaking of the Havlagah (restraint)," Arabs were killed in simultaneous attacks around Palestine.[160] More deadly attacks followed: on 6 July 1938 21 Arabs were killed and 52 wounded by a bomb in a Haifa market; on 25 July a second market bomb in Haifa killed at least 39 Arabs and injured 70; a bomb in Jaffa's vegetable market on 26 August killed 24 Arabs and wounded 39.[160] The attacks were condemned by the Jewish Agency.[160]
Role of the "peace bands"
The "peace bands" (fasa'il al-salam) or "
From December 1937 the main opposition figures among the Arabs approached the Jewish Agency for funding and assistance,
Fakhri Nashashibi was particularly successful in recruiting peace bands in the
Just two months earlier, on 15 October 1938, rebels had seized the
Towards the end of the revolt in May 1939 the authorities dissolved the peace bands and confiscated their arms.[165] However, because members of the bands had become tainted in the eyes of the Palestinian Arabs, and some were under sentence of death, they had little choice but to continue the battle against the national movement's leadership, which they did with the continuing help of the Zionist movement.[167]
Role of rebel leaders
At least 282 rebel leaders took part in the Arab Revolt, including four Christians.[168] Rebel forces consisted of loosely organized bands known as fasa'il [169] (sing: fasil).[170] The leader of a fasil was known as a qa'id al-fasil (pl. quwwa'id al-fasa'il), which means "band commander".[171] The Jewish press often referred to them as "brigands", while the British authorities and media called them "bandits", "terrorists", "rebels" or "insurgents", but never "nationalists".[172] Ursabat (meaning "gangs") was another Arabic term used for the rebels,[173] and it spawned the British soldiers' nickname for all rebels, which was Oozlebart.[172][173][174]
According to historian Simon Anglim, the rebel groups were divided into general categories: mujahadeen and fedayeen. The former were guerrillas who engaged in armed confrontations, while the latter committed acts of sabotage.[173] According to later accounts of some surviving rebel leaders from the Galilee, the mujahideen maintained little coordination with the nominal hierarchy of the revolt. Most ambushes were the result of a local initiative undertaken by a qa'id or a group of quwwa'id from the same area.[170]
Galilee
Abdul Khallik was an effective peasant leader appointed by
Jabal Nablus area
Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad from the Tulkarm area was a deeply religious, intellectual man and as a fervent anti-Zionist, he was deeply committed to the revolt.[179] He was regarded second to Qawukji in terms of leadership ability and maintained his independence from the exiled rebel leadership in Damascus.[179] [180] He personally led his fasa'il and carried out nighttime attacks against British targets in the revolt's early stage in 1936. When the revolt was renewed in April 1937, he established a more organised command hierarchy consisting of four main brigades who operated in the north-central highlands (Tulkarm-Nablus-Jenin area). He competed for the position of General Commander of the Revolt with Aref Abdul Razzik, and the two served the post in rotation from September 1938 to February 1939, when al-Hajj Muhammad was confirmed as the sole General Commander.
Al-Hajj Muhammad refused to carry out political assassinations at the behest of political factions, including al-Husayni, once stating "I don't work for Husayniya ('Husanyni-ism'), but for wataniya ('nationalism')."
Fakhri Abdul Hadi of Arrabah worked closely with Fawzi al-Qawukji in 1936, but later defected to the British authorities.[175] He bargained for a pardon by offering to collaborate with the British on countering rebel propaganda.[175] Once on the payroll of the British consul in Damascus, Gilbert Mackereth, he carried out many attacks against the rebels in 1938–1939 as leader of his own "peace band".[184][185]
Aref had a little mare
Its coat as white as snow
And where that mare and Aref went
We're jiggered if we know. – British Army verse.
