Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present

Remembering and Imagining Palestine Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present Haim Gerber Remembering...

Author: Haim Gerber

102 downloads 940 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Remembering and Imagining Palestine Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present

Haim Gerber

Remembering and Imagining Palestine

Also by Haim Gerber ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN AN OTTOMAN CITY: Bursa, 1600–1700 ISLAMIC LAW AND CULTURE THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST STATE SOCIETY AND LAW IN ISLAM: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective

Remembering and Imagining Palestine Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present

Haim Gerber

© Haim Gerber 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–53701–9 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–53701–4 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerber, Haim. Remembering and imagining Palestine : identity and nationalism from the crusades to the present / Haim Gerber. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–53701–9 1. Palestine – History – 1917–1948. 2. Palestinian Arabs – History. 3. identity. 4. Nationalism – Religious aspects. 5. Arab nationalism – Palestine. 6. Religion and politics – Palestine. I. Title. DS125.5.G47 2008 320.54095694—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

2008020959

Dedicated to my wife Ruthy, without whose support and encouragement this book might never have been written

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Introduction

1

1. The Wider Historical and Theoretical Context

14

2. Elements of Palestinian-Arab Identity in the Past

42

3. The Formative Period: 1918–22

80

4. From Riots to Radicalization: 1922–36

106

5. The Great Rebellion and Its Aftermath

135

6. The Ideology of the Palestinian Arabs during the Mandate

163

7. Palestinian Nationalism after 1948

187

Summary and Conclusion

207

Notes

214

Select Bibliography

230

Index

235

vii


Introduction

This book investigates the history of Palestinian identity and nationalism from the Crusades to the present. My purpose is to trace elements of such an identity in the pre-1914 period, then try and find out their influence on the process of nation formation in Palestine in the formative period after 1917 (the date of the British occupation of Palestine). Another purpose is to investigate the development of this identity in the twentieth century, keeping an open mind to new imaginings and non-traditional patterns, but always minding the real or imagined resonance of the past. I also devote some attention to find out how deep down the social hierarchy did nationalist feelings penetrate. Two central points, one negative and the other positive, determined the course of this study. On the negative side, for a long time I have been less than happy with the traditional Zionist ideological approach to the Palestinians, an approach presented as a sociological and historical reality, and characterized by complete denial of their very existence as a movement or nation. Palestinian identity, to the extent it was at all recognized, was said to be parasitic on Zionist identity, and an imitation of it. It went without saying, therefore, that no Palestinian identity could be traced before the advent of Zionism. It never existed even afterwards, anyway not outside the minds of “fanatic” religious clerics and “corrupt” and “greedy” effendis, the traditional leaders of the inhabitants of Palestine. But for the incitement of these social elements, the common folk of Palestine, too “primitive” for exalted feelings such as nationalism, would have embraced the liberal and benign cause of Zionism, and joined forces with the Zionists against their own corrupt leadership. If this had been no more than an ideological stance, perhaps the historian could have added nothing of value. But it was presented as 1

2


a truthful sociological analysis, which had a powerful influence on reality itself as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I might observe that I deny the common claim that Zionism “had” to put forward this argument in order to exist. On the contrary, a claim could be made that a demand (political and ideological) for only a part of the country could have facilitated an early solution of the conflict. But this is really a footnote; here I am concerned with the truth-content of the traditional Zionist view of the Palestinians. In investigating this historical theory and finding out what is true in it, a number of questions immediately present themselves: (1) Were there antecedents of identity in Palestine before the appearance of Zionism, that is, before the end of the nineteenth century? This, in the first place, demands a return to the available record for the pre-modern era in order to trace forms of identity. It is my argument in this part of the study that substantial rudiments of Palestinian and other local forms of identity have existed in the country since the Crusades, often in actual relation to the Crusades. And (2) was the nationalism of the people of Palestine during the Mandate really Palestinian or just intuitive-Arabic, or possibly anti-Zionism, or localism of some sort? Additionally, we shall also have to devote some attention to ponder the issue of how did this nationalism remain an affair of a small elite. But this book has a second, positive, source of inspiration: in pondering and researching these issues I encountered, and became attracted by, the international debate about nationalism waged in the literature in the last generation. The most hotly debated question current in the recent study of nationalism is strangely, if fortuitously, similar to the one that interested me here in the first place – that of the existence of meaningful historical origins of nations and nationalisms, or the lack thereof. Theorists like Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner writing in the early 1980s, undermined older studies that took seriously the claims of national movements to eternity or at least antiquity and showed that nations were in fact recent creations, even fabrications, represented as ancient to enhance their status and legitimacy. Gellner went much further in this than Anderson, by claiming that it was not nations that created nationalism, but the reverse – nationalism created nations. As a practicing historian this witty saying made me uneasy. It seemed to me highly questionable to claim that nationalism created the nation. The remark begs the question of who created nationalism, and how was a particular form of nationalism created? In leaving this question unasked and unanswered, one is left to speculate that there was some

Introduction 3

process of deus ex machina – something that happened in a contingent and arbitrary way, not requiring explanation. This seemed unsatisfactory to me. But a third theorist suggested some other ideas. This was Anthony Smith, who proposed something that seemed more reasonable to me: some sort of an historical process created buds of a nation; these buds created a nationalism, and this nationalism created the full-grown nation (an ethnic group that demands a state, and where sovereignty belongs, or is assumed to belong to “the people”). It follows that the “buds” are an exceedingly important element in the process of nationformation, which we often neglect, thus losing an important and interesting side of history. This seemed to me particularly important in the case of countries in the so-called Third World, those that created nationalism after it already existed in the West. The nationalism of such societies in any case suffers under the assumption that it is a mere imitation of the West, with no internal and authentic cultural and sociological processes involved (a theory explicitly proposed by Anderson). As a practicing historian of Middle Eastern societies, this suggestion seemed to me unfounded and worthy of empirical investigation. These initial thoughts led me to Anthony Smith’s theory, today called ethnosymbolism, not a particularly successful name, but a fruitful and reasonable theory, that rejects the evidently obsolete, primordialist, idea that nations are ancient, let alone eternal, but insists that the historical process by which ethnic groups have evolved is usually (not necessarily always) vitally important to understanding their modern nature as nationalist movements. This is a statement I fully agree with, and the issue became one of my major concerns in this book. This theory not only claims that there are historical antecedents for most national movements, but also that these antecedents were meaningful and even important in the creation and functioning of the nation in the modern period. This is the true challenge faced by this theory, and it poses a research question I am going to investigate. It is my argument that such influence existed and continues to exist in the Palestinian case. The rudiments of Palestinian identity that have existed since the Crusades go on to exert their power on this identity even today. Contingent factors were there and played a role, but the erstwhile identity exerted a strong and lasting influence. While one of my fundamental interests is the existence and importance of the pre-modern elements of Palestinian identity, another major one is the question of what happened to this identity during the Mandate. Zionist thinkers and activists, like David Ben-Gurion, claimed that the Palestinians did not really care much for Palestine, their focus of thought

4


being their Arabness and the Arab homeland. It is interesting to find out how the Palestinians themselves viewed these issues. But the “prehistory” of this study also dictates for us another question: as said above, Zionism saw the Palestinian masses as lacking in nationalism. What seemed to be nationalism was really incitement by grasping and egotistical effendis (the traditional Palestinian elite, composed of leading families holding religious and non-religious state posts), and men of religion, interested in preserving their hold on poor and ignorant people. No one wondered if the Palestinian masses possessed any agency or had the minimal intelligence to know what was good for them. They were “brainwashed”, no matter what they insisted on for themselves, or was said on their behalf by somebody else. And again, the theoretical debate on nationalism joins forces with the Zionist approach. Anthony Smith accuses the ultra-modernists of holding that nationalism was not an authentic expression, but an emotion fabricated by interested elites. As for the masses, any absurd idea could be sold to them anyway. Such theories have no place, or agency for the lower classes. Assuming real agency to lie with the people would have led to the undesirable conclusion that the phenomenon is not necessarily purely negative. In some Zionist versions of the local situation the elite are acknowledged to possess something that could be called Palestinian nationalism. In many academic studies of the period, however, even that much is not admitted. One basic claim is that the Palestinians lacked positive values in their nationalism, their ideology being confined to a fundamental hatred of Zionism, an alien and dangerous force. It is often pointed out in this context that during the Mandate the Palestinians rarely put forward a demand for formal independence (an obvious psychological ploy: they were careful not to alienate Britain in their fight against Zionism, the real adversary). In terms of a formulated ideology this meant that Palestinian nationalism lacked positive tenets; it could only have negative ones. Palestinians certainly could not be Arab nationalists; that would require a higher level of economic and political development. Other historians (Zionist and others) claim that, on the contrary, the people we today call “Palestinians” saw themselves at the time as simply Arabs and nothing more specific. All these debates offer excellent matter for research, and are discussed again and again in the following pages. I shall argue that not one of the historians who have dealt with these questions really got the story right. In this study I reject these views and assume that, in the first place, the involvement of the Palestinian elite in the creation of nationalism was authentic, rather than merely greedy or egoistic. No one of course

Introduction 5

doubts that the Palestinian elite was acquisitive and self-seeking; but equally no one can reasonably claim that these qualities were more conspicuous in the Palestinian case than in any other society in history. In the second place, I claim that there was a role to play for the common people, and my study attempts to define and describe this role. I follow in this point James Gelvin’s study, which detected a crucially important element of popular nationalism in Syria at this time, and suggested that something similar took place in Palestine. I thus reject the claim of Zionist activists and propagandists that all statements about the existence of real, popular Palestinian nationalism are almost by definition false, fabricated, self-deluding, or a combination of all these. Inadvertently, Zionist thinkers join forces here with the most ardent post-modernists, who make the same claim for all nationalisms and nationalist ideologies. Nothing there was authentic, they declared, or “true” in any real sense. But this is clearly a political argument that need not be taken seriously: Zionist activists have not considered for even one moment that this judgment applied to Zionism as well, which to their minds was the opposite of fabrication, invention, brain washing, false consciousness, and the like. This study proceeds under the assumption that people’s claims on their lives ought to be taken with a great deal of seriousness. To summarize the point: I am mainly interested in the “pre-history” of Palestinian identity and its influence on the later developments; and in popular nationalism. These topics may seem disparate and unconnected. What welds them firmly together is the fact that both relate to the skeptical attitude so widely adopted concerning Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate, that it was nonexistent, and anyway inauthentic. In terms of the use of sources I may say that the book is a combination of an in-depth study of original documentation and an interpretation developed over many years of pondering and teaching this topic. My main documentary contribution lies in Chapters 1 and 2, based as they are on some new and unknown Arabic documents, but also on some original research into the Zionist discourse on the Palestinians. The main bodies of Arabic documents employed here were: (Praise) literature written in the Mamluk and Ottoman eras; the famous chronicle of Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali of the late fifteenth century; and some fatwa collections written by Palestinian muftis in the Ottoman period; for the later Ottoman period I employed Arab newspapers that started to appear after the 1908 Young Turk revolution. All this evidence, though it falls short of what could be ideally expected, shows quite clearly that Zionist historiography of the country was thoroughly wrong concerning many

6


issues. It is true that there are some fairly acceptable excuses for this: most of the flat country was indeed half empty, but the central mountainous region was quite densely populated, and there were several reasonably functioning and even at times prosperous towns. Religious scholars produced books, mainly about Islamic law, a major concern of this society, and some of these books were considered as excellent throughout the Middle East. The best known author is Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, a seventeenth-century scholar who was admired to the end of the Ottoman period as one of the finest transmitters and interpreters of Islamic law in the region. Several others clearly deserve closer study. Scanning this literature for identity terminology was not at all easy (some of the books being in manuscript form only) but yielded some interesting results. Local forms of identity were found to exist all through the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, which in a way is not entirely surprising. We know for a fact that some form of Palestinian identity existed already in classical Islam, under the term Jund Filastin, or administrative district of Palestine. My treatment of the Mandatory period is mainly based on my own interpretation of the secondary literature, supplemented by some key documents from the British archive, mainly for illustrative purposes, though this use was at times heavier, as on the first year after the Great War, which remains a blank spot in the literature. Chapter 1 of the book presents a number of historical introductions, all of which are important for the development of the argument, such as a summary of the general debate on the structure of nationalism; the social origins of nationalism in the Middle East in general; an introduction to the social and economic history of Palestine; and a summary of Zionist and British approaches to Palestinian nationalism. Chapter 2 deals with the pre-history of Palestinian identity. An important start along these lines was made by Rashid Khalidi,1 but I propose to go much beyond what has already been done by using new types of sources. Here, I present various levels and traces of identity in Palestine before the modern era. An example is the term itself, Palestine, which seems to have been current throughout, though in a non-political manner. The British certainly did not invent the term and the concept, as is commonly and tenaciously believed. On another level there was a certain community around the widespread and deep-seated belief in the sacredness of Jerusalem (al-Quds), al-Aqsa Mosque, and Muslim Palestine as a country. Moreover, there was a natural sliding from the city to the country of which it was the heart. These values exploded onto the political scene in 1099, with

Introduction 7

the coming of the Crusaders, who forcefully demonstrated to the people of the country that there were other people who coveted their holy places. This chapter shows for the first time, as far as I know, that the Crusades left a deep and enduring mark of fear on the collective mind of the Palestinians. They were constantly remembered, among other things by what can be called commemoration ceremonies. Chief among these ceremonies was the Nebi Musa pilgrimage, which took place every year exactly one week before the Eastern Christian Good Friday. I interpret this as a kind of “national” holiday, created apparently in the wake of the Crusades, specifically to commemorate those terrible events. In one week of pilgrimage to a site near Jericho, which drew tens of thousands from all parts of Palestine, a loose sense of a common land was created and maintained, a sense that carried over to non-folk types of literature, such as chronicles and even fatwa compilations. The upshot of all these varied investigations was that when we reached 1914 the inhabitants of the country were very much “Palestinians” in their own eyes, and in fact even in the eyes of their Ottoman overlords, though clearly this designation was not “political” (they did not demand independence). Had the Ottoman Empire gone on existing, Palestinians might have been content to live under it, though probably with a much larger degree of autonomy. But I argue that with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Palestinianism (combined with Arabism) was natural and almost inevitable. Thus, I do not allow historical trajectory to take over completely, but I ascribe major importance to it, precisely my understanding of the ethnosymbolist approach. It was in the post-Crusade period that a rudimentary mission, or a kind of ethnic election, came into being in Palestine, mainly around the obligation to guard and preserve Jerusalem and particularly the Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif in Arabic). This rudimentary sense of mission would become entirely explicit during the Mandate; many documents discuss this point at length. The continuity with the former period needs no elaboration or proof. (This topic is dealt with further in Chapters 6 and 7; Chapters 3 to 5 deal with the chronological developments, and with the popular nationalism inherent in them). Chapter 3 covers the first years of the Mandate, from 1918 to 1922. In particular it surveys the feelings and mood among the Palestinians in the first year of occupation, a topic not sufficiently considered by other studies of the period. The survey shows that the Palestinians of this time had no idea that they were supposed to see themselves as South Syrians. They saw themselves as Palestinian and Arab. The chapter also

8


surveys the “Syrian” episode during 1919–20, and its aftermath, up to the Churchill White Paper of 1922. Chapter 4 surveys the period from 1922 to 1936, and focuses on the Wall/Buraq Riots of 1929, and the radicalization of the Palestinian public in the early 1930s. As to the 1929 riots, I try to show that this was a clear chapter in real popular nationalism, not the result of the machinations of one leader, as is usually claimed. I also argue that the riots were an outcome and an illustration of religious nationalism, or the amalgamation of nationalism and religion. The Mosque of al-Aqsa had been a focal point in the eyes of the Palestinians’ enemies since the Crusades, and here, in 1929, the danger was threatening again. The Aqsa was a religious value, but also the show-case of the Palestinians since the rise of Islam, a classic combination of a religious and non-religious asset. It was a major proof that the centrality of al-Aqsa, and the community of suffering created around it in Mamluk and Ottoman times, were remembered, and not invented in what is sometimes called invention of tradition. This crisis over the 1930 saw a new level in the radicalization of Palestinian feelings in the early part of the 1930s, as a new generation of youngsters entered politics, and as Jewish immigration levels leaped with the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. It was only at this time that the Palestinians finally realized that in order to reverse British policy, it was more important to fight against the British than against Zionism. An important episode during this period was the appearance of the Istiqlal party, subject of a notable recent study by Weldon Matthews.2 The party was dedicated to a number of issues, among them Pan-Arabism; it kept clear and even fought against, sectarian and family interests, as well as working more closely with the lower classes. But the party declined after two years, possibly signaling that Palestinianism was great deal stronger than anticipated. Chapter 5 surveys the Palestinian Rebellion of 1936–9. This is of course the high point of the whole period. It is here that great debates are waged about popular nationalism and popular participation. Was the participation voluntary, out of patriotism and nationalism, or were they coerced by gangs of criminals? And was it Palestinian nationalism they were fighting for? The overwhelming weight of the available evidence points to the conclusion that the rebellion was indeed national and Palestinian. The rebellion ended in 1939 with the dispersal of most Palestinian leaders, who were absent from the country during World War II and the period of rearrangement after it. The outcome was that the Palestinians were defenseless during the 1948 war, and depended entirely on the

Introduction 9

Arab armies for survival. Nevertheless, I do not resist in this chapter to broach a side issue, which is: did the rebellion really fail as dismally as is usually claimed? Chapter 6 deals with Palestinian ideology during the Mandate, and describes and analyzes the main views held by groups and representative individuals during this period. Some of the points highlighted are that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine at this time saw themselves as both Palestinian and Arab, not one or the other, as we read in the literature. They were very much in possession of positive nationalism, and did not simply hate the Jews. Their hatred of the Jews had nothing to do with anti-Semitism in the European sense of the word, and a great deal to do with the things that the Jews said and did in relation to the Arabs of Palestine. Also distinct among the ideological values that shine through the available documentation is the Palestinians’ yearning to implement past values and past achievements: the Crusades were often mentioned, and constituted a lively lesson for contemporary politics; Islamic values connected with Jerusalem and Palestine were propagated, lamented, emotionally celebrated, and almost daily commemorated as the core values of this nation in a state of formation. A crucial point that emerges from this documentation, one which I consider the crux of my study, is that, quite independently from a similar idea in Zionist thinking, the Palestinians considered themselves a “chosen” people, however loose this idea may have been. This mission, or even chosenness, consisted in the fact that they believed that it was God who had elected them to the role of guardians of al-Aqsa for the entire world of Islam.3 I close the circle, so to speak, by describing the later developments of Palestinian nationalism after 1948 (Chapter 7). Despite playing for a time with secular elements like “revolution”, the quintessential and authentic values of al-Aqsa and the role of the Palestinians in defending it have in time reasserted themselves, to reach full circle with the impressive stand by Arafat at Camp David in 2000 and in the ideology of Hamas. In both “documents” the distinct element is the assignment imposed on the Palestinians by God, to be the keepers of the Aqsa Mosque for the entire world of Islam. A summary of the main arguments and findings of this study seems in order at this point. One major finding is that ever since the Crusades there existed in Palestine certain elements of identity, such as that the country was named Palestine; it was an Islamic holy land, under constant threat of being attacked again by Crusaders, never forgotten for even a minute. This latter component was probably enhanced under nineteenth-century conditions of European influence.

10 Remembering and Imagining Palestine

A second point that the study argues is that this traditional identity influenced developments in the early Mandatory period quite strongly, if not decisively: in 1918, a year in which the Great War was still raging and no outer pressure from Syria was yet felt, the Palestinians were hoping for a Palestinian state and showed no other ambitions or proclivities to speak of. Also, I maintain that the separation from Syria in 1920 could not have been so painless if a separate Palestinian nationalism had not already existed. Third, during the Mandatory period popular nationalism, or “populism”, developed among the Palestinians, culminating in the great Revolt of 1936–9. In intensity and radicalism this type of nationalism transcended that of the old notable elite of Palestinian society, thus presenting a theoretical problem for students of nationalism, who usually claim that nationalism is universally initiated by social elites, the lower classes being brought into the living room only at a later stage. I suggest that a solution is offered by James Gelvin’s study on early Syrian nationalism, where a similar “populist” movement developed.4 Gelvin held that an explanation for this phenomenon is to be sought in the process of capitalization that took place in the Middle East in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the course of this process, substantial dislocations occurred, resulting in the demise of traditional crafts and the emergence of new professions. There was no doubt some economic development, but a large number of people suffered downgrading and social upheaval, and some radicalism also emerged. This was the background in Syria for the appearance of popular nationalism sustained by working people and the lower classes in general. The same changes took place in Palestine, expressed in the waves of violence in 1920, 1921, 1929 and culminating in 1936. In all these occurrences, the elite can be seen as being pushed forward by the masses rather than leading them, as would be “expected.” Fourth, the study was able to detect in Palestinian history a number of specifically Palestinian elements, chief among them being a feeling of chosenness. Ever since the Ottoman period the people of Palestine have felt that it was their fate and responsibility to stand guard over the Aqsa site for all of Islam. This feeling became increasingly stronger during the Mandatory period, to become today a kind of chosen people’s collective identity. An important book touching on various aspects of our topic appeared as the basic text of this book had already been written. A short resume of the part touching on the Mandate and its relation to the present study seems in order, as it elucidates some issues discussed here. Rashid Khalidi’s

Introduction 11

The Iron Cage5 is a general analysis of Mandatory and post-Mandatory Palestinian history, the basic question being why did the Palestinians fail so dismally during the Mandatory period. This might be matter for further research, in addition to that presented above, since it is often heard in Israel and Israeli historiography that this failure was due to the lack of “real” Palestinian nationalism at that period. Not only this, but some, Benny Morris for one, claim that the failure was due to the Palestinians’ low level of development or even their “primitive” state of social and political development.6 In one of his chapters Khalidi tackles precisely that sort of question, by comparing Palestinian society both to the Yishuv (the Jewish Zionist community of Palestine) and to other Arab societies in the Middle East at the time. Khalidi correctly points out that in many ways the Palestinians fell short of the level of sophistication of Jewish Zionist society, not for any inherent or immanent reasons, but because of the contingent but crucial factors characterizing that society. In the main, it was a society of middle-class young people with high levels of education, relatively well endowed with modern skills, and in many cases cohesive and very intensely motivated. Some of them, those living in the cooperative settlements (kibbutzim), were imbued with socialist values that were adhered to with a devotion rarely encountered in history. But, unlike “true” socialism, to this society the national element was no less important in their ideology than the socialist one, perhaps even more so. Strangely enough, this community of penniless socialists originating in Eastern Europe was able to enlist the support, financial and political, of some of the more successful capitalists of the Western world of the time. Such communities of boundless devotion and willingness to sacrifice everything do not last long, but they did endure to the end of the Mandate and a little beyond. The twilight of the kibbutz that we observe today is a sign and proof that it was a phase, an outcome of specific historical circumstances, and nothing inherently Zionist that the Palestinians lacked. Khalidi also shows that in terms of real social indices the Palestinians of the Mandate were often more advanced than other Arab societies of the time. Why then did they fail so dismally? Khalidi’s main explanation is that they were trapped in an “iron cage”. In order to adopt any measure of development suggested by the British, such as a parliament of some sort, they would have had to accept the legality of the Mandate and British over-lordship, both of which implied that they admitted the Balfour Declaration’s equation defining them as mere “non-Jewish communities”, not the owners of the land as of old. It is interesting, though, that later in the book the author deals with the direct responsibility of the

12


Palestinian leadership for the disasters that befell the Palestinians, and presents that responsibility as a fact. As so many writers before him, Khalidi cannot resist the temptation to find these people fully responsible for what happened. In my view, this is assigning too much agency to individuals, and disregarding the circumstances in which they were situated. But Khalidi himself shows earlier that the Palestinians had to fight two formidable enemies at the same time. No liberation movement in the Third World in history has ever had to shoulder such a burden or has succeeded in the challenge. The notables are of course easy and obvious prey for historians, but we should probably pay more attention to objective circumstances. The fact is that Khalidi, it seems to me, greatly underestimates the depth of the “cage” he is talking about. Let us say that the Palestinians could not accept anything from the British without admitting the legality of the mandate. But as many ask, why could not the Palestinians at least establish their own autonomous parliament and other internal organizations, as the Jews did without any hesitation, even institutions not enjoying British recognition. The benefit of these institutions to the Zionist movement during this time can hardly be overstated. But this is again a misunderstanding of the Palestinian leadership’s situation: the Zionists came from below, from the outside, intending to conquer the fortress; they did not lose any face by erecting their own ad hoc institutions. This is exactly what the Palestinians could not do: they were the masters of the land. Their institutions had to be the institutions of the country as a whole; anything else would tantamount to an admission that they were not the rightful masters in their own house. To maintain their own claim on the land they could set up only the most rudimentary of institutions, like the Arab Executive, the actual leading body of the Palestinian until 1936, which was merely the executive committee of the Third Palestinian Congress of 1920. This situation was damaging in the extreme, and it was self-inflicted and inevitable, as in a classic Greek tragedy. My view of the Arab Revolt is entirely different from that of Khalidi. The idea that the defeat of the rebellion sapped Palestinian energies in 1948 is largely a myth. No local commanders of the Great Revolt could have changed the situation of the Palestinians in 1948, facing as they did a regular army that was vastly better trained and better equipped than they were. The task in 1948 was much greater than in 1938. Then it had been a matter of sniping at a passing vehicle from behind a bush or cutting a line of communication. Now villagers had to fight for their lives and for the existence of their homes and communities. It was a

Introduction 13

formidable task, for which they were, again, objectively ill equipped: while the Jews enjoyed almost unlimited freedom and autonomy to organize, arrange, and plan as part and parcel of the Mandate, the Palestinians were literally governed, and could hardly move without the knowledge of the British. The immediate outcome of the revolt was the White Paper of 1939, a historic achievement of the Palestinians, which the war and the Holocaust turned into a worthless piece of paper.

1 The Wider Historical and Theoretical Context

This chapter introduces several topics that are considered in this study. The introductions are not merely of general literary interest, but are vital to the unfolding of the arguments set forth in the book. One such introduction outlines the theory of nationalism as elaborated in the world outside Middle Eastern studies. The book draws many of its insights from this theory and even aspires to make a small contribution to it. The next section is the history, or rather pre-history, of nationalism in the Middle East, outside Palestine. Structurally, much of what occurred in pre-Mandatory Palestine took place in other Arab countries as well, so this section helps to understand the Palestinian trajectory, particularly the thorny relations between Arabism and country-identity. A third kind of necessary introduction is represented by elements from the history of Ottoman Palestine. Particularly relevant are aspects of social and economic history. Economic history, especially of the nineteenth century, is important in underpinning an influential argument (made by Porath, for example) that there was no place for real nationalism in Palestine during the Mandate because there was no modernization, or that at least there was not the serious economic development “necessary” for national take off. This section deals with that sort of problem.1 The second matter in this section is the evolution of the land regime in Palestine in the last century of Ottoman rule. In few areas of late Ottoman history does confusion reign as it does in this one. But again, I do not see it as my task in this study to put things right for the sake of it; I have a major point to make here on identity and nationalism, which will be elucidated as the study proceeds. Finally, a fourth kind of introduction is necessary, one to the discourse of the Zionists and the British on the Palestinians and Palestinian 14

The Wider Historical and Theoretical Context

15

nationalism. The argument made in this book is that this discourse had a great deal to do with the failure of the Palestinian national movement during the Mandate and the consequent historiography denying the very existence of such nationalism at that time.

The historical sociology of nationalism From an early stage of the writing of this book I believed that a study such as this would profit considerably from insights and theories extracted from the comparative historical sociology of nationalism. The purpose of this section is to summarize the main points of this theory, in particular some matters relevant to this study. Until the early 1980s the question of nationalism hardly existed in historical sociology, the subject being considered not worthy of serious study. The time was too close to the atrocities of World War II, often blamed on nationalism, for the topic to attract serious academic interest. The field was dominated by protagonists of nationalities themselves, true believers in nationalist movements, who held that nations were ancient and natural, eventually creating their own nationalist ideologies, which first made their appearance around the time of the French Revolution. Serious academic interest in this field started in the 1960s, and intensified in the early 1980s, with the appearance of two books, by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, which have dominated the field ever since.2 These two scholars claimed, for the first time, that nationalism, and even nations, were entirely new in human history, their antiquity being a fiction, a myth created by the protagonists of national movements to enhance the prestige of their own nation. Nationalism was now declared a typically modern phenomenon, a construct of modern societies rather than an outcome of historical development.3 Adherents of this new school accordingly became known in time as modernists or constructivists, while members of the traditional school became known as primordialists. Anderson linked his theory to the decline of religion, and with it the decline of the hold of Latin as a sacred language. At the same time, roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the print revolution was underway, whose logic demanded a print language that was wider and more comprehensive than the spoken languages then current. The new nations that came into being were the groups that used the new print languages. This process took place in Europe. The equivalent process in the Third World was given short shrift by Anderson, who claimed that it was merely a pirating, that is, a slavish emulation of the West, without reference to local social and political processes.

16


Anderson in fact has another theory in his famous book, little publicized, completely different from the first, which we shall call here “mark II.”4 This theory is much more relevant to the topic of the present book. It is based on the case of the relations between the Spanish empire and its colonies in South America. It explains first why these colonies developed nationalism, and second, why a long list of countries belonging to the same cultural world and emanating from the same empire developed different and separate nationalisms. As to the first matter, nationalism was created here because of obstacles to “free pilgrimage”, namely members of South American elites (American born, or a creole) being prevented from rising to positions in the central government (this of course was also the background to North American nationalism). As to the second matter, the particular kinds of South American nationalisms are said to be the outcome of the Spanish mode of running their empire. The provinces were administered as entirely separate universes, prevented from engaging in smooth commercial relations in commerce and movement of people. Three centuries of such separate management turned different provinces into different countries with different nationalisms. As will become clear, while Anderson’s first theory has no applicability to the Middle East, the importance of the second can hardly be overstated. Gellner’s theory went in a different direction, although it too tied nationalism to the process of modernization. In his analysis, nationalism was part and parcel of the industrialization of the world. The agrarian societies that existed until the industrial age were decentralized in the extreme and had little use for central governments. Families and villages took care of the education and socialization of the young generation and were fully autonomous and autarkic in culture and education. There was no need for the elite and the masses to possess the same culture, and generally they did not. The coming of industrialism changed all that: industry demanded large-scale formal and written education, supplied and maintained by state-based institutions. Written communication became central to such societies. Hence Gellner’s claim that culture in modern societies replaced social structure, which dominated pre-modern societies. At the same time, the rise of industry brought about the decline of rural communities and kin groups, and the rise of centralized urban societies. Nationalism was the ideology appropriate for the new social forms. Nations came into being by the logic of the educational system; there were no connections between the nation and emotions of any sort, let alone pre-existing ones, a thought Gellner brushed aside as sheer nonsense, claiming that modern people


17

“do not become nationalist from sentiment or sentimentality, atavistic or not, well-based or myth-founded: they become nationalist through genuine, objective, practical necessity ...”5 Practical necessity produces a culturally homogeneous group; this group starts to worship itself and creates nationalism. Hence Gellner’s famous dictum “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist ...”6 Hence Gellner’s other famous claim that far from being historical in the true sense, the specific nation is entirely contingent: “The cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions. Any old shred and patch would have served as well”.7 The nation was also contingent in another sense: only a few of the aspirants attained their inherent goal, a nation state. There are thousands of languages in the world but only a few hundred national movements. Most cultures do not even try to attain their political roof. In his criticism of Hroch’s work Gellner said, for example: As the overwhelming majority of cultural differences ... fail to find expression, there is no case for reifying nations ... Before the event we can only identify countless cultural differentiations, and we simply cannot tell just which will turn into ‘nations.’ After the event, we know which nation happened to crystallize, but that does not justify saying that the nation in question ‘was there’ from the start, ready to be ‘awakened.’ (emphasis in original)8 Gellner’s theory has been criticized by many and on many grounds. It was shown that in several cases nationalism preceded industrialization, and mass education came a long time after industry.9 At least in part it was functionalist (high culture was needed for industry). A particularly important criticism was made by Anthony Smith, who in a long series of studies showed that while on the whole nations in the full sense are modern, in most cases they are based on a pre-modern ethnic basis of some kind. This was a point Gellner rejected vehemently throughout his life, but was finally ready to accept partially in his posthumously published last book. Here some nations were said to possess navels, meaning historical origins that mattered in their modern development. A particularly important critique of Gellner is Brendan O’Leary’s, not least because he is a sympathetic observer, out to defend this theory rather than to destroy it.10 Among other things he yields some ground to Smith: “It seems especially sensible to concede that ‘national consciousness’ developed in some territories before full-scale industrialization.”11 Additionally, and most importantly, O’Leary shows


convincingly that Gellner’s theory itself undercuts his explanation for the supposed contingency of any specific nation: only societies possessing high written culture had any chance of developing a successful national movement.12 This criterion means that nations were not so contingent after all. Those that possessed a high written culture were likely to develop nationalism. Another point, particularly important for the present study, is the way Gellner tackled the problem of nationalism in non-industrialized countries. Gellner dealt specifically with Greece, but the example may be generalized: the national revolution of Greece certainly preceded industrialism in that country. How could this come about? Gellner suggested that Greece was an exceptional case. But if one exception was possible, why not more? O’Leary suggests that a better idea would be to assume that, seeing the modernizing potential of nationalism, elites in pre-industrial countries tend to adopt nationalism and spread it around in their social environment. If this is correct, and I tend to think that it is, it follows that once nationalism became the accepted political language in the more developed countries, all the countries in the world soon adopted it. This does not mean that we should accept Anderson’s argument about nationalism in the Third World being a mere imitation of the West. It would seem that the West provided only the spark. The rest was up to the local sociology (and history). The constructivist approach launched by Gellner peaked with the theory of Eric Hobsbawm. Nationalism was basically the outcome of the requirements of capitalism for a territorial base that would secure markets and legal backing for the activities of capitalist elites.13 Still more after 1870, nations became sheer inventions, even pure fabrication and forgery, the handiwork of elites, created to help maintain their control of the democratizing masses of that time. According to this approach nationalism is in a sense unreal and devoid of any historical origins; moreover, the common people are by definition passive and lack any role or inherent beliefs.14

Smith and ethnosymbolism All these theorists are usually classified as modernists or constructivists; their main counterweight is Anthony Smith, whose theory is called ethnosymbolism.15 In essence he claims that the constructivists have gone too far: empirical study shows that at the core of most nations lies a pre-modern ethnic group, or ethnie, and that historical development and historical memories play a much more important role in how nations come into being. Moreover, many a modern nation displays an


19

identity that is strikingly similar to the form of the pre-modern ethnie in question. Historical investigation often finds substantial continuity from the pre-modern ethnie to the modern nation. Furthermore, Smith observes that historical memories of golden ages can play powerful roles in nation formation even if these memories are only recently reawakened. To the claim that people can believe anything, and that every nation can and does invent golden ages, the ethnosymbolists reply that the condition of the nation-state in Africa clearly shows that there are limits to what people can actually invent: most nations in Africa lack recorded history and not one of them has ventured to forge one.16 Miroslav Hroch is another contributor to the ethnosymbolist school. In his Social Preconditions for National Revival in Europe he deals mainly with the rise of the various small nations in Europe, and underscores that this had little to do with industrialization; more importantly, preexisting communities preceded the modern nations in all the relevant cases.17 In fact, in his analysis the process of nation creation in Europe began in the Middle Ages. This does not mean that any specific nation was inevitable. The process might be blighted; nevertheless, it was not a contingency occurring in the nineteenth century; every nation had well defined historical roots.18 To the extent that the thrust of Smith’s theories is mainly directed against Gellner, it is important to stress one major point that might steer us into the wrong course. O’Leary claims, probably correctly, that some ethnosymbolists are theoretically confused in attributing national feeling to pre-industrial and pre-modern groups and societies, or in coming too close to doing so. The crucial point in full-fledged nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy: the ruled and the representatives of the rulers must be co-nationals, and sovereignty in that society must be seen to emanate from the nation, not from the ruler, at least ideologically. Few if any societies prior to the French Revolution displayed that characteristic. But Gellner probably went too far in declaring that any connection between pre-modern societies and the nations that sprang up on their shoulders was only contingent.19 One of the major points made by the modernists and constructivists is that nationalism was invented by very thin elites, usually to serve their own material interests. Almost no theory tackles this problem head on, but Smith deals with it briefly, blaming constructivism, among other things, for elitism: It is the ideas, strategies, and choices of elites – politicians, bureaucrats, officers, intellectuals, aristocrats, and business classes – that

20


dominate the social constructionist portrayal of nationalism. Little attention is given to the popular basis of nationalism or to the involvement of other classes and strata in the creation or preservation of the nation. While we can document many instances of elite manipulation of wider constituencies, it is equally important to analyze the ways in which popular outlooks and traditions have influenced the perceptions and actions of elites.20 This topic came up in an important debate between Paul Brass and Francis Robinson on the circumstances surrounding the separation of Pakistan from India in 1948. Brass suggested that this separation was effected by the leadership of the Muslim community of India out of sheer self-interest: their expectation was that under Hindu-majority rule the position of the Muslim elite of British India would be severely downgraded, so the only way open to prevent that happening was to found a state consisting purely of Muslims. No history, no emotions, no communal feeling, no role for the masses, just a practical, in fact, cynical consideration of the elite, a classic constructivist argument. Francis Robinson rejected that argument, claiming that Brass was overlooking a prolonged process of Muslim communal identity in India that antedated partition by many decades. At its base lay the wish of Muslims to be governed by their own culture, a crucial part of which was the Sharià, the holy law of Islam. This law, at least in principle, governed not only the social and economic arenas, but also questions of sovereignty and the identity of the ruler. It was a matter of deep feeling of the entire community, and an issue on which leaders could ill afford to alienate their constituency. In this case at least, the lower classes were accorded a decisive say in matters of communal identity and modern nationalism.21 For most theorists nationalism comes after religion, so that it is an alternative and a replacement for it in terms of historical epochs. A historian of religion was probably required to expose the flaws in this assumption, and sure enough a historian of religious institutions, Adrian Hastings, suggested a theory where nationalism and religion were not situated in logical contradiction, at least not in real-life terms.22 Hastings denies that nationalism arose after the bonds of religion had eroded. Early English identity was formed around the English Bible and English Protestantism and the king as the head of religion, and it antedated the first signs of secularism by a number of generations. More generally, Nationalism owes much to religion, to Christianity in particular. Nations developed, as I have suggested, out of a typical medieval and


21

early modern experience of the multiplication of vernacular literatures and of state systems around them, a multiplication largely dependent upon the church, its scriptures and its clergy. Nationformation and nationalism have in themselves almost nothing to do with modernity. Only when modernization was itself already in the air did they almost accidentally become part of it.23 Elsewhere in the book Hastings emphasizes that the focal point in the creation of nationalisms was the creation of a distinctive culture, a fact that often originated with differences in religious worship and ceremonies. Many such religious differences remained extant and active well into the modern age, particularly where ethnic conflict and animosity were present.24

The historical origins of nationalism in the Middle East This aspect is crucially important for the later characteristics and peculiarities of modern nationalism in the Arab world and among the Palestinians. Briefly, in the past the dominant view was that Islamic societies were unfit by their primary nature to accept nationalism. These societies, it was held, knew only the meaning of Islam, and of the Ottoman Empire as the last concretization of the Islamic polity.25 One day enlightenment arrived from the West, and Arab and Muslim intellectuals learned from Westerners the basic ideas and conceptions of nationalism, which they fervently adopted. The question of how could they do this, given that they did not abandon Islam, was not seriously broached. In any event, the revolution taking place in the West since the 1980s in the study of nationalism reached the Middle East in due course, with totally new kinds of questions on the agenda. As in the rest of the world, extreme modernism seems to be fashionable here too. A good example is the recent theory of Cole and Kandioti, which speaks about Middle Eastern nationalism as something born in the modern Middle Eastern states only after World War I, and as something that only the state can invent and indeed maintain.26 According to this theory we are still not entitled to talk about Palestinian nationalism, and Arab nationalism never really existed (as there never was an Arab state). This is a bit too extreme and not entirely convincing. This and similar theories assume that nationalism arose full-blown, and that nothing of it existed beforehand. In any case, these theories claim, no historical antecedents have to be considered anyway as they cannot be

22


of any importance. One of the strongest points made by this theory is that the religious sect could have been the basis of nationalism in the Middle East, just as well as the state which actually came into being.27 The problem with such theories is that the explanation is written before the facts are collected. Any possible influence of the historical trajectory is ruled out a priori, without the theory’s exponents taking the trouble to check the evidence. It is assumed that the evidence cannot be of any relevance. A major complicating problem here is of course that the topic slides all too easily into the famous debate between Said and the Orientalists. The Orientalists argued that everything in the modern Middle East comes from seventh-century Islam, while Said and the Saidians claim that classical Islam is irrelevant to the understanding of modern Islam and the Arabs. The argument that the historical trajectory is important seems to place the present writer in the Orientalist camp, which is not the case. The truth is that a middle approach is needed: the Middle East in 1920 could not be a blank page, nor could it be an automatic derivation of the seventh century. The middle period, maybe in particular the recent Ottoman era, exerted an influence much greater than the literature allows. This is probably important for all areas of life, including the origins of nationalism. In any event, the approach I have adopted in this study takes seriously the possibility that the past played a role in the process of nation formation in the Middle East. I did not decide a priori that this was so. It simply proved to be the case. This problem can be looked at in another way. The sociology of nationalism in the twentieth-century Arab world was peculiar and unique. There was wavering and indecision between Arabism and state nationalism. After World War I the state seemed dominant; then Pan-Arabism emerged (in fact reemerged), and then Pan-Arabism retracted again. All current indicators show that on the cultural level Arabism is still deepseated. No Syrian or Palestinian even today will claim that his ethnicity is Syrian or Palestinian rather than Arab. On a recent tour by Arab villagers in northern Israel to a Palestinian village destroyed in 1948 (shown on Israel TV, May 2005) the Palestinian guide asked the children “Who are we?” and answered himself: “Our ethnicity (qawmiyyatuna) is Arab, our country (biladuna) is Palestine.” This is the duality that has existed at the heart of Arab nationalism from its very beginning until today, and shifts in this duality have only taken place within these parameters. This is the uniqueness of Middle Eastern nationalism; there is no similar example anywhere else. It cannot be learned from any other nation, and I suspect it would be extremely difficult to invent arbitrarily.


23

In modernist terms this is really contingent, nothing other than deus ex machina. However a close look at historical documentation reveals that an explanation for this duality can be discerned there. In a recent study on the social origins of nationalism in the Middle East I concluded that Arab sources from the late Ottoman period show that contrary to all expectations the term country (bilad or arz) was very much in the parlance and psychology of Arab writers at that time.28 Syrian compilers of biographies of luminaries from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries use almost exactly the names of countries prevalent today to denote the birthplace of various luminaries, as well as the itinerary of many of them through the known world, moving from Syria to Iraq, to Iran, and sometimes even to India. Sometimes smaller areas were called bilad as well, but the biographers differentiated clearly between countries and regions, calling the first type ummahat al-bilad, mother countries. True, with the exception of Egypt no Arab country was coterminous with an Ottoman province, but the fact remains that biographers were not interested in provinces, but in countries. The reason was that the countries had remained from antiquity not for essentialist reasons but because Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces was so unobtrusive that nobody took much notice of the provinces, only of the country. The case of Egypt is the most interesting in this regard: in Ottoman times it was a country and that country was coterminous with a province. It was a highly unified entity within, and at the same time almost completely separated from, the rest of the Arab world in the Fertile Crescent because it developed its own autonomy inside the empire. Social relations, though, remained strong, as people and goods crossed freely and frequently.29 In the early nineteenth century Egypt became almost independent of the Ottoman Empire, hence almost totally separate from the Arab Fertile Crescent. Not surprisingly, perhaps, until the 1930s neither the Arabs nor the Egyptians considered Egypt an “Arab” country at all. The Ottoman past and the modern fact cannot, to my mind, be unrelated. To call the special trajectory of Egypt contingent defies all common sense. As I said above, I believe the explanation for the existence of countries is to be sought in the fact that the principal countries hark back to ancient times. What kept these countries alive down the ages and into Islamic history is a trickier question. A good candidate to explain it, I think, is the particular Middle Eastern geography, characterized by the close proximity of deserts to human habitation, such that Syria, Iraq, and Egypt are cut off from each other very abruptly and harshly. The separation was of course much greater before the communication


revolution of the modern era. Large empires like the Ottoman could bridge this vast emptiness, but only nominally, and beneath the imperial canopy life went on in the separate countries as of old. This analysis seems to explain why religious adherence could not be the basis of nationalism but the “country” could – this being more deep-seated and meaningful in the life of the inhabitants than sect. The biographical dictionaries alluded to above also alert us to the surprising fact that despite everything we have heard about the total disappearance of Arab identity after the classical age it was still alive and well, at least among members of the intellectual elite of the region. It appears, for example, in biographies of literary experts who kept the memory and identity of the ancient Arabs alive through reliving the literature and the stories of the early heroism.30 It appears also in biographies of high Ottoman men of state, who are said to have been in the habit of assembling Arab poets and literary experts for what sounds like nothing short of literary salons, designed specifically to celebrate Arabic literature. Not the least striking aspect of several of these biographies is the fact that the pasha in question figures in the collection for no other reason than his striking devotion to this custom, which of course indicates what the biographer thought of it. One last interesting fact in this type of biographies is that in some of them the benefactor, always an Ottoman man of state, is described as “being fond of the sons of the Arabs” (muhibban li-abna’ al-Àrab). All this seems to show that Arab identity remained alive despite all adversity throughout the ages. Long discarded bits and pieces of information pointing in the same direction may assume a different meaning: Albert Hourani’s old assertion (unfortunately undocumented) that Arabism was kept alive in the great Arab families of the Fertile Crescent; British consuls’ reporting from the mid-nineteenth century that various elites in the Arab countries considered themselves Arab; and so on and so forth.31 The question is what kind of sociology kept the identity around Arabism alive. Ottoman activities were crucially important. The existence of a stratum of Arab intellectuals engaged in Arabic literature and old Arab tales and histories is a factor of considerable importance, though perhaps not a sufficient one. Crucial here is Anderson’s second theory of the formation of nationalism, which is highly relevant to the Middle East: unlike the Spanish, who ran their South American empire by a system of divide and rule, separating territories from each other and creating a sort of iron curtain between them, in the Ottoman Middle East it was nearly the opposite. Here reigned what is sometimes


25

called pax Ottomanica – the provincial governor might have been aware of the border of his province, but he might well have been alone in this. There were no borders on the ground; travel was free, and much resorted to. This may have been a vital factor in keeping Arabism alive. Also important was the fact that for the Ottomans classical Arab culture was the true high culture which they honored and appreciated. They did not merely allow its autonomous existence throughout the Arab lands, they did much to preserve and maintain it, for example, by establishing important libraries that to this day house the treasures of classical Arab culture and civilization. All this was on the level of pre-modern and pre-nationalist identities. Something approaching nationalism emerged in the Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was still indeed pre-nationalism, because there was no clear-cut demand to break with the Ottoman Empire. But there was already a perceptible feeling of an Arab nation, separate from and superior to the Turkish, and demands for Arab autonomy, cultural and political, were persistent. It was really nationalism minus a few percentage points, and we ought to treat it as such. No longer was subjection to an increasingly Turkish-oriented empire acceptable; at most an acquiescence existed in building a sort of interethnic partnership, something akin to Austro-Hungary. Here we have to ask first what caused the appearance of this near-separatist nationalism, and another element of Anderson’s mark II theory of nationalism proves useful: the circle of pilgrimage, and the obstacles imposed on freedom of pilgrimage. More precisely, the reference is to the ability of subject communities in the empire to rise to the top. A peculiarity of the Spanish and English political system was that “creoles,” that is, citizens of the empires born overseas, could not, in the Spanish case, rise to office in the metropole, and in the English case could not elect their own members of Parliament. Needless to say, provincial elites were not likely to appreciate such discrimination, and as Anderson shows, it was only a matter of time before they developed their own nationalism. Now the Ottoman Empire, “the worst despotism the world has ever seen,” to use a widespread description of it in Western discourse, displayed the opposite approach. Until the Tanzimat (the nineteenthcentury reform movement) there was no discrimination against Arabs in promotion to the highest offices. Even after heavy ethnic discrimination was introduced after 1910, an Iraqi Arab (Mahmud Shevket Pasha) was Grand Vizier in 1913, an Arab (Sati` al-Husri, the future high priest of Pan-Arabism), was the director-general of the Ottoman ministry of education, two Palestinians were district governors, and


the list is probably much longer, and little researched. This absolute equality in elite promotion through the centuries accounts for the lack of Arab nationalism until the early twentieth century, rather than the harsh suppression suggested by George Antonius.32 But Turkish ethnic nationalism had been taking shape probably since the 1890s, and it became harsh and discriminatory after 1910, with efforts at Turkification in schools and everywhere else. Despite efforts to minimize this aspect in various studies, complaints about it are found in the contemporary press,33 so at least something of it surely existed. The Arab elites reacted exactly as the American ones did: they developed their own nationalism. So we come to the last issue that faces us in this chapter, the form that Arab nationalism assumed at this stage. In the next chapter I show that there is massive evidence to support the thesis that there was Palestinian identity in the past; nevertheless, the first form that nationalism took here was Arabism. The glory of the past must have been the most powerful argument, though we must bear in mind that this glory was not glorious enough to entice Egypt at this time. There were probably additional factors, the pax Ottomanica being the most important. Also important of course was the fact that Arab identity was simply present, as we have seen. It certainly needed no invention, only preservation. But as I argue throughout this book, at no time was it unadulterated Arabism. Local Palestinian patriotism was strong, unbroken and consistent even at the height of Pan-Arabism. No one at any time suggested forsaking the Palestinians’ special closeness to Jerusalem and to al-Aqsa. As we have seen above, it was and remained a dual type of nationalism, born of Arab ethnicity on the one hand and the ancient vitality of countries created by separating deserts and benign Ottoman rule.

Economic changes and their importance Nobody can deny the relevance of Gellner’s preoccupation with economic transformation, industrialization, new high culture common to all, and a modern educational system. We saw above that Gellner exaggerated, but was probably not mistaken. Some measure of economic modernization would have been necessary for nationalist transformation. Years ago the historian Yehoshua Porath expressed the view that the lack of economic development was responsible for the lack of positive nationalism among the Palestinians during the Mandate. He was mistaken in a similar way to Gellner. Moreover, James Gelvin has shown that the Syrian economy in the closing Ottoman decades was developing sufficiently to bring about social change, to draw people


27

into the cities and into changed occupations there, often entirely new and modern.34 Exactly the same process took place in nineteenthcentury Palestine. After the introduction of steam navigation in the 1820s eastern markets began to be flooded in earnest with goods of the Industrial Revolution. Toward the end of the century the pace of change grew fast and furious. Local textile crafts were particularly hard hit, and started to decline. Other traditional crafts were much more resilient, but new crafts and professions were introduced (pharmacies, photographers, tour guides, and many more), the security of property and safety on the roads was enhanced at an unprecedented rate; economic activity accordingly speeded up and intensified, the most visible expression perhaps being the conversion of silver and gold coins strung on necklaces into cash. Economic relations with the West surged, in three areas especially. Large quantities of wheat from the Hawran were exported through Acre port; the large-scale and rapidly growing export of Jaffa oranges caused a major development of that town. Jaffa entrepreneurs, most of them Muslim Arabs, expanded their orange groves at a rapid pace, but not fast enough to meet European demand. A bottleneck was water, of which not enough was available for irrigation. Undaunted, they advanced to the then cutting-edge technology of raising water from wells by motor-pumps imported from Europe. It was indeed a mini-scale industrial revolution, defying endless mystifications about the mismatch between Islam and entrepreneurship. Finally, barley was exported on a large scale from Gaza to the breweries of England. No activity at all had existed in these three areas in the mid-nineteenth century.35 Alexander Scholch looked at the same issue from another angle.36 He compiled statistics of trade in various towns in Palestine from 1856 to 1882, and found an unmistakable trend of robust development in every area he looked at. Beshara Doumani conducted a more concentrated study of the town of Nablus in roughly the same period, and found the same result there too. At the same time, more work was available in the towns despite the lack of an industrial revolution.37 A greater sense of security and more foreign trade encouraged the economy across the board, so that now more people were attracted to the towns, which indeed grew faster than the countryside. All this was made possible by the changes wrought by the Ottoman government. By a logic that still defies simple explanation, the same regime that for centuries before the middle of the nineteenth century was completely powerless to curb the excesses of the Bedouin suddenly found the power to do so. The strength of the Bedouin and other centrifugal forces (like local notables) was weakened and then crushed

28


altogether. Local strong men, like the Abd al-Hadis in Nablus and its environs, and Abd al-Rahman Amir in the Hebron area, were tackled militarily and destroyed.38 In 1868 the first carriage road connecting Jerusalem and Jaffa was constructed. A series of small fortresses were built along it, where light garrisons were stationed to protect travelers. A source from the early 1890s says that these buildings were by then deserted as danger no longer lurked on that road. In the early 1880s the valley of Esdraelon was reported to be no longer a place of grazing for Bedouin tribes, and that those tribes were themselves subject to close government control. That these developments had enormous economic importance is unquestionable. But they were also relevant to the creation of nationalism in at least two ways. First, they somewhat changed the traditional structure of the society, making it more urban and more ready to adopt ideologies like nationalism. Second, before the mid-nineteenth century people moved little from their home town or village because travel was dangerous. But after law and order improved radically, particularly with the paving of the carriage road, movement between one end of the country and the other became usual, and with it the sense of country must have become much more common than previously. All in all, truly remarkable economic development was taking place in nineteenth-century Palestine, which seems to have carried with it a movement to nationalism. Life in Palestine was further transformed by an important process, the Ottoman Reform, and particularly its attendant development of education. The exact effect of the change has not yet been studied in detail, but there is little doubt that it was extensive. Until that time all the education locally available was restricted to religious learning and Sharià law. The Tanzimat movement introduced modern studies for the first time. Arab youngsters could now read traditional Arab literature and history, and the glories of the Arab empire builders, who spoke Arabic, and not Turkish as in later centuries, became clear to all who were exposed to this process of education. Khalil al-Sakakini spells out this influence in his memoirs.39

The land regime Some important facts relevant to our topic can be gathered from the land regime prevailing at the time of the Mandate in the country.40 This land regime was the outcome of Ottoman developments. In the sixteenth century the situation was that sown land was considered state land, and


29

was held in perpetuity by peasant farmers who had the right to bequeath it without any hindrance. The state was represented on the ground by timar holders, who received the revenue in lieu of military service. They clearly did not own the land and did not constitute anything approaching a landed aristocracy. Land was held individually, with part of it, pasture land, held collectively by the village community. There were no big landlords in this system, and their emergence was obviously not encouraged by the state. After the sixteenth century this land regime may have come under pressure, but all the evidence we possess indicates that it survived to the middle of the nineteenth century: the timar system persisted much longer than previously thought, and the iltizam system of tax-farming entered the scene much later than formerly believed. So when Charles Issawi compiled consular reports on economic life in the mid-nineteenthcentury Middle East, the land regime reported was consistently that of small and independent owners. One important reason for this was that according to the sixteenth-century Ottoman land law, entitlement to sown land could be established only though proof of actual tilling. Land could not be owned theoretically, since there was no land registration. No less important was the situation on the ground. The crucial point was that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the power of the central government was much weakened, leading to an increase in the power of the Bedouin, among other centrifugal forces. The Bedouin of the Hawran lived by a transhumance system of migration, whereby they spent the winters in the lowland of Palestine. These were tribes equipped with firearms which the Ottoman government at this time could hardly confiscate from them. The inevitable outcome was that much of the lowland was barren of permanent habitation. Hardly affected, however, were the mountainous regions, where no Bedouin at all were to be seen and settlement remained as solid and as dense as the water supply and the terrain allowed. This region was barely affected by the so-called Ottoman decline. The new Ottoman legislation of the nineteenth century should be understood against this background. The 1858 Ottoman land law did not change the status of sown land, which did not become freehold. But one major innovation was the introduction of compulsory registration in a tapu (land registry office). Land could now be bought on paper from the government, though it still had to be worked. Indeed, after the inauguration of the 1858 law large-scale buying of unoccupied land started, particularly in the valley of Esdraelon and along the coast.


Again, this would not have taken place without political and economic changes on the ground: around 1850 the last of the bubonic plagues struck Palestine, possibly the region as a whole, and the population at last started to grow, having been static for several centuries. At the same time law and order improved dramatically, the Bedouin being pushed back or politically subjugated by the government, so that for the first time demographic pressure could be matched by expansion of settlement, as peasants started to go down from the height into the plains and found new localities, initially improvised (the khirbas, “ruins”, but also temporary villages), then more permanently established. In reality most land in the plains was bought by large investors, mainly Syrians and Lebanese, but also some Palestinians, while the mountainous region continued to be dominated largely by small farms and independent villagers. Several hundred registration documents from the late-Ottoman period survive, and the story they tell is clear enough; the old theory that the Ottoman registration process crumbled and peasants registered in the name of moneylenders, etc., is simply untrue. This might have been the case on the periphery, but nowhere else. If such a process had taken place the entire mountain area would have gone over to the big landowners, and in due course would have been sold to the Zionists. This did not happen; there was no land purchasing in the hilly areas because no real landlords existed there, and because villagers possessed enough intelligence and political confidence to register the lands in their own names. This is of course supremely important for the history of the Palestinians in general, but, as I show later in Chapter 5 (on the Great Revolt), it also had important implications for popular nationalism during the Mandate, and probably to the present day. I develop the argument that free peasantry had the tactical autonomy not only to act against foreign occupiers, but also to develop their nationalism to a maximal extent.41 Hence arose the difficulties that this area, the Triangle (between Nablus, Jenin, and Tul Karm), persistently gave foreign occupiers, and is still giving them.

Zionism and the Palestinians This study deals with popular Palestinian feeling and nation formation during the Mandate, so the insertion of an analysis of the Zionists’ views on the Palestinians requires an explanation (one that will also hold for the next section, on British views). One argument in this book is that the disparaging and totally dismissive Zionist and British discourse on Palestinian nationalism was


31

a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: it exerted a powerful influence on political practices that created the “fact” that Palestinian nationalism did not exist. This influence is demonstrated below. Here I want to depict how the Zionists and the British formed their image of the nationalism of the people of Palestine. This largely took place before the period of the Mandate, hence the location of this topic in a chapter on the wider context. Beyond some general points, it is somewhat difficult and possibly misleading to talk generally of Zionist views, and preferable to deal with individual thinkers. Zionism had no formal or even widely accepted ideological articulation. Some of its central leaders, highly influential in the propagation and dissemination of ideas, also took to writing, and their output renders this ideology best. This is particularly true for David Ben-Gurion, who wrote a substantial number of books, several of them bestsellers during the Mandate. Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, did not write specifically on the Arabs of Palestine, but he did mention them indirectly in a number of places.42 While he himself was of course intensely nationalistic as regards his own people, he showed utter derision for the nationalist feelings of the Asian (and Middle Eastern) peoples. This was apparent already in his effort to buy Palestine from the Ottoman Sultan for a large sum collected from world capitalists, treating the Sultan with the characteristic disdain common at the time. I find nothing despicable in the Sultan’s answer. He said that Palestine was not a piece of real estate and could not be sold; even if he, the Sultan, wished to sell it “the people” would not accept it. He must have had Palestine’s place in Islam in mind when he added that the Muslims had covered the land with their blood conquering it in the past, and would do so again before ceding it to anyone else (an exact prediction on both counts). Herzl persisted in seeing the inhabitants of Palestine as transparent later on as well. An example is his book Altneuland, a description of Palestine as a Jewish autonomy under an unspecified overarching empire. The book tells us of a tour of the country under this future regime, conducted by its head and an Arab friend. This man is asked by guests for his opinion of the new situation, an Arab minority under Jewish rule, and has only good words for the Jews: they bought much of the land thereby enriching the local people; they treated the local people fairly and decently in their religious and civil rights. But distinct throughout is the writer’s apparently total obliviousness to the fact that the Arabs are being treated like a sack of potatoes – they have meaning only as individuals; they are not part of a community of any sort,


national or even cultural or social. They have no single collective right. All the symbols of the state are Jewish, and the Arabs are seen to be happy with all of this. Indeed, Altneuland has been described as a utopia, a very well deserved name. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist movement from the beginning of the Mandate to the rise of Ben-Gurion in the mid-1930s, did not publish much on the Palestinian Arabs, but penned quite a few memoranda touching on this topic that were presented to the British government. The special position of the Zionist movement under the Mandate indeed made it possible for its leaders to address the government in London directly with respectable memoranda which elicited carefully composed replies from the highest authorities (whereas Arab leaders had to address the High Commissioner like duty-bound natives). Weizmann’s historic importance lies in the unquestioned influence he had on British leaders in the run up to the Balfour Declaration. It is my conviction that this influence was much greater than can be proven from the surviving historical documentation, although, as I claim below, what he told the British was commensurate with their interests, as they saw them at the time. But within these parameters he certainly was influential. The similarity between opinions expressed by Mark Sykes (see next section) and Weizmann’s views, for example, is striking, and cannot be fortuitous. As I show in Chapter 3, Weizmann, like other Zionists of the time, held that no Palestinian people existed, and moreover, that the Arabs of Palestine were a primitive lot who cared nothing for politics or emotions at all, but were only concerned for their physical and economic wellbeing. He seemed genuinely shocked when in 1918 he discovered that Zionism was actually resisted. However, he could not bring himself to accept that any objective grounds existed for this resistance. Unlike Labor Zionism, which opted more for the class explanation of this apparent mirage whereby Zionism was not liked, he preferred the view that the British officials were to blame. These officials had not been properly educated by their government to appreciate the importance of the National Home policy, so they were not adamant in imparting this message in their relations with the Arabs. Any sign of resistance to this policy should have been nipped in the bud. On a different level, in the early Mandate period the question arose of what precisely Zionism wanted, and the exact meaning of the term National Home. Weizmann made no secret of what he really meant. He stated it at the Peace Conference in Paris and he repeated it several times thereafter. The National Home meant that the ruling government would


33

allow the Zionists to bring in 70,000 to 80,000 Jews a year, which in a number of years would make Palestine as Jewish as “America is American and England is English.” This was an ominous saying, perhaps meaning that ethnic minorities had no place in that framework. It naturally incensed the Palestinians, but was not well taken even by the British. That statement constituted a major embarrassment to the benign façade Zionism was trying to present, then and even today. It gravely contradicted Zionism’s claim to be only of positive help to the Arabs of Palestine. It showed Zionism with sharp teeth. A recent example of an evidently propagandist effort to tackle this “problem” is L. Stein’s attempt to exorcise this statement, and claim that what was said was “to build up a Jewish nationality that would be Jewish as the French nation was French and the British nation was British.”43 But Weizmann’s own words as cited above seem more reliable. More reliable too is the text of the Churchill White Paper of 1922, which says that Arab apprehensions about British intentions as regards the Zionist role in Palestine “are partly based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the [Balfour] Declaration ... Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.” The White Paper rejects this phrase out of hand, but certainly affirms that Weizmann did use it.44 To revert to Weizmann’s memorandum, it contained an additional important element: “Later on [he added], when the Jews formed the large majority, they would be ripe to establish such a Government as would answer to the state of the development of the country and to their ideals.”45 The most important Jewish thinker about the Palestinian Arabs was David Ben-Gurion.46 He devoted two books and many sections in other books to this question. Most of his ideas were not really original, but were his own rendering of ideas current in the socialist camp of the Zionist movement. As in other parts of the world, this sector of the political field was torn between the universal brotherhood and solidarity of socialism, and the ethnic egoism of nationalism. As virtually everywhere else, this tension was resolved by means of universalist rhetoric and ethnic-nationalist practice. In Palestine the theory was developed that the Zionist project, while it did not come into the world to help the Palestinian masses, was nevertheless to their pure benefit. That they did not seem to agree was simply because they had been brainwashed by their greedy, selfish, and wicked elite of effendis, who maliciously convinced them to lash out at the Jews. The explanation was simple: they wanted to keep these masses under their tight control

34


and lucrative exploitation, while the Zionists wanted to free them and make of them independent human beings. Hence, the real interest of the working masses in Palestine was to go with the Zionists, not against them, which meant of course also agreeing to their political program. The problem which no Zionist thinker at the time (and very few Israelis to this day) was willing to face was that this analysis rested on a lie: there was an insoluble tension between Zionist ambitions and the fate of Palestinian workers and peasants. After all, the country belonged to the Jews, by natural law and “undisputed” justice. Hence they had every right to buy up all its land, and to deprive its former citizens from work on it, so that Jews could become farmers again. Such buying up was called (and often still is, even today, in the media for example) “land redemption”, making the fact of Arab landholding ritually and morally impure, even shameful to Jews who looked on and did nothing. For the same reason Arabs were also to be barred from every non-agricultural workplace owned by Jews. Palestinian workers and peasants could objectively be excused if they drew conclusions from Zionist practice rather than from Zionist rhetoric about the native population of the country. But that did not impress thinkers like Ben-Gurion, for whom this logic was set in concrete. Ben-Gurion shared with other Zionists of the time the general idea that there were no Palestinian people worthy of the name. When he met Arab leaders in the 1930s several of them made him square up to the fact that such a people actually existed, no less than an Iraqi people existed. No matter. For him they were just Arabs, whose nationalism was supposed to be realized in other Arab countries. All arguments to the contrary fell on deaf ears. For this reason, the sacred right of selfdetermination was not a right of the Arabs of Palestine, despite the fact that they constituted some eighty-five percent of the population. The right of self-determination would come into its own only the moment the Jews constituted a majority. All this should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some indications that Ben-Gurion knew better. Being the most far-sighted and penetrating of the Zionist thinkers, he is on record as admitting that popular Palestinian nationalism did exist. He said as much to group of Zionist activists after the 1929 Wailing Wall Riots. But this was behind closed doors. Just one or two days later he sent a memorandum to the Socialist International, where the Palestinian national movement reverted to “a crowd, incited and inflamed by the fire of religion and fanaticism”, and “a mob summoned by the prospects of loot.”47


35

But the most shocking piece of theorizing on the Palestinians that I have found in Ben-Gurion’s works is a lecture from 1944, entitled “The Burden of Wilderness”, which contains two important points in his thinking. One is the perception of the country as a wilderness apart from the Jewish contribution to its development. Describing a virtual trip in the country from Jerusalem to the north via the Jordan valley and to the south via the same route, he was able to conclude that most of the country was a wilderness. The eighteen or so Palestinian towns and 800 Palestinian villages did not exist for him. The other element in this lecture, really somewhat disturbing, is a short history of the country, describing all the foreign (i.e., non-Jewish) powers that ruled it down the ages as “foreign occupiers” and “step-children”. Among these powers are the Arabs, who are thus barred from the respectable position of natives, reserved to the true sons of the land, the Zionists. It may be interesting to look briefly at some Zionist academic studies on the question of Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate. Porath’s is unquestionably the best book written on the chronology of the Palestinian people during the Mandate.48 He does not deal with general questions of interpretation, whatever their nature. The book of course purports to be objective in a new and unprecedented manner for Zionist historiography, and sometimes it admirably succeeds in this. For example, Porath accepts the Arab position concerning the HusaynMcMahon correspondence, which no Israeli historian has done before him.49 But a more careful reading shows that he is heavily biased to the Zionist side. His approach to the Arab rebel leaders is a clear example. The British archive is full of “positive” information supplied on many of them. None of this is reproduced by Porath. As to nationalism itself, the Palestinians, according to Porath, had none. They were too backward economically to develop real nationalism, particularly Arabism, which only their most sophisticated intellectuals such as Akram Zuàytir could fathom. The most that he admits is local patriotism and fear of Zionism. At least this last feeling is not interpreted as fake, false consciousness, and the like. But even this fear is not really analyzed in detail, so one is left wondering whether it is not something immanent and natural to Arabs, impermeable of rational explanation. Meir Litvak, an Israeli scholar, has written a valuable study on the way the Palestinians in the twentieth century manipulated and twisted the historical record to build an account that suited their national needs.50 It is an exemplary case of how the Zionist historiography of the Palestinians takes advantage of the insights of the constructivist school to make fun of the claims made by the Palestinians. One argument


offered by the writer is that the major if not the sole reason for the existence of Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate was their drive to fight Zionism. There was no positive motivation. He cites Barth’s famous insight that the major determinant of the identity of groups is their hostility to the Other. Though unquestionably true as far as it goes, this is, again, a hostile argument. Litvak would not dream of accepting that the sole content of Zionist ideology is hatred of Arabs. This point is not even formally documented by the study.51 But Litvak’s major argument as regards the mandatory period is that if any nationalism did exist in Palestine in this period it was Arab nationalism pure and simple.52 Those who are called Palestinians locally did not see themselves as such, but made every effort to prove to the world that they were part of Syria and more generally of the Arab world. A typical example is Litvak’s interpretation of a statement by the Supreme Muslim Council concerning the Nebi Musa pilgrimage: it “has attempted to turn some of [these festivals] into cultural and educational fairs and industrial exhibits, in order to encourage Arab culture and national crafts.”53 What Litvak fails to tell us is that everyone in mandatory Palestine knew full well that Nebi Musa was a purely Palestinian event, unique even in being dated according to specific Palestinian history. This ambivalence is the heart of my argument here: both Porath and Litvak for some reason chose to look at one side of the coin. They strangely overlook substantial quantities of available information indicating that the Arabs of Palestine during the Mandate saw themselves as both Arabs and Palestinians, entities they would be hard put to distinguish. Litvak seeks to enhance his argument by citing the unquestionably reliable survey conducted by Rosemary Sayigh in Lebanon in the 1970s, namely that the Arabs of Palestine before 1948 did not consider themselves Palestinians but Arabs or members of local communities.54 The problem is that Litvak misconstrues the information given in that study. The question really was how Palestinians defined themselves in 1948. Litvak would have been right if those asked had said that they did not understand the question. Since they were asked to describe the Palestinian people, they must have understood that they belonged to that collectivity. Additionally, we have to remember that they were asked to describe the Palestinian people by other terms, not by tautological terms. Interestingly, these negative ideas are widespread, and are even shared by some Palestinian scholars. An example is Musa Budeiri, who also queries the possibility that what developed in Palestine during the Mandate was true nationalism:55 In fact, he claims, the Palestinians


37

during the Mandate were purely religious, and it could not be otherwise: No other ideological idiom would have been familiar or comprehensible to the rural inhabitants of the country, who constituted a majority and to whom the idea of nation and national interest was totally alien.56 The author further claims (“insinuates” would be more accurate here) that the elite actually understood the situation in national terms, but the masses could be mobilized only through Islam: Concepts such as Jihad, Shahid, Fida’i, al-Buraq, al-Ard al-Muqaddasa were terms commonly and frequently employed in the nationalist discourse of the period. The Crusades were repeatedly conjured up to give historical depth and to inculcate a sense of historical continuity to people’s sense of identity. It is not that the Palestinians betrayed an early fundamentalist bias ... , but their struggle against Jewish colonization was perceived in religious terms and this was their only recognizable Weltanschauung.57 Budeiri further claims that there is no evidence to support the contention that a strand “supportive of distinctly Palestinian nationalism” already existed among them.58 In the first place, “Palestine was not a distinct geographic historic entity whose people had had a separate historical existence since time immemorial.”59 Moreover, the Palestinian a`yan (notables, traditional leaders) were but a weak adjunct of the Syrian a`yan, the Palestinians themselves seeing their country as southern Syria and their future as inseparable from Syria. Only after the expulsion of Faisal from Syria did it dawn on the Palestinian leaders that they had to look after their own separate interests.60 None of these statements is supported by hard evidence, and none of them in my view is correct.

The British and the Palestinians61 What the Zionists thought about the Palestinians is important for this study only because the Zionists affected the British mode of thinking, which in turn had a massive and direct effect on the very existence and survival of Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate. The interesting point about the British attitude is that: how could a liberal state like the British Empire (unquestionably the most liberal empire the world has ever known, despite Ireland) give a populated land to a people not living there, not bothering even to ask the inhabitants what they thought about it. Even assuming that their strategic wartime

38


needs, cited as the explanation for the Balfour Declaration, were a crucial factor, why not reserve at least part of the land for the natives; why not reserve for them some form of autonomy, political or cultural? In fact, why not at least speak some words of consolation, explaining why their legitimate interests could not be honored, because other needs were more pressing? Why this total disregard, this total transparency (apart from Curzon’s single sentence that did not amount to anything)? After all, at that time the country included also Trans-Jordan, thus forming a land not as negligible in size as Curzon depicted it in the run up to the Declaration. This is truly a mind-boggling question, and I do not think there is a satisfactory answer to it in the literature. I do not pretend to have one myself; but the question is important enough to warrant more discussion. It is important for this study chiefly because the situation often raises the following nagging question: “Does not this neglect raise the suspicion that the inhabitants of the country were ignored simply because there was no Palestinian nationalism at this time after all?” I think the answer to this question is “no”. Also, I think a starting point in looking for a solution is that the British position had something to do with Zionist influence. Zionist influence on the British mainly came through the work of Chaim Weizmann, an energetic and charismatic professor of chemistry from Manchester University, and a rising Zionist leader in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It would be absurd to assume that Weizmann really controlled the minds of the leaders of the British Empire, the foremost power in the world at the time. His strength was that he told them what they wanted to hear. His negligible power of persuasion over the Zionists living in Palestine in the 1930s is a remarkable historiographical lesson on the fallacy of the theory of the crucial role of personalities in history. The simple truth is that for their own reasons the British leaders were open to his message. So, while Weizmann’s influence on his British associates has to be contextualized, it should also not be minimized. An example showing its actual existence is a sentence in a letter from Ronald Graham, Head of the Middle East Department after Sykes and a high official there at the time of the Declaration, to Ronald Storrs, Military Governor of Jerusalem: “I regard the Palestine mandate with resignation but without enthusiasm ... I confess that when the question first started I was a hot partisan ... but ... our friend Weizmann, for whom personally I have much respect and liking, sold us a pup.”62 It hardly needs detailing that the pup in question was the fantasy of Arab acquiescence to the idea of unrestrained Jewish settlement of Palestine.


39

We know today that the original idea of the Balfour Declaration – frankly an exceedingly bizarre notion – was not Weizmann’s and he may be excused for not thinking of it. It was suggested to the Foreign Office by two obscure persons, one from Egypt and the other from the US. Both people suggested to the Foreign Office that some sort of declaration in favor of a Jewish Palestine would enhance the position of the British in Russia and America, support that the British Empire at this lowest point of the war could ill afford to turn down. The British quickly realized the great potential of making such a statement: they were in dire straits in the war, and attracting American Jewry to support the side of the Allies would provide a meaningful boost, carrying no tangible cost in money or human life. This was probably their foremost consideration. In the British cabinet’s wartime deliberations on the Declaration that is indeed the only real consideration discussed63 (besides Montague’s Jewish point and Curzon’s on the poverty of the country). But the potential was much greater. It was already clear that the country was actually going to fall to the British, and the statement must have been immediately perceived as a golden opportunity to achieve something else altogether: to deprive France of its promised role in the Holy Land and to help legitimize Britain’s holding on to the country indefinitely. The British leaders were intensely interested in such control, for it was most important strategically for the security of the Suez Canal and for communications with imperial possessions in Asia. I believe that the holy places were also important for them culturally, as a reminder of the Crusades. Prime Minister Lloyd George specifically mentioned the imminent capture of Jerusalem in 1917 in juxtaposition to the Crusaders’ failure there.64 Certainly building this colony on the shoulders of foreign and powerless settlers connected to Great Britain by a special relationship would shear the French of any convincing argument against this brilliant looking arrangement. The precedent of Ulster does not appear in the contemporary documentation, but it was pointed out retrospectively by several persons as having been mentioned at the time. There was only one “small” hurdle in building this magnificent new version of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: the country was populated by some sort of a community of people not having any cultural relations with the Jews, nor likely to be particularly fond of seeing the Jews running their lives. It is hard to imagine that British officials did not think about this issue. It was here that Weizmann’s theories came in so handy. He sold them the Zionist narrative that what existed in the country was a dispersed lot, devoid of any cohesion or consciousness, interested only in a meager improvement of the conditions of their material existence.


A good document exemplifying, if not proving, all the above is a private letter by Mark Sykes, the chief architect of the Balfour Declaration, to Clayton, Political Officer of the British army in Palestine. Among other things he writes about Palestine some four months after the Balfour Declaration: I now come to the question of Palestine itself. What the future regime in Palestine will be depends of course on the Peace Conference ... Our policy should be, so to order affairs, that the general opinion of the world will be that we shall be the most suitable Trustees to hand the country over to for development and control ... As to the actual running of the country, Sykes saw three areas requiring different treatment. First was “Jerusalem within the Crusading walls”, minus the Haram area, but including Bethlehem and additional Christian holy places. These were to be run as a British enclave, by the British governor of Palestine. In second place were the Palestinians: “Whoever has charge of Palestine will have to protect, support, and mediate for the population vis-à-vis Zionism.” Third, there was the Zionist issue. Here Sykes gives an interpretation of the Balfour Declaration which is the closest we will ever get to an official one. In his words: I think it is well to recognize that the Zionists do not desire to break out into a fully-fledged republic. Their immediate want, is opportunity to colonise and develop the waste lands of Palestine and their most sanguine members regard this as an event which will take at least three generations to accomplish.65 So what is the point this discussion is trying to make? The British were duped into believing that there was no Palestinian nationalism, hence no resistance was to be expected to Zionist policy. They were trapped in a small Zionist self-deception, but they accepted it willingly, because Palestine seemed a highly valued prize, not least because of the memory of the Crusades. Later they were hard put to extricate themselves from this trap without a major loss of face. (In 1921 the British Cabinet re-examined the viability of the Declaration in view of the trouble it was starting to cause, and decided it would be a major loss of prestige to cancel it now.)66 Only with great difficulty did they bring themselves, in the late 1930s, to admit that despite all assertions to the contrary, a Palestinian nation did exist.


41

But there is another side to the question that should not be lost sight of. Before the 1914–18 war it is true to say that no Palestinian nationalism existed. There was Palestinian identity, not nationalism. This draws attention to the basic fact that nationalism in the Middle East started as Arab nationalism, not as country nationalism. I have shown above that country identity existed all along, but it hid in the shadows, behind Arab nationalism, which had taken center stage. It may be interesting to ponder why this was so. It seems to me that the explanation is not so important, maybe not important at all, simply because it is clear today that groups of activists in Palestine, Syria and Iraq that intensely propagated the establishment of an Arab state were not at all forgetful of their own countries, and their ideal was really to celebrate their own country’s role within the whole Arab state. The surface ideal was Arabism, but the finer truth was that the country and Arabism were inextricably connected in the minds of the nationally conscious, or most of them. But for the British before the Great War it was not easy to fathom this truth: it had to be gleaned from local newspapers and similar indigenous sources. Few at the time concerned themselves with Arab affairs to such a degree.

2 Elements of Palestinian-Arab Identity in the Past

As noted in the Introduction, scholars almost universally agree that there were no traces of Palestinian identity before it was invented by the British in 1918. Rashid Khalidi and Yehoshua Porath are alone in claiming that such an identity existed a little earlier, although for Porath it was no more than a reaction to Zionism. Rashid Khalidi is the only scholar who identifies a positive Palestinian identity not connected to Zionism. In this chapter I try to delve into this issue more deeply by using new kinds of sources and relying on new kinds of theories. My general conclusion is that something was present, substantially more than formerly thought. I also claim that this “something” was crucially important for the development of Palestinian nationalism in the twentieth century. This is not a perennialist but an ethnosymbolist claim, and an explanation is called for. I do not argue that a Palestinian nation existed before 1920. I do not even argue the existence of a fullfledged, self-conscious ethnic community. What existed was a community of some meaning, difficult to categorize exactly, but highly relevant to the way Palestinian nationalism was created, which is why the topic is extremely important as a subject of study. Furthermore, I am not claiming here that the transformation from pre-modern Palestinian identity to modern nationalism was inevitable. If, for example, the Ottoman empire had survived World War I rather than being dismantled, it is quite possible that Middle Eastern states would not have come about for many years to come, if ever. In that sense what came to pass was in no way inevitable. But I also reject vehemently the idea that it was contingent. It was something in between, and once the Ottoman empire passed into the history books the pre-existing frameworks, like an uneven die, had a better chance than other putative possibilities of materializing. The British may have established Palestine as a state, but 42

Elements of Palestinian-Arab Identity in the Past

43

they did not, indeed could not, establish Palestinian nationalism. It would be rather bizarre if they had: during their 30 years of control of Palestine the British had showered the Palestinians with offers intended to make the Mandate a palatable dish. In fact, they failed dismally, and understandably so: they asked the Palestinians to sign their own death warrant. Now, we are asked to believe that the Palestinians accepted from the hands of the British an offer of how to define their very self. This makes no sense and in my estimation it never happened in this way. I have shown above that in dividing up the Middle East the colonial powers seized upon the ancient division of the area, still very much a sociological reality in the Ottoman period. This applied to the Palestinians as well. This chapter does a number of things. First we consider the history of Ottoman Palestine, singling out mainly those subjects that are particularly relevant to the issue of identity. Then we go into the ways in which Palestinian community of some sort existed. As is shown, rudiments of Palestinian identity developed around a number of issues. There is the highly controversial matter of the name of the country. A very common belief is that the name was invented by the inhabitants of the land only to combat the ideological claims of the Jewish settlers after 1882. Better informed scholars know that the term was in fact used as the name of the country in the Middle Ages, but claim that it disappeared later, to be reinvented for anti-Zionist political purposes in the modern era. This chapter shows that in fact the name applied and was current throughout the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, though its usage was probably intensified and became politicized through European cultural influence in the nineteenth century. Another topic around which Palestinian identity came into being (or existed for many centuries) is the term the Holy Land, the other traditional name of the country in historical documents. Again, many historians, it seems mainly Israeli, claim that the Palestinians only discovered the holiness of the country when they looked for another propaganda weapon in the war against Zionism, and in any case, some maintain, they stole it from Christian Palestinians. This chapter shows that none of these notions is true, and that throughout history Palestinians were aware that the land was sacred to Islam, in several ways to be detailed below. The sanctity of Palestine is of course connected with that of Jerusalem, whose central mosque, al-Aqsa, is the third holiest site of Islam, so considered for many centuries, probably since the time of the Prophet himself. After a brief hiatus, a somewhat enigmatic verse in the Qur’an

44


was (correctly to my mind) interpreted as applying to Jerusalem, thereby showing that the city figures in the Qur’an. Not surprisingly Jerusalem became the focal point of Palestinian identity throughout the centuries, and in Palestinian nationalism in our age, a real cultural and political driving force. It is true that a theoretical problem existed, in that Jerusalem was a city rather than a land, but this problem was “solved” by the fact that the city’s sanctity radiated in all directions, encompassing an area the extent of which is hard to tell with any exactitude. But there are some indications that in Ottoman times it corresponded more or less to the area of western Palestine, maybe without the northern Galilee. A fourth element around which Palestinian identity came into being was the traumatic episode of the Crusades. This phase, starting in 1096, ended with the fall of Jerusalem three years later, and led to a long and tortuous history which ended in 1291 with the final expulsion of the Franks, as the Crusaders were called by the Muslims of the Levant. A universal argument in existing research on the Muslims’ involvement with the Crusades is that they forgot all about the incursion as soon as it ended, and only regained consciousness of it in the late-nineteenth century, possibly due to the German Kaiser’s famous presentation of himself as a modern crusader. In this chapter I show that this statement is a myth: the Crusades were remembered all through these centuries, and commemorated by a kind of “national” holiday that certainly united the participants in an emotional ceremony that highlighted the duty incumbent on all of them to guard the Holy City. The claim made in this book, in fact, is that Jerusalem and the need to guard it against old or new crusades is the real driving force of Palestinian nationalism. Finally, this chapter has to tackle a further supremely important historical issue. Despite the unquestioned Palestinian identity that existed, say, in 1910, about the time when nationalism erupted in the Middle East (and Palestine), it took the form of Pan-Arab nationalism. In this section I look at the diary of Khalil al-Sakakini, which starts at about this time (1907) and is a unique source for this early nationalism. Arabism was the overriding dream. The whole issue of Palestinian identity seems to dissolve into thin air, and my whole chapter seems for a moment superfluous. My answer is that in the first place it is interesting to observe forms of real Palestinian identity in the past, even if such forms became weaker at some point later on. Moreover, the statement that Palestinianism was wiped out and Arabism took over is simplistic in more ways than one. In short, the last issue to be dealt with in this chapter is the relation between Arabism and


45

Palestinianism in the making of the incipient phenomenon of nationalism in the last years of Ottoman rule in the region.

An outline of the history of Ottoman Palestine The main issue in the history of Ottoman Palestine for the purposes of this study is how the country was run by the Ottomans and the consequences for Palestinian history and identity. From as early as the sixteenth century the Ottomans undoubtedly realized that given the conditions of communication prevalent in the empire it was impossible to run the empire very centrally, and that some formula of indirect rule had to be devised. Yet the Ottoman dynasty was clearly not keen on seeing provinces slip out of its control. We do not know how or precisely when someone hit upon the beautifully logical idea of adopting a system whereby some officials, the governor and the judge (qadi) to be exact, were to be sent from Istanbul and replaced quite often to prevent their becoming ensconced in one place, while local people would be drafted to the administration to staff other jobs in the provinces. Some of these jobs were highly important, like mufti (jurisconsult), naqib al-ashraf (head of the Prophet’s descendants), manager of the Haram area, deputy judges, and head scribe of the Sharià court. The outcome was a historical sociology of two different levels, and the following analysis is split into two accordingly.1 On the level of provincial governors, the aim of the central government to maintain control and change governors at will was a desire rather than a reality until the beginning of the Reform movement in the empire in 1839. Even then many governors who were called upon to vacate their posts refused to do so, and there was not much the central government could do about it. Local governors of course recognized Ottoman rule, but in practice they built semi-autonomous principalities for themselves. In the seventeenth century all of Palestine was divided into three such autonomous districts (sanjaqs), which developed symbiotic, even friendly, relations with each other, together resisting Lebanese forces that tried to encroach on Palestinian territory from the North. In 1623 a battle was in fact fought between the three principalities and an invading force from Lebanon (the invaders were routed). Amazingly, a recent study found that by the end of the century the three dynasties had intermarried, so here in effect was a rudimentary Palestinian state, in territory more or less coterminous with the area of western Palestine.2 Whether any political thought or consciousness accompanied this we do not know.3

46


These principalities were smashed by the Ottomans at the close of the century, in an effort to enhance centralization. But in the eighteenth century the process repeated itself. A family of tax collectors of Bedouin origin called Zaydan managed to build for itself a principality in the area of Galilee and to control it for several decades, until 1775. The ruling head of the family at the time was Dahir al-Umar. That year the star of another such local governor shone, namely Ahmad al-Jazzar, governor of Acre, who also refused to vacate his post when called upon to do so. He too built an extremely thriving little state in the area of the Galilee. Under his rule Acre burgeoned from a fishing village of some 2,000 people to a prosperous town of 35,000, based mainly on the cotton export boom that flourished there. Those principalities were in effect Palestinian states. They were not of course based on Palestinian consciousness, but the same can be said of many other similar phenomena in other parts of the world at that time (German principalities before the age of nationalism are never, for example, denied the appellation “German”). An interesting bit of information here is that an anthropologist has found that twentieth-century Palestinian peasants in the Galilee consider Dahir al-Umar to have headed a Palestinian state.4 The day-to-day administration of Ottoman cities was entrusted to locally engaged civil servants. Theirs were highly important jobs in terms of local politics, and some of them were lucrative. With the cultural tendency prevalent in this society for a son to follow in his father’s footsteps, a situation arose whereby a sort of service aristocracy arose: high status families, in hereditary control of the central posts in the city’s administration. Since Jerusalem was mainly a religious center, all these families were closely associated with religious occupations. The most important families in this aristocracy were the Husaynis, holders of the office of mufti and naqib al-asharaf since at least the eighteenth century; the Khalidi, holders of the secretariat of the Sharià court; the Alami, holders of positions in the administration of the Sufi orders; and so on and so forth.5 This structure lasted for centuries. It is amazing how in a state like the Ottoman empire, famous for its arbitrariness and the mercurial destiny of its officials, these so-called notables (a`yan), were durable and immovable, despite temporary setbacks. True, they did not threaten the stability of Ottoman overlordship in the area. But there are also indications that the Ottomans admired their cultural values, religiosity, and loyalty. Not only the system as a whole was stable; no less impressive was the fact that the same families maintained their exact traditional occupation in


47

the administration of the town. It seems that with time each of them became satisfied with that position. There are even signs of friendships between the families. The situation is the complete reverse of the one existing during the Mandate, and the reason is not far to seek: not knowing this history, and caring little to find out, the British in the early 1920s proceeded to hand all the posts open in the administration of the country to one family of local leaders. The outcome was necessarily devastating: endless rifts, accusations, and animosity, which largely explain what happened to the Palestinians at this time. A no less important, yet extremely subtle, role filled by these notables was mediation between the local population and the central government. Local grievances against an unusually grasping governor would be passed on to Istanbul through this group. Rarely, they even joined rebellions against governors, such as the one staged in 1825, eventually successful, against rapacious taxation. The important point is that these families were highly respected by the population of Jerusalem, who regarded them as their leaders and mentors. No known historical fact casts serious doubt on this admittedly naïve-sounding generalization. Finally, the longevity of this group is truly remarkable. They retained their place under the Ottomans when all other local elites were crushed and disbanded during the Reforms. They went on to play leadership roles under the British Mandate, when their position was as strong as it had been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is an important point of identity in all of this: the a`yan provided some leadership to the Palestinians under the Ottomans, and leadership meant cohesion and a sense of community. Such leadership was evident, for example, in the Nebi Musa celebrations, assembling people from all over the country, and tightly run and led (and fed) by the Husayni family from at least the eighteenth century.6 We saw in the last chapter how nineteenth-century Palestine underwent impressive modernization – economic development, urbanization, new occupations introduced from the west, influx of foreigners, and the like. Clearly, Jerusalem was becoming a place of international importance: the European powers were looking for markets and outlets to exercise political influence, and Palestine was just the place: it was the Christian Holy Land, to which the Europeans were also intensely attached emotionally. Fierce rivalries developed between Britain, France, and Russia, replicating and even exceeding the rivalry for power in Europe.7 All this undoubtedly left a mark on the Ottoman empire as well; there are clear signs that the relative political neglect of Jerusalem

48


and Palestine ceased from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Proof came in the form of turning the district of Jerusalem, formerly always subordinated to one of the surrounding provinces (Damascus, Sidon), into an independent district, subordinate directly to Istanbul.8 It was the only case of its kind throughout the empire, and the meaning was too evident to be overlooked. In terms of identity, the importance of this move was crucially important in creating an enhanced sense of “Palestine” among the inhabitants: relations with Damascus were thereafter sparse, and they hardly appear in the extant documentation. If we add to this the sense of country that was created, or enhanced, as an outcome of the dramatic growth in law and order from the 1860s or so, the conclusion must be that indeed, a sense of a meaningful “country” was alive in Palestine at this time.