Aref Abdul Razzik of Tayibe was responsible for the area south of Tulkarm and was known for evading capture whilst being pursued by the security forces.[186] He signed his bulletins as 'The Ghost of Sheikh Qassam'.[186] Razzik assumed a place in British army folklore and the troops sang a song about him.[186] Razzik was capable and daring and gained a reputation as one of the army's problem heroes.[186]
Jerusalem area
Issa Battat was a peasant leader in the southern hills below Jerusalem who caused enormous damage to security patrols in his area.[187] He was killed by a patrol of armed police in a battle near Hebron in 1937.[187][188]
Arab volunteers
In the first phase of the revolt, around 300 volunteers, mostly veterans of the
Funding
In the contest of wills between the British Empire and Palestinian aspirants for statehood, the respective efforts to secure the financial means to sustain the hostilities also played out as a battle for funding.[h] The Mandatory Authority's repression of the revolt was bankrolled directly from London and through the revenue stream supplied to the administration by land and property taxes, stamp duties, excises on manufactured goods and customs duties on imports and exports. Draconian collective punishment fines on the peasantry –many heavily burdened already by debt and unable to pay them – were such that revenue extracted from punitive fines exceeded, and more than compensated for, the revenue lost during the revolt.[189]
The majority of funds raised to finance the uprising came from Arab/Muslim sources. In the broader Arab/Muslim world a measure of financial aid, never vast, filtered in from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Muslim India for some time.[190] In Palestine, the peasantry, often debt-ridden, could offer little towards subsidising the resistance.[191] A variety of measures were adopted. Women donated jewelry and ran fund-raising committees:, a jihad tax was placed on citrus groves, the industry being the backbone of Palestine's export trade; Palestinians on the government payroll contributed sums anywhere up to half of their salaries; levies were imposed on wealthier Arabs (many of whom went abroad to avoid paying them, or because they could not meet demands to provide financial aid to strikers).[192] The AHC's functions in this capacity were truncated when it was abolished by the British authorities in October 1937. Displaced in Damascus, its leaders were cut off from contact with field units and donations gradually dried up.[193] al-Husayni, by then in exile, proved unable to raise money, and in Syria militant contacts were informed by July 1938 that they would have to make do on their own.[194] By 1938 the drop in revenues caused militant gangs to resort to extortion and robbery, often draining villages of ready cash reserves set aside to pay government fines, which then had to be met by the sale of crops and livestock.[195] Some contributions were obtained from American sources.[194]
A great deal of speculation later arose around the purported role of Germany and Italy in backing the revolt financially, based on early claims by Jewish operatives that both countries were fomenting the uprising by funneling cash and weapons to the insurgents.
In the first years after 1933 Germany was approached by a variety of Arab nationalist groups from Palestine and abroad asking for aid, but Germany categorically refused. Maintaining good relations with the British was still considered to be of the uppermost priority, hence it limited itself to expressing its sympathy and moral support.[206] Soon after the outbreak of the revolt, in December 1936, Germany was approached by the rebel commander Fawzi al-Qawuqji and in January 1937 by representatives of the Arab Higher Committee, both requesting arms and money, but again in vain.[207] In July al-Husayni himself approached Heinrich Doehle, new general counsel of Jerusalem, to request support for the "battle against the Jews".[208] Doehle found that Germany's hesitation in supporting the rebels had caused pro-German sentiment among Palestinian Arabs to waver.[209] Some limited[j] German funding for the revolt can be dated to around the summer of 1938[198] and was perhaps related to a goal of distracting the British from the on-going occupation of Czechoslovakia.[211] The Abwehr gave money to al-Husayni[198] and other sums were funneled via Saudi Arabia.[212]
Outcome
Casualties
Despite the intervention of up to 50,000 British troops and 15,000 Haganah men, the uprising continued for over three years. By the time it concluded in September 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, over 300 Jews, and 262 Britons had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded.[1]
Impact on the Jewish Yishuv
In the overall context of the Jewish settlement's development in the 1930s the physical losses endured during the revolt were relatively insignificant.[29] Although hundreds were killed and property was damaged no Jewish settlement was captured or destroyed and several dozen new ones were established.[29] Over 50,000 new Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine.[29] In 1936 Jews made up about one-third of the population.[213]
The hostilities contributed to further disengagement of the Jewish and Arab economies in Palestine, which were intertwined to some extent until that time. Development of the economy and infrastructure accelerated.[29] For example, whereas the Jewish city of Tel Aviv relied on the nearby Arab seaport of Jaffa, hostilities dictated the construction of a separate Jewish-run seaport for Tel Aviv,[29] inspiring the delighted Ben-Gurion to note in his diary "we ought to reward the Arabs for giving us the impetus for this great creation."[214] Metal works were established to produce armoured sheeting for vehicles and a rudimentary arms industry was founded.[29] The settlement's transportation capabilities were enhanced and Jewish unemployment was relieved owing to the employment of police officers,[29] and replacement of striking Arab labourers, employees, craftsman and farmers by Jewish workers.[213] Most of the important industries in Palestine were owned by Jews and in trade and the banking sector they were much better placed than the Arabs.[213]