The term “Palestine” Much of the discussion on the existence of any meaningful antecedents to Palestinians’ nationalism centers on whether they called their country “Palestine” at all. The first modern appearance of the term was in 1911, when it was used by Isa al-Isa as the name of his newly founded newspaper. But this could not have been more than re-invention, since the available, and widely known, historical documentation indicates that the name existed as an administrative term in the classical Islamic period. The Arabs themselves clearly did not invent it but took it from the Romans, who divided the country administratively into Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda.9 The term Jund Filastin or “the administrative region of Palestine” was current in Arab parlance from some time after the establishment of Muslim rule in the Fertile Crescent in the mid-seventh century until 1250.10 But when the Mamluk dynasty assumed power in Egypt and Syria-Palestine it changed the administrative nomenclature altogether, dropping the term Palestine from usage. The Ottomans followed suit, and the name was never again used officially until the time of the Mandate. While the term was in administrative use it was also part and parcel of popular usage. The people dropped the Jund and called the country where they lived “Filastin.” Obviously, only the common people could bring about such a situation.11 As they took Palestine to be their country some identification may be assumed, though how deep this identification was in the early Islamic period is hard to say, as is the question of whether they saw themselves as “Palestinians.” But what happened to the term sociologically after 1250 is anybody’s guess. It is


49

usually assumed that it disappeared completely, and was reinvented in 1911. This study tried to check this piece of traditional knowledge. A major source for the history of Palestine after 1250 that may shed some light here is a history of Jerusalem and Hebron written in the 1490s by Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali al-Ulaymi, a scholar and resident of Jerusalem (d. 1519).12 This is a source of unique value. It is probably the only history of Palestine written between the end of classical Islam and the end of the Ottoman period. Though purportedly about Jerusalem and Hebron, the book is very much about Palestine and can be shown to be an outcome of fervent love of the country. Mujir al-Din’s book is the most important source for this chapter and it highlights a major methodological problem that this study faces: to what degree do individual writers or speakers represent the publics which they are assumed to represent (or for whom they wrote). After all, our interest here is not literary. We are not interested in Mujir al-Din per se; we are concerned with his views only to the extent that he represents a substantial section of the population of the area/country at the time of his writing. Naturally, proof of this is exceedingly hard to come by. But as I understand his particular position, there must have been a strong link between his viewpoint and that of his social milieu, since this was a book for them, to be read, enjoyed, and passed on. We know for a fact that the book was read and quoted by all other subsequent sources used in this chapter down to World War I and even after.13 Among other things Mujir al-Din’s book is notable for its extensive use of the term “Palestine.” The simple fact is that Mujir al-Din calls the country he lives in Palestine (Filastin), a term he repeats 22 times. One other name he uses for the country is the Holy Land, used as frequently as Palestine. No other names, such as Southern Syria, are ever mentioned. With both these names special methodological care is required. The book is an amalgam of medieval and contemporary materials, and theoretically the writer may at times simply cite a source containing a meaning no longer current in his own time. On closer inspection, however, this was found on the whole not to be a major problem. In most cases it is evident enough that what is being said, generally or specifically, clearly refers to his own time. The most deliberate treatment of the term “Palestine” comes in a geographical dictionary of the names of towns in the country, where the term Palestine is embedded in the entry for al-Ramla, called in medieval times Ramlat Falastin. Talking about al-Ramla, Mujir notes that Falastin is also the name of the country.14 On a number of occasions he specifically mentions the country of his own time. In one such case he tells of a popular saint from the time of


the Crusades buried near Arsuf (north of Jaffa), Ali b. Àlil (also Àlim), and at the end of the biography he apologizes for not enlarging on this topic: “And in the land of Palestine there are a number of tombs of saints and rightful people, and places designed for pilgrimage, but our intention here is brevity.”15 In a number of other clear-cut cases he speaks explicitly of Palestine in his own times. That the book is not only about Jerusalem but about Palestine is clear from the geographical dictionary, which gives a historical summary of towns, ranging from Gaza in the South to Nablus in the North. It is again an undeclared history of Palestine. What area did he have in mind when speaking about Palestine? It stretched from Anaj, a point near al-Arish, to Lajjun, south of the Esdraelon valley. It was thus clearly equivalent to the Jund Filastin of classical Islam.16 Mujir al-Din is our baseline for all aspects of Palestinian identity in Ottoman times: He was clearly conscious of his Palestinian-ness; he was conscious as well of living in a Holy Land, and he was fully aware of the Crusades, their likely recurrence, and the probable implications of this for the people of the country. To revert to the topic of this section, the term “Palestine” appears later as well. The next writer to use the name of whom we have any knowledge lived two and half centuries after Mujir al-Din. This was another remarkable person, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, an independent mufti and legal scholar in al-Ramla in the seventeenth century, who left for posterity a most important collection of fatwas (Islamic legal discussions of questions posed by members of the public).17 A fatwa is a public document, to be read and used (sometimes in court) by all sorts of people, probably literate, and it is my understanding that the language employed could not have been invented by the mufti. Nor was Khayr al-Din al-Ramli an obscure personality. Quite the reverse: all legal jurists from Syria and Palestine after the seventeenth century used his material intensively, and unquestionably knew every fatwa in it inside out. All this information becomes important if we bear in mind that on several occasions Khayr al-Din al-Ramli calls the country he was living in Palestine, and unquestionably assumes that his readers do likewise. What is even more remarkable is his use of the term “the country” and even “our country” (biladuna), possibly meaning that he had in mind some sort of a loose community focused around that term.18 Another Palestinian writer of the seventeenth century who used Filastin to name his country was Salih b. Ahmad al-Timurtashi, who wrote a fadail (Merits) book titled “The Complete Knowledge of the Limits of the Holy Land and Palestine and Syria (Sham).” As far as is


51

known this was the first (and only?) time that a fadail book carried this term in its title, showing again that Palestine was not automatically or necessarily part of Syria.19 Abdul Karim Rafeq, who wrote an extensive study on Ottoman Palestine, came across the term a number of times. 20 Among his sources for the late-nineteenth century was a travelogue of a Damascene traveler, Nu`man al-Qasatli. This book, still in manuscript, is called “al-Rawda al-Numaniyya in the travelogue to Palestine and some Syrian Towns.”21 The title speaks for itself – Palestine was seen as fairly, albeit not completely, separate from Syria. An important source shedding light on the question is Ruhi alKhalidi’s book on the history of Zionism, written in the first decade of the twentieth century.22 It is noteworthy that whenever the name of the country appears, it is always Palestine, never southern Syria or anything else. Al-Khalidi does not seem to be inventing it, otherwise it would be difficult to see why he does not try to explain what he is doing, or where he found this “bizarre” name. He is simply using what his language and his knowledge have imparted to him. Perhaps the clearest indication that it was not the British who invented the term Palestine is its usage by the Ottoman authorities. The remnants of the correspondence of the Ottoman governors with their superiors in the first decade of the twentieth century quite often relate to the Zionist question and the resistance to it among local inhabitants. The country is referred to throughout as Palestine. Moreover, if Ruhi al-Khalidi or some other Palestinian is never beyond suspicion of fabricating a country for his nascent people, surely no one can make that claim for the Ottomans. The last thing they needed was another nationalist question, so one can safely assume that if they used “Palestine” that was the name they found on the ground, so to speak.

The term Holy Land It is well known that Palestine was a Holy Land for Christianity and Judaism. It still needs documenting that this was the situation in Islamic societies as well. Proof of this fact appears in various types of literature that have survived from the period under consideration. Medieval Praise Literature is one early place where Palestine is often referred to as a Holy Land. An example is the earliest Praise book, that of Wasiti, which indicates that the land was blessed and made holy by God himself, when He said in the Qur’an: al-arz allati Barakna fiha li’l-Alamayn (the land wherein We have blessed all creatures – Prophets, 71).23 The

52


same writer also refers to God’s words to Musa on entering the Holy Land.24 Mujir al-Din uses an additional name, besides Palestine, to describe the country he inhabited: the Holy Land (al-Arz al-Muqaddasa). As noted, this term appears in his book as often as the term Palestine. He first tells us that the events concerning the Israelite Patriarchs already took place in the “Holy Land” although this is certainly an anachronism.25 But it persisted as the name of the country under Islam,26 under the Crusades,27 and into his own age, as in the description of Nablus as “a town in the Holy Land.”28 In terms of identity the name “the Holy Land” seems to have been more important than “Palestine”: from the material reviewed so far it is hard to gauge the depth of identification with “Palestine.” But it must have been otherwise with regard to the term Holy Land, which ipso facto meant something important and emotional for every Muslim. The most often cited piece of information given by Mujir al-Din is his view of the extent of the Holy Land.29 By his account it stretched from Ayla at the head of the Red Sea to northern Syria, and covered Syria as far as the Euphrates. It seems to me that here Mujir al-Din is giving a kind of ceremonial definition rather than a practical, everyday definition, since throughout the book he calls the land he is talking about the Holy Land, but he never speaks about Syria proper (his account of the Crusades being an obvious exception). Whenever he mentions the term Holy Land in the book one readily perceives that the reference is to Jund Filastin, or western Palestine without the Upper Galilee. In one place he mentions events that took place in Egypt, in Sham, and in the Holy Land.30 In another case we read that the ancient Israelites entered the Holy Land at Jericho, thus confirming the same idea.31 An interesting source for the topic at hand is also Muhammad Khalili’s book of legal opinions. He was a Shafiì mufti of Jerusalem in the eighteenth century (d. 1735–6), who left a fatwa collection that was published in the nineteenth century.32 In briefly discussing the relevance of this work to our topic, it is important again to establish that Khalili was a “realistic mufti” rather than a theoretician. One proof of this is the question relating to the law of limitation, a well known yet underdeveloped and inconclusive topic in classical Islamic law. In one question relating to this issue Khalili was asked about the legality of such a law in the Ottoman state, and he was puzzled by the issue, since no Shafiì legist had passed judgment on it. He added that he decided to consult some important Hanafi jurists residing in Jerusalem, who informed him that no such law existed in Hanafi law either, but that


53

the Sultan in the sixteenth century, employing the logic of istihsan (opting for a lenient solution), had introduced this law to prevent endless debates on any issue. Following the same logic he opts to accept the legality of the Ottoman legislation.33 This is a clear case showing this mufti’s pragmatic and worldly turn of mind, which may hint that his material ought to be taken as representing reality. While Khalili apparently did not use the name Palestine to describe the country, he did use the term Holy Land. In some fatwas the country is called the Holy Land without any particular reason.34 Sometimes the holiness is relevant to the issue discussed. Thus in one fatwa we read of a quarrel over a piece of land contested by two Palestinian waqfs, one of them supporting a mosque. The manager of this waqf puts it to the mufti that if his waqf lost the case the mosque could stop the call to prayer, and this would happen “in a Holy Land, blessed by God.” Thus, he continues, whereas the Christians strongly defend their places of worship, some Muslims try to ruin theirs. The mufti, in his answer, accepts the validity of the questioner’s point: how striking it is that although this is a Holy Land the Christians guard their holy places so much more diligently than the Muslims, and this despite the fact that they have no qadis or governors.35 In one particularly long response he rails against an obscure jurist who has ruled on worshipping at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron, claiming that the blessing (baraka) conferred on saints expires with their death. Khalili seems to have been deeply offended by this stand, since it refutes several verses in the Qur’an where God specifically blesses areas in Palestine (or all of it) connected with the life of Abraham.36 Does this legist, he asks, mean to say that God’s blessing of places is liable to expire? This indicates quite clearly that Khalili is fully aware that various verses in the Qur’an make Palestine a Holy Land, quite apart from the special case of Jerusalem.

Hasan al-Husayni and the concept of country (diyar or bilad) Hasan al-Husayni was the mufti of Jerusalem in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth. He is particularly well known for his composition of a collection of Jerusalem biographies, but he also assembled his fatwas in a volume, which remains in manuscript.37 In this book he discusses with his fellowcountrymen some of the problems occupying them, and some matters of identity crop up. There are many signs that this mufti was practical

54


and realistic, and that his material can be trusted to originate in the real world of late-eighteenth-century Palestine. For example, on many occasions he discusses the timar (the Ottoman quasi-feudal fief system), an institution that means nothing in Islamic law in the pure sense of the term.38 Moreover, he grudgingly accepts additions to Islamic law that were necessitated by the time, such as the khulu and other forms of long-term rental of waqf properties.39 Less grudgingly or not at all, he accepted the legality of a financial transaction (muamala) involving five percent interest, on the basis of the authority of Ebu Suud Efendi, the famous Ottoman mufti, which was also backed by the Sultan himself.40 He seems not to mention the term Filastin, which of course means nothing, since he had no reason to mention it. That he knew this was a viable term is probable since his main legal source in purely quantitative terms is none other than Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, considered above. Not only is al-Ramli his most quoted authority; he is often quoted as the final and affirming source,41 and sometimes al-Husayni terms him the “final legist.”42 In one place he refers to Àbd al-Rahim al-Lutf, one of his predecessors, as the mufti of “al-Diyar al-Qudsiyya,”43 literally the land around Jerusalem. In my view this means in effect Palestine. We know that the qadi of Jerusalem was the judge of Palestine, and there is some logic in assuming that this would apply to the mufti as well, since most of the work of a mufti was tied to that of the Sharià court. If there is any doubt about this, the rest of this section on Hasan al-Husayni, will prove this point conclusively. In the first place, this is made evident by reviewing the places from which he received questions. Most of course came from Jerusalem itself, but a substantial number came from towns such as Jaffa, Gaza, Acre, Nablus, and Hebron.44 No fatwas were found from places farther afield. The identifying term which Hasan al-Husayni uses a great many times is “the country” or “our country,” either in the form of diyar or bilad, often declined in the first person plural possessive (our), which of course raises the question who are the “we” in this expression. Is it too far-fetched to suggest that in talking to people in the language of “our country” he (and they) had in mind a community of some sort and meaning? In several fatwas he says that the testimony of villagers “in our country” is not acceptable in a court of law in “our” time, because they do not follow the Sharià in several areas (e.g., not respecting the authority of the court by declining to appear before it; not honoring the dowry rights of their daughters).45 In another case a man held a salary in the custom-house of Jaffa which his children inherited after his


55

death, in accordance with the specifications of the Sultanic patent. On the death of one of the brothers his share passed to his son, but another brother claimed that sons of the deceased were ineligible to inherit as long as other brothers still lived. In his answer the mufti says that this may be what the patent document lays down, but “the customary law of our country,” (urf diyarina), states that the son inherits a wazifa from his father.46 Here not only does the mufti deal with legal cases coming from the other side of the country, unrelated administratively; he treats that area in terms of a country rather than a sanjak, the Ottoman administrative term that would be relevant here. Elsewhere he reports a case in which a man bought from another the as yet unknown crop of his land for a lump sum, “which in the customary law of our country is called daman”.47 A particularly revealing document relates to an extreme legal situation that arose when the people of Dahir al-Umar (called in the document “the people of Safed,” al-Safadiyya) began spreading their control into the southern parts of Palestine, including Jaffa, Ramla, and Gaza. It was a time of great insecurity, and people hid assets with others lest they be confiscated. A man in Jaffa at this time extorted a document from a lender saying he had paid all his debts, threatening to reveal his name to the Safadiyya as someone who hid money with others. After the episode was over this lender contested the validity of the document, claiming he had in fact been forced (makruh) to give it. The mufti concurs, saying that the special legal situation that prevailed at that time was well known to “the people of the country.”48 By saying this, the mufti in fact tells us that a term “the country” existed, and had a clear legal meaning, known not only to the mufti but also to the people with whom he communicated, who constituted a substantial crosssection of the population. In this last document we also get some notion of the extent of this “country”: from Safed in the North to Gaza in the South, thus even more extensive than the medieval Jund Filastin. Hasan al-Husayni is a good source showing that the Ottomans did not forget or fail to appreciate Jerusalem’s special place in Islam. It transpires from his book that Jerusalemites had a legally sustained right of monopoly on the wazaif (paid jobs) connected to Jerusalem endowments, “out of respect for their living next to the al-Aqsa al-Sharif.”49 Khalili also sometimes refers to the country as “this country”50 or “our country,”51 in referring to various socio-legal customs, such the mode of division of the produce between the owner of the land and a


partner who also works it.52 It is interesting that he does not refer to Ottoman administrative terms and provinces but to a country, which is a clear and valid legal term. We are reminded here of course that the qadi of Jerusalem was always considered the judge of Palestine west of the Jordan river, and if this was true of qadis, it must have been true of muftis as well, since the work of the two was closely connected.53 The source of the term diyar is still not entirely clear: does it emanate from a sociological habit of thinking in terms of a country? It would seem so. But what were the mechanisms that created such customs? While not much is presently known about this, another source helps to flesh it out a little. This is Uriel Heyd’s collection of Ottoman archival documents from sixteenth century Palestine.54 It is interesting that already in the Introduction Heyd observes that Palestine, though not forming an administrative province in itself, possessed its own unique character: it was separated by a desert from Egypt, by deep religious divisions from the Shiites to the North, and had little in common with the mainly nomad Trans-Jordan. Even in administrative terms, Heyd goes on to write, Palestine was the only country in the area (in addition to Syria of course), where the Ottoman “feudal” system was operative. This no doubt introduced an additional element of distinctiveness.55 Leaving generalities and going into detail, one thing that strongly distinguished Ottoman Palestine, according to these Ottoman documents, was its people’s intense religious inclination to make pilgrimages to its holy places. In one document we read of a unit composed of 40 timar holders who escorted the Palestine Hajj pilgrims every year; on the way back it split off from the main caravan and proceeded to escort the pilgrims to Nebi Musa, Hebron, and Jerusalem, then to take them all the way to the borders of their own sanjaks of Gaza and Nablus.56 A pattern thus emerges at this time of regular visits by inhabitants of the country to the famous holy sites of Islam in Palestine, thereby creating a sense of country, maybe even of rudimentary homeland. Many of Heyd’s documents deal with this pilgrimage and its attendant dangers, and the efforts of the government to reduce them. The government understood that need and worked to satisfy it, not only by curbing the danger of the Bedouin but also by refurbishing tombs and other holy sites, providing them with expensive fabrics and other amenities.57 Citing the Turkish traveler Evliya Chelebi, Heyd says in conclusion: “As Evliya Celebi’s account of his travels shows, the veneration of innumerable holy places in Palestine had become a widespread fashion among the Muslims of the seventeenth century.”58


57

The role of Jerusalem: Jerusalem in early Islam A major factor in Palestinian identity past and present is the status of Jerusalem as the third holiest site in Islamic theology.59 The sacredness of Jerusalem arises from the ancient interpretation of some verses of the Qur’an connected with the life of the Prophet. The famous verse (17:1) “Glory be to Him who transported his slave by night from the sacred Mosque to the Furthest (Aqsa) Mosque, whose environs we have blessed ...” is interpreted to mean that Muhammad experienced a night journey (Isra’) from Mecca to Jerusalem and from there to Heaven (Mi`raj), and was then taken back to Mecca. There is some discussion in the literature about whether the reference is necessarily to Jerusalem. Though this topic is not the expertise of this writer, I think it pertinent to comment that “blessed environs,” or “places,” or a “land” appear in the Qur’an several times, always in relation to Palestine, so I for one accept the interpretation that the reference is indeed to Jerusalem. Other scholars have reached the same conclusion by different approaches.60 If Jerusalem is mentioned in the Qur’an then Jerusalem is necessarily sacred, and this is how Muslims throughout the ages have understood it. That they saw it in this light from very early on is attested by a relatively reliable Hadith: “You shall only set out for three mosques, this my mosque, the mosque of Medina, and the mosque of Jerusalem.”61 If the interpretation of Qur’an 17:1 is one major battleground of interpretation, another concerns the status of Jerusalem in the early centuries of Islam. Why, for example, was the Aqsa Mosque built? Emmanuel Sivan has taken Muslim tardiness in reacting to the Crusades to mean that Jerusalem at that early time was not particularly important to Muslims. He supports this argument by an old claim that the Aqsa Mosque was built to prevent people from going on pilgrimage (to Mecca), given that Mecca was ruled by a rebel against the Ummayads of Damascus. But this argument is highly problematic. While it may reflect a real situation, it is certainly insufficient. It seems untenable that a ruler of the empire invented such an interpretation of the Qur’an. More bluntly, it seems to me somewhat dubious that a ruler in seventh-century Syria or Palestine would have had the audacity to name a mosque after a term appearing in the Qur’an without wide consensus among scholars and ordinary people that such an act was “right,” theologically speaking. As to the importance of Jerusalem in the pre-Crusade period in general, the overwhelming weight of the evidence seems to go against the suggestion that was comparatively insignificant. In religious terms


it was extremely important, being a major center of pilgrimage, attracting a large number of pilgrims as an alternative to Mecca, not for political purposes but simply because they could not afford the long journey. Many of the rites they performed in Jerusalem were akin to, even imitations of, true Hajj rites.62

The Crusades The Crusades were large-scale invasions of the Middle East by Western armies, starting in 1096 and ending in 1291 with their final expulsion.63 They were religious wars, triggered by the Byzantines’ call to the Pope for help against the rising tide of Turkish tribes in Anatolia. The Pope accepted the call, but diverted the initiative to the conquest of Jerusalem, where the Holy Sepulcher, Jesus’ tomb, was situated. The First Crusade began a few years after the death of the great Seljuk Sultan Malikshah, followed in the same year by the death of the famous vezir Nizam alMulk. With the departure of these renowned leaders the Islamic empire remained a shadow of its former self, with cities everywhere becoming independent principalities running their own affairs. There was not much of a Muslim army and no unified political decision-making center. Under such conditions it was not particularly difficult for the Crusaders to overrun the region, culminating in the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099. A number of principalities were established, chief among which was the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The chief characteristic of the process of conquest was its ferocity, massacres being perpetrated in several places, particularly Jerusalem. The sources diverge widely concerning the numbers slain but they were undoubtedly very large. Bodies were mutilated, and incinerated to extract gold coins from their bowels; other atrocities were also committed. For example, the sources engage in a lively discussion about the depth of the pools of blood pouring from the slain bodies.64 This graphic description is important, to my mind, because it affected the durability and the strength of memory generated by these events, and the accompanying long-term paranoid fears – matters more and more expunged today from the records by Western scholars for obvious political reasons. But Muslim paranoia in this case is based on some reality. The Muslim reaction to the First Crusade was slow to come. As Emmanuel Sivan has succinctly shown, at first no one seemed to care about Jerusalem.65 Could it be that it was not considered sacred at all? Unlikely. More probably, people were in a state of shock, as the Palestinians were after 1948 and 1967. They could not believe that all


59

this was really happening to them. They needed time to pull themselves together. Another way to look at it is to say that the holiness of Jerusalem became an active force only as it was challenged by others’ sense of sacredness. But this reaction did arrive, as it inevitably had to, because the Crusaders constituted a tiny foreign elite sitting atop a subject, utterly despised population. Resistance seems to have started about twenty years after the conquest, in the region of Aleppo, where a local army chief by the name of Balak died in a skirmish with Crusader forces from Antioch. Balak was one of the first Muslims to have the epithet mujahid (Holy-War warrior) inscribed on his grave.66 It was left to Zengi, ruler of Mosul, to become the first Muslim leader to score a real success against the Crusaders. In 1144 he succeeded in capturing Edessa, the eastern Crusading principality, thereby sparking the Second Crusade. Zengi was assassinated in 1146, and his son Nur al-Din succeeded him. Nur al-Din had been converted to the jihad from early on, but there was not much that he could do given that he initially controlled only the areas of Mosul and Aleppo. He certainly devoted most of his time and energy to the idea of jihad, starting a propaganda campaign designed to put pressure on other rulers in the area to join forces with him. But he made no progress beyond annexing Damascus to his kingdom. Egypt remained independent and indifferent, and as long as this was the case the Crusader principalities were destined to remain firmly entrenched. But the situation began to change in the 1160s. First came a somewhat foolhardy attempt by the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to conquer Egypt. Fatimid Egypt, a dissident Shiite state of dubious legality in Nur al-Din’s eyes, was nevertheless a Muslim power, and Nur alDin ventured there more than he did farther to the North: on a number of occasions in the 1160s he sent a large contingent of his army to help the Fatimids against the Crusaders, and this force was on the whole successful; in the process it managed to occupy Egypt from within. The man behind this achievement was the Kurdish general Shirkuh, who died of natural causes three months after the takeover. In control of the Egyptian situation remained his young nephew and protégé Salah al-Din (Saladin), who on Nur al-Din’s orders “canceled the Shiite Khutba” [Friday Sermon] (1169) thereby annexing Egypt to Syria and ending Fatimid rule. The annexation was merely nominal, however, since Nur al-Din had no way of enforcing it. For his part Salah al-Din felt obliged to keep up appearances of loyalty for the rest of Nur al-Din’s life, which came to

60


an end in 1174. Salah al-Din thereupon put forward a claim to be the legitimate successor of the deceased ruler. He was backed by the citizenry of Damascus, who made Saladin the ruler of Egypt and of Syria, at least. He certainly inherited from Nur al-Din the jihad propaganda machine and the obsession with retaking Jerusalem and the rest of the Mediterranean coast. He engaged the Crusader forces in minor clashes, but it was only in 1186 that he was able to annex Mosul and its region. This furnished him with enough forces to try something bigger. At the beginning of 1187 he entered the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem south of Tiberias, crossing the enemy border for the first time. He led a large army, having in mind a large-scale confrontation, not a skirmish as some claim. Yet he probably did not anticipate what was shortly to become the great news of the twelfth century: the war party in the Crusader councils prevailed, and the entire Frankish army was committed to battle, the famous battle of Hattin (July 1187), in the worst possible tactical way. The outcome was a complete rout, with the entire Latin leadership falling into the hands of Saladin. Devoid of a real defending army, the rest of the country fell into Muslim hands without much difficulty, culminating in the recapture of Jerusalem in October 1187. But the Crusading venture was destined to last for another century. Saladin was unable to take coastal fortresses such as Tyre and Acre, which thus became landing stages for the Third Crusade that started to take shape soon after the news of the fall of Jerusalem reached Europe. This time both sides were wise enough to avoid committing their main forces to battle, and the outcome was a stalemate. Richard the Lionhearted, leader of this Crusade, was able to capture Acre (which became the capital of the later Crusader state), and won a minor battle at Arsuf, but perceived the danger of laying siege to Jerusalem and preferred to leave it at that, returning to Europe in 1192. Saladin himself died in 1193 in Damascus. His successors, the Ayyubids, were not military heroes and did not wish to be seen as such, and they left the Crusader principalities in peace, having to manage quarrels inside the ruling family itself. In these circumstances another Crusade, led by the German emperor, was able to retake Jerusalem by diplomatic means in 1229. Such was the city’s situation until it was recaptured for the last time in 1244 by a band of marauding soldiers from the Iranian zone. It was finally left to the Mamluks, firm and undisputed rulers of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent after 1250, to marshal the superior force that was beyond the reach of the Crusader principalities. It was also crucial that their destiny interested western Europe less and less, so


61

there was no flood of volunteers as in the past. The Mamluks were able to capture one fortress after another, until by 1291 not one was left. With this the main events connected with the Crusader phenomenon come to an end. But we should beware of making the mistake of regarding 1291 as the definite end of the Crusades. Various European political and intellectual actors, from Popes to philosophers, kept calling for a renewal of the Crusades,67 and as we shall see below the people of the Middle East remained terrified for centuries at the prospect of a new crusade.

Memory and commemoration of the Crusades Social memory is one of the most popular topics in social history today. But memory is of course highly problematic, and most memory studies in recent years do not deal with actual memory but with how the people of the present invent memory (in fact, invent the past), for their own present-day purposes.68 While this sort of memory is interesting and important, we must also go back to the question of real memory and real history: did anything of it exist in real terms, and if it did, what is the historical significance of such memory? In Middle Eastern studies this topic has been broached in the past particularly in relation to the Crusades. As a major victory of the Middle East over the Christian West, it is evident that the Crusades were used extensively in the twentieth century to fight Zionism, and this topic is dealt with in Chapter 6. Here I am concerned with the actual historical issue of the memory of the Crusades. On the whole historians widely concur that soon after 1291 (the end of the original Crusades) the whole matter was expunged from Muslim memory, and was reinvented for political purposes in the latenineteenth century. Studies claiming this are now piling up so high that a full-length book would be called for to deal with them, but here we will be much briefer. A well-known historian who has claimed this for a long time is Bernard Lewis.69 A recent study by a notable historian of the Crusades, Jonathan Riley-Smith, declares that “One often reads that Muslims have inherited from their medieval ancestors bitter memories of the violence of the crusaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the end of the nineteenth century Muslims had not shown much interest in the crusades.” Elsewhere in the article he constructs a theory that it was only the theatrical behavior of the German Kaiser at the end of the nineteenth century that alerted Muslims to the whole affair.70 Even with respect to the supposed reinvention of the Crusades in the nineteenth century this chronology


is wrong. The first modern Muslim mention of the Crusades appears in the first volume of Ahmed Jevdet’s history of the Ottoman Empire, published in the mid-1850s.71 The section is not long, but there is a fully conscious treatment of the phenomenon including the term ehl-i Salib (Crusaders). I shall soon show that the more general statement is also wrong. This theme of forgetfulness seems to be a kind of intellectual revenge by Western historians on Islam – we lost the Crusades but at least kept the consciousness of them all the while; in a way it energized our culture, while you forgot all about them, so in a way they never really existed for you. There are in fact few such empty and unfounded myths as this in any area of study known to this writer. Muslims are even mocked for not knowing the term crusade in real time, while we know today that the term was only invented long after the end of the “Crusades.”72 As to the very notion of forgetfulness, it is entirely wrong, and unjustifiably so, since the evidence to the contrary has been on the shelves of famous libraries for the better part of two centuries. It cannot be explained in any other way than an early and extreme case of Orientalism, of the type so ably derided by Said. The Crusades could not have been forgotten soon after 1291 because they did not really end in 1291. Several later attempts were made to invade Egypt, so the Egyptians, at least, had nothing to be forgetful about; Egyptian historians of the Mamluk era are indeed known to have spoken about the Crusades a great deal.73 Mamluk practical policy also reflected that awareness: we know for a fact that the government and the population continued to be fully aware that Christian Europe had not abandoned the idea of Crusading and the intention of renewing the invasions at the appropriate time. This awareness was embodied in an intensive drive to erect all kinds of religious structures designed to accommodate pilgrims and visitors to the Holy City. Buildings such as sufi lodges and other types of hospices were supported by large public endowments so that a visitor could stay in Jerusalem free of charge for quite some time.74 Crusading continued in another context too, namely the early Christian wars against the Ottomans. These were mostly conducted under the banner of a crusade and were endorsed and encouraged by the Popes. As for the people of the Levant themselves, the first evidence that the Crusades were not forgotten is the aforementioned book by Mujir alDin al-Hanbali al-Ulaymi, on the history of Jerusalem and Hebron, written in the 1490s. Mujir al-Din kills two birds with one stone: being


63

a Jerusalemite historian, he shows both that the people of Palestine had not forgotten the Crusades and that Muslim historiography of that topic started well before the late-nineteenth century, as the common argument goes. The Crusades in his book are not just mentioned in passing; they are dealt with extensively over more than a hundred pages, a good proportion of this two-volume book. The importance of this point for the argument of this study cannot be overstated. For while we appear to be able to say little on the involvement of Palestinians (emotionally or practically) in the Crusades at the time, proof of the communal recollection two and half centuries later is an important indication of such collective group feeling, directed against an outer threat and a menacing “other.” Mujir al-Din’s account of the Crusades accordingly deserves a close look. It is a history with one undisputed hero and that is Salah al-Din, thus disproving another well-known contention found in the literature, namely that past generations were more versed in the deeds of Nur alDin rather than in those of Salah al-Din. Mujir al-Din would have been shocked to hear this. He narrates briefly the early history of the Crusades, emphasizing the horrors, the massacres, the anguish of the few survivors, and the initial indifference of the authorities to their plight. But when he goes on to describe the anti-Crusade he clearly chooses what to include and what to leave out. Zengi, initiator of the anti-Crusade, is barely mentioned. Even Nur al-Din, real founder of the jihad movement to liberate Jerusalem, and a ruler who devoted his energies and resources largely to this purpose, is disposed of offhand, with no mention at all of his deeds, only of his connection to Salah al-Din. All the attention is focused on Salah al-Din, including extensive treatment of his adventures in Egypt, where he was sent in the 1160s together with his uncle Shirkuh, to save it from being overrun by the Crusaders. Of course, there is detailed treatment of Salah al-Din’s rise to power, and even more detailed treatment of his heroic deeds at the battle of Hattin, the conquest of Jerusalem, and the later acts of the conqueror. Of subsequent events, we get an extensive description of the Ayyubids, though only in their relation to Jerusalem. Not much is said of Damascus or Cairo. Then we are given an account of fresh efforts by the Franks to take Jerusalem, a description of the wrangling over the destruction of the city’s walls in 1219 (an effort to prevent another massacre), the ceding of the city to the German emperor in 1229 and the final reconquest in 1244. With this event Mujir al-Din’s account of the Crusades breaks off. There are no more episodes concerning Jerusalem, so there is no further reason to deal with the Crusades, as he himself states. Yet his

64


earlier account is Salah al-Din-centered no less than Jerusalem-centered, so this narrative is an unquestioned celebration of the deeds and exploits of Salah al-Din. Mujir al-Din does not merely tell the story of past events. He shows how those events were living facts of his own day (though we should not forget that his very discourse on the Crusades is a late-fifteenthcentury fact, not a twelfth-century one). A beautiful tale from his own time is his story of the endowment of the tomb of Ali b. Àlil, a famous sheikh from the time of the Crusades, situated near the village of Arsuf, site of the famous battle of Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted in 1192. Mujir al-Din says that in “our” time the manager, a sheikh from Jaljulyya, refurbished the tomb and the entire complex, including a tower facing West where he stored weapons to be used in a Holy War against the Europeans, just in case.75 From about the same time we have information, recently discovered, that at least part of the motivation for the huge Ottoman undertaking of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem in 1538–41 was also connected to a fear of a new crusade. Intelligence gathered in 1537 warned of pirates approaching the Palestinian coast. Immediately an order was given to start repairing the city defenses.76 From that time on the Fertile Crescent was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, a power sometimes depicted as a foreign occupier holding the region in a colonialist fashion. This is a total confusion. The state was Ottoman, not Turkish, and classical Arabic culture was its true high culture, loved and honored by all members of the Ottoman elite. The point of this brief reminder is to allow us to realize that the intellectual world of the Ottoman-Turkish elite was similar, if not identical to, that of the Arab elite. It is relevant therefore that Turkish materials exhibit the same matter-of-fact familiarity with the Crusades as Arab documentation. An example is a Turkish state archive document from the sixteenth century, dealing with the rights of Jews in building synagogues. The qadi of Jerusalem is directed to bear in mind that while “the conquest of Umar” (al-fath al-Umari) was a benign one (sulhan), the conquest by Salah al-Din (al-fath al-Salahi) is considered a forceful one (ànwatan), hence allowing fewer rights of building.77 This sounds like a piece of information that the writer had at his fingertips, not a finding of research. Even clearer is the case of another interesting source, Evliya Chelebi’s journey in Palestine in the seventeenth century. Every place Evliya visited which had any Crusader history attached to it is not passed over in silence. A bizarre but useful point is that the stories are often legendary – Acre was taken through a miracle wrought


65

by an Aleppine sheikh; dates are always left blank; the chronology is completely confused.78 Only the basic facts remain true to history. Quite clearly, Evliya could not have had any history book before his eyes while writing; he wrote from popular memory, which preserved the recollection of these enormous events. A slightly later episode showing that the memory of the Crusades was alive and well is from 1652.79 The French traveler Jean Doubdan was in Jerusalem that year, and among other things he reports repairs undertaken in the basement of the Franciscan convent. In the course of the work unknown rooms and tunnels were exposed. The population of Jerusalem became excited, believing these were tunnels leading outside the city, by which a new crusade was making its way in. It ended in riots directed against the convent led by pilgrims returning from Nebi Musa. A more symbolic coincidence than this could not be imagined. Nebi Musa pilgrims, and anyway rioters in Jerusalem, could not be members of the elite; they were necessarily of the lower classes. They did not read books and those few who went to school certainly did not study history; yet they were vividly aware of the Crusades, enough to take to the streets and risk their lives confronting the Ottoman soldiers who defended the convent. This is striking, and raises the question of how it came about. What was the mechanism by which ordinary Muslims in Jerusalem could remember the Crusades? We shall deal with this question later on. The same fear of Crusaders underlay the endowment deed of Muhammad Khalili, Jerusalem’s Shafiì mufti in the eighteenth century, who described the Christian convents as the “enemy,” and saw the danger in their massive purchases of Muslim-owned properties. These strong words are contained in an endowment he established in the early-eighteenth century.80 It refers to houses and gardens in Jerusalem and Hebron, for the benefit of a large collection of books. In the section of the document relating to the preservation of the property the founder stresses specifically that what is on his mind in founding this endowment is the threat posed to Jerusalem by the Franks. Lack of preservation of these assets will play into the hands of those unbelievers, he observes, for Bayt al-Maqdis is the center of their interest and religiosity. Such a place should be shored up on all sides by strong buildings and fortresses, to intimidate them and nip their desires in the bud. He adds that these matters were in order in the past, but recently there has been a deterioration. A noteworthy additional asset to be financed from the proceeds of this endowment is “two upper floors,” which the founder had formerly built as an

66


addition to the main Nebi Musa complex, a site – as we show later in this chapter – wholly devoted to commemorating the Crusades.81 This practicing mufti enlisted the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the country in the defense of their Islamic holy sites; the document thus constitutes an excellent proof that the Crusades created in Palestine a meaningful community of fear and commemoration of these past events. Rashid Khalidi traces a petition of 1701 from a group of Jerusalem notables to the Sultan, requesting that he rescind permission granted to a French consul to take up residence in Jerusalem, “in this holy land” as the document calls it, for fear of things that had already happened in the past.82 Evidently they were referring to the Crusades. Where did they learn this history? We do not know. But we do know that they remembered it. Clearly, the study of how societies remember is in its infancy and it cannot provide a theoretical answer. We shall not be able to push it much farther here, besides showing that this saga of historical remembering goes on and on. The next episode showing that the Crusades were remembered as if they had set out the day before occurred during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. A short time after Napoleon landed in Egypt in 1798 the Ottoman governor of Damascus sent the notables of Jerusalem word of what had happened and reminded them that, as everybody knew, Jerusalem and its environs were the real and final target of those infidels.83 This was well before Bonaparte actually invaded Palestine the following year, and before he captured Cairo. The subsequent extensive correspondence between Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Cairo leaves the reader in no doubt that the Muslims considered this invasion a new chapter in the Crusading movement, and the logic of this approach is hard to dispute. It is also difficult to avoid the strong feeling that they did not have to thumb through thick history books to find out what this invasion meant. They were naturally fully aware of this event and its meaning. Sure enough, large sums of money were spent that summer on refurbishing the fortifications of Jerusalem.84 An important source for the topic at hand is Consul James Finn’s memoirs from Jerusalem in the 1850s and early 1860s.85 Finn relates, for example, an event that took place in 1855. The Duke of Brabant was due to visit the city. His arrival time was supposed to be Friday morning, but the visiting party was delayed and reached the city by noon – only to find the gates closed. They learned that according to a custom current in Jerusalem since the Crusades the city gates had to be closed during the Friday prayer lest another Frankish assault be launched! A glance at


67

the history books indeed reveals that the occupation of Jerusalem in 1099 took place on a Friday, at noon. True, it followed a siege lasting months, but popular memory, which captured and preserved the event rather nicely, nevertheless compressed it into an underhand attack. In any event, the significance of this story is that the gate-closing was nothing less than a commemoration ceremony. The people of Jerusalem reminded themselves of the crusades every Friday by shutting the city gates.86 Elsewhere Finn tells us that the people of Jerusalem – “our native neighbours” – are fully aware of the great encounters of early Islam in Palestine, like the battle of Yarmuk or the battle of Hattin, which they know better than the battles involving Napoleon. Again, the memory of the Crusades was alive.87 A further episode showing how the Crusades were remembered took place in 1911, when a Syrian and a Palestinian member of the Ottoman parliament embarked on an anti-government speech-making campaign intended to prevent Zionist land buyers from purchasing the area of Fule, in the valley of Esdraelon, with the argument that in that area lay a Crusader castle that had played a certain role in the jihad of Salah al-Din.88 It seems obvious then that the memory of the Crusades lived on in Palestine since the Middle Ages. The reason is not far to seek: the Crusades constituted a mortal danger for the local community, and must have been a personal trauma for every individual living in the country at that time. Since no formal schooling in history existed between 1291 and the nineteenth-century Ottoman reforms, the period was probably remembered through being a perennial topic of conversation. No record of this survives, but something of that nature must certainly have kept the memory of the Crusades alive through the centuries. Our last demonstration of memory of the Crusades in Palestine is the ceremony in which the conquering British commander, General Allenby, delivered a speech, actually read out by one of his aides. The story goes that the last sentence of this speech was, more or less, to the effect that with this victory by the British Army, the Crusades had come to an end. The gist of the story is that on hearing this sentence the mufti of Jerusalem seized the mayor by the sleeve, and both left in disgust.89 There is a widespread claim that this story is a fabrication, nor have I myself seen it in original documents. The reason I am nevertheless not ready to write it off is that this at least is evident and provable: on many occasions during the Mandate period various Palestinian leaders and

68


spokesmen introduced it as known fact. Politically and sociologically the story should be taken as true, that is, the Palestinians entered the Mandate period haunted by the specter of a new crusade, of which they had become accustomed to be extremely wary (see further in Chapter 6). An interesting and important question is precisely by what means were the Crusades remembered? We possess no clear-cut information on this. One possible way was through folktales. Studies on Arab folktales collected in countries such as Egypt in modern times mention the Crusades, among other layers of history.90 But the commemoration of the Crusades in these stories, though undisputable, is somewhat vague, and falls short of accounts of the erection of defensive fortresses along the coast. It must have been a matter of popular knowledge passed from one generation to the next in the process of socialization. But there were also commemorative rites. The Nebi Musa pilgrimage and the closure of the gates of Jerusalem every Friday are of course excellent examples. An important final point on this subject is that not only was a vivid memory of the Franks retained but also a serious measure of animosity towards them. This animosity seems to run counter to an argument that will be put forward in several places in this book, namely that the Palestinians at the time of the Mandate admired the British empire and were hard pressed to bring themselves to hate it badly enough to conduct an efficient struggle against it. But I do not think that a real contradiction exists between these two notions. First, it was mainly France that was associated with Crusader history and contemporary threats and menacing political demands. Second, there was the new political influence of the West, which in the British case in particular was tied to the spread of the ideal of liberalism and fair government.91

The place of Jerusalem after the Crusades There is a widespread belief that the Ottomans neglected Jerusalem and may even have forgotten all about its sanctity. This is far from being the case. It is true that their capital city was a great distance away – a tremendous distance in fact in the conditions prevailing between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It is also true, meaningful, and important that unlike the limited Mamluk empire, the Ottoman empire stretched over the Balkan peninsula before it even came to possess the Arab lands, so that a tiny and remote place like Jerusalem necessarily suffered. An additional factor was the fact that Jerusalem was small in terms of demography and economy. The Ottoman administration – far more rational and logical than its popular or even scholarly image


69

would allow – necessarily reflected city sizes in determining provinces. Jerusalem was bound to suffer from all the above, but even with these limitations it was far from a negligible place. We remember the large investment of money and thoughtful energy that went into the building of the city walls in 1538–41. This was a major undertaking that can still be admired today, and it represents a serious level of governmental (probably also civilizational) interest. The Ottomans also carried out large-scale repairs in the structure of the Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, repairs repeated several times in the following four centuries. A fine example of special social and state treatment of Jerusalem in Ottoman times is the custom, mentioned earlier, which was backed by “old Sultanic decrees”, to reserve wazaif (paid jobs) in all religious endowments in the city for relatives of deceased job holders “out of respect for those who live in the shadow of the Aqsa Mosque and out of a desire to protect them against the intervention of non-Jerusalemites.”92 An important aspect showing that Jerusalem was always revered by the Ottoman rulers is the history of the frequent repairs carried out to the famous religious buildings of the city, a topic of research by St. Laurent and Riedlmayer. They show that such repairs and reconstructions were often expensive and elaborate, involving investment by the central government and the draft of materials and artisans from the Black Sea area as well as the capital. Special carts were built in government facilities in Istanbul and assembled in Jaffa to carry the materials to Jerusalem. All this is quite impressive in terms of proof of the Ottomans’ intense interest in Jerusalem.93

The Fadail (Praise) literature Since the time of the Crusades in the eleventh century, some clearer signs appear of identification between the people living in Palestine and the land itself. A literary genre that first appeared in the Middle East was the literature in praise of various places (fadail in Arabic). This genre was the outcome of incipient local patriotism, which could naturally work best at this deeply religious time by indicating (or inventing) the importance of the place in Islamic general history. After the occupation of Palestine by the First Crusade in 1099, with the enormous calamities and anguish inflicted on the people living in the country, it is only natural that Jerusalem and Palestine figured increasingly in this literature. Clearly, Jerusalem and Palestine presented much more to work on than most other places in Islam: early on Jerusalem was considered the third holiest shrine of Islam, and Palestine itself was considered a Holy Land.


After the Crusades, Jerusalem and Palestine increasingly figure in Praise literature, showing that popular emotions about Jerusalem were strong and lively. Numerous collections of Praise literature appeared in the fourteenth century, no doubt celebrating the expulsion of the Crusaders a short while before. It is useful to keep in mind that the material contained in these books was not invented at this time but harks back to the first century of Islamic history.94 The importance of these collections is the real-time sociological role which they played. A significant publication of Praise literature on Jerusalem is by Charles Matthews, entitled “Palestine – Muhammedan Holy Land.”95 This is an edition of two fadail books from the fourteenth century, one on Hebron and the other on Jerusalem. The book on Jerusalem is mainly of interest here, among other things since it shows the strong tendency of people at that time to slip imperceptibly from the Holy City to the Holy Land. The text, for example, speaks of “the land of Jerusalem.”96 Such a slide is observable from the very beginning of the genre. The earliest Praise Literature concerning Jerusalem is that of Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Wasiti, who lived in Jerusalem in the tenth century. A saying of the Prophet cited by this writer, which conveys clearly how the holy shrine, the city of Jerusalem, and Palestine the country formed concentric circles of sacredness, and which resonates in the minds of Palestinians to this very day, declares: the holiest country is Syria (al-Sham), the holiest part of Syria is Palestine; the holiest spot in Palestine is Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), and the holiest place in Jerusalem is the Mount, and the holiest place in the Mount is the Mosque-[area], and the holiest point in the Mosque-area is the rock.97 Another fourteenth-century fadail book that displays this tendency is by Shihab al-Din Abu Mahmud al-Maqdisi, who among other things mentions the famous verse about Jerusalem with the addendum “alladhi barakna hawlahu,” interpreting this sentence to mean Palestine.98 While the fourteenth century was a period when fadail books and the fadail phenomenon reached a climax, more recent studies have shown that the stream of fadail al-Quds continued to flow throughout the Ottoman era, starting to decline probably only with the nineteenth century.99 This certainly disproves the notion that the place of Jerusalem was seriously eroded in public view in Palestine and its environs. A notable fadail collection is Mujir al-Din’s book itself, which, according to one scholar, was written specifically to celebrate the role of Jerusalem in Islam. It is also pertinent to remark that another important aspect of Mujir al-Din’s is his distinct animosity, if not


71

vehemence toward non-Muslims in general and Christians in particular. This often found expression in a quite narrow mode of interpretation of the Islamic legal sources to limit as far as possible the possibility of Christians to build or renovate buildings in Jerusalem.100 Would it be too far-fetched to claim that this approach had something to do with the trauma of the Crusades?

The Nebi Musa pilgrimage and festival: commemorating the Crusades and defending Jerusalem A major factor that must be introduced into the picture of a meaningful Palestinian community before the modern era is the Nebi Musa festival, one of the central elements in Palestinian Islam in the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, one that justifies to some extent the claim that something like Palestinian Islam did in fact exist. Outwardly, of course, this statement is a contradiction in terms, since Islam prides itself on being universal to all believers. But in reality things were more complicated. The Nebi Musa Festival was a popular pilgrimage to the tomb of Moses, a place identified off the road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho. For a week before the Christian Easter Muslims from all corners of Palestine would gather in Jerusalem and move in a procession leading down to the site of the grave, where they would celebrate, circumcise their sons and perform religious ceremonies, both orthodox and Sufi. There is no hard evidence on the historical origins of the pilgrimage, but there seems little reason to dispute the consensus that it goes back to the time of the Crusades. The whole situation cries out for an antiCrusade interpretation: the most striking element of the ceremonies connected with this pilgrimage is the date on which it took place: unlike all other Muslim holidays, which, of course, obey the Islamic calendar, this one followed the Christian calendar, and started exactly one week before Easter, when Jerusalem was filled (indeed overrun) with Christian pilgrims, going in procession down from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea to perform ceremonies in the River Jordan. It would be odd indeed if this Muslim festival did not have an anti-Christian point to make. It is reasonable to suppose that it was instituted by Salah al-Din after the re-conquest of Jerusalem in 1187. From time immemorial Jerusalem was flooded at this time by Christian pilgrims from many countries, who, in the eyes of Muslims at least, would take over the city. It is not at all difficult to suppose that after the re-conquest Muslims would wish to balance this “conquest” with one of their own, and what better way to do this than by celebrating a similar holiday? The fact that this holiday


is celebrated exactly one week before Easter would seem to demonstrate this point conclusively. This of course in no way detracts from the fact that by instituting this popular anti-Crusade celebration the Palestinians to all intents and purposes instituted a “national” holiday. The first writer to describe the festival is Mujir al-Din, writing in the late-fifteenth century. Mujir al-Din gives the main known details: that the premises were built by Baybars and that repairs were done at later dates. He also describes the main contours of the celebrations at the site.101 Joseph Sadan’s valuable studies on the competition between Jerusalem and Damascus over the location of Moses’ tomb, while not directly concerned with the Nebi Musa festival, are nevertheless extremely relevant to it.102 Sadan seems entirely justified in assuming that this was in reality a competition between Damascus and Jerusalem per se, rather than just over the location of tombs. In addition, these studies add an important chapter to the fadail al-Quds literature. Until recently it was believed that in the post-Crusade period, particularly the fourteenth century, fadail literature reached its zenith; but Sadan shows that the high point actually came much later, under the Ottomans, probably in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is a crucial point in proving that the memory, real rather than invented, or even imagined, of the events connected with the Crusades and the Holy Land was still very much alive five or six centuries later and did not fade away soon after the fourteenth century. Since Jerusalem was under no actual danger at this time, Sadan observes correctly that all this was much more than just a memory of the Crusades. It was also a matter of local, regional, patriotism: Jerusalem, administratively subordinate to Damascus, is seen as taking its revenge by waging a kind of culture war against Damascus on the issue of which region is “better.” Obviously, not just the city was implicated in this war but an undefined area surrounding it. Sadan observes that in the end Jerusalem came out on top: the majority of fadail and travelers’ books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came to recognize that Moses’s tomb near Jericho was the true one. Particularly sensitive was the case of the Nablus sub-province, administratively under Damascus but within the orbit of the area participating in the yearly pilgrimage to Nebi Musa. Sadan shows that writers from Nablus tended to side with Jerusalem in later centuries. Thus, this competition constitutes a nice case indicating an unquestioned identity extant in an undefined area around Jerusalem. It might well have been the region from which pilgrims were drawn to the Nebi Musa pilgrimage. This extended from Hebron in the South to Nablus and Jenin in the North, in other words more or less the medieval Jund Filastin.


73

Again, the tomb of Moses is much more than just a tomb. At least in the case of Jericho the pilgrimage connected with it was the crucial point. In effect the pilgrimage carried the symbolic meaning of the region between Jerusalem and the tomb, as well as the area between the pilgrim’s home, Jerusalem and the tomb. That is, the tomb signified an area; and since that area was coterminous with Jund Filastin, or Palestine, the fadail literature of the Ottoman period is an expression of local patriotism, not in the narrow sense of the town or village, but in the wider sense of the country. An important angle on the topic of Nebi Musa is a study by Tamari on the architecture of the complex.103 He shows that the building was repaired and modified throughout the Ottoman period. More specifically, in 1730, 1819, and 1885 (or thereabouts) major repairs and extensions were made. The additions included a new outer wall and an additional lodging area. This information provides us with some insights for which we do not have written documentation: the pilgrimage not only existed in Ottoman times but actually expanded in number of participants and social importance. To the extent that the pilgrimage expressed country-wide identity, as we have learned from Sadan’s studies, Tamari’s work seems to suggest that this identity was in a process of growth. An extremely important, though partial, picture of the workings of the Nebi Musa pilgrimage in the middle of the nineteenth century is given by Consul Finn. The most interesting aspect of his description is the religious zeal and devotion characterizing the pilgrims taking part. This zeal was clearly anti-Christian, but since there were no obvious signs of all-year hatred against the local Christians, there is hardly any doubt that this was an anti-European manifestation, and anti-European in the context of the memory of the Crusades.104 The best source on the details of the Nebi Musa pilgrimage in late Ottoman times is a detailed description by David Yellin, a Jewish resident of Jerusalem and an exceptionally sensitive (and friendly) reporter on local life, for whom the religious enthusiasm of members of another religion did not automatically earn the appellation of “fanaticism.”105 In Yellin’s description the pilgrimage started in the Haram, with the unfurling of the various flags, about thirty of them, all green and embroidered with Qur’anic verses in gold. In attendance was the mufti, who played the chief role, as well as an Ottoman military band and the main army commanders as well as the Ottoman governor. This immediately transformed the occasion from a folkloristic pilgrimage to an official event. Then the procession set off in the direction of Jericho. On


leaving Lions’ Gate, Yellin observed thousands upon thousands of people, including a large number of women, thronging the hills, buildings, and walls all around, in a kind of large-scale amphitheatre, all cheerfully watching an array of mock “fights” involving breathtaking horsemanship and swordplay. Were these symbolic reconstructions of Crusader encounters? This is my reading of these celebrations, although of course no tangible proof is available. Another interesting piece of information in Yellin is the relationship between city and countryside during the “season.” According to Yellin, each peasant family coming to celebrate the pilgrimage had a family in town sponsoring it. The very first moment of encounter was a celebration, unquestionably symbolic: the peasant family would send an envoy to report that the family was on its way. Then the urban family, probably a`yan, would send out a delegation to accompany the peasant family. The full encounter would then be celebrated by a beating of drums, music, and mock fights, involving horses and swords. The symbolism behind these ceremonial encounters is not far to find. The Nebi Musa pilgrimage was a time for the celebration of unity among the classes, between the a`yan leadership and its followers, an affirmation of the social order; it was a proto-national holiday with politics left out – or perhaps not entirely left out. Certainly the mock fights symbolized a war against enemies of Islam. It stands to reason that they related to the Crusades. Small wonder then that during the Mandate the pilgrimage was to become the single most important annual event for nationalist excitement and mobilization. Its meaning was already built-in and ready-made in the Ottoman period. A major source for the history of this pilgrimage is the book by the amateur Palestinian ethnographer Tewfik Canaan, who compiled materials on saints and saints’ sanctuaries in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century.106 He describes Nebi Musa in great detail, the description being more or less akin to that of Yellin. But a further point of some importance is the description of the popular activity on the site, including in the main Sufi ceremonies, circumcision rites, and popular entertainments that included in the first place many makeshift coffee houses and in the second place congregations of families in the evenings around campfires. In these two venues the main activity would be listening to folk stories. And again, the extant studies show that such stories would necessarily include tales of the Crusades.107 The question about Nebi Musa is this: is there a proof that those pilgrims who went there knew for a fact that they were commemorating the Crusades? So far there is no proof-positive of this, although it is hard


75

to believe that all those thousands who performed the formalized rituals surrounding the Haram area, and who later encountered the Christians flocking to Jerusalem at the same time, did not ponder the meaning of all this. Another piece of evidence approaching a proof is the inscription in Nebi Musa itself, commemorating the first builder, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars (one of the major Mamluk Sultans to dismantle the last Crusading principalities in Syria). The inscription says in part: “Ordered the building of this sacred place over the tomb of Moses ... the Sultan of Islam and the Muslims, master of the kings and sultans, conqueror of the cities, annihilator of the Franks and the Mongols, who wrests castles from the hands of unbelievers ...” So certainly every pilgrim who went to Nebi Musa could get an idea of what this place was about. The problem is that inscriptions are notoriously difficult to read, even by the initiated. It is important therefore that a recent study of the inscription found it appropriate to comment that while Muslim inscriptions are usually difficult to decipher, this one was different: “It is placed relatively low, is accessible to the eye, and the style of writing does not pose much of a problem. Here, at least, the inscription was intended to be read, and the visitor to the Maqam had the opportunity to peruse its contents ...”108

Palestine and the Palestinians on the eve of the Great War There are sufficient indications that on the eve of the Great War the concept and idea of Palestine was well entrenched in the minds of the Arabs of Palestine, though this did not prevent many of them from working for Arabism. As we saw above, they failed to find any discrepancy between the two. But in this section we are dealing specifically with the Palestinian component, and as the press of the period shows quite clearly, their most basic identity was simply Palestinian. An example of this is the founding meeting, in 1910, of a society that took it upon itself to establish schools and advance education in “this motherland” (hadha al-watan). Reported as present were a number of Jerusalemite writers, headed by Khalil al-Sakakini, entitled by the paper as adib Falastin, the man of letters of Palestine.109 In the same issue there is another relevant article. In this one, entitled “The Writers of Palestine”, the writer commends an Egyptian author for mentioning that the writers of literature in Palestine at that time were no fewer in number than in other Arab countries. He is unhappy, though, that the Egyptian author does not mention people by name. The tone is clearly patriotic,


and the object of this patriotism is Palestine, pure and simple, only of course not political.110 A third example is from 1912. This article complains of the inactivity of the Ottoman governors in developing the country. It notes that when these governors first take up their posts they deliver impressive speeches about their lofty intentions, but then nothing comes of this. One recent example cited specifically is a governor from Anatolia who said in his speech that he was going to act as if he was “a son of Palestine” (ibnan li-Falastin): he would take care of it as if it were his own country.111 It is almost superfluous to dwell on the term son of Palestine. It is certainly a highly evocative term, which clearly stirred the hearts of the listeners and showed some perception of their feelings. Their basic identity was Palestinian, with which they identified with all their soul, unrelated to any Zionist context, though they still felt allegiance to the Ottoman state. By 1914 this level of nationalist consciousness had almost reached the openly political level, when the newspaper “Falastin” engaged in a quarrel with the government over its passivity in combating Zionism. After winning a court case against the government for unjustified closure, it ran a forthright article attacking the government, using the terms al-umma al-filistiniyya, “the Palestinian nation”, and hadhihi al-bilad al-filistiniyya, “this Palestinian country”.112 But again, we should not forget that many Palestinians at the time strongly inclined to Arabism. In the last chapter I dwelt on the pre-1914 origins of Arab nationalism. The role of the Palestinians in this movement is discussed by Porath, who assessed that the Palestinians were loyal subjects of the Sultan to the end, in other words, that there were almost no stirrings of nationalism among them. He reached this conclusion on the basis of counting the names of Arab-movement activists before the Great War.113 On the basis of these figures he could claim that the number of Palestinian activists fell far short of the number of Syrians or Iraqis (relative to population size). But this conclusion is roundly criticized by Bayan al-Hut, who points out that Porath overlooked a number of lists of known activists from this time: if those lists are included, the relative number of Palestinian activists in this wave of nationalist activity is similar to that of Syria and Iraq.114 In sum, there was nothing amiss with the state of political development of the Palestinians; they were not only capable of developing nationalism, but actually did so to the same degree as the Syrians. The best individual example of such nationalism, one that deserves a detailed account, is a remarkable personality, Khalil al-Sakakini, decidedly not of the elite, a Christian, who studied in the new schools


77

inspired by the Tanzimat, probably in this case a missionary school. He then worked as a private tutor of Arabic; and he kept a diary from 1907 until his death in 1953.115 This document was published by his daughter after his death, and it contains many important details on early nationalism in the Middle East. In 1907, when the diary begins and Sakakini is aged about 27, he is already an ardent Arab nationalist. He does not explain how he became one, but it is quite clear that the idea was imparted to him through the process of studying classical Arab literature. It had also something to do with Zionism, of which Sakakini was closely aware. He happened to give Arabic lessons to an early Zionist activist, who told him his version of the Zionist theory of how the Arabs had not developed their land properly and had therefore lost legitimate ownership of it to the Jews, who were about to demonstrate what proper development was. Sakakini was of course furious, and developed a deep animosity toward a national movement which, though it had a right to pursue its own salvation, chose to do so by seizing the land of another poor nation. But there was much more to Sakakini’s nationalism than this. Though he lamented the underdeveloped condition of the Arab nation, he showed boundless love, expressed in emotional and highly evocative terms. He derided those who preferred regional nationalisms over the big idea of Arab nationalism, and considered them pettyminded. But even such an enthusiast of Arabism did not forget Palestine. At one point he says that he hates Zionism because what it does in Palestine ruins the whole Arab world. This is so because Palestine is the geographic heart of the Arab world – you take Palestine out of the picture and the Hijaz is cut off from Egypt and Syria and you are left with disjointed pieces of land. This is an extraordinary opinion indeed, befitting a Christian to whom the Isra’ and Mi`raj (the Prophet’s Night Journey to the Heaven) do not mean very much, but who finds a way of conveying the same idea in different terms: Arabism was foremost; but there was no Arabism without Palestine. The conclusion of this remarkable body of nationalist thought is that Arabism and regionalism again appear inseparable. Sakakini’s diary exemplifies another major ambivalence in Palestinian nationalism – that between negative feelings (that is, anti-Zionism), and positive feelings (love of one’s culture and language, motherland, and nation). Sakakini was obviously in possession of both sets of feelings. To try and disentangle them analytically would be the height of futility. The last meaningful piece of information shedding light on the feelings of Jerusalemites and Palestinians on issues of their identity before the Mandate comes from the war period itself. A report sent from

78


Jerusalem sets out the feelings of various groups. Written by a resident of Jerusalem, the report claims that there is a growing feeling that this war will bring about a British occupation, and most people are favorably disposed toward such a possibility. First this characterized the Christians, but now it is the feeling of most Muslims as well. This is said to hold for Jerusalem, Nazareth, Haifa, Jaffa, etc. It is also true, in the writer’s opinion, of the leading a`yan families of Jerusalem. Most also believe that Great Britain will acquire the southern parts of the country, while France will get Syria as far south as Acre. At the same time, the report emphasizes that in some marginal areas, particularly Hebron and Nablus, there is strong resistance to any foreign occupation of the country, and people in these areas might actually assist the Turks when it comes to a showdown. The impression arising from the report is that there is no concern about the replacement of one foreign occupier by another; there was hope that under British control independence would be more easily attained.116 This report seems to me authentic and believable, not only because of the contradictory picture it shows. It seems credible because there is evidence as well as sound logic to suppose that the Palestinians’ attitude to the Turks was highly ambivalent. They were still seen as the true guardians of Islam, and no one in the country had an ideological quarrel with Islam at that time. But contrary to the views of some historians, it is my judgment that at least most of the urbanites at this time were educated enough and sufficiently versed in the ways of the world to understand what modern nationalism was and meant, what liberalism and democracy meant, and they thought that these values were entirely reconcilable with Islam. The outcome was mixed: while in their minds they did not entirely ditch the Ottoman Empire they were quite ready to see its dissolution through the actions of others. It is important to spell out the meaning of this interpretation. It is not surprising that Porath did not use this report in his study of his period. Nor did he use other such pieces of information (e.g., the report of Ekrem Bey on the prospects of local nationalism in the country) that would indicate the existence of robust buds and even shoots of Palestinian nationalism (whether in the form of Palestinianism or Arabism).117 Such buds were authentic outgrowths of the internal sociology of Ottoman state and society, and had nothing to do with Zionism. This goes against Porath’s theory, that the only life-giving source of Palestinian nationalism was Zionism. It remains to be asked what was the importance of this pre-modern identity for the history of Palestine under the Mandate. They could have chosen for themselves another identity, perhaps Syrian, perhaps


79

something else. I do not believe that they would have been willing to receive any identity imposed from the outside. Identity in my view is hardly as malleable as the modernists would have it. As we shall see in the next chapter, the early years of the Mandate would seem to belie this assertion: the inhabitants of the country started by being Palestinian, then asked to join Syria, and throughout wanted to be part of an Arab state. But there is a serious misunderstanding here. They never, under any formula, wished to disappear as Palestinians. They always wanted to preserve their autonomy and govern the country as autonomous Palestine. So we face the basic duality discussed in the last chapter. Palestine as “our” homeland, land of our ancestors, was never discarded. There was no malleability here at any time. This tallies well with information from Syria under Faisal. Muhammad Muslih has shown that during Faisal’s reign a surprising phenomenon emerged, whereby members of the Syrian public voiced resentment against Iraqi and Palestinian figures who held posts in the Faisal administration, calling these other Arabs ghuraba, strangers.118 Apparently the Palestinians were not alone in holding firmly to a dual identity.

3 The Formative Period: 1918–22

On November 2, 1917, Great Britain was deeply embroiled in a life and death conflict with Germany in World War I. Concurrently it was in the closing stages of a successful campaign in Palestine and could look forward with some confidence to the occupation of Palestine and Syria, perhaps even to the liquidation of the Ottoman Empire. On that day the British government issued a cabinet statement known as the Balfour Declaration. In its single sentence Great Britain made a promise to the Jewish people to establish a National Home in Palestine, provided the religious and social interests of the local inhabitants (“non-Jewish communities”) were not jeopardized. A masterpiece of diplomatic vagueness, this document, whose origins I discussed earlier, dominated the interwar period considered here. This chapter examines the initial impact of the Balfour Declaration on the local Arab population. In less than a month (on December 9) Jerusalem had fallen to the advancing British army. Though it took another year to complete the capture of Syria and Palestine, the outcome of the war was now clear enough, and the politics of the post-war settlement were immediately manifest, mainly in Jerusalem and Jaffa. The main theme of these politics is one of our chief concerns in this book: the existence, or the absence, of Palestinian popular nationalism. In this chapter I will also investigate whether the newly forming nationalism was arising ab nihilo, or whether it was a continuation of past patterns and memories. The period surveyed in this chapter is one of the stormiest in the Mandate’s history. Initially, that is in the first year of the occupation, the war was still on, so no shape of a post-war settlement appeared in the offing, and opinions this year (and opinions were certainly aired) seem more pristine and authentic. It is interesting and surprising that no available study has tried to tap those opinions. On a different level, 80

The Formative Period: 1918–22 81

the period was characterized by the initial salvos in the PalestinianZionist conflict. The Paris Peace Conference convened early in 1919, by which time political schemes and solutions had started to form and circulate in the region. Around that time the idea of a British Mandate (encompassing the Jewish National Home concept) emerged, as well as the totally new notion of an independent Syrian state under Faisal, son of the ruler of the Hijaz, who had headed the Arab Revolt. Strong emotions engulfed the Palestinians, who from the very start of the period showed in the clearest way that there was nothing they detested and feared more than Zionist control over them. This storm lasted until July of 1922, when the first round in the Palestinian fight for survival was over, with the formal and final League of Nations approval of the Mandate.

The first year of occupation Of interest in this section are the collective minds of the parties who became locked in a triple bind in Mandatory Palestine. Here the Zionists and the British will feature only to the extent that their stands facilitate understanding of the Palestinian problem. Particularly absorbing are the dispatches in the British archive for the clues they provide on this most elusive of topics, popular nationalism among the Palestinian Arabs. But we also want to understand what kind of nationalism it was: Palestinian? Arab? Syrian? Concerning the resistance to Zionism, did this purpose totally dominate their minds, or were there also positive values which they recognized as important for themselves? Among such possible values, were some connected with the past, as detailed in the last chapter? These are the main topics that are pursued in this chapter. The first year of the British occupation immediately drew the three parties out into the open, each with their special mode of understanding the new situation and its significance. In general, the initial reaction of all three sides was surprise, even “shock.” The Palestinian Arabs were dumbstruck by the Balfour Declaration, not only in the sense that someone could promise their homeland to another people without even consulting them, but also that this someone was Great Britain, a country they viewed with a reverence almost beyond comprehension to readers in the early-twenty-first century. The Zionists were also in a state of shock, or so it seemed. They were shocked at the reaction of the Palestinian Arabs to the Balfour Declaration, that is, that they were not embraced wholeheartedly by the native population. British officials on


the ground were also shocked. Like the Zionists, they too were surprised by Palestinian reactions to the declaration, but unlike the Zionists (who viewed all these feelings as a mere pretence anyway), they quickly came to regard them as serious, authentic, and coming from below, that is, reflecting popular perceptions; accordingly, these reactions were highly relevant to the security of the British position in the country. It was in this way that the period came to be in effect a war of words over popular nationalism. The first British reports from Palestine after the occupation already convey surprise and consternation at the local reaction to the new British policy. One of the earliest reports is by Gilbert Clayton (Chief Political Officer, Egyptian Expeditionary Force, as the British army in Palestine was called), in early February 1918, which mentions that educated Muslims in Jerusalem were much disturbed by the possibility of Jewish domination of Palestine.1 Some days before he had detected an early nationalist tendency in Jerusalem, when he said: “Arabs [of Palestine are] very favourable towards King of the Hedjaz [Hijaz].”2 Since the war was still raging and the option of a Syrian state lay in the future, the term King of Hijaz at this time was clearly a code word for Arab nationalism. How did the Palestinians find their way to the King of the Hijaz, who as we know really did get a promise of an Arab state after the war? Was this a leak of the Husayn-McMahon correspondence? More reasonably, it was concluded from the leaflets dropped from the air at the start of the war, calling the Arabs to arms against the Ottomans, promising Arab independence. But the important point for this study is that this is a first indication that the Palestinians of 1918 did not see themselves as Syrians or their country as Southern Syria. They were either Palestinians or Arabs – in fact both. As if the Balfour Declaration were not enough to stir up the feelings of the Palestinian Arabs at this time, in Jerusalem in 1918 much of their animus was engendered by the presence of the Zionist Commission, a delegation of British Jewish leaders headed by Chaim Weizmann who traveled to Palestine in March that year with British blessing. Some sort of tacit understanding existed (more on the Zionists’ side) that they would be given a share in the running of the country, particularly as regards Jewish affairs. The British not only encouraged the Commission, they even attached a British political officer to it, in the person of William Ormsby-Gore MP, an ardent Zionist in his own right.3 As we shall see, the presence of this body had a severely adverse effect on the Palestinians’ mood. But it is interesting to note that initially the British had high hopes of them, obviously because they did not expect or


anticipate any Palestinian resistance. This is evident, for example, from one of Clayton’s dispatches of the time, which incidentally again reveals the naivety of British policy makers then, as well as their curious breed of racism: “In Jerusalem itself feeling among Muslims is strongest against the Jews, whom they dread as possible controllers of the Holy City and of all of Palestine. It is perhaps not surprising, as the Jerusalem Jew of today is certainly not an attractive personality.” He goes on to say that he expected much from the coming delegation: “I look for much from the Weissmann [sic] Mission which will bring them [the Arabs] into contact with a really good class of Jews.”4 That the British were somewhat justified in pinning great hopes on Weizmann and his supposedly restrained understanding of the British promise emerges clearly from an important episode that took place in Cairo, where the Commission stopped en route for the Holy Land. During their stay there a meeting was arranged between Weizmann and a group of Arab nationalists. What happened at this encounter is reported by Lieutenant-Colonel Symes, head of the Arab Bureau. The meeting took place with a group of Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Cairo during the war, who felt that the Jews were about to assume control of Palestine right away, and maybe even buy up Arab property in the country and drive out its native population. But Weizmann dissuaded those activists, saying, in Symes’s words, that it was his ambition to see Palestine governed by some stable Government like that of Great Britain, that a Jewish Government would be fatal to his plans and that it was simply his wish to provide a home for the Jews in the Holy Land where they would live their own national life, sharing equal rights with the other inhabitants ... 5 But the Commission did not accomplish its goal, at least as the British saw it. It merely aggravated feelings in Palestine, intensified Arab and Palestinian nationalism, and made the country that much more difficult to govern. Particularly inflammatory to Palestinian ears was Weizmann’s speech at a dinner party given by the military governor, where he insisted on telling the Palestinians present that the Jews were returning to Palestine, not coming to it, meaning of course that they were its true owners. An example of the devastating effect of this statement is a reaction to the speech in the form of a newspaper article whose translation found its way into the files of the British government. The article in question is a strong polemic against Zionist claims to Palestine, including an


undisguised threat of the use of force. It makes evocative use of the theme of the ancestors, whose spirits are disturbed and forced to move from their resting places by the troubles haunting the land, and who call upon their descendants to take a firm stand to save the country. These themes, particularly mentioning of the blood shed by these forebears in the defense of Palestine, clearly allude to the seventh-century Muslim conquerors of the country and to its re-conquest at the time of the Crusades. They are intended to remind present-day Palestinians to live up to those accomplishments. Toward the end of the article the writer turns to Palestinian émigrés: “I send you all the greetings of your mother Palestine who embraces you tenderly. Embrace her and have pity on her ...”6 From the epithet “Mother Palestine” in the address to Diaspora Palestinians one may assume that they had been perfectly familiar with the term for at least some time. Most importantly, Syria is not so much as mentioned. To my understanding it simply defies all common sense to suggest that a term like “Mother Palestine” could be a four-month-old fabrication, imposed by a foreign occupier. It must have been something much deeper than this, in terms of time and meaning. Fairly similar information is contained in dispatches from A.P. Albina, a British officer of Palestinian origin and aide to Mark Sykes, who was in Palestine in mid-1918 on a fact-finding mission. In one of his dispatches he observes: “Jewish predominance in Palestine is a nightmare to Moslems and Christians alike. The Authorities who get their information through the usual channels know little about the actual feelings of the population.”7 He goes on to state that he was able to mix with people of all walks of life and to learn their abhorrence of Zionist policy. The presence and activities of the Zionist Commission in Palestine did much to strengthen their fears. Albina refers specifically to above speech by Weizmann as a source of distress, and claims that only preferential treatment of the local population might avert future trouble for the British. Again, besides the information provided on the politics of the country, this dispatch contains important clues as to the deep-rooted nature of anti-Zionist feelings, which were by no means confined to the elite. An interesting and important report on feelings in the country in mid-1918 was written by Muhammad al-Qalqili, a Palestinian and editor of the Egyptian newspaper Kawkab, who toured the country on behalf of the British at that time. He too pointed out that the local reaction to Zionism was so negative as to adversely affect the legitimacy of the British government itself. He indicated that the main reason why the Turks had lost their standing among the local population was their


support for Jewish colonization, or so he claims. But now, “the impression made [by the Balfour policy being advanced by the British] was an extremely painful one leaving the people in a state of bewilderment.”8 This statement conveys the impression that the writer was speaking about a cross-section of the population, rather than a few notables. At the same time the report notes deep-seated support for the British encountered among people of all ranks in Palestine: “I – as a Palestinian – have known from many decades before the war of the admiration felt by the Palestinians for the justice and able administration of Great Britain, and I used to see evidences of this admiration among high and low.” There is no reason to suspect the writer of wishing to find favor with his British patrons. The report criticizes the Balfour policy and also points out atrocities committed by the army against villagers, so clearly the writer was speaking his mind frankly. Another important issue clarified by Qalqili’s report is the collective orientation of the population. Qalqili, as a Palestinian, several time mentions “Palestine” and “the Palestinians” as plain facts of life with which he grew up, but at the same time he writes quite clearly that the prevalent nationalist tendency is what was called at that time the Arab movement, or Arab nationalism. Syria, and the idea of Palestine being part of Syria, are not even hinted at, since obviously such a union was not yet thought of, and it was not a natural thing in the mind of the Palestinians. Finally, Qalqili also gives the impression that he has conversed with a broad cross-section of the population, rather than just with people from the elite. About this report as well as Albina’s, cited above, it could be added that coming so soon after the Balfour Declaration it does not stand to reason that such intense feelings expressed by the common people could be the result of brainwashing by the effendis. These notables did not dispose of a well-oiled propaganda machine that might make this possible, and they themselves were too deeply shocked by the weight of events even to begin any political work. It must have been an entirely unmediated, popular process that brought this feeling about. All these contemporary assertions of the existence of popular nationalism, presented with a clear undertone of total surprise, may be understood as appearing against the background of an intensive Zionist campaign claiming that no such concept as Palestinian nationalism really existed. The Zionist leader most responsible for this was of course Weizmann. While hammering this point home he sometimes inadvertently proved the opposite. An extremely interesting document, also beautifully depicting the mood of the Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem

86


immediately after the occupation, can be found in a message of May 1918 from Weizmann to the Foreign Office, describing Arab feeling toward Zionism and nationalism in general.9 He starts by admitting that the situation “is not so favourable as we could wish – and as, indeed, we have a right to expect – to the development foreshadowed by Mr Balfour’s declaration of November 2nd.” He goes on to say that a certain amount of hostility could have been expected, but what was actually encountered transcended all bounds of the expected. An excellent example of this occurred on April 11, in the presence of the governor (Ronald Storrs). The occasion was an amateur theatrical show at a Jerusalem school for orphan boys. Two orators rose and delivered emotional nationalistic speeches: They called on the Arab nation to awake from its torpor, and to rise up in the defense of its land, of its liberty, of its sacred places against those who were coming to rob it of everything. One speaker abjured his hearers not to sell a single inch of land. Nor is that all. Both speakers took it for granted that Palestine was and must remain a purely Arab country. Weizmann was clearly taken aback by the fact that the Palestinian Arabs could actually feel nationalism. And if that were not bad enough, a map was prominently displayed with the caption “La Palestine Arabe.” The speakers ended their performance by declaiming, “Vive la Nation Arabe, vive la Palestine Arab.” (Long live the Arab nation; long live Arab Palestine). Weizmann was particularly enraged that the British governor who was present did not stop the “intransigent and aggressive nationalism” that was afoot. This is superb proof that immediate, popular, grassroots nationalism was active in Palestine from the very first moment of the British occupation. The speakers are not named. They were probably not famous or important. It enhances the impression that here was grassroots nationalism. Here too the total absence of any reference to Syria is crucial. This was pure and unadulterated Palestinian nationalism before elites and leaders started to play with it. It is a blend of Palestinianism and Arabism, exactly the same blend we saw before the war. Arabism is the ethnicity, but Palestine is the homeland; they are two sides of one coin. They are Siamese twins, neither of which can exist without the other. A further important point in this incident is that it is not only negatively anti-Zionist. Positive, historic values, such as the holy sites, were not forgotten.


Weizmann is also the source for what seems to be another insight into the existence of popular nationalism in Jerusalem in 1918. The information is supplied by Ronald Storrs (Jerusalem’s Military Governor), and is related to a long and personal conversation he had with Weizmann, while both were sitting on a hidden staircase in the Haram area. Such a conversation must have revolved around the issue of Zionism and the Arabs. Weizmann is cited as talking “of the recent great shock he had had.” This is said by Storrs to have been said “with great and moving frankness.” Later in the report Storrs coined for this shock the evocative French Revolution term “The Great Fear”.10 Since they were talking about the obstacles encountered by the Commission, there is little doubt that the shock in question was the unexpected and aggressive opposition shown by the local Palestinians, and the image of a Great Fear could only be created by the danger posed by this opposition. Such a term as the Great Fear did not, indeed could not, refer to a few notables; it could only refer to a wild force threatening from below – the power of raging masses of people, uncontrolled by gentle intellectuals of the elite. It must have been the realization that local feelings of nationalism were a great deal more widespread and deep-rooted than anticipated. Naturally, Weizmann would take a completely different stand when speaking in a formal context. A dispatch which beautifully unravels this obsession of Zionist thought, as well as its inherent weakness, is presented in a report by M. Stein (a well-known British-Zionist activist) to the Foreign Office, written after a visit to Palestine. The main topic is the nature of Palestinian nationalism in the country. It is the usual blend of discursive erasure and awe. For Stein it is not even thinkable that this nationalism was a true popular feeling. It was instilled in the common people by the elite. But at least he admits that subsequently it has become real: If the Arabs have become restless, it is not sufficient to reply that it is because ideas have been put into their heads. What is important is the extent to which those ideas have been assimilated. The antiZionist feeling must be taken as it stands. There can unfortunately be no doubt that it has secured a considerable hold on the Arab public in the rural areas, which were until recently little affected, as well as in the towns. He goes on to admit that the leaders have a genuine and strong influence on their followers, and that it would be a grave mistake “to dismiss it as the artificial creation of a handful of agitators.” He then


points out that popular nationalist feelings had become immeasurably stronger in the eighteen months that had elapsed since his last visit to the country.11 Indeed, despite the obvious and indisputable existence of strong popular Palestinian nationalism at this early stage of the Mandate, which Weizmann himself observed at close range, Zionist efforts to deny its existence continued unabated. These were so intensive that they only served to prove the opposite. An important example occurs in a dispatch of December, 1918 by Clayton to the Foreign Office.12 Again the message is intended to warn the Foreign Office of the deep feelings of local nationalism and widespread objection to Zionism. Among other things it cites a conversation with Weizmann, who tried to convince Clayton that contrary to appearances there was no such thing as Palestinian nationalism: Dr Weizmann ... states that Jewry as a whole considers Arab National Ambitions fully realized in the new Arabo-Syrian State ... It does not appear to be realized that Arab national ambitions count for little in Palestine. The non-Jewish population of Palestine are concerned not with national aspirations but with the maintenance in Palestine itself of a position which they consider is threatened by the advance of Zionism. Of course, this naïve denial comes a few months after Weizmann, as we saw, observed at close range at the orphanage what he himself described as “intransigent and aggressive nationalism.” In any case Clayton was certainly not convinced. He persisted with the finding that the Balfour Declaration “was extremely unpalatable to the non-Jewish elements” and went on to predict that the situation was so explosive that violent anti-Jewish opposition was quite likely in the near future, before the fate of the country was decided. Again, he must have had in mind grassroots nationalism: a few notables were unlikely to engage in a violent uprising or riots. In fact, he must have realized by then that the Jerusalem notables were too delicate culturally to be engaged in violent nationalism, and that if a situation is dubbed “explosive” the reference must be to the emotions of the lower classes. In fact, it seems that whenever British officials under the Mandate refer to the situation as explosive or dangerous they are referring to grassroots nationalism – probably with a great deal of sociological justice. Another effort to look into the controversial topic of the existence of Palestinian nationalism is Ormsby-Gore’s report on the Zionist


Commission, mentioned above in another context.13 Ormsby-Gore wrote not only about the Commission, but also about the nature of Palestinian nationalism. Not surprisingly, as the liaison officer of the Zionist Commission and a sworn Zionist, Ormsby-Gore denied point blank that such a thing existed: Until the advent of the recent recruiting campaign conducted by one of Sherif Feisal’s officers, the Moslem population of Jerusalem took little or no interest in the Arab national movement. Even now the Effendi class, and particularly the educated Moslem-Levantine population of Jaffa, evince a feeling somewhat akin to hostility toward the Arab movement very similar to the feeling so prevalent in Cairo and Alexandria. That this information was completely unfounded is attested by an overwhelming mass of information, some of which we have detailed above as coming from reliable sources. The importance of this observation lies elsewhere. In the first place it lies in the similarity between this view and that of Weizmann as to the non-existence of Palestinian nationalism; and it lies as well in the fact that Ormsby-Gore, Conservative MP and Baron, probably constituted a link, or a bridge, between Zionism and the British political elite: during the war he was a member of the Arab Bureau and was shortly to become parliamentary Under Secretary to Churchill in the Colonial Office, and Colonial Secretary in the British Government between 1936 and 1938.14 Hence, his views on the Palestinian national movement and feeling, though obviously distorted, probably carried much weight among British policy makers. And what these policy makers thought of the Palestinian national movement was a political fact of immense relevance to its very life and death, in real life and in a historiographical sense. Arab-Palestinian feelings themselves went on being expressed in ever stronger terms. In November 1918 the Jews in Jerusalem celebrated the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in a street parade which only British intervention prevented from entering the Old City. A large group of Palestinians, representatives of the various nationalist societies active in the city, presented the military governor with a petition of protest, in which they expressed resentment of the fact that their Holy Land, the burial ground of their forefathers, which they had inhabited and defended for centuries, was now considered by the Jews as their national home. The petition demanded the rights of the Palestinians as such, and makes no reference to Syria.15


British officials in late 1918 outdid each other in the alarmist terms they employed to describe the dangers inherent in the continuation of the Zionist policy. These dispatches emphasize in particular the popular, lower-class nature of Palestinian nationalism. One report is from General Money, the Chief Administrator, who claimed that “such policy as giving to the Jews a preferential share of the government of Palestine in the near future would be disastrous” in terms of the feelings of the Arabs in the former Ottoman Empire, and eventually also of the Muslims in the entire British Empire. In an analysis clearly presenting popular nationalism Money says: “I presume that the Foreign Office has been informed of the extent and strength of the feelings of the inhabitants of this country as regards their future destiny.” He strongly suggested that the Foreign Office should make a statement that would greatly reduce popular expectations and fears concerning the Balfour Declaration.16 Popular nationalism is also apparent in a letter from Clayton to the Foreign Office in September 1918. This dispatch is based on a letter sent from Egypt to Syria which was intercepted by the British censorship.17 The letter indicates the existence of extremely virulent antiZionism among the Palestinians, a phenomenon it treats with some surprise, and suggests that Sykes reconsider his Zionist policy, for “if this problem is not solved in a way to please both Mohammedans and Christians and to maintain their rights, it will cause in the future such great difficulties ... the result of which will only be known to God.” This anti-Zionism is not described as the opinion of a few notables but as a general opinion of all strata. Three months later he reported that though there was no imminent danger of explosion, the friction between Jews and Arabs was increasing daily.18

1919: The Syrian episode In November 1918 World War I was about to end, and the British army allowed the Arab army, headed by Faisal, to enter Damascus in a victory procession. Moreover, the British soon withdrew from inner Syria and allowed Faisal to create the rudiments of an independent Syrian state. Exactly what the British thought the French would do concerning this bizarre act is not clear, but obviously Faisal and the Arab movement in Syria were quick to determine facts on the ground, believing that an established Syrian-Arab state would present the Peace Conference in Paris (convened in January 1919) with a fait accompli. A strong propaganda campaign in this direction started all over the Middle East, and


very soon the trend engulfed the Arabs of Palestine as well, not only of wishing to see Palestine annexed to Syria, but also of representing Palestine as an integral part of Syria. On the whole this tendency seems to have appeared only at that moment, because only at about that time was Faisal permitted by the British to enter Damascus as the conquering army commander, whereupon he started to organize his Arab state. By then it was also clear that Faisal was heading a would-be state that was separate and different from that of his father, who remained ruler of the Hijazi state. Realizing that they might soon face Jewish predominance, and under the painful impression created by the overbearing manner and intention of the Zionist Commission, the Palestinians could see clearly that with Syria they might form a part of an independent Arab state. The choice was not overly complicated. As I show in Chapter 6, the transmission of this point to the public is most revealing: documents demanding that Palestine be seen as part of Syria represented Palestine as Southern Syria (an appellation never encountered in the literature before that period); but they conceded the truth in the preamble, “We, the people of Southern Syria, known as Palestine ...”, thereby admitting that Southern Syria was a new invention, while Palestine was the fact well known on the ground. The outcome was intense activity by the Palestinian elite issuing manifestos, petitions, and announcements, and spreading the information that they considered themselves as part of Syria. Yet all the while they insisted that there was no intention of losing Palestinian identity, which would be preserved as an independent entity in any possible form of state. In March 1920 a popular “Syrian Congress” was convened, which elected Faisal as king of Syria. But neither France nor the international community was impressed by these developments, and a French army landed in Syria in June 1920, as concretization of the Mandate over Syria it had received from the League of Nations. In July there was a clash between the French and a Syrian army, many of whose soldiers were armed only with sticks. This brought the “Syrian state” to an end, and with it ended the Syrian adventure of the Palestinians. Interestingly, unlike other movements which grieved over forced separation for decades, there was no sign of grief in this case. The Palestinians closed a chapter, and seemed to open a new one of their own, without further ado.19 At this point to return briefly to the theory of nationalism, and say that it cannot be claimed that either Palestinianism or Syrianism should be considered the true essence of Palestinian nationalism at this moment, would be anachronistic, in fact primordialist in the sense discussed in Chapter 1 earlier. But what can be stated is that both these

92


tendencies were not arbitrary, particularly since the Syrian state at this time was the best alternative to the Arab state that was the topic of widespread discussion and yearning before and during the war. Both Palestinianism and Arabism were the options presented by the historical trajectory and collective memory and identity of the Arabs of Palestine, as we have seen earlier. The new development was clearly within the bounds of the ethnosymbolist approach detailed in the Introduction, which to my understanding includes the traditional attachment to territory. One of the earliest dispatches in our sources that mentions the Syrian tendency unambiguously was sent by Clayton in December 1918. This dispatch claims that earlier in 1918 the Arabs of Palestine had been content with the prospects of British rule, but the British inclination to the Zionists pushed them toward the king of the Hijaz and the Arab government of Damascus. If Palestine was to be a part of Syria, they assumed, the possibility of it being dominated by the Zionists would be reduced.20 In the same vein, a report written by a certain Jerusalemite in early 1919 and given to Sykes says that while a leaning to Palestinian autonomy within a British-controlled state existed among the Palestinians, the predominant tendency was to join Syria and opt for an independent Arab state.21 The former position was typical of older notables, while the latter characterized the younger and more radical social elements, described in the report as the “intellectual and agitating part of the youth.” The report speaks of close relations between this group and the Faisal establishment in Damascus: army officers come and go; pamphlets and newspapers are brought from Damascus and distributed among the local population, including the villagers. The report also mentions that members of this more radical group, who were of course members of the Arab Club and the Literary Club, often went to the villages and propagated their nationalist version among the villagers. So here is a neat and clear piece of information on how popular nationalism came into being among the Palestinians as early as 1919.