As a result of collaboration with the British colonial authorities and security forces many thousands of young men had their first experience of military training, which Moshe Shertok and Haganah leader Eliyahu Golomb cited as one of the fruits of the Haganah's policy of havlagah (restraint).[215]
Although the Jewish settlement in Palestine was dismayed by the publication of the 1939 White Paper restricting Jewish immigration, David Ben-Gurion remained undeterred, believing that the policy would not be implemented, and in fact Neville Chamberlain had told him that the policy would last at the very most only for the duration of the war.[216] In the event the White Paper quotas were exhausted only in December 1944, over five and a half years later, and in the same period the United Kingdom absorbed 50,000 Jewish refugees and the British Commonwealth (Australia, Canada and South Africa) took many thousands more.[217] During the War over 30,000 Jews joined the British forces and even the Irgun ceased operations against the British until 1944.[218]
Impact on the Palestinian Arabs
The revolt weakened the military strength of Palestinian Arabs in advance of their ultimate confrontation with the Jewish settlement in the
The Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini and his supporters directed a Jihad against any person who did not obey the Mufti. Their national struggle was a religious holy war, and the incarnation of both the Palestinian Arab nation and Islam was Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Anyone who rejected his leadership was a heretic and his life was forfeit.[k] After the Peel report publication, the murders of Arabs leaders who opposed the Mufti were accelerated.[221] Pressed by the assassination campaign pursued by the rebels at the behest of the Husseini leadership, the opposition had a security cooperation with the Jews.[164] The flight of wealthy Arabs, which occurred during the revolt, was also replicated in 1947–49.[82]
Thousands of Palestinian houses were destroyed, and massive financial costs were incurred because of the general strike and the devastation of fields, crops and orchards. The economic boycott further damaged the fragile Palestinian Arab economy through loss of sales and goods and increased unemployment.[222] The revolt did not achieve its goals, although it is "credited with signifying the birth of the Arab Palestinian identity."[223] It is generally credited with forcing the issuance of the White Paper of 1939 in which Britain retreated from the partition arrangements proposed by the Peel Commission in favour of the creation of a binational state within ten years, although The League of Nations commission held that the White Paper was in conflict with the terms of the Mandate as put forth in the past.[105][l] The White Paper of 1939 was regarded by many as incompatible with the commitment to a Jewish National Home in Palestine, as proclaimed in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Al-Husseini rejected the new policy, although it seems that the ordinary Palestinian Arab accepted the White Paper of 1939. His biographer, Philip Mattar wrote that in that case, the Mufti preferred his personal interests and the ideology rather than the practical considerations.[30]
Impact on the British Empire
As the inevitable war with Germany approached, British policy makers concluded that although they could rely on the support of the Jewish population in Palestine, who had no alternative but to support Britain, the support of Arab governments and populations in an area of great strategic importance for the British Empire was not assured.[224] Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain concluded "if we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs."[224]
In February 1939 Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs
There was a growing feeling among British officials that there was nothing left for them to do in Palestine.[225] Perhaps the ultimate achievement of the Arab Revolt was to make the British sick of Palestine.[226] Major-General Bernard "Monty" Montgomery concluded, "the Jew murders the Arab and the Arab murders the Jew. This is what is going on in Palestine now. And it will go on for the next 50 years in all probability."[227]
Historiography
The 1936–39 Arab Revolt has been and still is marginalized in both Western and Israeli historiography on Palestine, and even progressive Western scholars have little to say about the anti-colonial struggle of the Palestinian Arab rebels against the British Empire.[228] According to Swedenburg's analysis, for instance, the Zionist version of Israeli history acknowledges only one authentic national movement: the struggle for Jewish self-determination that resulted in the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948.[228] Swedenburg writes that the Zionist narrative has no room for an anticolonial and anti-British Palestinian national revolt.[229] Zionists often describe the revolt as a series of "events" (Hebrew מאורעות תרצ"ו-תרצ"ט) "riots", or "happenings".[229] The appropriate description was debated by Jewish Agency officials, who were keen not to give a negative impression of Palestine to prospective immigrants[230] In private, however, David Ben-Gurion was unequivocal: the Arabs, he said, were "fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn into the homeland of the Jewish people."[17]
British historian Alan Allport, in his 2020 survey of the British Empire on the eve of the Second World War concludes that murderous incidents like al-Bassa:
were outrageous precisely because they were unusual. On the whole, the British Army and the various colonial gendarmeries that worked alongside it in the 1920s and 1930s behaved fairly well—certainly with a good deal more self-restraint than security forces of other imperial states. There is nothing in the British record in Palestine to compare with the devastating violence of the Rif War in Spanish Morocco for instance or the Italian pacification of Libya, both of which involve killing on a vastly greater scale. Many British soldiers behaved impeccably in Palestine during the Arab revolt.[231]
He concludes that it was the "Palestine surge"—that is, London's use of sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm and crush the Arab rebels—was a success.[232]