Nebi Musa We saw in the last chapter the importance of the Nebi Musa pilgrimage and festival as the focal point of a countrywide holiday, highlighting identity values and the need to defend them against invaders and intruders, primarily Crusaders. Little wonder that Nebi Musa continued to fulfill this function under the Mandate, and certainly, the centrality


of the pilgrimage to Palestinian nationalism was not in any way an invention, as claimed in one study.22 During the Mandate the Nebi Musa pilgrimage became the focal point of Palestinian nationalism in more ways than one. And it is interesting that it did not take long to present itself as such. It did so in fact as early as 1920, before any constructionist had the time to claim that it was a contemporary invention of tradition. Friedland and Hecht’s study is the only one that focuses on the political use to which the pilgrimage was put. Their article claims that Palestinian nationalism was invented by Haj Amin al-Husayni, using the pilgrimage as his stage. Of course Haj Amin did exploit the pilgrimage to enhance his position, but the claim that he thereby invented Palestinian nationalism is rather absurd. The main features of the pilgrimage under the Mandate remained the same as before, but it began to be politicized. Gilbert Clayton gives an excellent description of the 1918 pilgrimage. He is well aware of the history of the celebration, namely that it originated in the time of the Crusades, and was intended to create a mass presence in Jerusalem more or less at the time when the Christians assembled a similar mass presence. He goes on to describe the pilgrimage as it unfolded in 1918: the ceremonies of presenting the flags and attaching them to poles, one of them being reserved to the Mufti of Jerusalem, who played the key role in the ceremony; the prayer at the Aqsa Mosque as the starting point, then the formation of a large procession of pilgrims going in the direction of the Dead Sea. At this stage, “parties of Bedouins and villagers perform all manner of dances, others indulge in displays of swordsmanship, fighting mimic duels; some recite strange eastern chants or repeat prayers ...” A striking moment was the departure of this procession from of the Gate of Sitti Mariam, where it came face to face with thousands of people standing on the slopes opposite and cheering the spectacle.23 This description of course shows that the traditional ceremony remained largely alive. The arrival of the pilgrims from Nablus and Hebron had been and remained one of the focal points of the ceremony, symbolizing as in times past the uniting of all the regions of the country into one meaningful whole; hence the precise timing of this entrance and its ceremonial celebration. In 1918 Clayton still did not note any anti-Zionist overtone in the ceremony, but this soon appeared. It was first expressed in vocal sloganeering in which antiZionist slogans were vocal. Friedland and Hecht make a grave mistake by asserting that until the 1920s Nabulsis and Hebronites did not take part.24 In the nineteenth century Consul Finn described their enthusiasm


for the pilgrimage in the most colorful terms. A crucially important point contributed by Tewfik Canaan’s famous account of this pilgrimage is that the flags in the procession were all embroidered with Qur’anic verses, the main theme of which is the old monotheistic polemic against the Christians and the divine nature of Jesus.25 This is clearly another proof that the pilgrimage was indeed an anti-Crusade celebration. An important source that adds some significant details is a book by Harry Luke, a British Mandate official and author. In describing the Nebi Musa pilgrimage Luke pointed out that the whole event was extremely tense and religiously charged while inside the Old City, but it turned into a merry popular celebration once the procession left the confines of the city walls. Moreover, the tension that characterized the ceremonies in the city was such that in Ottoman times the governor would be happy when he could cable Istanbul to say “passed in peace.”26 During the Mandate the Nebi Musa celebration drew many thousands of people from all corners of the country. Some sources speak of 15,000 in some years. Counting families and acquaintances who stayed behind, and with whom the pilgrimage was discussed before and after the event, the number of Palestinians connected to it could easily reach hundreds of thousands, literally most of the Arabs of Palestine. They were for the most part of the lower class, mainly villagers. It can reasonably be assumed, in my view, that those who attended and those who heard the stories knew what Palestinian nationalism was in the early 1920s, and most of them probably felt themselves part of this whole. Porath is thus unconvincing in his claim that the peasants knew nothing about the entire issue of Palestinian nationalism and simply did what they were told.27 In March 1920 the starting point of the Nebi Musa celebration became the first occasion of inter-communal collective violence in the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. It was the time of the inaugural celebrations of the Syrian state, and feelings were running unusually high. With the arrival of the Hebron contingent, traditionally the high point in the emotions of the pilgrimage, clashes between Jews and Arabs started; what exactly sparked them has never been determined. Mob violence spread to several quarters of Jerusalem and lasted for a day. By the end of it four people had been killed on each side. The British, as they were so often to do in the future, launched a committee of inquiry. The outcome was the much maligned Palin Report.28 To my mind, it is a treasure-trove of information on several of the topics that interest us in our study of popular local nationalism, and it evinces much awareness of pre-modern Palestinian values and symbols.29 It is openly


and explicitly anti-Zionist, but there is no indication that this bias was there beforehand, or that it was politically motivated. If this assessment is correct (and I think it is), the actual sociological observations made about Palestinian feelings may have been factually grounded rather than fabricated to suit the political target. There is no reason to deny the report this credibility. Some of the observations it made are striking and can be verified by recent studies, though they run entirely against the grain of dominant British opinion at the time. An example is Palin’s benign view of the Ottomans and the remnants of the Arab collective memory at the beginning of the Mandate. These observations can be read today in scholarly studies, but in 1920 they could only be gathered from real people in Palestine. Some key sentences deserve full quotation. In spite of the Turkish overrule ... , they [the Arabs] have never forgotten their pride of race and empire, or that the author of their religion sprang from the noblest family of Mecca ... The Turkish overrule probably caused less disturbance of these ideas than might be imagined, as the government appears to have to a great extent ruled through the leading Arab families in the country ... As far as his title to Palestine and Syria, the Arab’s tenure is by title which he considers as good as that of any nation in the world – conquest not from the Jews ... , but from ... the Roman Empire of Byzantium. Furthermore, Palestine and Syria occupy a peculiar place in his regard in view of their being the earliest foreign conquests of the Arab invaders, and Palestine more particularly owing to the fact that the Harem el Sherif in Jerusalem ranks as the third holiest site in the Moslem world ...30 This excerpt does not smack of anti-Zionism, but is about something entirely positive – the feeling of Arabism and sense of historic ownership over the country, and it thus supports the claim that Palestinian nationalism was based on positive as well as negative-confrontational values. These observations also read as if they refer to wider groups than a narrow elite. Indeed, the report later tackles this issue squarely: It has been said by the Zionists that the popular excitement is purely artificial and largely the result of the effendi class, which fears to lose its position owing to Jewish competition. It is sufficient to quote the evidence of Major Wagget with which the court finds itself in full accord, when he says: It is very important to realise that the opposition

96


is by no means superficial or manufactured, and I consider this a very dangerous view to take of the situation.31 Up till now I have quoted from the Palin report passages that say something about the basic views of the Palestinians at this time, without any connection to Zionism. But the report also gives a great deal of information about the feelings of the Palestinians as provoked by what they considered to be the outrageous behavior of the Zionists. By the end of the Great War the Palestinians were aspiring to self-determination, encouraged by the Allies’ inclination to support the independence of small nations. Their hopes were dashed, mainly by the exaggerated hopes pinned by the Zionists on the Balfour Declaration. The main culprit again was the Zionist Commission, which seemed to be something worse than a state within a state; it seemed like a parasite controlling the host: the Jews got privileged treatment in all areas of life, and what they could not secure in Palestine they got in London. If this is what went on before the Mandate was even approved, one could only look with horror at the situation after it was approved. To cite the report: We have then arrived at a condition of affairs when the native population, disappointed of their hopes, panic stricken as to their future, exasperated beyond endurance by the aggressive attitude of the Zionists, and despairing of redress at the hands of an Administration which seems to them powerless before the Zionist organization, lies a ready prey for any form of agitation.32 This reads like an excellent analysis of the Palestinians’ state of mind in 1920, reproduced by many other sources. The sense of panic and doom especially recurs over and over. That this analysis (and the report) was brushed aside by some Zionist historians as inherently anti-Zionist only shows their inability to adopt an objective stand regarding the two sides.33 But from a purely Zionist point of view there is a certain problem here that needs another comment. The Zionist stand (and probable belief) was that Zionist overlordship would be beneficial for the country and all its citizens, including the Arabs. Whence could the Arabs have possibly got the bizarre idea that they had something to fear? Since the Nebi Musa riot was the first case of open Arab hostility toward Jews in Palestine during the Mandate, this may indeed be the appropriate place to look into the issue of the reasons for such violence. While there is no


intention here to condone violence, one cannot evade the fact that it did not come out of thin air, or from pure anti-Semitism, as many Zionists of the time claimed. Zionist historiography usually treats the Arab fear of Zionism as the outcome of paranoia, not explicitly, but naturally by implication. The Commission is cited as a factor in Arab rage and fear, but taken as somewhat irrational, for if the Jews promise to turn the land into a lush garden, what could be negative in this? What is left out of the discussion is that there was a great deal of perfectly good sense in Arab fear. In the first place, one of the principal pillars of Zionism was “Hebrew Labor” – Jews were not supposed to hire Arabs under any circumstance, and those who occasionally did so certainly risked the opprobrium of their community, and sometimes even their physical safety. It goes without saying that this was widely known among the lower classes of Palestinian society of the time, and it certainly did not endear to them the idea that soon this could become the law of the land. In fact, it was a sensible reason for a sense of panic. Nor was this all. No less terrifying was the strange Jewish habit of insisting that land bought from local or foreign landlords should be handed over clear of its former occupants. Eviction of occupants, whether tenants or owners, had never taken place in the traditional economy of Palestine, certainly not under the Ottomans, and it was an incomprehensible innovation. Since everybody knew that the Zionists had it in mind to buy up as much of the land as they possibly could, it was quite logical to conclude that they wanted all Palestinian peasants evicted from the land, possibly from the country. This, and not the Zionist promises of investment, was the crucial issue that molded the basic Palestinian approach toward Zionism.

The Jaffa riots The tension gripping the Palestinians did not subside with the end of the riots of Nebi Musa. It was only a year before it burst out again, this time in Jaffa. And again, the Zionist claim was that it was pre-planned and orchestrated by members of the Palestinian elite. And again, this was not what an objective committee of inquiry found. It also seems illogical: the riots this time broke out on May 1, 1921, during a Jewish workers’ parade in Jaffa. This procession of Bolshevik Jews soon clashed with members of Jewish right-wing groups and some people were wounded. Arab passers-by may have thought it an Arab-Jewish clash and intervened, which immediately turned the affair into an ArabJewish confrontation. Three days of violence ensued, in which some


forty-five people were killed on each side. Some of these events were called in Palestinian folklore habbat al-Shaykh Abu Kishk, after the sheikh of the Bedouin tribe Arab al-Awja, who organized “thousands” of villagers and Bedouin from the Sharon area to assault the Jewish settlement of Petah Tiqva, claiming that its presence in the area endangered their very existence. The attack was foiled by the British army.34 Again, the question is whether the rioting was the outcome of popular nationalism or of instigation by the elite. A British General Staff intelligence report saw it as a direct outcome of popular Palestinian nationalism, brought about in the main by British policy on Zionism. It stated: We are not faced with a simple outbreak of mob violence in spite [of there being] signs of participation of criminals and evil elements of the population. The troubles in Jaffa and other parts of the country are ... the expressions of a deep-seated and widely spread popular resentment at the present British policy. Churchill’s visit to Palestine was blamed specifically and emphatically, since Churchill himself treated the Arabs like “bad children” and brushed their leaders aside with a few light political phrases.35 It is interesting that this report, like other British reports of the time, predicted that if British Zionist policy was not modified at once, the riots might turn very soon into a general uprising, if not a revolution. An important source from the period that helps to elucidate this point is The History of the Hagana, the semi-official Zionist interpretative multi-volume history of the period, which, though written in the 1950s, still fully reflects the former period.36 An interesting chapter in the whole affair was the exchange of opinions that took place between Sir Herbert Samuel and a group of Zionist leaders who came to protest his speech of June 3, 1921. Responding to their complaint that he should have used more force to suppress the riots, Samuel retorted: You would like me to use a strong hand, but Britain will never agree to this ... One could speak of such a course if I had at my disposal fifty or at least twenty thousand troops. I do not have them, and no body is going to give them to me. As to the very idea, the strong way will not do much good. If I will punish the leaders, other will replace them. A people does not desert its leaders. Punishments did not help in Egypt, nor in Iraq, and are not likely to help in Palestine. There is only one way, and this is agreement with the people.37


About this, the editors of the History, experts on (their version) of Yishuv history, comment: But the leaders of the Arabs were at that time a far cry from any thought of compromise or agreement. The Arab movement, like all other primitive movements not built on organized membership but counting on its demagogic influence on the masses, was not capable of compromises. Any leader ready for a compromise while the masses were intoxicated with their victory would be brushed aside by a more extreme leader.38 This is a valuable insight. It shows that even the Zionists (the editors were leading figures in Zionist circles) here outline a profound lesson on mass-leadership relations in history, of which they are far from fully conscious: on the explicit and formal level the views of the mass are those instilled in their minds by the elite, but on a deeper level the masses call the shots, and the leaders are forced to follow them so as not to be brushed aside. In any event, this event is a major proof that popular Palestinian nationalism existed, and that it came from below – at least in part.

Herbert Samuel’s speech of June 1921 and subsequent developments The High Commissioner’s policy on the Jaffa disturbances, and the Zionist reaction to it, are fine examples of the discussions on Palestinian nationalism at this time. This new approach was set forth in a speech by Samuel on June 3, 1921. 39 He started by saying that the Arabs tended to exaggerate the meaning of the Balfour Declaration. They said that they would never give up their lands and their holy places, and that it was strange that a just country like Great Britain could bring down such a calamity on their heads. But the truth of the matter was that this was not at all the policy of Great Britain, which at no point intended this to happen. He reiterated the valid Jewish connection to the country; however, the only right the Jews had, in his view, was to come and live in Palestine, and even that in limited numbers: Jews should be enabled to found here their home, and ... some of them, within the limits that are fixed by the numbers and interests of the present population, should come to Palestine in order to help by


their resources and efforts to develop the country, to the advantage of all the inhabitants.40 This was a far cry from the deep-seated Zionism of Samuel in wartime. For their part, Zionist leaders had a valid cause for complaint against Samuel, who, on his arrival in 1920, was seen as the modern incarnation of some biblical Judean king. It should be borne in mind, though, that this was not a personal policy of Samuel, but a version settled to the last point with Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary. The crucial sentence, cited above, was cabled verbatim from London four days before the address. The speech was the outcome of consultation between Churchill and Samuel, but it certainly reflected Samuel’s views.41 For us here, the question is why did Samuel change his attitude as well. The debate between himself and the Zionists in the following months showed that it revolved around the issue of popular Palestinian nationalism. This debate has been analyzed in a study by Neil Caplan.42 From Samuel’s arguments it immediately becomes clear that what worried him was the strength and consequent danger inherent in Palestinian nationalism: “In the second half of 1921, Samuel continued to impress the Zionists with his views of the seriousness of Arab opposition.”43 Samuel indeed took the matter of Arab opposition with the utmost seriousness. Even before becoming High Commissioner he warned the Zionist leaders that Arab opposition was genuine and deep-seated, rather than constructed. Rather than listening to him carefully, his Zionist interlocutors became depressed on hearing these words, and certainly brushed them aside. After the Jaffa riots Samuel repeated his earlier warnings: Arab nationalist feelings were real and popular, and the use of force would not succeed in crushing them; in addition, it would necessitate brutal measures that no British government would be ready to risk. A week after the disturbances he told Churchill that it was inadequate and even useless to punish the direct offenders, and that the “Zionist leaders cannot fail to recognize that the application of their policy is not possible if it has to be conducted in the face of the constant, resolute, and perhaps violent, opposition of a large, and even the greater part of the population of Palestine.”44 This statement clearly shows Samuel’s assessment that most of the population was aroused to the point of resorting to violence, and since the Jaffa riots were in no way orchestrated from above these nationalist feelings must have sprung from below. As against this, the Zionist leaders refused point blank to consider the possibility that real nationalism was involved. Of the two arguments, the objective historian has to accept that of Samuel: the


Zionists refused to recognize Arab nationalist feeling since such recognition would entail certain natural rights. As against this, Samuel’s point of view was that of a governor seeking to administer a country as peacefully as possible. We may well believe him when he asserted that additional force would not solve the problem but aggravate it, since Arab feelings were at the grassroots level, that is in the hands of the crowds, hence bound to explode again at any moment.45 In one dispatch Samuel in fact offered a full analysis of Palestinian nationalism as popular nationalism: If it is difficult to gauge the opinion of the more enlightened classes, it is still more difficult to do so in the case of the uneducated masses. I must record, however, that a new factor has entered into the political situation in this country, and that is the interest in public affairs in the minds of the population in general that has been disclosed by the events at Jaffa and in the neighbourhood. These classes were indeed aware of the existence of certain important political questions, but these had not been brought home to them in any very direct manner, either by the politicians or by the events of their every day lives. They are now seen to be race-conscious in a more definite manner than they were before, and, for the time being at least, they are impressed by the power that they possess to resist and obstruct the Government. ... Before the Jaffa disturbances the masses could be regarded as little likely to be responsive to the call of the agitator, but the events that there took place make it impossible to feel any such assurance now.46 If this report left the impression that the causal direction of the creation of nationalist consciousness was top-down, another report from the same period shows that the situation was not so simple. In the High Commissioner’s report for the month of May 1921, Samuel writes inter alia: During the month a boycott of all Jewish goods broke out. The notables are stated to have done their best to stop it but met with much difficulty; such a step being interpreted by the people as having been prompted by the Jews and tended consequently to decrease the prestige of the notables in the eyes of the public.47 Here a new factor sets in (of which many more instances were to appear in the next two decades) that obliges us to reconsider some aspects of the

102


theory of nationalism: the leaders are supposed to blaze the trail for the lower classes and lead the way. But here the leaders are suddenly seen to be trailing behind the masses and trying to curb their radicalism. A methodological problem emerges: if the masses were more radical than the leaders, where did this radicalism come from? The explanation is that the elite may be the source of the spark of nationalism, but once lit it burns independently of elite efforts. As for the elite in Palestine specifically, though no doubt fervently nationalistic, it had several reasons to refrain from anti-British radicalism. Once the British recognized Arab rights and dropped the Zionist idea, it was the elite that stood to receive the reins of the country. Burning bridges to the British would destroy this logic altogether. The inevitable outcome was political moderation. In the months after the riots there were widespread expectations of an imminent outbreak of violence that would dwarf the Jaffa riots. An intelligence report of July 1921 warned that the government’s prestige was at an all-time low, with general anarchy raging in the country, and a widespread feeling that even in terms of law and order the people had been much better off under the old Ottoman administration. The report went on to describe the resulting mood of the British officials in the country as despondent in the extreme. It was all blamed on the government’s Zionist policy, which was described as making the Arab majority of the country ungovernable. The report called on the government to modify its policy forthwith, and predicted the worst kind of violence if this was not done.48 Better known in this respect is a report by General Congreve, the officer commanding British forces in Palestine at the time, who pointed out that the general atmosphere was such that a new wave of violence was imminent, and the British forces in the country were utterly inadequate to face the gravity of the situation. British policy favoring the Zionists should be modified; otherwise, major reinforcements had to be made available immediately. If present British policy were maintained, “Sooner or later the whole country will be in a state of insurrection and the only way of enforcing the policy ... will be by military force.”49 This without any doubt is another statement reflecting the level of popular nationalism in the country. A last relevant assessment of an imminent violent development in Palestine was made by Meinerzhagen, a well known and overt foe of the Palestinians at that time, who made some racist comments on this occasion as well. Still, he provides a diagnosis more or less close to the truth: he suggests that at first there will be passive resistance, but later direct resistance will return, starting with a conflict over the holy sites in Jerusalem.50


The Palestinian delegation in London Having exhausted almost every other means to persuade the British of the justness of their cause, the Palestinians decided as a last resort to send a delegation to London, intending to convince public opinion to reject the Mandate in the suggested form of containing the Jewish National Home clauses as its major element. The delegation met with British officials, including the Colonial Secretary, and held press conferences and meetings with British supporters. It presented a memorandum to Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, in which it detailed the Palestinian Arabs’ case for their land and independence. The members noted the various promises made by the Powers to the Arabs (and other nations) during and after the Great War; the objective readiness of the Palestinians to assume independence in terms of manpower; they demanded the abrogation of the National Home policy of Great Britain, for while the term National Home sounded modest and unassuming, private publications known to the Palestinians spoke openly of a fullfledged state, where the Arabs would be shorn of all collective rights and would be in danger of losing all national existence. They also indicated their long-standing, close, and unbroken connection with the land, pointing out the much weaker Jewish connection, characterized throughout by wars, instability, and the prominence of large minorities. They also protested the severance of Palestine from sister Arab countries. This, they asserted, went against the wishes of most Arabs in the Middle East, who yearned for Arab unity, which alone could restore the Arabs to their past glory and achievements for civilization.51 The document thus shows a positive nationalism, not just hatred of Zionism. The historical connection of the Palestinians to their land is emphasized, as well as their longing for a pan-Arab state that would associate them with the glories of the Arab past. But the fear expressed in this document for the very existence of the Palestinians in Palestine in case of Zionist success is also crucially important, and shows a community of interests between the Palestinian elite and the Palestinian rank-andfile. The demand for Arab unity voiced in the document also shows that the Palestinians were willing to relinquish some of their independence and their own narrow material interests. Again, this demand contradicts Porath’s claim that the Palestinians of that time did not understand what Arab nationalism really meant, and were only motivated by localism or anti-Zionism.52 In their press releases the delegation heavily emphasized Weizmann’s statement that he wanted to make Palestine Jewish as England was

104


English. This would severely impair the Arab nature of the country, and would only be enforceable by the use of a huge army.53 In real terms the delegation achieved virtually nothing. It was treated condescendingly by Churchill and other British officials, who brushed its demands aside without much attention. A single aspect in its favor was that the House of Lords indeed accepted its point of view.

The Churchill White Paper (June 1922) During 1921–2 the map of the Middle East was in a way redrawn: the Jaffa Riots constituted a crisis that necessitated some new British thinking about Jewish and Arab positions in Palestine. Transjordan was severed from the Palestine Mandate. For the highly structured British Empire, all this called for a new statement of policy, and this was issued in June 1922. The 1922 White Paper, which ends this first period, was a clear, though partial, concession to Arab-Palestinian nationalism and a tacit admission that this consciousness transcended all class boundaries; in particular it “infected” the lower classes, those who were able to cause the government serious trouble. It was to a large extent an outcome of the new ideas proposed by Samuel, who suggested, for example, that something should be done to limit Jewish immigration, or that some idea should be devised as to its regulation. In one dispatch he points out that in the last year 9,000 Jews had entered Palestine, many of them well-educated, who could only find meager manual employment. He suggests subordinating immigration to the country’s economic absorption capacity.54 This notion was accepted, and became one of the two main innovations of the 1922 White Paper, as well as a cornerstone of the Mandate until 1939. The other main innovation of the White Paper originated in London, and held that the Jewish National Home in Palestine (whatever that meant: it was and has remained an enigma) was never intended to cover more than part of the country.55

The return of the delegation In July 1922 the League of Nations finalized approval of the Mandates, closing the door on any possibility of changing the situation in the short run. The Palestinian delegation immediately announced the failure of its mission and its intention to return to Palestine as soon as possible. According to many reports from this time, with the empty-handed return of the delegation from London, all hell was expected to break


loose, and a new wave of violence would engulf the whole country.56 We saw above that the prediction was based on solid social facts, so two questions arise: why did the British government totally ignore the warnings, and why did nothing happen upon the return of the delegation (and for several years thereafter). As to the first question, it would probably have been awkward to change policy in Palestine in the middle of the process of granting the Mandate; this would have called for a strong explanation as to why Britain was maintaining control of the country at all. As we saw earlier, Zionism, and Zionism alone, supplied the British with a credible pretext for continued control of Palestine. And Britain was not about to concede such an excellent pretext lightly. The perspective of the British officials on the ground was entirely different. They faced a popular nationalism which made their job of controlling the country smoothly extremely difficult. They saw the British Empire through that perspective alone. It is remarkable, even admirable in itself, that the British system of government made it possible for these competing perspectives to flourish side by side, without the central perspective crushing the provincial one. The other question is how did it come to pass that the apocalyptic warnings came to nothing? The only possible explanation that comes to mind is that the Mandate was made final by the League of Nations, and nothing more could be done in the short run. This, and the fact that contrary to expectations, the Zionists got no control at all over the affairs of the country helped calm the situation. A final note on the delegation concerns the effort made by its head, Musa Kazim al-Husayni, to win official British recognition for it. For the British, of course, such a request was problematic in the extreme: after all, according to their own policy they were bound to recognize only Jewish institutions. On the other hand they wished to encourage contacts with the local population, since such contact also constituted some form of legitimacy. In one of his dispatches Samuel states the problem and his policy on it: to say neither yes nor no.57 Formal recognition was only for the Zionists.

4 From Riots to Radicalization: 1922–36

The years 1922–8 were a quiet period in the political history of the British Mandate for Palestine. Precisely what caused this seeming torpor of the Palestinian national movement is certainly one of the biggest enigmas of the entire period, with the attendant insidious question, whether this torpor was not a proof that there was no real nationalist ideology after all. I think the answer must be in the negative, though the matter is admittedly complicated. It seems to me that there were several good reasons for the Palestinians’ inactivity in the period before 1928 which we should examine before we conclude that they were lacking in nationalist ideology. The Mandate was approved by the League of Nations in July 1922, and no amount of political protest activity could have changed this situation, at least not in the short run. It should also be kept in mind (but is in fact often forgotten), that the Mandate was preceded by the Churchill White paper of June 1922, specifying that whatever the Jewish National Home was going to be, frankly still a mystery, not least to the British, it would stretch over a part of the country, at the most. This must have been some consolation to the Palestinians. Another point of major importance is that whereas until the approval of the Mandate all Palestinian voices were raised in considerable panic about the imminent handing over of the country to the Jews, the Mandate declared nothing of the sort, only promising a national home of some kind at an unspecified future date. It is implicit in all the documents of the period (though probably not explicitly specified anywhere), that before any further move away from this initial point of full British control would be considered, the Jews would have to form a majority in the country. In the 1920s this looked like sheer fantasy: The SovietRussian border had just recently been closed to emigration, and the 106

From Riots to Radicalization: 1922–36

107

main source of Jewish immigration into Palestine was thus blocked for fifty years or so. No other source seemed practicable. And indeed, for most of the 1920s Jewish immigration was thin, and fell well short of the Palestinian natural annual increase of some twenty-five thousand. Zionism seemed to have run out of steam, an apocalyptic vision shared by many Zionists in this period.1 As a consequence of this, the 1920s were taken up by conflicts that were minor in nature in comparison with the rest of the Mandatory period. One of the first issues on the political agenda after 1922 was the High Commissioner’s effort to convince the Palestinians to agree to institute a parliament of sorts, naturally a limited one in terms of authority, particularly with reference to banning Jewish immigration or land sales. The legality of such a parliament would be based on the Mandate, of which the National Home policy was a cornerstone. The Palestinians of course strongly objected to such an idea, and campaigned vigorously for the boycotting of the elections announced by the High Commissioner. The proposal came to nothing. For the Palestinians, it would have meant signing their own death sentence. It is however important in outlining a major “catch” of the Palestinian situation – much as they wished to cooperate with the British, the wording of the Mandate precluded this. The main public effort of the Palestinians in this period was given over to the establishment of their religious and religio-legal institutions – given that the Mandate expressly debarred them from the right to have political institutions. It was in this context that the British had to nominate a new Mufti after the death of Kamil al-Husayni in 1921. After considerable maneuvering and a certain bending of election rules, the man elected was the High Commissioner’s candidate, Hajj Amin alHusayni. The electoral body was composed of a small number of religious personages, who did not elect Hajj Amin, and it was only by adjusting the process that Amin was finally appointed. This has brought down the wrath of many historians on Samuel, though one may defend him by recalling that since the middle of the eighteenth century the Husayni family had held the post as a monopoly, and Hajj Amin was the candidate of that family at this particular moment. More dubious by far was Samuel’s decision to go further and nominate Husayni also to the important post of president of the Supreme Muslim Council, nominated in 1922 to administer all Muslim endowments and religious courts in the country. These two posts represented the only positions of real authority that the Muslim community possessed under the Mandate, and nominating one family to both violated the sacrosanct Ottoman custom


of assigning each elite Jerusalem family a place in the system. Now the entire system was badly shaken if not ruined, the inevitable outcome being open war among the families. Much of the tragedy that befell the Palestinians during the Mandate can be traced to this ill-fated decision. The enmity took a while to come to a head, but after 1926 it constituted the major political issue of the rest of the Mandatory period. To revert to the topic of nationalism proper. It seems that in the lack of any development on the part of Zionism during the 1920s, and given that Iraq and Syria were still engaged in an initial, largely futile, effort to advance toward independence, the Palestinians had no reason to be precipitate, so that a certain somnolence on their part seems reasonable. They really seem to have had no urgent need to revive a high pitch of activity in the years before 1928, when the conflict suddenly erupted with new vigor and force, in response to the perception that the Jews were posing a deadly threat to the Muslim holy sites. In other words, there is room to reconsider the accepted theory that Amin al-Husayni fabricated and orchestrated the whole outburst, and to reflect that perhaps there was something real in Muslim fears concerning the Aqsa mosque. On August 15, 1929, a large group of young right-wing Jews, belonging to the Revisionist Party, organized a noisy political demonstration at the Wailing Wall, the ancient remnant of the Solomonic Temple, where since the Middle Ages Jews prayed to God to redeem His people. Such a demonstration was a defiant and self-conscious violation of the status quo of the site, which, apart from being sacred to Muslims as well, was part of a Muslim religious endowment, and as such was unequivocally Muslim property. This was the climax of a tense year in the relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, a tension that revolved entirely around the Wall. It began on August 23, 1928. On the day before the Jewish Day of Atonement it was discovered that the Jewish beadle (Shamash) of the Wall had brought in a screen to separate men from women worshippers, clearly contravening the status quo concerning traditional Jewish rights of worship at the site. There was nothing in the political atmosphere in Palestine before that event that could be claimed as an early warning sign of a secret intention on the part of Hajj Amin to foment nationalist violence in the country. The British District Officer immediately gave an order to have the screen removed. As the worshippers opposed the order with force, the British police used some violence to enforce it. The incident, probably mainly because of the police reaction, aroused a wave of bitter criticism throughout the Jewish world and drew into the fray such personages as the


109

Zionist “poet laureate,” H.N. Bialik, mourning the miserable condition of the Jewish people in Palestine, unable to possess as much as its most iconic symbol. Loud voices even called for exerting violence in order to achieve complete Jewish control of the Wall. No voice was heard criticizing or lamenting the hasty action of the beadle, or suggesting it may have been a premeditated provocation by someone. This aggressiveness spurred into action the Palestinian Arabs, themselves unquestionably acutely sensitive to what they saw as the larger picture, the Jewish dream of rebuilding the Solomonic Temple, the Wall being just the first step. Heading this activity was Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who, as president of the Supreme Muslim Council, was responsible for all religious endowments in Palestine. So far he had done nothing to foment the feelings of the Palestinian Arabs. The reactions of the Jewish community to the Wall were enough to do this. The Mufti immediately started a campaign of defense of the Buraq, the name of the Wall for Muslims, after Muhammad’s fabulous steed. The campaign included a regional Islamic congress, where strongly worded decisions endorsed the sacredness of the Buraq for all Muslims, and warned of the serious repercussions that Jewish intentions in the Haram area would have all over the world. In the Haram area itself a zawiya (Sufi convent) was activated, whose long and lively dhikr ceremonies made the lives of the neighboring Jewish worshippers a lot less pleasant. The Mufti and the Palestinians in general also bombarded the British Governments with petitions setting out their own side of the argument. The Palestinian position was presented in a memorandum by Hajj Amin in October 1928.2 In it he writes that the Wailing Wall, called Buraq in Arabic, is also a site holy to Islam: it is one of the walls of the Haram, the Holy Precinct, sacred in itself since it is the Wall where Muhammad tethered the mount which carried him from Mecca to Jerusalem and from there to the Heavens and back. He also mentions the fact that the whole area had been a religious endowment since the Middle Ages, and that Jews were allowed to pray next to it as a favor granted by the neighboring Muslims. Hence no appurtenances had been allowed there since medieval times, a stand confirmed by the Ottoman authorities whenever the Jews challenged the status quo. Another memorandum stating the Muslim position was presented to the High Commissioner some days later by the Supreme Muslim Council, basically repeating Amin’s document but going beyond it by articulating the real crux of the conflict: the Muslim fear that the Wall was only the first step in Jewish aspirations, and that in truth they

110


were after the Haram area itself, where they would rebuild the Temple of Solomon in place of the mosques. This fear was presented as a firm belief, born of “bitter experience.”3 The Council also point out that the Wall is sacred to the entire Muslim world, and if Muslim rights in it are not respected, grave consequences could follow in many places. At the same time, a large number of petitions were sent from groups and individuals all over the country, making the same point in strong language. One petition, that of the congregation praying in the Aqsa Mosque, says that: The Moslems of Palestine consider themselves guards and supporters of the Mosque of al-Aqsa and the Moslem Buraq in particular. They, in their capacity as trustees of the Holy Places, which are respected by the Moslem Community as sacred as the Holy Mecca and Medina will take all the energetic and active measures for their protection ...4 The petition of the people of Ramla went even further and claimed that it was a duty incumbent on every Muslim to defend the Aqsa Mosque with every means at his disposal, including his property and blood.5 A newspaper article from this period cites the evidence of Awni Abd al-Hadi (a member of the innermost circle of Palestinian leaders at this time) before the Commission of Inquiry to the effect that one must realize that the Muslims of Palestine are merely the local guardians of the Holy Places, preserving these sites for the entire Islamic world; consequently they lack the authority to do anything that would affect the legal or political status of these sites.6 What appears here, I believe, is again, the most distinct motif in Palestinian identity and nationalism of this period, their self-image as the appointed guardians of the Aqsa Mosque and its precinct on behalf of the entire Muslim world. We have seen above that this self-image was not invented under the Mandate, but goes back (in a rudimentary fashion) to the time of the Crusades. It is one of the major findings of this book that this motif runs through Palestinian history and joins it into a meaningful whole. All this led directly to an escalating level of emotions as the Jewish High Holidays of 1929 approached. Trouble began with the aforementioned Jewish demonstration of August 15. This was naturally followed by a Muslim counterdemonstration the next day, concluding with people being beaten up. Tension mounted in the following few days, with the killing of a Jewish youth and the wounding of an Arab youth. When, three days later, on Friday the 23rd, the day of the weekly prayers


111

at the Haram mosques, emotions reached a pitch. The crowd rushed out of the mosques and started to attack Jewish shopkeepers and passers-by. A week of intercommunal clashes ensued, in which 133 Jews and 116 Arabs died. As usual in this study, the question that interests us is where was Palestinian nationalism in all these developments. In this case there is a unanimity between our specific inquiry and the traditional one in the historiography of this topic: was the violence single handedly orchestrated by the Mufti, or was it genuinely a product of popular rage and thus equivalent to real, or grass-root-level nationalism. Another interesting question is in what way was this nationalism “Palestinian.” Porath’s explanation of what happened, until sometime ago the standard “scholarly” explanation, is that the riots were instigated by Hajj Amin al-Husayni.7 Realizing that the cleavages and enmities within the Palestinian leadership were getting patched up at this period, he saw in the minor, even negligible Jewish infringement of the status quo in 1928 a brilliant opportunity to advance his political leadership of the Palestinians and to foment hatred of the Zionists by turning the incident into a major conflagration. Using a religious platform to further these ends suited him perfectly: The Palestinian masses did not understand the symbols of secular nationalism, but the religious symbolism spoke to them most potently. There is supposedly much evidence to support suspicion of the Mufti’s involvement immediately after the 1928 incident. An intensive propaganda campaign was set moving throughout the country, sometimes called the Buraq Campaign, in which many petitions presenting the Palestinian stand on the Muslim sacredness of the Buraq were composed locally and sent to British and world bodies. This pressure led to the November 19 statement of policy, in which the notion of status quo was accepted in principle, and the parties were given three months to present their arguments concerning their case. It was in the months thereafter that Amin’s policy of agitation is presumed to have proceeded in earnest, among other things by establishing a ma’dhana (call to prayer stand) above the Wall, later to become a zawiya (Sufi covenant). Amin, according to Porath, eagerly awaited a pro-Arab decision on the status quo, but since he believed that the Jews were hard at work pressuring the government in London, he thought a counter pressure in Palestine was desirable. The riots provided this pressure. But how can we show that they were indeed the Mufti’s doing? The text used as proof is a remark by the historian Izzat Darwaza, who many years later mentioned this so-called al-Buraq Uprising, as it became known, saying that Palestinian nationalism was

112


asleep at the time, and those who pushed for the riots behind the scenes wished to bring it back to life. This, of course, is hardly a proof. Porath evidently sees in this sentence by Darwaza an unintentional admission of guilt, a slip, but this is probably a Zionist bias. Writing in the 1950s, Darwaza, a close associate of Amin in Mandatory times, had reason and interest to glorify Amin’s primary role in creating every achievement of the Palestinian national movement, and the Buraq Uprising had become by then a major achievement of this movement’s history. Porath absolves the provocative and illegal Betar demonstration at the Wall on the August 15 as irrelevant to the Riots, since the Riots actually started a week later. However, this week was full of events constituting a bridge between the demonstration and the Riots (such as the Arab counterdemonstration, killing of a Jewish boy and wounding of an Arab boy and the funeral of the killed Jew, which turned into a mass emotional rally). A more objective weighing of the evidence shows that the case for the Mufti’s complicity in actually inciting people to engage in extreme violence is rather weak. Philip Mattar’s rendering of the chronology of events seems more plausible.8 According to this version, the Mufti had no grand plan to revive the national movement by igniting a conflagration around the Buraq. His protest against Jewish designs on the Wall was motivated by the intensive, worldwide Jewish campaign set in motion after the 1928 screen incident, a campaign intended to obtain the Wall for the Jews. Given Jewish influence in Great Britain, this outcome seemed quite likely. As head of the Palestinian religious endowments, it was the formal responsibility of the Mufti to prevent this. As in the case of many Muslims in the country, his fears for the Islamic sites were probably genuine, and the argument for a cynical play on unfounded emotions lacks any empirical basis. The Mufti’s role in the events was minor, and he deserves neither vilification nor glorification. All the extant evidence shows that he promised the British officials that he would do his utmost to pacify the crowd gathering in the Haram area on the 23rd, and that he did just that, stopping groups going in the direction of the Damascus gate and trying to talk to various groups to calm them. That his was the organizing hand behind the massacres in Hebron and Safad has never been substantiated. The Mufti himself certainly did not admit guilt. In a letter to the Times he declared that the urge of the Palestinians in the riots was a “spontaneous and uncontrollable protest,” not against Jews in general or Jews in Palestine, but against “unjust Zionist aggression.” He denies


113

that the outbreak was instigated by the Arab political institutions, or that “Arab effendis” stirred up the violence for political purposes. On the contrary, the tension leading to the outbreak is the fault of the Zionists, who in 1928 had tried to turn the old status quo on its head by making the Wall into a sort of open synagogue (where the separation between men and women is the traditional standard). If this were not enough, he goes on, the intransigent and aggressive speeches made during the 1928 Zionist Congress on the Jewish right to own the Wall (totally disregarding the traditional status quo) inflamed Palestinian sensitivities and brought them to boiling point. However, despite the tension gripping the people, Amin insists that the leaders and he himself made every effort to calm their offended emotions.9 All the evidence indicates that the Mufti was treading on shaky ground, and that his interest in large-scale violence at this time was not overriding: he was after all a government employee, and certainly interested in keeping his posts, above all because he probably expected the British to come to their senses and discard the Jewish National Home idea and policy, in which case he would be a leading candidate to run the politics of an independent Palestine.

A neutral observer: British views The affair, then, started on August 15, 1929, with a Betar demonstration at the Wall. The British authorities got word of what was going to happen a day before, as the demonstration was being prepared in the Lemel school in West Jerusalem. High officials went to the school in person and warned the Betar leaders present that the demonstration would be illegal if it were to involve military-style marching, hoisting of flags, chanting of political slogans and the like. Strong assurances were given by Betar leaders. Next day, the interdicted procedures were performed, to the letter. A wild demonstration of Jewish youths took place, with extreme anti-Government and anti-Arab speeches, military marching and so on. Some curses against the Islamic religion were reported. On the 16th a Muslim counterdemonstration was held, which went out of control, with some religious scrolls being torn and a Jew beaten up.10 Some excerpts from the report of the British Commission of Inquiry are relevant and important here. The report says, for example:11 “During and after the midday prayer in the Haram area, speeches were made by the Sheikhs of the Mosque of Aqsa and by the Mufti of Jerusalem.” Arab policemen were sent by the authorities to summarize these speeches. The conclusion drawn was: “Their evidence is to the effect that the

114


speeches made were of a pacifying character but that some of the audience ascended the platform and called to the crowd not to take notice of what the speakers said because they were unfaithful to the Moslem cause.” The report further notes that next day, August 24, the Mufti issued a communique in which he clearly called for quiet: [In] order to spare bloodshed and protect life, we call upon you, O Arabs, in the interest of the country ... to strive sincerely to quell the riot, avoid bloodshed and save life. We request you all to return to quiet and peace ... Be confident that we are making every possible effort to realize your demands and national aspirations by peaceful methods. The conclusion of the Commission regarding the complicity of the Mufti was that, in playing the part he took in the organization of the Burak campaign, he wished both to annoy the Jews, and also to mobilize Arab opinion on the issue of the Wailing Wall, but that he had no intention to utilize that campaign as the means of incitement to disorder.12 The Commission further dealt with Jewish accusations that the Mufti sent emissaries to the villages to foment violence. No evidence of this was found and there are two reasons that make the allegation unlikely: First, in three of the worst areas of violence (Hebron, Jaffa, and Haifa) the Mufti’s influence was at its weakest. Second, the Commission laid some emphasis on the witness from Beer Sheba who said he had received no directive from the Mufti and had heard of no such directive, and that had he received an order to come to Jerusalem, he would certainly have acted upon it. The Commission further praised the Mufti, stating that at least during the crucial days of August 23 and immediately thereafter the Mufti “exerted his influence in the direction of promoting peace and restoring order. On this point there was unanimity of opinion among the many official witnesses with whom during the course of our inquiry the question of the Mufti’s conduct was raised.” In general, the Commission ruled out premeditation. It was found unlikely, since the riots broke out at different times in different places, and there was no attempt to block roads to prevent police reinforcement, or to cut telephone wires to obstruct government directives and messages.


115

The effort of historians to pin popular violence on one individual leader is probably naïve, common though it may be. It is one of many points of resemblance in the attitude to Hajj Amin and to Yasir Arafat, who 70 years later (in September 2000) was blamed for fomenting another wave of Palestinian mass violence. But the same Arafat had been trying to foment violence in the occupied territories for 20 years after June 1967 and had failed. Is not this a reminder that the masses revolt when it suits them, and not because of any particular leader, who rarely if ever has so many people so firmly in the palm of his hand? This indeed is my evaluation of the situation in both 1929 and 2000. All this leads to the conclusion that the riots were spontaneous and the outcome of popular nationalism. That they were carried out for the avowed purpose of defending a holy site is of course important, and reminds us that the Palestinian masses at that time were certainly highly motivated by religious values. But it would be very simplistic to view the riots as purely a matter of religious faith. They did not break out in Syria, for example, though the Aqsa Mosque was supposed to be sacred to Syrians no less than to Palestinians. Violence gripped only and precisely the nation/country called Palestine. While the issue was certainly religious, it was no less also national, touching central values of the Palestinians, and of them alone. In fact, the 1929 disturbances stood at the intersection of religion and nationalism: the centrality of the Haram as the major icon of Palestinian nationalism, and the duty incumbent on the Palestinians to defend the mosques at all cost, as an obligation thrust upon them by God. A point of some interest is that in Hebron, where 69 Jews were killed by the crowd, an opposite phenomenon was also manifested. Not all the people of Hebron proceeded to massacre Jews. On the authority of a Jewish investigating body we know that out of 700 Jews in the city, a verified number of 450, probably more, were sheltered by the Arab population in their own houses. In other words, the truth is that many more Arabs in Hebron came out on the side of peace and humanity than on the side of violence. If anybody personally called for death to Jews, whether this was the Mufti or someone else, the fact is that most people in Hebron ignored such a call and even risked their own lives in defying it.13 Some key British documents from this period acknowledge the presence in the riots of real Palestinian nationalism. An important document demonstrating this point and analyzing the riots was composed shortly after they were over by F.G. Peake, Officer Commanding, Arab Legion.14 As the emergency commander called upon to suppress

116


outbreaks west of the Jordan at this time, this officeholder may be supposed to have been in possession of the best intelligence information on what was going on among the population. He explains the outbreak by the long suppressed feelings of the Palestinians and suggests that it is a utopian fantasy to suppose they can be contained in the future, basically because popular involvement makes such an outcome well-nigh impossible. To cite the report: Whatever the aims of the Zionists and whatever be the hopes of its [sic] promoters, it is daily becoming more apparent that the old methods of government are no longer adequate. We cannot introduce modern education and hold all the power, unless the system is to be maintained by force in the teeth of opposition. Nationalism now-a-days is a very real thing, it cannot be neglected nor abolished by force; either we must be prepared to hand over much of the power to the people of the country, or we must maintain sufficient force to uphold a regime which is disapproved [of] by the great body of the ruled; nor must we forget that in the event of the latter policy being maintained that in the struggle which inevitably we must sooner or later face, almost all the nation, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, will be ranged on the side of the National leaders against us ... Another example going in the same direction is a report written in January 1930 by John Chancellor, the High Commissioner. It was an ambitious, 73 page long memorandum, giving his own version of the wider context of the 1929 Riots.15 In this document Chancellor joins the long line of local British officials who held that the reasonable and understandable Arab opposition to Zionism was so intense and so widespread as to make the country practically ungovernable without major use of force. In fact, in the long run the country was uncontrollable even with the major use of force. In outlining his opinions, Chancellor made several references to popular Palestinian nationalism, the aspect of interest to this study. He surveys the history of the feelings of the people of Palestine. To him it is quite evident that the wartime promises to the Arabs did not exclude Palestine, which was set apart only by an after-the-fact interpretation in the 1922 White Paper. When the contents of the official correspondence became known in the latter phases of the Great War, the people of Palestine had every reason to expect that Palestine would be independent and Arab. Hence they received the Balfour Declaration with a sense of “incredulity.” Their anger and frustration grew apace


117

when at the end of the war all the Middle Eastern peoples received lavish promises of independence, from which the Palestinians alone were left out. The outcome was a mood of total lack of cooperation with the Mandate, which has lasted to Chancellor’s time of writing. In his view, what ignited the fire of 1929 was the 1928 Zionist Congress where non-Zionists joined forces with Zionists to form the Extended Jewish Agency, and the vigorous anti-Palestinian speeches made at that Congress with reference to the Wailing Wall. He goes on to suggest that the general feeling of injustice done to the Palestinians has now infected other Arabs “and gained for the people of Palestine the sympathies of the Arabs in neighbouring territories in their efforts to obtain self-government ...” Furthermore, he went on to prophesy, brilliantly, “As a consequence of the recent outbreaks, a wave of Pan-Arab nationalist sentiment has swept over Palestine and neighbouring Arab countries, and it is certain that the political situation will never again be as it was, or appeared to be, before last August.”16 Chancellor even predicted that in future outbreaks of violence Arabs from neighboring countries would rush to join the Palestinians. In conclusion, he suggests a radical curtailment of the current pro-Zionist policy in Palestine, as the only course likely to avert recurring and intensifying outbreaks.

The aftermath of the riots The aftermath of the Buraq rebellion exposes some other interesting episodes in the continuing relations of elite-masse in Palestine. Although the British government had issued a clear statement of policy declaring the Jewish activity around the Wall in 1928 an encroachment on the status quo, in the wake of the 1929 riots the High Commissioner, for some unclear reason, issued temporary regulations that improved the conditions of the Jews beyond the status quo. This impelled the Palestinian leadership to initiate a pro-active policy against the High Commissioner, including angry communications to London and similar aggressive measures bordering on the abusive. The Commissioner became angry and fought back. He summoned the Palestinian leadership and scolded them in no uncertain way for treating the representative of the King in such an undignified way.17 This whole episode looks rather like an amusing anticlimax to a horrific week in which hundreds of people lost their lives. But there is more to this bizarre incident than meets the eye. We should bear in mind that up to this point in the history of the Mandate the British had managed

118


to remain untouched: not a single attack, no physical or verbal abuse was directed at them. I will speak of this later as the major tactical error of the Palestinians during this period: they fought the Zionists, who had to stick it out under any circumstances; but they left the British out of it, though public opinion in England was much more sensitive to casualties. It goes without saying that Jewish casualties did not impress the British. In any event, only the British could change the policy in Palestine. To come back to the meeting between the Commissioner and the Palestinian leaders. One of those who took the lead in trying to apologize to the High Commissioner was Awni Abd al-Hadi, member of the Executive Committee, the semi-official leading body of the Palestinians. He began by saying that the Executive Committee in their actions are not always their own masters, but have to yield to the pressure of their followers ... The Government was doubtless aware that there was a great deal of excitement among the nation. The common people could not always look at matters broadly, but took an immediate view of events ... He added that the Committee members understood that they had to maintain good relations with the High Commissioner and the English public, but that the common people were more interested in the “denial of justice,” and “the pressure on them was strong to voice this view ...” Members of the Committee added that they “made a great effort to call off the strike which had been demanded by the whole nation: for they knew what risk was incurred by the closing of shops.” But hardly had they managed to cancel that strike, thereby incurring great risk to themselves, when the new regulations were promulgated. This is a most revealing episode in the evolving relations between elite and masses in Palestinian society under the Mandate. It was the first episode in a pattern that was to become clear in the coming decade: The leaders, assumed to show the way to the ignorant masses, are actually seen to be led, or pushed from behind, by the masses who took a much more radical view of the situation. This is fundamentally at variance with the theory of elite-mass relations in the context of nationalist movements: nationalism is supposed to be the handmaiden of selfserving elites, fabricated for their own selfish interests and then inculcated into the minds of unsuspecting and ignorant people. But in the matter at hand, we see again, as we have seen in former chapters, that things were not that simple: the masses had a will of their own,


119

and they developed a radical perception of circumstances that went well beyond that of the elite. This analysis goes back to James Gelvin’s point, cited earlier, according to which in Palestine, as in Syria, a popular nationalism arose, the outcome of the capitalist development that went on from the middle of the nineteenth century. This development resulted in the weakening of traditional vertical ties, as well as in the marginalization of traditional craftsmen, and populism, or political activism of the lower classes, was one result. The Buraq riots, or uprising, seem to have been a clear expression of popular nationalism, in a way expressing the basic collective identity of the Palestinians. We have seen above in this study that the connection of the Palestinians to their sacred sites in the Jerusalem Haram constituted the quintessence of their identity from the Crusades onward. A long list of events throughout the Ottoman centuries shows that they vividly remembered that epoch, and were constantly aware that such an invasion could recur. We have also seen that these events inculcated into the minds of the Palestinians the belief that it was their duty and privilege to be the advance guard defending the holy sites not only for themselves, but also for the whole Islamic world. Quite simply, it was a duty thrust on them by God, which could not be evaded. This duty was activated as soon as the Palestinians observed that the new kind of Jews were doing something similar to the Crusaders. They not only publicized their intention to take over the Haram and perhaps even demolish the mosques, but all through the 1920s they exerted themselves to erode the status quo in Jerusalem, thereby showing that their thinly veiled threat was far from virtual. It cannot be said that these fears were the expression of a vain paranoia. A report from 1920 tells of a meeting between a group of Jewish rabbis and Sir Ronald Storrs, in which the rabbis most emphatically pronounced the hope that one of these days, God would help rebuild His old House. The same report mentions an intransigent and uncompromising Jewish demand to take exclusive charge of the Wall, disregarding the rights or feelings of anybody else in the matter.18 A report on the political situation of the country for 1922 noted that the Jews were trying to change the status quo at the Western Wall by placing there benches, tables, water containers, and other appurtenances, all forcibly removed by the British police, and also that the Jewish Organization was trying to raise contributions for various purposes; one of the first listed was buying the Wall and the area around it.19


A Palestinian delegation went to the Hijaz in 1922, among other things to convey apprehension of Zionist intentions toward the holy sites: It carried some five hundred copies of a Jewish New Year greeting card, showing a Star of David over the Dome of the Rock.20 These feelings remained strong also after the 1929 riots. Interesting information can be gleaned from the letter sent to the Colonial Office by a British resident of Palestine, a certain Harry Piri Gordon. He tells, for example, of a British administrator of a local hospital treating large numbers of villagers, who after the Riots discussed with him the political situation in the country, being evidently fully abreast of events.21 Referring more specifically to these people’s beliefs concerning the Haram, Gordon says that “we now find devout Arabs from all over the country obstinately believing the excitement about the Wailing Wall is only fresh evidence that the Jews cherish the ambition to recover the Haram esh-Sherif and sweep away all Moslem shrines in order to establish the Jewish Temple.” He describes these views as extraordinarily widespread in the country, and adds that while it may be countered that such Jewish aspirations are not to be taken seriously, the Arabs are not prepared to differentiate between evictions of tenants from their land, which they see taking place daily, and supposedly theoretical aspirations to turn them out of their Holy Places. The value of this information lies in that it is presented as gathered from the general population of the country, and not the elites. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that while the 1929 disturbances constitute a minor episode in the general stretch of time covered by this study, it is exactly the long-term gaze that makes me assign much greater importance to it. This chapter has shown that the 1929 disturbances were not instigated by any leader, but were the outcome of popular feelings. The least we can say about these episodes is that they were carried out by the lower classes, the true subalterns. In that sense they certainly were an expression of popular nationalism. I say advisedly nationalism, for to call the disturbances religious would be highly simplistic. They were religio-national in the sense suggested by Hastings, as we have seen in Chapter 1 above. This means that the Palestinian masses were infuriated in this case by a perceived danger to their cultural and religious center, which signified their place and contribution to Islam. It is important that the disturbances took place in Palestine alone, not in Syria or Saudi Arabia, for whom Jerusalem was supposedly no less important. It should also be kept in mind that the whole episode was nothing less than a reenactment of a type of event that was part of the communal memory in Palestine since the Crusades. In that sense


121

the 1929 disturbances constituted a bridge of memory between the Crusades (both real and feared) and the more recent decades. The centrality of the Aqsa in the communal identity of the Palestinians made so evident in 1929, harks back directly to prevailing perceptions in Ottoman times, and serving as the bed-rock for the same feeling in the recent generation. Again, no ad hoc invention or incitement was necessary or even possible.

The radicalization of the 1930s One major outcome of the Palestinian outrage made evident in 1929 was the White Paper of 1930, which made Jewish immigration dependent on Arab levels of unemployment. But what seemed like a major Palestinian victory was soon nullified by an international lobbying campaign of the Jewish Organization. This resulted in the famous MacDonald Letter, in which the British Prime Minister reassured the Zionists that the pre-existing immigration equation would remain the same. This event was a major blow to the Palestinians, almost as strong as the Balfour declaration. An imminent outburst was expected, yet nothing happened, not in any case in the short run. It was the biggest non-event in the history of the British Mandate, and probably a major indication that popular outbursts come from below, at their own appropriate time, rather than fabricated by leaders. Despite this strange passivity, a memorandum from later this year reported the beginning of signs of unrest in the population, particularly in places like Nablus, always a nerve center of Arab nationalism. Signs were reported of youngsters who expressed a willingness to pass from mere protest to real violence.22 A further clear sign of early radicalization was the Nebi Musa festival of 1931, which showed that many Palestinians were not at all in a cheerful mood. It is true that according to the formal record nothing in particular happened that year in connection with Nebi Musa, but a private letter sent to the Colonial Office related that the Hebronites arrived in Jerusalem that year in an extremely agitated mood, chanting far-reaching nationalist slogans and brandishing swords. It was believed that only the large British force that encircled the Hebronites and hemmed them in rather tightly, prevented them from carrying their protest to the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem.23 Another clear sign of radicalization was the nationalist congress convened in Nablus in September 1931. Speakers were much more radical than customary, and the congress as a body called for tougher


anti-Government measures, such as non-cooperation, probably under the influence of Gandhi and his party in India. The final declaration partly conveyed this: “The Arabs should in future direct all their propaganda to the east and the Arab world. As guardians of the Holy places, the Arabs can find no better supporters than the Islamic world.”24 At the beginning of the 1930s a new generation of younger people entered Palestinian politics. These were products of the new educational system that came into being at the beginning of the Mandate. A small number among them may have been graduates of government schools, but it is well known that these schools were on the whole not conducive to creating nationalist radicals. They, on the contrary, made it their special task to impart traditional values, faithful to the traditional elite and the foreign occupier. But alongside this restrictive layer of education there arose another, private and nationalistic in character, upholding Islamic values, while also encouraging secular subjects and national values. Several such schools arose in Palestine at this time, the most famous being al-Najjah School in Nablus. Several of the people mentioned here in connection with radical politics in Palestine in these years were graduates of this school. With the rise to power of Hitler and the National Socialist Party in Germany in January of 1933, a large number of Jews flocked into Palestine and their number there rose from 180,000 in 1932 to some 400,000 in 1936. It should be stressed that there were already clear signs of radicalization before the intensification of this immigration; the Istiqlal party (see below), for example, was established before the coming of the new wave of Jewish immigration. But certainly the sudden large numbers of new-comers represented an altogether new problem for the Palestinians. The inevitable outcome was a notable radicalization on the part of the Palestinian Arabs during this period. Radicalization came about not only in schools, but also in youth movements, the main example being the Boy Scouts of Palestine. The Boy Scout movement was a phenomenon that emerged in Palestinian society in the early 1930s. It was much politicized from the start, showing little interest in the values of Boy Scouting movements elsewhere in the world. One favorite activity from the start was making excursions to various places in the country,25 an interesting point in view of the fact that Zionist writers then and today consider the excursion not only a quintessential characteristic of Zionist youth movement activity during the Mandate, but also as something that the “primitive” Palestinians were unable to fathom, since they did not understand the idea of love of country (as against village). Boy Scouts figure everywhere in radical


123

political activities in this period: They are among the hot-headed elements recruited by radical politicians such as Akram Zuàytir, who on one occasion spoke to the Boy Scouts of Nablus on the need for military training,26 and Boy Scouts were among the most active elements at Nebi Musa festivals in these years, participating in large numbers, and distinguishing themselves by waving the most radical anti-Zionist slogans and chanting the most enthusiastic poems.27 It is noteworthy that all the Boy Scout groups carried names of early Muslim heroes who played a central role in the Islamic conquest of Palestine, such as Khalid b. al-Walid. This in itself led people to think about the connections between Palestine, the Arabs and Islam. Many pieces of information from 1933 show the Boy Scouts’ strong tendencies towards Pan-Arabism. The visit of the leader of the Iraqi Boy Scouts in Palestine was an occasion for a Pan-Arabist rally, in which the restoration of past Arab glories was the main theme. Songs expressing radical national feelings were sung. Anti-colonialism and “the attainment of absolute independence” by force were also hailed.28 An intelligence report dated June 193329 speaks of a new phenomenon of intense and widespread agitations among the youth: “... national propaganda of an extreme character is being spread in certain schools, in many cases by the teachers themselves, mostly in private schools, but possibly also in Government schools.”

The Istiqlal party30 The most important manifestation of the changing political scene among the Palestinians in the first part of the 1930s was the appearance of an ideological party in a more precise meaning of the word than hitherto.31 This party, the Istiqlal (Independence), consciously kept clear of traditional Palestinian family politics and dissensions. It revived the explicit pursuit of Pan-Arab policies, after these had died out at the end of the Faisal episode in Syria. This, strictly speaking, was not new, since the Arab Executive itself referred in its petitions to Pan-Arab ideals. The Istiqlal Party made Pan-Arabism the central tenet of its ideology, but its real innovatory force lay in the adoption of the idea that the true enemies of the Arabs of Palestine were the British rather than the Jews. It is evident that the Istiqlal Party never really intended to leave the Jews alone. But it understood that to change the British government’s policy you had to quarrel with the British, not with the Zionists. Hence Istiqlal adopted a decidedly hostile attitude to the British, not only to the Zionists, something the traditional notables could never contemplate.32


Istiqlal was founded in December 1931, though it was announced to the public only in August 1932. Leaders of this and other parties roamed the country giving lectures.33 Later during 1933 the influence of Istiqlal was seen to be rising, along with its mounting anti-Government radicalism. It was said to be very active among the common people.34 It was also no doubt a generational thing: supporters of the Istiqlal were said to be the young generation, and not necessarily from the a`yan class. While the traditional leadership stressed the need to act within the bounds of the law, the new leaders spoke openly of the need to prepare for war and armed resistance. For the traditional leadership, faith in the basic trustworthiness of the British was crucial, at all events overriding. It was also crucial that this leadership still remembered the pact between Britain and the Arabs during World War I. To the younger generation all this meant very little.35 Calls of this nature, namely to fight against the British, were voiced in the Arab press from the early 1930s, by such people as Hamdi al-Husayni, Subhi al-Khadra, and Izzat Darwaza. Their articles claimed that the Arabs of Palestine had left the British in peace for too long, despite the fact that Great Britain controlled them in a typically colonialist fashion, which it intended to go on doing. After the foundation of the party, the most distinct activist in Istiqlal was Akram Zuàytir, a Nablus school teacher who collected hot-headed youths from among his students and others, and addressed them on the need to undergo military training for the inevitable showdown that would precede independence.36 True to its premises, the first two years of Istiqlal buzzed with activity in the Pan-Arab field. Two important visits to Palestine took place in this context, that of Yasin al-Hashimi, a top-level Iraqi leader (January 1932), and King Faisal of Iraq (September 1932). These two were considered leading voices in the quest for Pan-Arabism, and both were greeted in Palestine most enthusiastically, demonstrating a widespread yearning among Palestinians for a Pan-Arab solution to their predicament. Faisal’s death in September 1933 was a severe blow to this quest, as was the British dislike of the whole idea of Pan-Arabism.37 Istiqlal remained a small organization. According to the sources it did not try to recruit massively, and remained content with a membership of a few scores.38 This does not mean that it did not want mass public support for its policies, only that it did not seek formal membership. In any case this could not have been very useful in Palestine at that time, as there were no elections and no political nominations, nor in fact anything at all that could be affected by formal membership. Istiqlal sought to influence public opinion by arranging and participating


125

in mass rallies to make various protests or to commemorate various events. An example is the first rally it organized in Haifa in 1932, to commemorate the Battle of Hattin and its hero, Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi. It was said that 5,000 people took part in this event.39 Many more rallies of the same kind were organized in the coming years, to commemorate events connected with the Crusades and the Balfour Declaration. All of this shows that the influence of the party on the street and in the political field went much deeper than is apparent in its small formal membership. While the Istiqlal Party made a strong impression with its ideological rigor, in terms of real power its showing was not remarkable. For example, it had little effect on the non-cooperation convention assembled in Jaffa in late March 1933.40 Another report says that the branches, as well as the numbers of actual recruits to Istiqlal were very small, one suggested reason being that to exert real influence over Palestinian society at this time one had to be a senior member of the a`yan class.41 In any event, in 1934 the Istiqlal party ceased to exist as an organized body. It certainly posed a danger to the British Mandate and was a target of severe repressive pressures, as Matthews amply shows. It also suffered from the involvement of its official leader, Awni Abd al-Hadi, in land sales to the Zionists, and this too could not but affect the standing of the party with the public. Still, there can be little doubt that the great potential and the modest showing of the Istiqlal party presents one of the greatest enigmas in understanding Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate. Here was an ideological-nationalist party with the purest possible record and credentials, untainted by family quarrels, totally devoted to the nation and to nothing else, and yet it did so poorly on the ground. It seems almost unreal. However, I believe that there are several explanations, and such that tally with the general thesis of this book. Istiqlal was too modern, too secular, and perhaps a touch too radical for the time. Most Palestinians in those years tended to a more mixed type of leadership: one that would be simultaneously modern and traditional; notable-related, yet with modern views and modern posture; secularnationalist, yet with strong religious leanings; a leadership that would reflect people’s attachment to their religious sites and history. Istiqlal was somewhat removed from these values, though certainly not in its self-perception. Most importantly, precisely at this time a near ideal leader appeared, in the person of the Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. He was from an a`yan family but was himself radical and relatively young; his religious credentials were of course impeccable, but he was also

126


strongly nationalistic, in a Palestinian and Pan-Arab way. It was at this time that Hajj Amin was attaining heights of popularity and Istiqlal could not compete with him. Its secularism in particular was a liability. Several intelligence reports from 1933 speak specifically of the fact that Hajj Amin had become the undisputed popular leader of the Palestinian Arabs. These reports explicitly underscore the popular, grassroots nature of this leadership.42 The Mufti’s prestige was particularly augmented in the wake of an unusually successful Nebi Musa celebration in 1932.43 High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope talked with Hajj Amin in late 1933 and portrayed the Mufti as a moderate politician. He (the Mufti) insisted that he had nothing against the British and wished to cooperate with them. He even declared that he held it to be the responsibility of the Arab leaders to calm the stormy feelings of the population. In fact, he claimed, he was not even against the Jews per se; he only thought that the Jewish national home should by now be seen as complete, hence there was no justification to bring any more Jews into the country. He also warned that the feelings of the people were very close to boiling point and that they were beyond soothing words.44 Ultimately, it seems to me, the most important point demonstrated by the Istiqlal episode is that the politically aware Palestinian public at the time, though fully Arab in ethnicity, was also acutely aware of its Palestinian patriotism, and did not go along with the Istiqlal party’s radical Pan-Arabism. It is not impossible in this connection that part of the reason for the Istiqlal’s demise was a curious similarity between its ideology and that of David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders, who always insisted that the inhabitants of Palestine were Arabs, not Palestinians.45 Widespread Pan-Arabism at the expense of Palestinian patriotism clearly played into the hands of Zionism at this time: Several Palestinian and Arab leaders are on record as suggesting that if an Arab state was to be granted by Great Britain, such a state could be “flexible” on Zionist demands on Palestine (in a state of seventy million people a four or five million minority would not make much difference). This apparent tension may be explained by the Palestinians’ view of themselves certainly as Arabs, but not without their own “dowry” of Palestine. To my mind, the rapid decline of the Istiqlal Party was a crucial moment in Palestinian history in that is established in a clear-cut fashion that the “Palestinians” were first and foremost Palestinians.


127

The October 1933 demonstrations and their importance Early in 1933 the Palestinian leadership of the Executive Committee again tried to petition the High Commissioner to change the policy for Palestine, again of course in vain. A line of action that was now suggested was la-taàwun – lack of cooperation. This would include refraining from paying taxes and the resignation of all officials from government posts. A congress to implement these ideas was convened in Jaffa on March 26, 1933.46 Resignation, in particular, would have been a radical move since this was tantamount to a declaration of war on the government. It would certainly hurt the British government of Palestine, but it would more severely hurt the interests of the Palestinians, and characteristic of the congress were those who said it would be an excellent idea if we could all resign, but unfortunately we cannot. The fact was that thousands of Palestinians were employed as officials in the higher to middle ranks of the administration, and many more thousands in lower, manual jobs. This was much less relevant for the Zionists, who for the most part lived in a state parallel to the British administration. They had their own authorities, educational network, medical services, and most of the elements of a regular state. This was first of all a matter of custom, a legacy of the initial wording of the document of the Mandate and the original Jewish Commission, not something formally legislated. Basically, it represented the early British approach to the Jews as partners rather than colonized native inhabitants. But it was also of course an economic issue – the Zionists possessed the resources to pay the salaries of a large number of officials who could not otherwise sustain themselves financially. For the Arab population of Palestine, the British government was the only authority available. Resignation would spell ruin for the Palestinian economy. All this was also of course part of the basic difference between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in terms of collective psychology: The Arabs, as the large majority and original proprietors of the country, could not reconcile themselves to the idea of sectarian institutions. For exactly the opposite reasons the Jews were happy with the situation. The implication for the future was of course enormous: when the British left, the Palestinians were faced with a complete political void. The Jews enjoyed a perfectly and legitimately functioning government from the first day of the post-British era. The Jaffa congress thus inevitably failed, and the question was what to do next in order to tackle governmental complacency. The next move was public demonstrations in some Palestinian towns, late in 1933. Outwardly there was nothing very unusual about these


demonstrations; true enough, 33 Palestinians lost their lives, but many more had been killed by British forces in 1929. However, as all involved well recognized, these demonstrations were important on the level of principle – they constituted the first violent anti-British action in the Mandatory period. It may reasonably be argued that the demonstrations of October 1933, the main topic of this section, which were initiated and conducted by the Executive Committee, were in effect the work of Istiqlal, since from its foundation Istiqlal had criticized the Committee for not adopting a more aggressive line of resistance to the British. The decision to initiate the demonstrations came precisely as the Istiqlal leaders were meeting to decide on a line of popular resistance.47 The October demonstration started in Jerusalem, on October 13, 1933. A crowd of some seven thousand left the Haram area after the Friday prayer and marched in formation toward the New Gate, shouting mainly “Allah akbar.” At the gate they began to throw stones at the British police, who in turn fired on the crowd. The result was one policeman and several Palestinians dead. The demonstration in Jaffa on October 27 was even more violent, drawing thousands of people from all over the country, and resulted in total chaos. Several Palestinians were killed by the police. Only strenuous British official pressure made many peasants from the surrounding villages refrain from taking part, which would have made the event a major political and security crisis. British reports on the demonstration came to the conclusion that the reason for all this was Arab desperation at the growing Jewish National Home, their inability to influence British policy, and the growing feeling “that they are destined to extermination, expulsion and complete domination by the Jews.”48 In the coming weeks similar demonstrations, always on Fridays, were held in other towns of Palestine.49 The October demonstrations were officially illegal, and there was strong British pressure on the Executive Committee to call them off. British intelligence reports claim that the decision to refuse that demand was taken out of pressure from below: “It is ... safe to say that the Executive Committee ... were forced to adopt this decision by public opinion, and by the presence of militant elements in the Istiqlal and Young Men’s parties.” Everybody felt that rescinding the decision would bring about the fall of the Executive Committee. Public opinion even forced the members of the Committee to take part in the demonstrations though they were aware they could be beaten by the police.50 There can be no doubt that the demonstrations of 1933 were the first shot not only of the Palestinian revolt, but also of the change of


129

consciousness leading to the White Paper of 1939. This was expressed for the first time in an important dispatch by the High Commissioner (Arthur Wauchope) to London. Sent in late December 1933, this dispatch was considered important enough to be distributed to the entire cabinet and to the governments of the Dominions.51 In it Wauchope presented his analysis of the violent demonstrations in October of that year. He began by saying that the general opinion in the country was now much more hostile toward the government, mainly because of the harsh treatment the crowd got at the hands of the police in the demonstrations. More important, he noted with apparent amazement, the demonstrations were for the first time political in the sense of being anti-British. In consequence, he warns that if the Balfour policy is not changed, the next time round the violence will be much more serious. No doubt conscious of the change of focus of Palestinian violence from the Jews to the government, he says: It does not seem possible to me that the present hostility and widening breach between the Arabs and the British rulers can remain as they are today; either we find means to bring ruler and ruled more in sympathy or the separation and hostility will grow deeper and more permanent each year. Only a rapprochement with the Arab population of the country might stand a chance of stemming what seemed like a major collision course between the government and the Arabs of Palestine.52 Wauchope also has some explanation for the change in the Palestinian attitude in the early 1930s: other Arab countries were moving forward toward independence, and the disadvantages of foreign rule began to be seen clearly, beyond the troubles with Zionism. The High Commissioner’s information was no doubt based in part on a CID report gleaned from informants on the ground, and this adds some interesting and important details.53 The report says that there is a noticeable rise in anti-British feeling in the country. “This feeling is amongst all classes and discontent and bitterness are general and has been increasing yearly.” Until recently the Arabs of Palestine expected the British to acknowledge Arab rights in Palestine, but now they have come to despair of this. The increased level of Jewish immigration in the last year has enhanced this gloomy and desperate mood. New factors that have contributed to strengthen popular nationalism are the rise of literacy and the press – now even villagers read newspapers. In addition, there is a growing awareness of the situation of other Arab countries,


which are approaching independence, leaving the Palestinian Arabs behind the times. The report also notes the appearance of a young generation of partly educated radicals, much prone to the ideas of Istiqlal. While Istiqlal as an organization may not have been very successful, its ideas (broader Arab nationalism, enhanced radicalism unfettered by party affiliation) have infiltrated into broader levels of the society and have become quite widespread. The report also tells us that “There is amongst the Arabs a genuine natural desire for independence.”54 Much in these feelings is of course blamed on Zionism: The Arabs feel that if events progress at the rate they have done during more recent years they are destined to virtual effacement, those who are not driven to find homes in other countries will develop into “Hewers of wood and drawers of water.” From experience they find little which allows them to hope for cooperation or support from the Jewish race.55 The aftermath of the rather heroic moment of the anti-British demonstrations of October 1933 shows the limits of possible Palestinian radicalization during the Mandate, in fact the trap in which they were caught, a trap already alluded to above. In January 1934 the Palestinian national leadership (the Executive Committee) notified the High Commissioner that it was going to organize a demonstration to commemorate the dead of the earlier demonstration. This time the High Commissioner refused to be surprised; nor was he willing to allow any show of violence. This of course was only natural and to be expected. What was remarkable about the January 1934 demonstration is the degree to which the Palestinian leadership was willing to play the game. They seem to have been impressed by Wauchope’s warning, somewhat odd in a typically colonial situation, about “the strong feeling that would be roused in England if an Arab crowd were to cause the death of a British police or British soldiers, and how such feelings ... would adversely affect Arab interests and make the adoption of a liberal policy in Palestine all the more difficult.” To the historian, this warning is nothing less than astonishing. It reminds us again that up to this point the British in Palestine were living in a dream world of fantasy, not a situation of forceful occupation. The warning is also astonishing in its implied expectation that this dream state should go on, that Britain had somehow earned the right to expect that much from the Palestinians, after all the favors it had lavished on them.


131

No less important is the fact that the Palestinian leaders duly complied: they assured the authorities that the Palestinians were no troublemakers and were not interested in any kind of violence, or even in mildly irritating the British. The demonstrations were in fact perfectly peaceful, no incident marring the record.56 What purpose peaceful demonstrations could answer in the extremely tight corner in which the Palestinians found themselves is of course another matter entirely. They were clearly like aspirin for a cancer patient. Was there any logic in this kind of political behavior? My understanding is that such a logic existed. The Palestinian leadership could not in fact break totally with the British and approach them with open hostility: in normal colonial circumstances this might have led to their independence; in the situation obtaining in Palestine it might push the British even further into the arms of the Jews. At the end of 1935 two events occurred that proved to be the last straw for the Palestinians. The final chords of the period which may be described as the run up to the rebellion were the weapons incident and the revolt of Izz al-Din al-Qassam. These two events symbolically came together and worked to infuriate a people under siege such as the Palestinians were in 1935. On October 15, 1935, a cement barrel fell to the ground from a crane in the port of Jaffa and the contents were exposed. The barrel contained arms and ammunition, including 25 Lewis guns. Such “import” was of course illegal. This shocked all the Palestinians factions into putting aside their differences and unite to a common action against what looked like a British-Zionist conspiracy to arm the Jews.57 The Palestinian leaders insisted that this time they were demanding serious changes of policy, or they would resort to strong measures of protest. Probably nobody really had in mind the eruption of a general revolt, but this is what in fact happened. In addition, “the campaign was intensified against the recognised Arab leaders who were accused of being unworthy and not representative of the nation.”58 The British Occupation Day (December 9) was marked by demonstrations featuring unusually anti-British speeches.59 Activity in this period was dominated by the radical younger generation, led by people such as Akram Zuàytir of Nablus. The government’s answer to the memorandum came on January 29, 1936, and it was unsatisfactory as far as the Palestinians were concerned. Immigration was not going to be reduced in the near future.60 One minor concession was made concerning the sale of lands to Jews. The government promised to guarantee each fellah a minimum parcel of land for the support of his family. This “concession” immediately


incurred the wrath of the Zionist movement, which saw it as a “hindrance to Jewish progress” and as an encouragement for the fellah to preserve his “backward position.”61 On February 5, 1936 a one-day general strike engulfed the whole country. Crowds of youths demonstrated throughout the country and threw stones at the security forces. In the mosques of Nablus that same week strongly worded sermons were delivered, accusing the Mandatory powers of trying to destroy the national spirit. “Palestine, the land of our fathers and forefathers, is being given to another people, who now control the best part of it.” By the end of 1935 there were several indications that the mood of the Palestinians had become particularly despondent, and that they had had enough. In an interview that Raghib Nashashibi had with British officials he complained that the Jews got preferential treatment, even when they committed crimes, and warned that the general mood of the population was very similar to the one prevailing before the disturbances of 1929.62 The second episode heralding the Palestinian uprising was Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s effort at rebellion. Qassam was a man who had acquired a religious education at the famous Islamic university of al-Azhar in Cairo. There he may have absorbed ideas about reformist Islam which he appears to have developed further and given an early “fundamentalist” turn (at least in the sense of using religious teachings to advance political/national issues). In the early 1920s he led guerrilla warfare in Syria against the French, who sentenced him to death in abstentia when he fled the country. He settled in Haifa but not in obscurity. Qassam took up a post as a preacher in a Haifa mosque and immediately began to form cells of devotees in preparation for jihad against the Jews and the British. From the first Qassam rejected the notion of friendly relations between the Palestinians and the British, as well as the widespread assumption that in the end the British would return to their senses and recognize the justness of the Palestinian cause. From the start Qassam held that the conflict was a religious one, which would not be solved without violent rebellion. Thus, from the 1920s on, Qassam began to organize secret cells of followers in whom he inculcated his ideas about jihad against the British in Palestine. He shunned the middle and upper classes and deliberately approached the lower classes, a move that shows some consciousness, at the least, of class differences. Perhaps he judged, correctly, that only the lower classes were capable of sustaining guerrilla type operations for any length of time. It is also noteworthy that Qassam did not share the general contempt of the wider society (and of


133

modern historians) for those members of the lower classes who were involved in criminal activities and various forms of vice, and was not above trying to reeducate these people to respect the teachings of Islam and join his cause. Several of his close supporters were of that nature. Qassam’s early operations were secretive. His first anti-Zionist effort was a hand grenade thrown at a house in the Zionist settlement of Nahalal, in the Esdraelon valley (December 1932). Al-Hut speculates that the locale was not accidental. Nahalal was one of the first settlements in the depths of the valley, at that time the symbolic heart of the Zionist project. Characteristically, al-Hut points out, when Weizmann visited Palestine in 1931, he opened his tour at Nahalal, pointing out its symbolic importance as the reason, and announcing that he would also end it there. His Nahalal speech was translated in the Arab press.63 In October 1935 Qassam decided that the time was ripe to declare open rebellion against the British, hoping to ignite the Palestinians and the entire country by the small flame he planned to set alight. His group was intercepted by British forces a short time later, and Qassam and some of his men took refuge in a cave, which was soon discovered. Qassam, a man of 60, preferred to fight to the end rather than surrender. Qassam did not leave any substantial theoretical writings explaining his ideology. But there can be no doubt that he was not fighting solely for Islam, but also for the homeland (watan). In a farewell message he sent to Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, one of his disciples, he said that he expected from God “success in our endeavors in the cause of the motherland.”64 His last statement, made as he faced the British force in the cave, was: “We shall not give up this jihad for the sake of Allah and the homeland (watan).”65 The members of his band understood his message in the same way. One of those wounded in the clash in the woods of Ya`bad told a reporter that “our society was secret, and we did not accept anyone but those ready to die for the sake of their country.”66 Another prisoner from that clash said the purpose was “saving the motherland (watan), nothing else.”67 A good source showing that the mood of the Palestinians in late 1935 and early 1936 was rapidly becoming radical is the memoirs of Akram Zuàytir. A theme he emphasizes throughout the period is that the people all around him, as he himself, were beginning to think in terms of jihad, or violent resistance, rather than of going on with the traditional mode of mild protest. This was no doubt what Zuàytir himself preached in every lecture or speech that he gave; but it also fits what he reports other people were doing, such as holding clandestine live ammunition drills and similar activities. The other distinct topic in his


memoirs of this period is the growing friction between the street and the younger leadership and the old guard over the line that the movement in general should take against the British. Zuàytir railed against the old and smug leadership for trailing behind the street in the struggle: not a single leader had the courage to appear at Qassam’s funeral and other commemoration ceremonies since the British had declared him a criminal. The leadership was still voting against protest strikes, whereas Zuàytir quotes and reproduces petitions from all over the country showing that the people were several moves ahead in the process of radicalization.68 Zuàytir himself seems in fact to have been a serious driving force in this radicalization. It is to be noted that he was in Iraq in 1934 (working for the Ministry of Education), before returning to Palestine in mid-1935. Much of the lethargy ascribed to Istiqlal after 1933 may possibly have been due to the absence from the country of this most energetic and radical activist, and his return seems to coincide with renewed enthusiasm. Before long he was to play a significant, if not crucial, role at the start of the general strike (April 1936), probably his most important contribution to the history of the Mandate.

5 The Great Rebellion and Its Aftermath

The General Strike1 The period immediately before the strike was marked by efforts to establish a constituent assembly for Palestine; an Arab delegation was even invited to London to hold talks on the issue. Eventually, the idea was quashed by the supporters of Zionism in the British Parliament.2 While the politics of the constituent assembly was still seething, it was overtaken by a new turn of events, bursting forth from below in a wholly unexpected way. The pent-up feelings of the Arabs of Palestine, terrified for so long at the prospect of being dominated by another race, who, they had good reason to think, held sinister though well-concealed intentions concerning them, finally erupted. The inter-communal violence started on April 17, 1936, after the funeral of a Jew killed a day before by Arabs. Jaffa Jews attacked an Arab and injured him. Assaults of Jews on Arabs in Tel Aviv and of Arabs on Jews in Jaffa continued for some days. On the 19th of the month a group of activists in Nablus decided to start a general strike of some days, and this immediately caught on in other towns.3 The leadership itself was extremely hesitant as to how to proceed, but militant youngsters pushed in the direction of establishing a unified controlling body under the name of the Arab Higher Committee. So began a general strike that was to last for six months. As soon as it started the Committee published its conditions for ending it, with the usual Palestinians demands: a halt to Jewish immigration, cessation of land sales to Jews, and the creation of a national government. Such a prolonged general strike was necessarily problematic: no one could stop the fields from yielding their crops, so the peasants were almost by definition excluded. There was much wrangling over the participation of government officials, but in the end they 135


remained out as well. The problem we observed in the last chapter persisted: the Palestinians for the most part could not bring themselves to see in the British their enemy, and wished at all costs to avoid total war against the British Empire. The collective resignation of all Arab government officials would mean exactly this, so it was avoided. The effectiveness of the strike was severely compromised by the presence of the Jewish sector, which stepped in to supply food and other provisions denied by the strike, thereby gaining not only extra earnings but also a serious boost in general economic development. Crucially important installations where Jews and Arabs worked together (like Haifa port) could not be shut down either. This is merely one example of how the best efforts of the Palestinians during the Mandate were blighted by having to fight two wars at the same time: against an ethnic adversary and a foreign occupier. About half the length of the strike was devoted to efforts to end it. As is usual in such situations, the conflict was mainly about saving face: on the Palestinian side the question was how to end the strike without having to admit defeat, and on the British side the problem was how to give in a little in political terms without admitting a surrender to terrorism (as the British saw it). It took months of political maneuvering to reach the formula that the strike would be concluded as a gesture in deference to a request by Arab rulers. The call of Arab kings was finally publicized on October 9, 1936.4

A rebellion starts As the debates about the strike was being debated by the elites, violent manifestations started to occur in the cities. They were directed mainly against Jews who happened to be in the Arab sectors of mixed places. Property in and around towns was targeted and destroyed. Shooting at Jewish means of transport began, as well as shooting at Jewish settlements. In May 1936 organized urban bands appeared that started to attack government installations. The government reacted by arresting and imprisoning Arab leaders, further enraging the crowds, who intensified their activities, and may have been on the verge of total rebellion. In the middle of July the government reacted by blowing up a large section of the old city of Jaffa, allowing the deployment of vehicles into the area, and depriving the rebels of the security of the narrow lanes. Reinforcements were rushed to the cities and the rebellion lost much of its force. But as it was weakening in the cities it sprang up in the countryside, and was carried on the shoulders of groups from the lower

The Great Rebellion and Its Aftermath

137

classes, peasants in particular. Organized bands of fighters started to emerge from the villages, attacking government forces moving on the roads and all sorts of government and military installations. They knew the area extremely well, and the government forces, woefully inadequate numerically, preferred at this stage to largely leave the countryside to the rebels, and stick to the main roads. This phase peaked in August 1936, with the arrival of heavy rebel reinforcements in the form of a band of some two hundred fighters, headed by a professional army officer from Ottoman times, Fawzi (Fawz al-Din) al-Qawuqji. This officer recruited volunteers from Syria and Iraq, and semi-clandestinely received weapons and ammunition from the Iraqi army. Some time in August the group crossed from Transjordan and found shelter in the mountains of Samaria. At the beginning of September the force engaged in its main encounter with the British, who needed six hours, and the help of the air force (RAF), to dislodge Qawuqji’s forces from their positions. Only in September did the government announce its intention to impose military government on Palestine, which may have been a reason for the rebellion to die down rapidly (another reason may have been the imminent ending of the strike in anticipation of the commission of inquiry). The first phase of violent rebellion did not end in the defeat of either side: while the rebels showed tough resistance and a great deal of courage, it was becoming clear that they could not face the army squarely since their arms and training were too poor. But the early ceasefire, with the termination of the strike, meant that a final showdown was averted for the time being. The first question that must be asked concerning this initial phase of the rebellion is who started it, or, in other words, who was to blame. In his report describing this period, Air Vice Marshal Peirce, the General Officer Commanding, immediately accused the Mufti, though he also emphasized the “messy” nature of the first days. The High Commissioner held a different view. The “messy” nature of the early events, and their seemingly vindictive quality, gives some credence to the High Commissioner’s view (which eventually cost him his job), namely that the statement that the Mufti was the real motive force behind the strike ... is contradicted by the first four pages of Air Vice Marshal Peirce’s own dispatch [where the messy nature is described]. The disorders were caused by and continued by a universal Arab fear of Jewish domination. The existence of this strong national feeling and


the extreme likelihood of widespread disorders were known and reported by the High Commissioner ...5 All the evidence points at the conclusion that here at last was a fullblown, grass-root level Palestinian nationalism at work. No more politics of notables, but modern nationalism centered on Palestine. An example is the stories surrounding the Mufti’s role in the rebellion. All those concerned with the revolt, particularly British intelligence personnel, were interested in the Mufti’s role, a question destined to remain a matter of speculation. Among the leaders his point of view was certainly the most adamant. Later in 1936, for example, most of the other leaders opted to end the strike if the Arabs got “something” which they could present as an achievement. The Mufti was almost alone in adhering to all the Palestinians’ original demands (a halt to Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews, and the establishment of a national government). The Mufti seemed to side with those the British dubbed extremists. But another question arises at this point: was this his real position, or was it motivated by something else. Some thought the answer was plain: the Mufti was the extreme leader and all the extremism emanated from him. A more sophisticated view, expressed by a British intelligence report, (which to my mind is also nearer to the truth) was that “in some quarters it is pointed out that whatever his personal opinion might be, he is not in a position to withdraw from the present active policy as he would then lose his prestige and the support of the extremist element”; and in a different wording, “Some sources say that he is behind the whole movement and that he controls and directs the extremists ... Others, however, maintain that the extremists have got out of hand, and that in order to retain his influence, he is obliged to follow their dictates.”6 In other words, it was a classic case of a leader vis-à-vis the crowd – he was held to be the unquestioned charismatic leader by the Palestinian masses of that time. To retain that status he had to identify wholly with the heart and mind of that crowd. Any deviation from this line would cost him his charisma. He thought he was calling the shots, but he was in fact led by the crowd. The situation was to be repeated of course 50 years later under Arafat, who I believe was again led by the crowd below rather than genuinely leading them, as he believed he was. This is surely one of the most interesting aspects of the rebellion: how far was it the outcome of local lower-class initiatives, and how far was it staged by the elite? Many indications show that the common people were intensely involved. At a meeting between the High Commissioner


139

and the Arab Higher Committee on May 5, Raghib Nashashibi said that the situation in the country was extremely tense and that “the attitude of the leaders was dictated by the pressure brought to bear upon them by the nation. The people, he said, at the present time were ruling the leaders and not the leaders ruling the people.”7 An analysis by the High Commissioner himself of the relations between the elite (mainly the leaders) and the masses at the height of the general strike may serve to elucidate the problem involved. Writing in September 1936, he said that most of the people had become weary of the strike, but “no leaders hitherto have had the courage to voice this feeling and so put themselves in opposition to the nationalistic spirit ...” On the other hand, large numbers of the population are ready to go on fighting ... The matter of leadership is not simple as some people imagine ... [the members of the Higher Committee] are only united by their strong feelings for the National cause, and are greatly subject to the influence of the Shabab [youths, toughs] and other extremists. The Mufti in particular is singled out for discussion. Despite his supreme position, he is no real leader, in Wauchope’s view, and fearful of being isolated he takes the line of least resistance, which of course means siding with the nationalist youth.8 The complexity of the actual relations between the masses and the elite is evident here too, as is the fact that the real agency was from the bottom up. As to the nationalism of the wider population at this time, some historians have cast doubt on its genuineness. Perhaps the most striking view is Porath’s, which shares the basic Zionist tendency to undermine any claim to sincerity in the Palestinian claim to “real” nationalism in this period. The problem is how to account for the seemingly intense nationalistic feelings involved in the peasants’ participation. Porath claims that these feelings came about at this time through young villagers who graduated from the government educational institutions (situated for the most part in the main towns) where they imbibed “extreme” nationalism; they returned to the villages as minor government officials, and immediately set about disseminating their views. The “ignorant” villagers, observing that these views came from government officials, thought they were sanctioned by the British government.9 No proof of this is of course adduced, since no genuine peasant discourse from this period has been discovered. But it is surprising that given this analysis, these same peasants were willing to attack, injure,

140


and kill British soldiers. Are we to believe that the peasants thought this too was sanctioned by the government?