Matthew Hughes, a leading authority on the Revolt, notes that it is a standard move in British historiography to contrast the relative mildness of British counter-insurgency achievements with those of other Western colonial powers. A contrast is frequently drawn between the
See also
- 1929 Palestine riots
- 1938 Tiberias massacre
- 1941 Iraqi coup d'état
- Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
- Palestinian nationalism
- Woodhead Commission
- List of conflicts in the Middle East
- List of modern conflicts in the Middle East
Notes
- ^ 'While the majority of Palestinian fallāḥīn were dependent on bonds of "patrimonialism and elite parochialism" with notable families, these bonds weakened with urbanization as a'yān (the Palestinian notable class) abetted, or were incapable of stopping, land sales and dispossessions.'[15]
- ^ Hughes thinks this a conservative underestimate and calculates that a final figures might run from 5,748 to 7,272)[27]
- ^ Laurens states that the identification is 'certain', citing Yehoshua Porath.[68] Hughes states that this was denied by the Jewish press at the time:'The only basis for the suggestion that the assailants were Jews was apparently the fact that they were dressed in khaki shorts and jackets. It is submitted that this form of dress is not uncommon amongst the Arab workingmen of this particular neighbourhood.'[69]
- ^ "while the Zionist movement, after much agonising, accepted the principle of partition and the proposals as a basis for negotiation"; p. 49 "In the end, after bitter debate, the Congress equivocally approved – by a vote of 299 to 160 – the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiation."[98]
- ^ "to negotiate a modified (Peel) proposal with the British." [99]
- ^ "The British government initially accepted the report in principle...With war clouds looming over Europe, they began to have second thoughts about the practicality of partition, fearing that to attempt to implement it against the will of the Palestinian Arab majority would rouse up the entire Arab world against Britain."[100]
- ^ "it was the first manifestation of the Nashashibi group's armed defense against those who had violated the honor of their family and the honor of ... But when the general strike ended, he once again began coordinating his moves with the Zionists. The opposition's principal motivation for security cooperation was the assassination campaign pursued by the rebels at the behest of the Husseini leadership."[164]
- ^ 'The contest of wills between the British Empire and the Palestinians was also an organizational battle for funds and equipment in which London would bankroll the Palestine Government and pay for the troops needed for pacification.'(Hughes 2019, p. 82)
- ^ Joseph Laniado, a Jewish Syrian parliamentarian told his Jewish contacts that Germany and Italy had channeled 'large amounts of money' to foment rebellion in Palestine’.[196] In June 1939, Hans Piekenbrock, an intelligence colonel in the Abwehr's Abteilung 1, boasted to his chief and friend Admiral Canaris that 'It was only as a result of the money we gave (al-Husayni) that it was possible to carry out the revolt in Palestine’.[197]
- ^ The volume of Germany's funding was intentionally limited, as its goal was neither the collapse of the British Mandate nor the establishment of an independent Arab state (which would have been counterproductive to Germany's policy of expelling the Jews to Palestine), but to cause additional nuisance to the British.[198][210]
- ^ "the silencing of the opposition and humiliation of its leaders continued in the months that followed. In July 1938 an armed squad appeared at the home of a family of Nashashibi supporters in the village of Beit Rima, ...Before they left, the gang offered an explanation for their behavior: The jihad, they said, was directed against any person who did not obey the mufti. In the passion of the moment, they revealed the militants' fundamental tenet: Their national struggle was a religious holy war, and the incarnation of both the Palestinian Arab nation and Islam was Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Anyone who rejected his leadership was a heretic and his life was forfeit."[220]
- ^ "Capping it all, the Permanent Mandates Commission of the Council of the League of Nations rejected the White Paper as inconsistent with the terms of the Mandate."(Morris 1999, p. 159)
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Further reading
- Antonius, George (1938). The Arab Awakening. The Story of the Arab National Movement (1945 ed.). Hamish Hamilton.
- ISBN 978-1-611-68811-5.
- Goren, Tamir (2004). "The Judaization of Haifa at the Time of the Arab Revolt". Middle Eastern Studies. 40 (4 July): 135–152. S2CID 144109522.
- Hughes, Matthew (September 2009). "The practice and theory of British counterinsurgency: the histories of the atrocities at the Palestinian villages of al-Bassa and Halhul, 1938–1939". Small Wars & Insurgencies. 20 (3&4): 528–550. S2CID 144764155.
- Hughes, Matthew (2013). "A British 'Foreign Legion'? The British Police in Mandate Palestine" (PDF). Middle Eastern Studies. 49 (5): 696–711. S2CID 144152921.
- Hughes, Matthew (2015). "Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish Collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab Revolt, 1938–39". Imperial and Commonwealth History. 43 (4): 590–610. S2CID 159806598.
- Hughes, Matthew (April 2016). "Women, Violence, and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39" (PDF). 83. The Journal of Military History: 487–507.
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(help) - Johnson, Loch K. (2010). The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-537588-6.
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- Morewood, Stephen (2004). The British Defence of Egypt, 1935–1940: Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-4943-6.
- Swedenburg, Ted (2004). "The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936–1939". In ISBN 978-1-86064-963-9.
External links
Media related to 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine at Wikimedia Commons
- The Arab Revolt in Palestine – A Zionist point of view
- The First Intifada: Rebellion in Palestine 1936–1939 – A view from British historian Charles Townshend.