The second phase of the revolt The strike over, the government at once nominated a commission of inquiry to get to the bottom of the situation. The Peel Commission, as it came to be known, published its report in the summer of 1937, and the main recommendation was partition of the country into a Jewish state, mainly along the coast and in Galilee, and an Arab state, in the hill region, to be annexed to the Emirate of Transjordan. Jerusalem was to be linked to Jaffa by a corridor to be retained by the British, making a sort of modern Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Neither the Jews nor the Arabs accepted this proposal; the Zionists concealed their rejection by demanding further negotiations. It was felt all along that if the Arabs did not get some satisfaction of their basic demands the rebellion would soon erupt anew. This prediction now proved correct. A large number of petitions from villages and communities were written and sent to the British authorities, who duly forwarded them to London.10 More interesting however, methodologically speaking, is the report of the District Officer of Galilee, who said that the proposal was received by the villagers in the area with complete shock. “Fellaheen and landowners are probably more united in their rejection of the proposal then they have ever been before. Their common feeling in this district is that they have been betrayed and that they will be forced to leave their lands and perish in some desert.” They denied “with great indignation” the notion that their level of nationalism fell in any way short of that of other Palestinians.11 The second phase of the rebellion started with the murder of Lewis Andrews, District Officer of Galilee. In November 1937 the first information was received of the formation of warlike bands once again. (This description is based in the main on a file that contains a general report on military operations during the revolt.12) The first bands appeared in Galilee and Samaria, which in fact remained the main theater of the rebellion throughout. The winter rains and the steep slopes were ideal for guerrilla warfare. The report might have added the tactical autonomy enjoyed by villagers in this area, a concept that should be viewed in a wider context than the one envisaged by Eric Wolf: it probably included also a good deal of nationalist consciousness. The reference is to peasant autonomy, which comes about when the peasants live under regimes where they enjoy freehold status over their land. As we saw earlier


141

(Chapter 1), this certainly obtained in the Samaria region from time immemorial, and was secured under the Ottoman land law of 1858. It is interesting that villagers in the area of the Triangle (roughly northern Samaria) rarely, if ever, saw a Jewish settler, yet their resistance to foreign rule was the most fierce. The only plausible explanation for this is that they enjoyed an autonomy that also allowed them to adopt nationalist values more easily, maybe even to develop them independently. The most important military operation in November was probably the capture of band leader Sheykh Farhan al-Sa`di, a well-known Qassamist, who was tried and executed in the same month. At that time, the center of activity was in Galilee. In late December an army unit was ambushed near Sahnin by a band of some 60 fighters, who were soon joined by an army of 200 villagers from the surrounding villages. This was a clear concretization of the traditional village institution of fazà, a call to arms by shouts when a clash erupted between small parties belonging to opposing villages. No social institution can be more voluntary than this one, and its use in the rebellion is the clearest proof that the rebellion was indeed largely voluntary and village-based. In the end the British army of course prevailed, but not without the help of the RAF, three of whose planes were actually hit by rebel fire.13 A large-scale encounter took place on Christmas Day, 1937, in Wadi Àmud, in which the RAF was again heavily involved and 29 rebel fighters lost their lives. Already at this early stage of the rebellion, any large-scale encounter between the British army and the rebels looks more like carnage than combat. To my mind this is another indication of the extreme nationalist resolve with which the members of the bands were imbued. A serious clash took place on the last day of January 1938, near the village of Um al-Fahm, which an army unit was trying to capture to keep it from the rebels. Again, at one point the unit was ambushed by a band of some 60 fighters, who were soon joined by a 200-strong village army. This time too the RAF was rushed to the scene, and the rebels were dispersed, leaving behind some twenty to thirty dead. All British units on the ground were equipped with mortars, with wireless to call in air support within minutes, and even with donkeys to carry water and other supplies for 48 hours.14 In February reports arrived indicating that the bands were growing stronger and bigger, intelligence that proved well founded on March 3 when an army unit attacked a rebel band of some four hundred fighters near the village of Yamun, not far from Jenin. It was reported that some sixty rebels were killed, with thirty casualties left in the field, a situation

142


abhorrent to the rebels from the start. The British unit lost only one soldier, and the disproportion was explained in the report as due to the rebels being bad shots. It was not of course as simple as that. The truth was that the rebels had meager quantities of ammunition, hence only slight opportunity to train. The significance of this point for the present study is that it shows once again that participation in the revolt was almost tantamount to suicide – another indication of the voluntary ideological resolve needed to take up arms. Despite all this, five RAF aircraft were hit by rifle fire from the ground. The survivors of that same band left Samaria and proceeded to Galilee, where again they were confronted head on by British troops. Most of the band managed to withdraw from the scene, leaving behind a squad of six, assigned to the task of slowing down the pursuing British force. This they did, although all were “killed after gallant and desperate resistance.”15 The next three months of 1938 were characterized mainly by smallscale operations such as sniping and sabotage, with two bigger clashes in mid-April and mid-May. By now it was clear that the main leader of the rebels was Abd al-Rahim Hajj Muhammad, with two subordinates, Arif Abd al-Raziq and Yusuf Abu Durra; the main preoccupation of British forces in northern Samaria became pursuing these leaders, mainly the first-named. Several times he was nearly captured, but again and again it appeared that the British intelligence was a few hours late, the Hajj having left the given village a short while before the arrival of the soldiers. On some occasions the Hajj managed to slip through the holes in a military cordon already encircling a village, and in a few instances he may have been hidden in dry wells or caves in the villages. On a smaller scale, the same applied to Abu Durra and Abd al-Raziq: the British exerted enormous efforts to lay siege to villages where they were supposed to spend the night, sometimes even encountering them in open battle, but they always managed to slip through. The months of May to July were characterized by a new tactic, namely the permanent occupation of large villages, thereby denying them to the rebels. The bands inclined now to sabotage and small-scale operations, and the author of the report (General Haining) believed there was some reduction in their morale. Yet he was frank enough to admit that “there can be no doubt that an anti-Government feeling on the part of most of the populace developed throughout the rural districts during June and July ...” This was mainly expressed in the successful operation in those months of rebel courts of law and an alternative system of tax collection. These institutions were successfully run by band leaders, “in proportion as the anti-government attitude produced a more united front.”


143

A distinct rebel activity in this period was sabotage of the Teggart fence on the Palestinian-Lebanese border, which cut villagers on both sides off from their source of livelihood, and hence constituted a thorn in the flesh of numerous villages in the area. It was the target of endless sabotage efforts, including the destruction of a six-kilometer stretch on June 28. Partly in consequence of this Haining states generally: “In northern-Galilee, a sub-war is in progress against bands whose numbers are heavily augmented from the local villages as occasion demands.” September 1938 was reported to be the worst month of the rebellion for the British. The number of dead was given as 10 British, 74 Jews and 104 Arabs.16 That month the rebels actually took over most of the country;17 most post offices were closed down, as were most courthouses outside the towns, and likewise many, perhaps most, rural police stations. Even some towns were taken by the rebels, first Jericho, then Ramallah and Bethlehem. On September 9 three trucks carrying rebels (about seventy in number) barreled into Beer Sheba and took the town, capturing the police station and seizing a substantial quantity of arms, including a Lewis gun. On September 1 a rebel leader published a leaflet announcing a debt moratorium until further notice. A second violation of this order was to be punishable by death.18 In November 1938 the British finally managed to rush in large reinforcements, which brought the garrison in Palestine up to two divisions, or some eighty thousand troops.19 Now they were able to crack down on the rebellion with devastating force. But even under these impossible conditions many Palestinians were ready to risk their lives. One of the last instances is the heavy clash near Tiberias on December 6. A Jewish truck driver was shot in an ambush. British forces hurried in to investigate, whereupon Palestinian snipers in the surrounding hills opened up on them. Here too, the notable point is that rebel forces were reinforced by many villagers from all surrounding villages. The rebels lost with 50 dead while the British suffered no casualties. The villagers who entered the fray were truly ready to sacrifice their lives; there is no other way to interpret these horrific events.20

The revolt as a national phenomenon Wauchope, the High Commissioner at the time of the general strike, was even then moved by the resolve reflected in Palestinian violence to change his mind concerning the bigger picture in Palestine. In a letter to the Colonial Secretary soon after the start of the strike, he wrote, for

144


example: “Some means must be devised whereby in the future we shall not be faced ... by a sullen embittered Arab population ready to rebel when occasion offers ...”21 He emphasizes that the major problem troubling the Arab inhabitants of the country is Jewish immigration, which threatens to turn them into a dominated race. “That is their fear, and as a fact it must be faced, and a fear so genuine and widespread cannot be dismissed as the Jews would dismiss it as an artificial bogey, the frail child of agitators and self-seeking effendis.” It is interesting that in the same dispatch the High Commissioner expresses support for the idea (and policy) of the Jewish National Home, though he obviously does not take this phrase to mean a Jewish majority or a state. He suggests immediately that what Britain now had to realize is that there were enough Jewish immigrants in the country, and that further immigration should be stopped to allay Arab fears.22 Some interesting views of the nature of the operations of the Arab bands and their connection with the surrounding society are provided by the periodic reports of Harold McMichael, the High Commissioner who replaced Wauchope in March 1938. The tone of these reports is neutral, at least on the whole, with a measure of empathy, despite an obvious wish to see the rebellion end. The information in them would therefore seem trustworthy. This credibility is enhanced considering that the High Commissioner’s reports were based on the reports of lower, local, officials down the line, so that in a way the opinion was collective. An interesting passage about rural nationalism during the revolt occurs in a report by the High Commissioner on the events of February– March, 1938.23 The position of the rural population is not easy, he states, and most of them would evidently like to return to a quiet life. “At the same time, it must not be inferred that, however it may be expressed, the attitude of the Arab population is anything but one of inexorable opposition to ‘partition’ or further development of the Jewish National Home.” To exemplify this point the High Commissioner tells the story of the village of Ayn Ghazzal near Haifa. The District Officer of Haifa had lately visited the village, which he awarded P£50 as a token of appreciation of the villagers’ keeping the peace in their vicinity. The Mukhtar rose to speak. He declared that he was indeed against the use of violence, but “if anyone has been telling you that either I or anybody else do not sympathise with the gangs, they are lying. We consider that the gangs represent a good cause and that it is [the] Government’s policy that is the root of all the trouble in the country.” In a report of March 1938 the incoming High Commissioner already spoke about the difficulties incurred in putting down the revolt: “This


145

becomes doubly difficult in the countryside where the Arab population is in general sympathy with the criminal rather than with the alien Government.” Moreover, “The strong national feeling existing throughout the Arab population has had inevitable effect, direct and indirect, on the efficiency of the Arab police.”24 In the report on the summer months of 1938 this opinion is stated even more firmly: It is notable that during the last three months the tactical skill of the Arab bands has developed. They now operate according to plan and under leaders whose instructions they understand, trust and obey; they have, as is only natural, excellent intelligence; and many of their schemes owe such local success as they have achieved to discipline and a sense of guerilla tactics which are, I am informed, more marked today than they were, for instance, in the concluding stages of the disturbances of 1936.25 The same report also notes that the heads of the bands recently “are claiming to have brought into being a form of government of their own ... they are administering some rough form of so-called justice of a drumhead variety.”26 Regarding July specifically, the High Commissioner indicates that the level of activity of the bands has increased dramatically, and that “It became evident from the increase in the number and rise of the armed gangs that they were enjoying an increasingly greater support from the villages of Palestine”. The leading roles were in the hands of local people, who knew the country inside out.27 MacMichael then makes the insightful remark that the rebels presented themselves to the villagers as the founders of a new administration that would soon inherit power from the British. In this context they cited the establishment of an underground legal system, which offered fair Arab justice in all matters, and also fought traitors. He adds: “... They were at pains in general to attempt to create the impression that they were serious apostles of an Arab renaissance and not mere bandits as the Jews represented them.”28 An example of this was the order issued in August 1938 prohibiting the wearing of the tarbush and its replacement by the kufiyya and àqqal, the traditional Palestinian headgear.The same report also underscores the national-cum-religious aspect of the rebellion: It has further become evident that although the appeal of the “leaders” was directed to foster Palestinian Arab patriotism and the achievement of Arab political independence in this country, they are

146


more and more stressing the religious aspect of their struggle on the ground that the real problem facing Islam is the question whether the Arabs shall fall under Jewish imperialist domination. Among the village population Moslem religious sentiment is a stronger, more unifying and more universal feeling than Arab nationalism, which ... is but vaguely understood.29 MacMichael’s report for September 1938 is even more somber and apprehensive, and in turn even more struck by the achievements of the insurgents. That month more British and others were killed than in any month before, but this in itself was not the most important development, in his estimation. More noteworthy “is that, in the period under review, the disturbances have more than ever before assumed the character of open rebellion.” That is, the government is targeted more than the Jews. Moreover, in September the population increasingly abided by the directives of the rebels to shun the government court system and adopt traditional Islamic-Palestinian attire for both men and women. (The success of the rebel courts was attested by the disappearance of a large number of typewriters from government offices.) The High Commissioner concludes, “All these facts indicate that the Arab movement has recently become more of a national one, and that it is directed as much against the Mandatory Power as against the Jews.”30 More clearly still, “the rebellion has unquestionably become a national revolt involving all classes of the Arab community in Palestine and enjoying considerable support from the Arabs outside ...” Moreover, in this period ever fewer foreigners were fighting in the rebellion, thus making it more and more a Palestinian-nationalist business, and “there have been several instances of the villagers turning out en masse to assist a gang which is engaged with Government forces.”31 In his aforementioned cable of August 1938, the High Commissioner writes: “We must be prepared for intensification of trouble ... We must realise that the whole rebel effort is progressive, and may develop into an insurrection ...”32 He desperately called for further reinforcements. In a cable in September the High Commissioner reiterated these ideas: There is no doubt that [the] position is deteriorating rapidly and has reached a point at which rebel leaders are more feared and respected than we are. The civil population is terrorized by their ubiquitous activity and having to choose between two dangers prefer the side which retains their sympathy on nationalist grounds ... The movement is definitely a national one though financed partly by blackmail


147

levied on a large scale in the country. It is not fully coordinated but its organisation is being improved with the objective of wholesale insurrection ... .33 He realizes and reports that a part of population, though certainly nationalistic, would prefer to return to a quiet life: He writes for example: Certainly [now] there is no-one to influence the rebels who are nationally minded Palestinians. The movement is less dependent on outside help than in 1936. The Arab inhabitants of the country, where not actively hostile to His Majesty’s Government, are so terrorized that their influence or desire for the cessation of rebel activities counts for nothing.34 In a later dispatch he describes the situation of the peasants in Palestine as between the hammer and the anvil: they are tired of the revolt and the exactions of the rebels, but are terrified of being inundated by the Jews.35 But, the heavy losses did not seem to deter the rebels, even in the eyes of their arch-enemy: “It is significant that as yet the heavy reverses and casualties inflicted on the bands by the Forces have had little effect on recruiting, and the rebels continue to face death or suffering from untreated wounds without the inducement of considerable cash reward.”36 MacMichael goes on to express his distress at realizing the ease with which the rebels are able to kidnap those they have decided to put on trial. The kidnapped persons could easily alert police road blocks which they necessarily pass through, but they never do this, as if admitting the authority of the rebels to kidnap them. On this the High Commissioner remarks: “This is sufficiently indicative of the prestige enjoyed by the gangs.”37 Lest we think for a moment that the High Commissioner had gone over to the rebel side, the report later puts us right. First, he admits that his report has been “gloomy”, but he goes on to indicate that there are some “encouraging” developments as well. These of course have to do with the strenuous efforts invested by the British forces during these months to inflict as massive blows as possible on the rebels. This effort was showing some signs of success, hence the guarded optimism of the High Commissioner. We do not have to doubt the High Commissioner’s sense of patriotic duty; he was simply honest enough to report the powerful aspects of the rebellion, even though he had no sympathy for it at all. Even when the rebellion was clearly in decline, the District Officer of Samaria, could write: “There is no change of heart. If the young men

148


could take to the hills once more without the certainty that they would be identified, they would do so.”38 One of the most interesting episodes of the rebellion was the so-called kufiyya-àqqal episode. In the summer of 1938 Palestinian townsmen started to abandon their traditional headgear of Ottoman times, the tarbush, and instead began to don the village headgear of kufiyya and àqqal. Many historians claim that this was a cheap trick used by the rebels to advance their cause, and in any case an innovation imposed from above by the rebels. MacMichael tells another story, much more sympathetic to the rebels and the Palestinian population in general. The kufiyya-àqqal is described as popular fashion, the outcome of changed circumstances: “the ‘effendi’ is now becoming discredited. If he is loyal to the rebellion, the British may banish him to the Seychelles; if he is loyal to the government, his life and property are in grave danger. In his stead, the band leader is the new hero.” The High Commissioner notes some cynical explanations for the appearance of this fashion (such as a ploy of certain manufacturers), but concludes that it is most likely a political symbol of identification with the rebellion, and one that is not likely to incur the wrath of the British government.39 By November 1938 the rebellion was in decline, and the British started to call the shots, using suppression methods that were often brutal, and probably vindictive. These also sparked much protest, such as a common complaint against collective punishments. In a cable the High Commissioner explained to his Minister why such penalties were necessary. One can agree at least with the sociological mechanism described here: “Arab opinion is such that it will continue to regard any steps taken against the rebels and peasantry, many of whom are their willing assistants, as unduly provocative and repressive.” And “... the outline of the matter is that the bulk of the Arab population is against us even though they may not operate as armed bands who can be engaged and defeated.” As noted earlier he opines that many of the villagers “are part-time armed rebels ... who cause not only loss of life but most of the sabotage.”40

Military views on Palestinian nationalism during the rebellion Late in 1938 General Haining (General Officer Commanding) drew up a report on the rebellion, which may serve as a basis for understanding how the military men viewed it.41 The main question for this study, again, is to what extent the rebellion was a matter of nationalism of the


149

masses, as claimed, for example, by Swedenburg,42 and to what extent was it forced on the masses by a few hooligans, as is the widespread opinion of Israeli historiography. A British general might well be expected to be dismissive of the rebels, but Haining was not. His report claims that the rebellion was closer to a voluntary movement than anything else. Though there was a rebellion in Palestine, he begins, there was no rebel army in any strict sense of the term. The rebels at that time numbered between 1,000 and 1,500 and were divided into small groups dispersed all over the country. These groups tried to avoid frontal clashes with the army, and when such a clash loomed they opted to hide their weapons and blend into the crowd around them in the villages. But these regular fighters were only the skeleton of the fighting force. There was also a second line, consisting of villagers who joined in for a single operation, some voluntarily and some less so. In some areas real village support existed: “In parts of the country where rebel sympathies are strong and organisation is best, definite village detachments with leaders and a quota of arms, are in existence.”43 In some places patriotism was combined with self-serving banditry: “Elsewhere, again, no regular gangs exist, but small parties of rebel sympathisers combine by night for such activities as sniping and sabotage – which have become a recognised and remunerative ‘racket.’ ”44 Again, support by villages for the rebellion was near universal, but not always out of free will: “Practically every village in the country has, at one time or another, harboured and supported the rebels and assisted in concealing their identity from the Government forces. While in many cases this has been done from sympathy, in the remainder the same result has been achieved by terrorism.”45 In the city the revolt was managed by the shabab, hot tempered youths, who employed traditional effendis as their advisers and aides. The rebellion was led in general by the Mufti and some leaders in Damascus, but, Haining points out, on the ground every commander did as he pleased. The two top commanders were Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad and Arif Abd al-Raziq. Relations between these two had been tense to the point of near mutual violence. Abd al-Rahim was elected at some stage to be the titular head of the rebellion, a title that was to remain without any practical content: there were no combined operations of any nature. Many considered Abd al-Rahim as the most upright and respectable of all the rebel leaders – he came from a “good” family and had some education. He preserved high standards of conduct and sternly resisted all pressures from the Mufti to take part in the terror


campaign against his enemies. Arif Abd al-Raziq was from a lower-class family, devoid of any education, and had few scruples about bullying and killing suspected traitors or political opponents – of himself or of the Mufti, whose chief representative Abd al-Raziq was in the rebellion. Haining notes an important question concerning social class and the rebellion. As in other guerilla situations, in Palestine too the elite leadership of the pre-rebellion period found itself in a predicament, since its “cultured” manners precluded it from leading fighters in the field, which involved untold hardships. Not surprisingly only one of the rebel leaders was a member of the elite, namely Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni. It is characteristic that although he was no less than the son of Musa Kazim al-Husayni, also of course a close relative of the Mufti, Abd al-Qadir was only of marginal importance within the pantheon of rebel leaders. Moreover, his theater of operations, the Hebron area, was the least active, even the least prestigious, in the rebellion. Aside from Abd alQadir, notables were sometimes recruited by the leaders for administrative jobs of sorts: “They have not gained any real control of the fighting leaders, and in fact they continue to be terrorised by fear of being ‘bumped off.’ ”46 This is a classic case of role reversal, where the dominated and downtrodden become the commanders due to external circumstances. From our point of view (nationalism as a feeling animating various groups), there was another sort of reversal: the notable elite was supposed to show the lower classes what real nationalism was, but in an interesting reversal, which deserves further thought, it was now being instructed by the lower classes in nationalism and patriotism.

Suppression methods and their nationalist meaning Surprisingly few, if any, studies dealing with the rebellion speak about the glaring disparity between rebel power and British military capabilities. As I have said before, this disparity made the rebellion something of a carnage, if not a massacre, since every encounter was likely to end in the death or serious injury of the rebels. I argue that only intense patriotism could explain why Palestinians in great numbers were willing to subject themselves to such horrific conditions. The ultimate weapon deployed by the British with deadly dexterity was the air force.47 True enough, in the final analysis it was not the RAF that decided the fate of the rebellion, but 80,000 British troops on the ground; this only highlights the great degree of Palestinian heroism involved in the rebellion. But air power was the decisive weapon. In the early phase of the


151

rebellion the RAF was already deployed, as all British units were provided with radio transmitters with which they would call in air support upon encountering a rebel unit. Such support would come in the form of bombardment from the air by the main gun, after which the pilot put his aircraft into a dive and sprayed the rebels with machine guns. Not much resistance would remain, but should it persist the process would be repeated. All this, with the addition of the “air pin” (described later), made the RAF deadly in the fight against the rebellion. In major clashes it probably was the decisive weapon. In the Yamun clash of March 1938 the RAF played a vital part. Planes attacked a rebel force of about 400 and at least 30 were killed. On 15 September 1938 the major clash of the rebellion took place, at Deir Ghasana, the place of the famous meeting of the band leaders together with their men. Twelve planes swooped down on some five hundred fighters, who of course had no anti-aircraft weapons. Small wonder that no less than 132 rebels lost their lives in this “encounter.” During the loyalist convention organized by Fakhri Nashashibi at Yata on December 18 it was reported that the band of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni was attacking the nearby village of Bani Naìm. A large RAF squadron of no less than 21 aircraft was soon on the scene, with the inevitable result of at least 64 dead and many more injured, among them Abd al-Qadir himself, said to be seriously wounded. An upgrading of the striking power of the air force was the so-called air cordon, or air pin. In one document this idea of the air pin, or air cordon, is explained in detail. It started in November 1938. In that first month it was tried 106 times, on 38 villages. As soon as it became known that a rebel unit was located in a village overnight, planes would be sent there at daybreak; they would circle the village, dropping leaflets calling on the population to stay at home until further notice. Anyone trying to leave the village at that point would be shot at from the air, on the assumption that he was a rebel. At the same time, a land unit would advance on the village and start a thorough search for rebels. Reading through the British Mandatory Archive of Palestine and the secondary literature, one gets the impression that it was really the British army which put down the rebellion, not the internal warring of Palestinian factions, as one might guess from reading the Israeli historiography of the period. On the whole the process is well known: in the final stages of the rebellion an internal rift appeared between the Husaynis and their opponents; during 1939 this rift gave rise to a new phenomenon, the assassination of “traitors” by the Husaynis, and the appearance of counter-bands, called “peace bands,” who fought the


Husaynis and the rebels in general. This is portrayed (with great satisfaction, needless to say) as the major factor in the breaking of the revolt.48 This is not at all the impression one gets from reading the British documentation, which assigns very little importance to the main leaders of the peace bands, Fakhri Abd al-Hadi and Fakhri Nashashibi, and to the whole phenomenon in general. While the British formally endorsed what these people were doing, they were fully aware that by that time the wings of the rebellion had already been clipped, and that this activity was of marginal importance and even a nuisance. Typical in this respect is the report on the aforementioned Yata assembly, a large gathering of Hebron mountain villagers, arranged by Fakhri Nashashibi in December 1938 to launch his anti-rebel campaign. The British District Officer reported that in the first place, despite the progovernment nature of the meeting, the general outlook of the masses in the area remained nationalist: “It is true that the vast majority of Arabs remain staunch supporters of Arab national claims and regard Hajj Amin as their leader.”49 Even more interestingly, this official claims that most of those present (about four thousand in number) had no notion as to what it was all about. Since it took place in a village south of Hebron most villagers thought it was about how to defend the South against encroachment by “northern” villages, traditionally their enemy. After the event many of those present sent cables to the effect that they did not support the cause of Fakhri Nashashibi at all. British views of the activities of Fakhri Abd al-Hadi are even more dismissive and suspicious. My own view is that the entire phenomenon of the peace bands has been inflated out of all proportion.

The social origins of the rebels Some historians point out with evident satisfaction that the rebellion was in fact nothing better than pure banditry. As evidence they adduce the fact that certain band leaders were formerly involved with the police, some as escaped convicts, and some as persons wanted by the police for supposed crimes. It was said that Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad owed money to people and was being sought by the police. Others had committed other offences. Some band leaders had been occupied in manual, low status occupations, like porters or water sellers. This line of argumentation is plainly futile, to say the least. The only thing it tells us is that people with education or members of the elite were not up to the hardship of starving in the hills and taking part in


153

real battles. Certainly, the leaders of the rebellion were lower class, mostly villagers, and their followers were mainly villagers likewise. Their deeds constitute proof that genuine, all-class popular nationalism existed among the Palestinians at this time. This is the only fact that is meaningful and important regarding the band leaders’ social origins. For the rest, it is interesting that British reports vilify the band leaders much less than some Israeli historians do. Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad is always praised for his piety, honesty, and integrity, aspects curiously absent from the accounts of some writers.50 A recent study that seems quite objective says he did not owe money and was not wanted by the police.51 It is well known that he kept clear of internal Palestinian rifts, and even had some class consciousness. A famous sentence attributed to him is: “The shoe of the most insignificant mujahid is nobler than all the members of society, who have indulged in pleasure, while their brethren suffer in the mountains.”52 After two years of eluding the British army, he was eventually killed on March 25, 1939, during a search of the village of Sanur in northern Samaria.53

The consequences and effects of the rebellion: a change in British consciousness A conclusion generally agreed among students of the Palestinian rebellion is that it failed dismally. It was militarily suppressed and its leaders were killed or deported, in the latter case for many years or even indefinitely. In the short run the outcome of the rebellion was indeed the 1939 White Paper, which put an end to the National Home policy and replaced it by one favoring a Palestinian state. It could be claimed that this historic achievement was made null and void by the fact that the Palestinians did not accept the White Paper. Furthermore, it is said, World War II and the Holocaust placed an ultimate weapon in the hands of the Jewish community of Palestine in the fight for statehood. There is nothing wrong with this argument except for its being a classic case of interpretation of events by hindsight or in the light of later developments. The only true consequence of the revolt was the White Paper. To downplay the White Paper because later events nullified its importance is not historiography, but more akin to tendentious journalism. The real documentation of the period shows that the rebellion had major effects on the British and on the Arab world. In the first place it changed, even revolutionized British consciousness about the Palestinians, and secondly it contributed in a major way to the rise of

154


Pan-Arabism, particularly in Egypt. I shall confine myself in this study to the first topic. Convinced that partition was unpalatable to the Arabs of Palestine, to the point of driving them to extremes, the British government appointed another committee of inquiry, ostensibly to find practical ways to implement partition, but undoubtedly advertised that the government was no longer interested in this solution. The committee decided to convene a round table conference in London, where Zionists and Arabs would discuss the issues and perhaps reach an agreement. The members did not really envisage such a result, of course. In effect they set about preparing for what were to be two parallel conferences, to be held in London early in 1939. The British had no set blueprint for what was going to be decided in this double conference, but they had a general idea, apparently reflecting a new consciousness on their part, the outcome of the Arab rebellion and developments in the sphere of Pan-Arabism. It is usually thought that the Palestinian revolt failed utterly. The publication immediately after the suppression of the revolt of the White Paper in which the British granted the Palestinians an independent state, has been interpreted as wholly unrelated to the revolt and due to the looming war in Europe and the fear of Pan-Arab reaction should it break out. Here I argue that much of the British Empire’s change of heart concerning Zionism was also a consequence of the rebellion, or rather the realization that without allaying Palestinian feelings it would be possible to control the country only by the permanent deployment of a huge army. One of the earliest documents to sound the alarm was a memorandum to the government by the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, in November 1937. Eden objected to the call of the Colonial Secretary to enforce partition on the country even in the teeth of a violently opposed Arab population. The memorandum probably represents the first highlevel British realization, since the famous intervention of Lord Curzon in 1917, that the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine was entirely wrong. Echoing Ben-Gurion’s unreal notion that after partition the Arabs would invite the Jews to expand into their own territory in order to invest and develop it, Eden argued more logically that the tiny Jewish state would have to expand militarily, and would encounter all the Arabs ranged against it. He compared the situation to what he considered the major British blunder of sending the Greeks into the heartland of the Turks after World War I, thereby heating Turkish nationalism to the boiling point. Something quite similar could be expected here. Who


155

would be charged with stopping it? “We”, of course, with an immense, endless, pouring in of soldiers. Would it ever end? He goes a step further, and in fact questions the very justice of the Zionist enterprise. The real problem of Palestine, he says, is the problem of shipping in every year thousands of people who are perceived by the locals as part of a huge wave of immigrants who are going to run their lives. Intense displeasure at watching this happening would be generated anywhere in the world. Every local community, seeing their own homeland where they have lived for hundreds if not thousands of years, invaded by foreigners, “must rebel”. This is in fact an endorsement of the Palestinian point of view, and it was motivated primarily by the general strike and the rebellion. True, Eden also dwells at length on the looming power of the Arab countries, the rising strength of Pan-Arabism (which he correctly attributes in turn to the Palestinian resistance), but the Palestinian rebellion is a major component of the analysis.54 One of the earliest opinions of a British official on partition, and its putative connection with popular nationalism, Palestinian or Arab, was voiced in January 1938 in a dispatch from the High Commissioner, Arthur Wauchope.55 The prevalent belief then was still that the idea of partition would provide an answer and calm the country down. One who did his best to convince Wauchope of this was Weizmann, who told him some days before the dispatch was sent that the Arab state would be forced to cooperate with the Jewish state after partition, or it would face economic ruin. On this, the High Commissioner had an interesting comment to make to London: Of course those Jews who believe that all Arab disturbances and agitations are due to the machinations of a few Effendis can consider their future with perfect assurance: but these Jews, formerly so strong in numbers and in tone, are a diminishing body. Most people now accept the first sentence in Lord Peel’s report that – “The disturbances of 1936 were the outcome of a conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalisms.” It is very doubtful that such a change of heart really took place within the Jewish community of Palestine, but in capturing the change of perception in British officialdom in Palestine concerning the existence of Palestinian nationalism, this analysis is probably highly valuable. In a consultation at the Colonial Office during the run up to the London conference, a report by one of the heads of the ministry said that should the Arabs of Palestine persist in their total rejection of

156


partition, it seemed to him that Great Britain would face the grim reality of having to abandon the Balfour policy, and telling “Dr. Weizmann that, in view of the opposition of the Arab inhabitants of the country [whose intensity was not suspected at the time the Balfour declaration was made], we do not feel able to implement our pledges to the full.” The reason was that “... it is impossible to contemplate the prospect of governing the Arabs of Palestine indefinitely by a rigorous system of repression.” The official even cites as authority a trope from the Peel report of a year earlier: “it is not easy to pursue the dark path of repression without seeing daylight at the end of it.”56 The reversal of the British position was of course due to the realization that ArabPalestinian resistance was an endemic, insoluble problem. It was a clear admission that Palestinian resistance itself had changed the British outlook, not the fear of Pan-Arabism nor the looming war in Europe, which is not even hinted at. In this particular debate another participant, the legal adviser Grattan Bushe, went much further than Downie in his conclusions about the political meaning of the revolt. He says, among other things: I do not think that we have faced, or are now facing, the realities of the situation. We invented a soothing phraseology to describe those who were fighting against us. They were bandits, terrorists, or gunmen. That was comforting to the public ... The danger is lest we begin to believe in it ourselves ... I think you have got to contemplate a whole nation disillusioned, frightened and desperate ... fighting on because there is nothing else [for] to [sic] them to do. He too adds that even if the whole British army were sent to Palestine it would not ease the situation.57 This consultation was followed by an interdepartmental conference intended further to shape imperial opinions and decisions. It took place at the Colonial Office in October 1938, and was convened to devise new policies concerning Palestine.58 Also present were the chief officials of the Palestine administration. By then all participants concurred that the National Home policy had failed and that the demands of the Palestine Arabs were to be accommodated much more seriously than before. The question was simply how to present this to the world without admitting a surrender to “terrorism”. The Foreign Minister, for example, said: “If concessions were to be made, it was essential to avoid the appearance of a surrender to terrorism. We must show the world that the decision has its roots in justice, not force.” This was of course an


157

admission that it was precisely the strength of the rebellion that had brought about the change. But more important for our present purpose is the fact that the participants raised several problems concerning the convening of the London conference. One issue was the leadership of the Palestinian delegation, or, more precisely, the leadership of Hajj Amin al-Husayni. This was a significant matter since the British change of heart came with a major reservation as to the role of the Mufti, in turn a decision of major consequence for Palestinian history. The opinions expressed in this context tell us a great deal about the reasons for the failure of the Palestinian Arabs during this period. Most, though not all, of those present at this mini-conference were vehemently opposed to so much as consider dealing with the Mufti at all, though some supported him. Lord Dufferin, for example, said: “Will any settlement be effective in Palestine unless made with the real Palestinian leaders? Recent telegrams have emphasized growing and indigenous Palestine Arab nationalism; only the Mufti can really control them.” This view was supported by Bushe, the legal adviser, who reminded everyone that the peace in Ireland was made with the leaders of the terrorists. Here the Colonial Secretary intervened to say that there was a great difference between Ireland and Palestine: Britain had no intention of leaving Palestine, so would find it difficult to allow the return from exile of Hajj Amin as chief negotiator;59 his return would give him the immediate aura of a hero. A British imperial consideration thus doomed Hajj Amin to continued exile, ineffectiveness, and the London conference to total failure. But Bushe persisted in defending the Mufti: “It is arguable that the Mufti’s case has never really been heard, and would not have been now without the violent action he has taken.”60 He urged the others to adopt a more conciliatory approach to the Mufti. This elicited a retort from the High Commissioner: “This reading is not in keeping with [the] Mufti’s character and past history. He alone is our enemy.”61 There was no official decision on this point, but this must have been the general mood and it certainly prevailed in British counsels for the remaining years of the Mandate. Another interesting exchange at about this time on the merits and demerits of the Mufti is that between Bateman of the British embassy in Cairo and the Foreign Office.62 Bateman continues the line of argument associated with the Egyptian Embassy at this time, according to which partition has to be abandoned, along with any further pursuit of the National Home policy in Palestine, since this would require further allocation of forces, which were unavailable. The Jews were expendable: “Let us be practical. They are anybody’s game these days.” He suggests


limiting immigration to a constant percentage of the country’s population, and ending the trouble in that way once and for all. All this was of course a purely British interest: “Please don’t think, from all this, that I am pro-Arab or anti-Jew, I think them each as loathsome as the other.” He is merely being pro-British. As to the Mufti, he expresses the singular notion of bringing him back into the picture, thereby gaining some control of the situation, possibly even ending the violence. He acknowledges that in this way the British would elevate the Mufti to the level of a Gandhi, a Michael Collins, or a Zaghlul, but he has no problem with this. The answer from the Foreign Office was in full agreement on the need to change the Jewish policy in Palestine, but it disagreed completely on the issue of the Mufti: too many people opposed the Mufti too strongly to allow him to return. The writer admitted that if the situation in Palestine worsened substantially it might still happen. True, he noted, the Mufti currently possessed “enormous significance” in the Arab world. This text, it seems to me, raises a historical question of some importance: whence this unbridled hatred of the Mufti, shared by so many in official British circles? After all, a good case could be made for the thesis that Gandhi caused the British Empire much greater damage by working to separate its most important possession from it. Unusual hatred for the Mufti is seen already at the height of the rebellion, in September 1938, when the Colonial Secretary and the High Commissioner exchanged messages in which they discussed possible Palestinian negotiators after the revolt, and both were emotionally, almost personally, adamant in not allowing the Mufti to be such a negotiator.63 Similarly, in a cable to the Colonial Office in the period leading up to the London conference the High Commissioner expressed his anger at the meddling of the Mufti’s faction in matters relating to the participation of the rival faction, the Nashashibis. This seemed to him outrageous, because while Raghib Nashshibi was a moderate leader, the Mufti “was barred because he is a villain.”64 The policy to be pursued by Great Britain at the conference was set out in a memorandum prepared by the Foreign Office in December 1938.65 It was assumed that the Jewish-Arab conference would yield no result, and Britain would then have to impose its own solution which would necessarily be conciliatory to the Arabs; otherwise the rebellion would drag on indefinitely. The Palestinian side would have to be appeased by a solemn promise that a Jewish community would under no circumstances have mastery over the Arabs of Palestine. This policy had actually been brewing in the Foreign Office long before. For example, an earlier Foreign Office memo written by Lacy Bagallay66


159

stated that it had become apparent that Partition “cannot now be carried through except by rigorous and continuous repression of the Arab population.” Before explaining why that was so he went on to present the Palestinian case as the natural and true one, and the imposition of Jewish immigrants on the Arab majority of Palestine as wrong. It was not an anti-Semitic view. It was a matter of hard fact: it was a fact that a Jewish state in Palestine was unworkable; it was a fact that Jewish immigration had to be stopped: The continuance of Jewish immigration under any other form will not in the long run be possible without the use of overwhelming force. This might not matter if His Majesty’s Government had overwhelming force at their disposal. But clearly this is not the case. They have too many commitments and anxieties elsewhere. Again, the conclusion to be drawn is crystal clear: outwardly the Palestinian revolt had failed, but here it is judged by a high official British observer as a major determinant of British policy. Another comment called for at this point concerns the nature of the revolt. Current orthodoxy is that the revolt was forced on the population by a group of hooligans. What would have been simpler than putting those hooligans behind bars and ending the whole affair? But here an official British observer admits that two British divisions over an extended period could not prevent such a revolt from recurring again and again. This is tantamount to an open admission that the revolt was pretty much a popular affair. Still, while the British changed their minds about Zionism and its value to them, they adhered to their views concerning the importance to them of Palestine and their wish to retain it. We have already seen some opinions that indicate how this sealed the Mufti’s fate. There are several similar suggestions in the British archives. One is a general appraisal of the importance of Palestine for the British Empire.67 This document argues that Palestine was the only British foothold in the eastern Mediterranean; it constituted an extremely valuable buffer zone between Egypt and potential enemies to the north; it also constituted a bridge between British positions in the eastern Mediterranean and on to India, still the jewel in the British crown. Palestine’s role in the transport and production of oil was also considered of crucial importance to Britain. The document notes that western Palestine was crucially situated to ensure continued control of the almost landlocked Transjordan. Hence, any agreement with a possible Palestinian state

160


should ensure that Britain retain land and air bases, ports, and free communication to safeguard the preservation of all these vital interests. The tone was adamant and uncompromising, full of confidence in the power of the British Empire to enforce its will. It tallies with Niall Ferguson’s judgment that before the war the British government was wholly confident that the continued existence of the empire was not in any danger.68 The London conference was a bizarre affair. There are probably few events in history that demonstrate with equal clarity the poverty of the argument that it is ideas that move history forward. Here ideas were stripped of all cover and shown up for what they really are – intellectual camouflage for politics and other this-worldly interests. As noted above, there were in effect two parallel conferences, each stranger than the other. The British knew to start with that they were going to tell the Zionists that the National Home policy was over – impracticable, to use a sanitized language, and that the Zionist movement was not going to get all of Palestine as it wished, or even a tiny part of it. Yet they conducted serious-sounding “negotiations” with the Zionists, which were nothing but make-believe. The theatricals they performed with the Arab side are a little more complicated to interpret, but theater they undoubtedly were. They were willing to go to extremes to placate the Palestinians, showing, as indicated above, that the British realized that they were likely to rebel again and again. To admit this point was of course out of the question for the British. They preferred instead to convince the Arabs (or let the Arabs convince them, as it seemed) that there was something amiss with their (the British) interpretation of the Husayn-McMahon correspondence of 1915, on which their traditional Palestinian policy rested. For years the British fought tooth and nail to convince everyone that they never intended to promise Palestine to the Arabs, inventing for this purpose the most dubious logical arguments possible. Suddenly they recognized that indeed something was faulty in their logic, and that Palestine was not necessarily excluded from the promises to the Arabs (which every honest reading of the correspondence would have shown in the first place: had they wanted to exclude Palestine they would have said so, as they did concerning Aden and southern Iraq, much more obvious zones of British interests than Palestine). It was all a charade, and it all obeyed political interests – indeed, delivering a resounding blow to all idealist interpretations of history. Yet this was only a partial Palestinian victory (although a victory nonetheless) since in effect the Palestinians were not really invited to


161

the conference: their leader was barred, and without him their whole case was crippled, as the British knew full well. Instead, Arab leaders from other countries were invited. By remote control, and from behind the scenes, the Mufti decided the Palestinian and Arab position. Had he been openly accepted he would have certainly been more receptive to some compromise, on the British conditions at least, if not the Zionist. But this was not to be, since the Mufti remained debarred. The conference ended in failure, but negotiations with the Arabs continued in all sorts of channels for some months, until in May 1939 the new British policy for Palestine was published in what is called the 1939 White Paper. This White Paper, clearly the greatest achievement of the Palestinian people, was the direct outcome of a nationalist effort, and to deny this nationalism is to deny the true contemporary meaning of the White Paper. The document declared the British intention to establish a democratic government in Palestine after ten years, which meant of course a Palestinian state; it accepted further Jewish immigration only in a very limited way – no more than 75,000 more immigrants, over a five-year period, after which immigration would be conditional on Palestinian acquiescence. The only condition laid down by the British for the concretization of this process in real terms was their refusal to set a fixed date for the establishment of the Palestinian state, making it dependent on proper relations existing between Arabs and Jews, which would make smooth running of the country possible. This implied the continued existence of a Jewish community in Palestine, enjoying some sort of special, unspecified, status. Though diluted, this was still a victory for the Palestinians; but it was rejected by the newly revived Arab Higher Committee and Hajj Amin, specifically for the reason that the Jews could prevent the fulfillment of the process by violating the peace of the land. This was plainly a weak argument, since the main issue of Jewish immigration had been solved once and for all in favor of the Palestinians. More probably, the real reason for this rejection was the exclusion of Hajj Amin himself from presiding over this process. Thus, the whole solution was still-born. It is interesting that ordinary people in Palestine in real time saw things differently. In February 1939 rumors leaked out from the London conference to the effect that the Arabs were about to win a state of their own, in which the Jews would constitute a constitutional minority. The Arab public thronged the streets in joyful demonstrations, in which British policemen were carried on their shoulders. “In villages in Samaria bonfires were lit. In the Nazareth area villagers declared a general holiday of one day.”69 In the High Commissioner’s estimation,

162


most of the Palestinian public was not enthusiastic about grand Pan-Arab schemes, and would rather have a Palestinian republic headed by Hajj Amin. “What the fellah wants is a severe restriction of immigration and land sales and some safeguard to prevent the Jews from ever securing a political or economic mastery over him.”70 Another report from this time71 stated that the talk of the people of the area in the previous two weeks was about the rumors concerning the outcome of the London conference. There was talk of a halt to immigration and land sales. The immediate, unmediated, response of the population was one of elation: “Groups of people, principally the lower and more lawless elements, paraded the suks of Nablus [February, 26] singing national songs and acclaiming Hajj Amin ... .” The District Officer adds that when this news first reached the town the evening before, “speeches were made in the cafes, and Hajj Amin and Mr Chamberlain were cheered enthusiastically and impartially.” Similar reactions were seen in the Tul Karm area, according to a report of the local district officer.72 The reaction there and in the surrounding villages was one of “rejoicing”. Crowds gathered everywhere, and wanted to carry British soldiers on their shoulders. Army personnel and vehicles were greeted most enthusiastically. An outburst of joy was also reported from Jenin, where it was celebrated by salvos of thousands of shots in the air.73 Whatever the popular feelings of the Palestinians of the time, the White Paper was soon to be buried under the weight of subsequent events.

6 The Ideology of the Palestinian Arabs during the Mandate

As we try to reconstruct the ideology of Palestinian Arabs during the Mandate, a methodological problem arises: much of the information we have on the subject comes from social bodies and individual people, sources a great deal narrower than “the Palestinians”. In a study interested mainly in history from below this is certainly a problem. But the problem is a universal one in historical research: the lower classes did not speak for themselves. In this book I have often made British officials speak for them, in contexts where these officials claim to represent lower-class Palestinians. But the officials never speak in enough detail to satisfy the curiosity of the more discerning reader. For example, we want to know what the masses thought of Jerusalem, but in my sources the masses never speak on this issue. They are, however, profusely spoken for. We have to choose a reliable representative. In my understanding of the nature of the sources the Arab Executive (the group of notables elected to the post by the Third Palestinian Conference of December 1920) was more or less representative of the ideology of most of the Palestinians in the 1920s, while for the 1930s there is ample evidence that the Mufti was by far the most popular leader in the country, and a widely accepted one.1 It is true that there are many documents signed by “villagers”, but these were invariably village leaders (mukhtars), and the language used is suspiciously similar to that of similar documents penned at the same time by city notables. This similarity of course makes these documents dubious as a source. A second caveat is in order. We should keep in mind that no formal statement of ideology was ever made. No formal body ever undertook to do this on a large scale, and no individual thinker appeared to fill this gap. One has to piece the fabric together from a large number of collective and personal documents composed during the period. These 163

164


were petitions from various societies and groups; decisions of various congresses; statements made before commissions of inquiry; memoranda presented by leading individuals or bodies, and the like. A large number of these documents have survived, and so far they have not been fully exploited for research purposes. The number is large enough (in the hundreds) to be even statistically significant, and many of the documents tap the views of non-elite members of the Palestinian community, so that they are even meaningful for the issue of popular involvement in the nationalist narrative. This chapter is mainly based on a detailed analysis of these documents. It is particularly interesting to observe the early period of British occupation, when phrases were coined intuitively, there not having been enough time to absorb too many diluting influences on the initial approach of various groups to the issues involved. The earliest available document is a petition by the Muslim-Christian society of Jaffa, presented to the British authorities and protesting against the Jewish National Home policy.2 From internal evidence it seems that the document was written before the armistice of November 11, 1918. The intentions of the Allies, among them the British, concerning the future of the region were not yet known. It is illuminating to observe what was going on in the country in these uncertain circumstances. The document is mainly directed against Zionism: the writers cannot visualize that the country should be given to anyone but themselves. They wish to clarify their rights concerning “our fatherland (watan) and the fatherland of our ancestors, Palestine.” While they are happy for Great Britain as the victorious occupier, they are very loath to hear the Zionists claim that they are returning to the country, rather than coming to it. “Palestine is Arab,” and its language Arabic, and they found it inconceivable that Great Britain should decide the fate of the country without consulting them first. The most distinct feature of this document is the full-fledged Palestinian identity expressed in it. The idea that Palestine is an integral part of Syria is not so much as mentioned. The inhabitants are defined several times as Arabs and as Palestinians, the difference, it seems, being above all stylistic. It is already implied that for the people of Palestine at this time Palestinian-ness and Arab-ness were two parts of an inseparable whole. Another thing that seems obvious in this document is that the members of the Jaffa society state their minds without having taken much time to ponder their situation. The whole looks an immediate and intuitive view, the one they have held of their country and of themselves throughout, not one forged for this occasion. This impression is

Ideology of Palestinian Arabs during the Mandate

165

of course enhanced by the fact that, as we have seen, this was more or less the opinion of the inhabitants of the country of themselves before the war, with the proviso that then the Ottoman Empire still existed and they did not want to dismantle it. At the beginning of November 1918 the same Jaffa society sent two further petitions to British officials, protesting against Zionist activities. In these petitions they defined themselves as the true indigenous population of the country (wataniyin), and demanded that Great Britain should live up to its liberal reputation and grant them their rightful freedom. They are the original inhabitants who are the original owners of the right over Palestine. Palestine is thus a country unto itself, and its inhabitants a nation unto themselves, with any connection to Syria or any other Arab state not so much as hinted at.3 Nor were these views confined to the people of Jaffa. At the beginning of December 1918, a group of 40 individuals defining themselves as “Palestinians,” who had been banished to Damascus by the Turks, presented a petition to the British Foreign Ministry and the Peace Conference, in which they expressed their shock and indignation at the idea of turning their Palestine into a national home for the Jews. Again, despite the fact that they are writing from Damascus, they insist on a purely Palestinian patriotism and nationalism, not mentioning Syria at all but only Palestine.4 Those early and intuitive documents already convey the special religious connection between the Palestinians and their country: the fact that some of the most important sites sacred to both Muslim and Christian Palestinians are situated in it. This motif is introduced lightly and in general terms in the Jaffa petition of November 1918.5 The connection is more strongly highlighted in a petition from the Nablus area of the beginning of 1919: The country is Arab and Muslim, and must remain as such because it shelters the Aqsa Mosque, sacred to hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world. Again, Syria is not mentioned, so this is probably the original and intuitive view of the group involved in phrasing the document, and it clearly represents pre-national views held in Palestine in the nineteenth century, as we have seen.6 It is interesting that even as late as 1918 Palestine was regarded as an independent entity. Syria was not seen as a mother-country. The idea of amalgamation was to emerge about a month later, following a strenuous campaign by its supporters. But the documents relating to the initiation of the proposed fusion show what was newly constructed and what was the original (and traditional) mode of self-perception. Thus, the document that speaks about the election of candidates to the first

166


Palestinian congress starts by saying inter alia: muqatàt suriyya al-janubiyya al-ma`rufa bi-filastin, that is, the land of Southern Syria, known as Palestine. In other words, what everybody always knew as Palestine is henceforth to be named Southern Syria. Put differently, the writers were fully aware that had they called the country simply Southern Syria, nobody in the Middle East would have known what they were talking about. But no one needed a map or a dictionary to know what the term Palestine meant.7 This document also offers a simple explanation for the then popularity of the Syrian option: It was simply the case that for a brief moment Syria was an independent, not to say Arab, country. In Palestine everything was different, and the future looked very bleak indeed. The way in which the term Southern Syria was explained by the term Palestine is not confined to a single document. In fact, a more or less similar variant appears in all the documents from this period that mention the term “Southern Syria”: Southern Syria is given as the name of the country, despite the fact that the known term is Palestine.8 Obviously, Southern Syria was not a traditional name, or even a formal geographical definition. On the contrary, the way in which the term Palestine is always used to explain Southern Syria supports the conclusion that it was quite well known to everybody in the area in 1914 and could not have been invented because of Zionism or for any other reason. It is also interesting and significant that annexation to Syrian nationalism is always conditional: the Palestinians wish to be part of Syria, but only on condition that the form of government is federal, that is, that Palestine retain a wide measure of autonomy within a monarchical and democratic country.9 And indeed, the all-Syrian Congress of March 1920 emphasized exactly that point, namely, that the form of government of independent Syria would be federal. For a new and enthusiastic nationalist entity this idea is no doubt somewhat surprising, and is probably explicable by the fact that the Palestinians were in, but far from wholeheartedly so.10 Conspicuous in its absence from all these early formulations of identity is any reference to the famous Husayn–McMahon correspondence, which was later to figure as a cornerstone of the Arab argumentation against the British. This correspondence was exchanged between McMahon, the British governor of Egypt, and the Sharif Husayn, ruler of the Hijaz, in 1915, over the fate of the Fertile Crescent after the war if Husayn joined the British against the Turks. In principle, the British offered Husayn the entire region as an independent Arab state, but they


167

excluded the area west of the districts of Aleppo, Homs, Hamah, and Damascus, where the influence of France was paramount. Starting with the White Paper of 1922 they claimed that they had intended to exclude Palestine as well, using the somewhat lame excuse that what they meant by “districts” was the Turkish “province,” which in the case of Damascus included the area now known as Jordan. Since Palestine lies west of this district, they claimed it was not included in the promises. The problem with this argument is that it contradicts the most elementary content analysis of the document: Neither Homs nor Hamah were provinces in the Ottoman sense, and the area west of the province of Aleppo was in the sea, so there was little point in reserving it to the French. The upshot of this situation was that “the promises” served as a major Arab and Palestinian contention throughout the inter-war period. But Porath notes with some surprise that they never mentioned the matter in the first two years after the war, possibly implying that they knew their case was weak.11 This conclusion is not convincing. Everybody in the Middle East, certainly in Palestine, knew that France’s paramount influence in the nineteenth century was confined to Lebanon, and that in Palestine British influence was, if anything, more pronounced. Nobody in Palestine who happened to read the correspondence would have thought that Britain would give Palestine to France. On any reasonable reading Palestine would seem safely within the Arab state, and no reasonable reader could be expected to conclude that by some tortuous thought process Palestine could be seen as being west of the district of Damascus. My reading of the curious Palestinian lack of recourse to this argument in their anti-Zionist campaign in 1918 and 1919 is that they probably did not know about the correspondence, and that their argumentation at that time reflected their parochial understanding, the one stretching back to the late-Ottoman period. If this is correct, it enhances the claim that their deep feeling of attachment to the land of their forefathers, a country they dubbed as beloved and called Palestine, separate from and superior to any other country, harks back to a time long before Zionism and the truly nationalist eras came into being.

Arabs or Palestinians? One of the more influential analyses of Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate is that made by Porath, who says simply that they did not possess a real nationalism, since they had not undergone the socioeconomic transformation necessary for nationalism to emerge.12 In a

168


former chapter I showed this view to be theoretically wrong: most Third World societies in the twentieth century developed a nationalism without undergoing a Western-style capitalist revolution. Whether or not the Palestinians did have nationalism is another matter – a purely empirical question. What they did have, according to Porath, was a sort of generalized anti-Zionism and something resembling an atavistic local-patriotism that did not amount to much.13 Apart from the odd intellectual, they certainly could not have understood the meaning of Arab nationalism. It is interesting that the other Israeli scholar who has studied Palestinian nationalism during this period, Meir Litvak, has presented a diametrically opposed view, viz., that they were simply Arabs, without any awareness of being Palestinian. Both views are inexact.14 The truth was that the inhabitants of the country (barring of course individual variations that no doubt existed), saw themselves as both Arabs and Palestinians. Far from being mutually contradictory, these two dimensions were complementary, and most Arab inhabitants of the country would probably not have been able to separate them from each other. Most of the documents use the two terms together, and the most common reference in them is to the “Arabs of Palestine.” Thus, the petition of Nablus to the Peace Conference in early 1919 says that the Arabs of Palestine resent and abhor any possibility of Jewish domination over them and will never be able to bring themselves to live under such domination.15 The third Palestinian congress, held in Haifa in December 1920, sent a memorandum to the High Commissioner in which it was stated that the congress represented all the classes of the “Palestinian Arab nation (sha`b)”.16 Similarly, the call from the Arab Executive in 1922 to boycott the elections says that the “Arab Palestinian nation” is in complete consensus not to take part in this event.17 Often the order is reversed and the reference is to the Palestinian Arab nation.18 In a number of documents we find that there are several references to Arabs but one at least to the Palestinian nation, thus suggesting that the differentiation was probably stylistic, and that only the two terms in conjunction, or implication, made sense to readers.19 One document, for instance, calls the people of the country Arabs, but then proceeds to tell the reader that Palestine faces a danger as no other nation does, in that the land of that nation (umma) is being given to others, which will necessarily bring about the elimination of the nation from its country.20 Here, too, it is quite clear that the claim that the inhabitants of the country are referred to simply as Arab would be a gross misreading of the document.


169

On the other hand, in many documents of the period the people of the country are simply called Palestinians or the Palestinian nation (either sh`’b or, more commonly, umma). The first clear example of this is found in a document sent by the delegation in London to the Palestinian delegation in Geneva, directing it as to the tactics to be used in explaining the Palestinian position, and referring to the population of the country as the “Palestinian nation.”21 This came a few days after the Geneva delegation had sent a message to London, to express disappointment with Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, for not giving “the Palestinians” self-rule.22 Similarly, in the important memorandum presented by the Palestinian delegation to the Colonial Secretary in 1921, where the ideology of the Palestinians at this period is set forth, the people of the country are called either Palestinians or the people of Palestine, never Arabs.23 The same is apparent in documents of a less official nature. Thus, the Muslim–Christian society of Nablus, which in 1922 issued a call to boycott the 1922 elections, refers to the Palestinian nation, or simply the nation, but never to “Arabs.”24 A particularly important document in this regard is the final declaration issued by the London delegation on the termination of its mission, having failed to move the British government from the Balfour policy and having failed to prevent confirmation of the mandate by the League of Nations. The declaration says, inter alia, that despite the approval of the Mandate by the League of Nations, including the Zionist programme designed for Palestine, our beloved homeland (watan), the delegation still holds that the future of the country is in the hand of its original inhabitants, who in their unity, may be able to save their country and preserve their national identity ...25 The reference is clearly to a separate and independent Palestinian nation. Such references to a separate Palestinian nation continue throughout the period. An example from 1925 is the document laying out the plan to meet Lord Balfour during his visit to the region. The document, again, uses the term the Palestinian nation.26 Similarly, the declaration issued by the Executive Committee in 1928, to mark 11 years since the Balfour Declaration, said that the Palestinian nation, and behind it the Arab nation, would mark the next day as a sad event.27 There is a clear separation here between the Palestinian and the Arab nations; they are hyphenized rather than amalgamated; they are two sides of one coin. An example of such usage in the 1930s is the decision adopted by the large Nablus convention called after the discovery of the smuggled


weapons in Jaffa harbor in October 1935. This decision says inter alia: “The Palestinians are encouraged by the sympathy shown towards them by the Islamic and Arabic worlds ...”28 Again, they are Palestinians, and they are distinct from Muslims and Arabs, generally, though strong connections obviously exists. It is not true, however, as Porath claims, that this was really localism, rather than Palestinianism. Nor is it true that with the end of the Syrian episode all traces of Pan-Arabism disappear. An example of the continued longing for this unity is the memorandum of the Arab Executive presented to Churchill in 1921, saying inter alia: We ask that Palestine not be separated from her Arab neighbouring sister states. The dividing up of Arab states which were under Turkey and the natural result of the adoption by each of different laws and regulations with regard to Custom, Post and Telegraph ... does injury to the future development and progress of the Arab nation, which is anxious to regain its former civilization and glory ... All the vast sums of money expended on separating the Arab countries, the memorandum goes on, could be saved by establishing one federated state, which would be the ideal – one ethnic whole enclosing different sub-identities in the form of different countries. This wording also enhances the conclusion that Syria was never the ideal of the Palestinians; it was merely the beginning of Arab unity.29 An individual body of thought that could be cited as an excellent example of the inextricable ambivalence between Arabism and Palestinianism, is found in Akram Zuàytir, whose memoirs from the 1930s can be said to constitute an ideological document of considerable importance.30 As will be recalled, Zuàytir was one of the founders and leaders of the Istiqlal party, known for its radical anti-British and PanArab tendencies. All these tendencies are fully reflected in his writing. The memoirs are sprinkled with Pan-Arab messages. An example is the description of the ceremonies in honor of the deceased Syrian nationalist leader Hananu, held in late 1935 and early 1936. A large assembly, organized in Nablus by Zuàytir and his friends, commemorated this death and Zuàytir wrote an article for the occasion, summarized in his memoirs. In it he refers to Damascus as “our national Ka`ba, our true capital,” and says further “We are all one nation, Syrian Arab.”31 Zuàytir’s stand on Pan-Arabism thus remained unshaken; but to draw the conclusion that ipso facto he did not see himself as a fervent Palestinian would be a mistake. His memoirs are full of references to his


171

beloved homeland Palestine. The reason for writing the memoirs in the first place is presented as having to do with his observing, as a young man, what was being plotted against “my homeland Palestine.”32 Throughout he refers to a Palestinian nation (al-Sh`b al-Filastini, alumma) as an entity that exists as a matter of course, and for which he cherishes the deepest bond of affection.33 He probably would have been shocked to hear that in praising the idea of an Arab state so emotionally, he was saying something against a Palestinian identity. He certainly seems to be thinking of the Palestinians and Palestine as a major building block of the Arab nation and Arab homeland, neither the block nor the whole building being conceivable without each other.

Anti-Zionism It has long been said that the true basis of Palestinian nationalism is the fight against and the intense dislike of Zionism. This statement is true and false at the same time. It is true in the sense that even if there had been no positive side to Palestinian nationalism, the issue of Zionism was more than enough to bring about the creation of a counter-nationalism and sustain it in vigorous life for generations to come. Nevertheless the statement is fundamentally false in the sense that it implies the absence of a positive side to this nationalism. It is demeaning to Palestinian culture and identity to contend that there is nothing more to it than hatred of Zionism, but it would also be historically false to disregard how Zionism enhanced Palestinian resolve to win nationhood and statehood. This section deals only with this latter issue. The most simple and basic point of conflict was that the Zionists belonged to a different culture and religion than that of the native population of the country, combined with the fact that, in complete opposition to other colonial situations, they did not wish to create something in common with the local inhabitants. The mentality of separateness predominated from the start. Also part of the most basic point of departure was the fact that the Zionists wanted to have the country to themselves, to control it. Not many Zionists in the early Mandate days clearly articulated this desire to others or even to themselves, but the Palestinians were in no doubt whatsoever about this from the start. All this could not endear Zionism to the local inhabitants, and was also responsible for a part of their ideology. While there were many reasons for the rise of Palestinian nationalism as part of the general emergence of nationalism in the Middle East,

172


in practical terms they found themselves having to devise arguments that might have seemed superfluous without the existence of Zionism. After all, the Syrians and Iraqis never had to defend their case by claiming that their presence in the country harked back to such and such a year B.C.E. Nobody ever disputed their ownership of their country. But the Palestinians, as we have seen above, had to stave off arguments depicting them as foreign occupiers and step-children of the land. It was a war about the question of who was more native to the country, and such a war is naturally conducted by historical arguments, among other things. But it supplied the Palestinian national movement with a more or less coherent set of propositions about its rights in the country, propositions both rational and secular by the standards of every respectable national movement in contemporary Europe. As early as 1919 the Palestinian regional groups and Muslim–Christian associations who sent petitions to the Peace Conference pointed out the ancient presence of Palestinian Arabs in the country, and emphasized their continued and uninterrupted settlement in it and defense of it. 34 The Arab connection with the country existed well before the rise of Islam, and for most of the time was stable and tranquil. As against this, the Jewish connection with the country was much shorter, and could hardly be described as full dominance in any way, since that time was characterized by constant civil war and political instability. Thus, real Jewish control over the country was shaky, and never more than partial, geographically and demographically speaking.35 A good version of this argument is the testimony of Izzat Darwaza to the Peel Commission, where we hear that the country is Arab and had been Arab for hundreds of years before the advent of Islam. In fact, the kingdom of Petra, 300 B.C.E., is said to have been Arab in ethnicity. This ethnic nature continued to be dominant in the country not only in classical Islam, which is evident enough, but even under the Ottomans, who were keen to preserve the Arab nature of the country, and even co-opted Arabs into positions of governance in Palestine itself as well as in other provinces.36 This last part of the argument, at least, can be said to be a historical fact rather than ideological exaggeration. As against this, Darwaza emphasizes once more the weak nature of the old Jewish state in Palestine, which coexisted with many non-Jewish elements (Idumeans, Greeks, Philistines), who in all probability surpassed the Jews in terms of numbers. A major argument of the Palestinians under the Mandate was the simple but effective one (intellectually, if not in practice) of selfdetermination, the natural and undeniable right of the majority to a


173

state in its own vision. This, and the related call for a national government, responsible to a popularly elected parliament, were the most common arguments made and demands posed.37 One of the surprising facts about the Palestinians’ ideology vis-à-vis Zionism during the Mandate is the extent to which they were deeply convinced that the National Home policy of the British meant doom as far as they were concerned. Since this turned out to be an almost exact premonition, it is interesting to look into this issue in some detail. The realization was already there from a very early time of the Mandate. An example is the memorandum presented to the League of Nations by the Palestinians in 1921.38 While repeating other arguments of the Palestinians, the document also makes the point that the National Home policy comes “at the expense and at the certain extinction of the Arab people who are the owners of the land ...” and that “the people of Palestine ... cannot consent to a policy in which they behold their doom and their extinction as a corporate body ...” The same theme appears in the memorandum presented to Churchill in 1921, which states inter alia that “The very serious and growing unrest among the Palestinians arises from their absolute conviction that the present policy of the British Government is directed towards evicting them from their country ...”39 Relevant here is also an episode that took place in the context of the confrontation between the Palestinian delegation and the British government in 1921–2. In a press release from late 1921 the delegation says it has made strenuous efforts to receive from the British Government an authorized explanation as to the exact long-term meaning behind the Balfour Declaration. This they were unable to secure, British officials claiming that the Declaration was self-explanatory. Failing this, the statement goes on to say, the Palestinians have to accept the interpretation that is embedded and implicit in Weizmann’s speech at the recent Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, where he said that the National Home policy meant that the Zionists aim at bringing into Palestine 50–60 thousand Jews annually, so that Palestine would become Jewish as England is English.40 Weizmann returned to the theme in a memorandum he presented to Churchill in July 1921. Here he repeated the statement he made before the Peace Conference, reiterated that the Zionists would bring in 70–80 thousand Jews a year, would make Palestine as Jewish as America is American and England is English, and added that when the Jews had a large majority they would turn Palestine into a Jewish state.41 This might be interpreted to mean that, as in England, the land would contain no minority ethnic group. What this meant for the Palestinians was self-evident.

174


This speech by Weizmann must have had a remarkably strong effect on the Palestinians. In fact it was a bomb-shell. The crucial sentence is mentioned in several places, among others in a letter sent to the Pope to solicit his help against political Zionism.42 Another was a memorandum addressed to the High Commissioner in 1922, after a message in which he tried to calm their anxieties about British intentions in Palestine.43 The Arab delegation to London also strongly protested against Weizmann’s statement.44 The belief that British policy was destined to lead to the doom of Palestinian collective existence in Palestine is also encountered in the 1930s: it is for example mentioned in a letter by Hajj Amin as head of the Arab Higher Committee addressed to the British Prime Minister, explaining the persistence of the Arabs of Palestine in their strike in 1936.45 Was all this sheer paranoia, or was it grounded in reality? The overwhelming weight of the facts points to the latter possibility. While the idea that some sort of an official Zionist body was devising plans for the eviction of the Palestinians is obviously fanciful, the actual policy of the Zionists toward the Palestinians gave the impression that this was exactly what they had in mind. Were not Palestinian peasants forcibly evicted from every piece of land bought from Arab landowners? Did not the Zionists have an open and proud policy of “redeeming” every bit of land in Palestine they could lay their hands on? Did not the combination of these two things mean eviction of at least all the peasants of the country? The answer to these questions is not only in the affirmative; there is positive evidence that the Palestinians were aware of this chain of meaning.

Palestine as a Holy Land A large number of documents from the very beginning of the period under study show that the Palestinians considered the country to be a Holy Land. Litvak’s claim that they learnt about this from the Christians is groundless.46 The explanation given by Muslims for this sacredness is that the country contains within it some of Islam’s holiest places, a fact that makes it holy itself. The reference is of course to the Aqsa Mosque, where the Isra’ and Mi`raj took place. The city and the country are psychologically amalgamated, a continuation of the historical approach, as we have seen. The argument seems to have been first employed in an official context in 1921. Among the papers of the Palestinian delegation sent to London in 1921, is an unsigned memorandum, probably prepared


175

as an aide-memoire for the members in presenting their views to British leaders and officials. The document puts forward the usual array of arguments, chief among them the Palestinian-Arabs’ preponderant majority, hence the Arab nature of the country, but underscores also the sacred nature of the land, a sacredness that emanates from the fact that it shelters the third holiest shrine of Islam, as well as the holy sites of the Christian Palestinians. Implicitly, the country and the holy sites are joined together.47 Thus, a memorandum written by the London delegation debates the High Commissioner’s claim that the Jews had a special relation to the land, arguing that the relation of the Palestinians was even closer, since the country contained the Aqsa mosque. The Islamic holy places imparted sanctity to the entire country.48 A memorandum sent to the Pope two months later called upon him to uphold the case of the Palestinians, since the country was sacred to both Christianity and Islam. Moreover, “Palestine is one of the three lands (biqa`) most sacred to Islam.”49 The amalgamation between the country and the holy sites is here even more complete. The same argument was used in the Arab Executive’s reply to the Churchill White Paper, claiming, inter alia, that the country is a Holy Land for both Muslims and Christians, who flock there in their thousands each year on pilgrimage.50 In some of these documents the suspicion lingers that the Muslims are imitating the Christians in the matter of the country’s sacredness, since the writers emphasize the fact that the two religious groups are strongly bonded together. However, in several cases the sacredness argument is employed in a non-religious context and without any intention of drawing nearer to the Christians. One such example is the denunciation by the Arab Executive of the MacDonald White Paper (1930). Among other arguments the statement calls the country “The Holy Land” and even “Holy Palestine” and says it is incumbent on every Arab to help his brethren to regain their long-lost happiness.51 Likewise, the call of the Executive to the people of Palestine to take part in the demonstration planned for January 1934 refers to the country as the Holy Land without any religious reason for doing so.52 A particularly important instance is the speech given by Amin Husayni to the conference of the national committees (lijan qawmiyya) at the beginning of the general strike. Amin was the classic proponent of combining the secular-nationalist and the religious messages and welding them together into one seamless whole. In this case he rehearses the traditional case of the Palestinians, emphasizing the promises, the correspondence, etc., but also resorting to Islamic arguments. Palestine is called throughout “this sacred Arab country” and among the modes

176


the Palestinians ought to use in order to extricate themselves from their predicament is true belief in God who can work miracles, because “the will of the people (sha`b) is the will of God.” He also calls on Arab brethren to support their co-nationals in Palestine, who are fighting to save this Holy Land and its holy sites not only for themselves, but for the sake of all Arabs.53 Strong religious overtones, though thickly interwoven with nationalism, are also apparent in the reaction of the Supreme Muslim Council to the speech of the British Colonial Secretary in the House of Commons (June 19, 1936), commenting on the general strike. The Council repeats its view that the Arabs of Palestine cannot accept the policy of founding a Jewish National Home in this “Islamic and Arabic Holy Land” and claims further that not only does this policy threaten the very existence of the Arab nation in Palestine, but also the existence of the Islamic holy sites, revered by millions of Muslims everywhere. The document further claims that the whole idea behind the Zionist project is religious, meaning the destruction of the mosques and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.54 One may probably understand the Palestinian attitude to the Great Revolt as a jihad under the same heading of Palestine as a Holy Land. It was a jihad because it was carried out to save an Islamic Holy Land. An illustration of this attitude is the call to the Palestinians after one of the terrorist acts carried out by extremist Jewish militiamen against shoppers in an Arab market. The document urges the Palestinians to persevere in the holy war, since “we have an obligation (àhd) to and covenant (mithaq) with Allah not to desert the battlefields and the arms until the country secures its demands and achieves its purposes, or we are martyred, together with the prophets, the righteous and the pious martyrs [whose graves] God blessed [in the ancient times] ...”55 The revolt was formally named a jihad also in a statement of the Headquarters of the Palestinian Revolt in Syria in early 193856 and by the commanders of the main fighting groups on the ground at the end of that year.57

The Palestinians as guardians of the holy sites of Islam: a rudimentary chosen people By far the most important argument used by the Palestinians since the beginning of the Mandate to legitimize their ownership of the land was that the country is Arab by culture and Islamic by religion, and must continue as such, because in it are situated some of Islam’s holiest sites. The reference is of course to Jerusalem (al-Quds, the Holy, in Arabic)


177

and to the Aqsa Mosque, mentioned in the Qur’an, as well as the site of several events of high theological significance in early Islam – Jerusalem was for some sixteenth months the Qibla (direction of prayer), and from it the Isra’ and Mi`raj, Muhammad’s night journey to heaven and back, took place. These concentrated events made Jerusalem the third holiest place in Islam, and Palestine (read: an undefined area around Jerusalem) a special place, a sacred place, throughout Islamic history. All this made Palestine potentially different and better than other countries within Islam, despite the strong Muslim tendency to universalism. In the twentieth century this special circumstance was the main basis for what has been called a Palestinian Islam, a basis that, according to theoreticians like Adrian Hastings, may well serve toward the emergence of a distinct nationalism. Numerous historical documents relating to the Palestinians emphasize that they are those people defined by the fact that they live around the holy sites of Islam that are in Palestine. This situation is often described by the medieval religious term mujawir, living under the roof or in the shadow of a holy place, like a student of religion.58 As in pre-modern times, the country was often described or defined by the holy sites, such as the land of the first Qibla and the Third Haram, and of the Aqsa Mosque. Al-Aqsa itself is sometimes referred to by an interpreted extension of the citation in the Qur’an: al-Masjid al-Aqsa wama hawlahu min al-mudun wa’l-qura, allati baraka Allah fiha., “the Aqsa Mosque, and the towns and villages around it, which Allah has blessed.”59 The country is also referred to as “the Holy Land, the Cradle of Religions, and land of Peace (or the land that should be the place of peace)”, to cite letter by Amin to an Indian newspaper.60 Sometimes this took the form of “Land of Miracles and the Supernatural and the Cradle of Religions.”61 One of the more interesting and important points of view put forward by the Palestinians since very early in the Mandate is that not only was the country theirs because it contained the sites sacred to Islam, but also because it was a duty incumbent upon them to guard and defend these sites for the entire Arab and Muslim world. This meant in the first place that the holy places were in danger, chief among them the Aqsa itself. This danger was not new. Muslims in this part of the world had lived in fear for their holy places since the time of the Crusaders, who overran the Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, turning them into a stable and a barracks, thus willfully desecrating them. The danger this time was embedded in a new kind of Crusaders, the Jews, who planned to


take over the Temple Mount area, demolish the Mosques and reestablish the Jewish Temple. There were plenty of internal Jewish documents to go by, which made no secret of such a wish, and it would be callous to treat such a fear as empty paranoia, or as rhetoric intended for propaganda purposes. It is in this light that we may understand Amin Husayni’s objection to any compromise with the Zionists over the Buraq/Wall, or even over worship arrangements during the Jewish high holidays. He objected to any compromise because it was not compromise as such that the Zionists were after. They were after a crippling arrangements leading to more compromises, and eventually to the occupying of the entire Haram area. In the Mufti’s language, as summarized by a British official: “The Mufti said that his Excellency [the High Commissioner] was aware that fundamentally the dispute was on account of the fact that the masses of Moslems believe that the Jews desire to acquire new rights at the Wailing Wall as a step forward towards the Mosque of al-Aqsa.” Later in the interview Amin was even more open, saying that Muslims in the country believed that “the Jews wished to get possession of the Haram.”62 Muslim apprehensions about the holy sites went still further. At maximum strength the argument went so far as to claim that God had entrusted the Aqsa Mosque to the care of the Palestinians, a sacred task no human would dare to shirk or not be diligent in carrying out. I came across such an approach for the first time in a document from 1922, a call by a Palestinian delegation to the Hijaz, which it visited during the Hajj season, to alert Muslims to the grave dangers of Zionism.63 The document reminds its readers that the Arab Muslims of Palestine have stood guard over the Aqsa and the Sakhra on behalf of the entire Muslim world, since the conquest of Umar (the second Caliph, to whom tradition assigns the conquest of Palestine for Islam), but that today Muslims should be aware that a new danger has appeared, in the form of Zionist plans to take over the Haram and rebuild the Solomonic Temple. It goes on to say that despite the difficulty, the Palestinians are alert even at night to guard what God has entrusted to their care – the Third Haram and First Qibla, blessed by God with the Isra’ and Mi`raj. They further assert that Palestinians will defend their rights in the holy places, a right they share with every Muslim, wherever he may be. A document from 1928 is still more explicit in emphasizing some of these points. The document in question is a memorandum by the Committee for the Defense of the Buraq. It was presented to the Muslim congress convened in 1928 in Jerusalem. The document relates to the country as a Holy Land in an entirely Muslim context, explaining this


179

by the Isra’ and Mi`raj, citing also the famous Hadith “La tushaddu alrihal,” (“You shall only set out for three mosques,” discussed in Chapter 2 earlier) and going on to claim that “God has nominated us, the people of this Holy Land, to be the defenders of this House ...” It reiterates that the people of this country consider themselves the representatives of the world Muslim community in preserving the sanctity of these sites.64 The document details again the contents of writings and photographs which convey Jewish intentions of taking over the Haram area, such as the famous photomontage depicting a star of David on the Dome of the Rock. The point was also made by secular bodies. An example is the call made by the Arab Executive to Arabs and Muslims to boycott Jewish products. Muslims and Arabs are urged to support the Palestinians, who are defending the holy sites of Islam, and to defend Arab unity efforts by defending Palestine, the make or break geographical component of any Arab unity plan.65 The Palestinians are loyal representatives who guard the interests of the Arab and Muslim worlds, who in return have the obligation to help the Palestinians in their distress. A further call, this time from the Muslim-Christian Society of Haifa, describes both Christian and Muslim Palestinians as mere guardians of the holy sites in the country, sacred to hundreds of millions of co-religionists all over the world.66 Anthony Smith, in his recent study of chosen peoples in history, shows how a long list of peoples have constructed for themselves a world picture in which they stand in a special relation to the deity. Sometimes this is based on a full-fledged covenant with God, according to which the people are to implement God’s constitution for the world in return for God’s assuring their own society the good life. Sometimes the special relation is only partial or rudimentary. An example is England, which developed the Protestant vocation of spreading “culture” (seen as consisting mainly of democracy and liberalism) around the world. Another is Russia, which after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 developed a self-image of being the Third Rome, the last guardian of the “true” version of Christianity. Smith also shows that modern nationalism in these societies is not based on any negation of the close and symbiotic historical relation between the people and its religion, but, on the contrary, on a continued harmony and intimacy. Nationalism may be a secular ideology, but this is really only a matter of formal logic; in real human terms identity can be a multi-faceted affair, and nationalism is a classic case of this. This study claims that a clear, though rudimentary element of election energizes the Palestinian

180


people. It did so to a certain extent in the past, and it does so even more today, as the next chapter will try to show.

The Crusades There are a substantial number of allusions to the Crusades in the documentary material produced by Palestinians during the Mandatory period, and one gets the impression that the topic was constantly on the minds of many if not most Palestinians at the time. These allusions are usually quite mild, referring to martyred ancestors, or to those who fought for this country in the past. But there are quite a few detailed references that deserve closer attention. The memorandum presented to Churchill on his visit to Palestine in 1921 already speaks of the historic rights of the Palestinians in the country, rights which among other things are anchored in the fact that the Palestinians fought the Crusaders and were able to expel them from the land.67 The message sent from the Muslims of Palestine to their brethren all over the world at the time of the Arab rebellion also cites the motif of the Crusades, by calling attention to the fact that the victory over the Crusaders was affected through the contribution of volunteers from the entire Muslim world.68 During a conference protesting land sales, which was held in Jerusalem in January of 1935, Amin al-Husayni addressed the 500 ùlama present and reminded them of the “millions” of people who in the past offered their lives to defend the country, before Salah al-Din and during his own time, and called on every one to follow that hero’s example.69 A message sent by the General Command of the rebellion (headquartered in Damascus) on the occasion of the British army’s search of Nablus (August 16, 1938), used the theme of the Crusades quite heavily. It tells the insurgents that the whole Muslim world is looking at them with pride, refers to them as “keepers of the Aqsa Mosque and successors of Salah al-Din” and goes on to say that “there is a similarity between the Yarmuk Campaign and those of today, and a family connection between Hattin and the jihad of today.” The message ends on the note that “Victory is preordained for us, for we are the army of God and His slaves ...”70 There were also less lofty references. One was the talk given by an anonymous band commander before a fight against a British army unit during the revolt. He mentions the battles of Khalid b. al-Walid in the


181

conquest of al-Sham (Greater Syria) in early Islam, and of Salah al-Din at Hattin; the English were defeated at Hattin, and now they were determined to avenge this defeat by crushing the rebellion.71 The Crusades are also sometimes mentioned in ideological documents in an inverted mode, by way of a complaint against the fact that the British and other European governments seemed to look at the Great War and its political aftermath as a kind of continuation and completion of the medieval Crusades. One such example can be seen in the comment of the Istiqlal party on Lord Allenby’s visit to Palestine in 1933, on the occasion of the opening of the YMCA club in Jerusalem. The comment is not only a rehearsal of the position of the Palestinians vis-à-vis the forces poised against them, but also reflects their astonishment in observing someone like Allenby regarding the end of the Great War as the end of the Crusades.72 All this is only a sample of the large number of cases in which the Crusades are mentioned. There can be no doubt that the Crusades were constantly on the minds of the Palestinians during the Mandate. This was so early on, and it was a self-sustaining memory. Of course, it also offered a much needed reassurance that not everything was as lost as it sometimes seemed, and that the course of history could be changed even after a great calamity. All this is evident and barely needs elaboration. What does need to be kept in mind is that, pace the detractors of Palestinian nationalism of this time, this continued and urgent commemoration of the Crusades by every means available was not an invention of the modern period, but a perpetuation of an old pattern.

Blurred genres It is evident that the effort to separate religious and secular-national motifs in Palestinian nationalism at this period can only be artificial. Often things were so enmeshed that those involved in these feelings would not have been able to classify them logically. A good example is the ideology of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, which began as that of one person, but soon became that of many. Al-Qassam’s thinking was of course above all religious, and he saw Palestine as an Islamic country in the full sense. But his ideology also contained purely secular aspects of Palestinian nationalism. Thus, a reporter who spoke with one of those who were captured after the Ya`bad clash was told that the group had been organized two years earlier in complete secrecy, in order to collect arms and fight the British and the Jews, “who occupy our land,” in order to save the motherland (watan) from the foreign occupier. The

182


preoccupation expressed here is with secular-national values, not with universal Islamic ones, or even any Islamic ones at all.73

Popular nationalism It is notoriously difficult to find hard core information on the involvement of the lower classes in the historical process, since almost by definition these groups are illiterate and do not write books. Mandatory Palestine exemplifies this problem very clearly. Ted Swedenburg conducted interviews with Palestinians about their nationalist feelings in the 1930s, from which it transpires that such feelings indeed existed.74 But, characteristically, this research was done 50 years after the fact, with all the grave methodological problems that this implies. In real time nobody asked the Palestinian peasants what they thought about themselves, and they themselves did not dream of troubling anybody with their thoughts. Hence the historian has to rely on roundabout detective work, even more than in relation to other topics. The first piece of evidence attesting to the existence of popular nationalism in Palestine after the 1914–18 war is the story of the King-Crane Mission. This mission came to Palestine in June 1919 and began to move about in the main towns, where it collected evidence from the inhabitants. Most of the witnesses were in favor of independence, an end to the Zionist National Home, and unification with Syria. But what is important here is that between the lines one can detect an involvement of the non-elite. The commission started its meetings in Jaffa, on June 10, 1919. It met with members of nationalist societies, as well as with representatives of 58 villages from the Ramle area. It is doubtful whether these could have been members of the elite. In Bethlehem, some days later, the commission was presented with a petition signed by a thousand people. These, too, could not all have been members of the elite. Of one place it is said that the commission met with workers.75 An important chapter in this topic is the anti-Zionist stand of British officials and officers of the military administration between 1918 and 1920. An example is the verdict of the Haycraft commission of inquiry, nominated to investigate the Jaffa riots of 1921. Its report says that “the general belief that the aims of the Zionists and Jewish immigration are a danger to the national and material interests of the Arabs in Palestine is well nigh universal amongst the Arabs, and is not confined to any particular class ...”76 Many thousands of Palestinians attended several well-documented public gatherings in Palestine during the Mandate, again showing that


183

nationalist feelings transcended by far the limits of the elite. At a popular rally held in Nablus in 1932 to protest the Balfour declaration it was reported that 10,000 workers and youths took part.77 Similarly, the funeral of Ìzz al-Din al-Qassam was certainly a case of popular nationalism at its purest: tens of thousands participated, including groups from hundreds of villages from all over the country. The atmosphere was described as electrified.78

Whole picture An important document in this regard is the general statement of ideology published by the Arab Executive upon the final endorsement by the British cabinet of the Mandate for Palestine, in July, 1922.79 The document says, inter alia: The Arabs of Palestine enjoy the right of self-determination for themselves and for their country, a right passed on to them by the long generations [of ancestors living in the country] ... They will preserve and defend that right in the face of any international decision that will try to divert them from it ... And what the Palestinian nation has suffered [lately] at the hands of Western politics is only a way to put her to the test and discover her true essence ... The nation has to ponder the events of the last four years ... And it is necessary that each one of the children of this nation realize that everyone who will let despair take hold of his mind ... is a traitor against his nation and motherland (watan) ... In Palestine is situated the Third Haram and First Qibla and it is the Holy Land for all the Muslim and Christian nations, so it does not belong to the people of Palestine alone, but to every Muslim and Christian who has got in himself a remnant of true faith. The Palestinians, who have [up till now] defended this holy land as best they could, now ask the Muslim and Christian worlds to share in this defense. After rejecting the decision of the British cabinet to endorse the Mandate, the document ends with the slogan: “Long live free and independent Palestine, and long live the Arabs”. This document neatly wraps up all the aspects of Palestinian ideology under the Mandate. It weaves together religious with entirely secular motifs, and underscores the fact that self-determination is no less central than the holy sites of Islam. It uses the term Palestinian nation without much ado, as a term well known to everybody. But at the same time it does not forget the fact

184


that the Palestinians are also Arabs. It emphasizes the fact that Palestine is an Islamic Holy Land, in which some of Islam’s most important sites are situated. It also draws attention to the fact that these holy sites are not strictly speaking the property of the Palestinians, but of the entire Muslim world, and that it has been the task of the Palestinians to guard these places. The document therefore again exemplifies that all these levels were present in the Palestinian identity of the time, and that every effort to devise a hierarchy among these values is most certainly futile and mistaken. An additional example is the memorandum presented to Churchill in 1921. It contains the whole picture of Palestinian ideology in a general form. The writers demand the establishment in Palestine of one national government, based on the following arguments: The promises of the British in the Husayn–McMahon correspondence; the long list of promises made by the Allied leaders after the War, promising the small nations independence; the fact that Palestine is no less qualified than any other small nation to shoulder such independence in terms of educated personnel; the fact that the historic connection between the Palestinians and their homeland is deeper than the connection had ever been between the Jews and the country. An example of this is the fact that the Jews left no trace on the topography of the land, as compared with the vast number of such traces made by the Arabs; finally they point out that it was against the wishes of the population of the area to sever the political connections between the various Arab countries, since these people consider themselves one ethnic nation and long to create among themselves a federated state.80

Pan-Arabism In the 1930s Pan-Arabism began to be distinctly perceptible in many contexts. The flag was raised not necessarily by the new and younger effendiyya. One example is the “Arab congress” that took place within the Islamic Congress of Jerusalem in 1931. Some of the delegates of the wider congress convened a mini-congress among themselves, Pan-Arab in intention and purpose. They published a declaration in which they accused the Allied governments of World War I of subverting the wishes of the Arabs to remain together and establish one big state uniting all of them, and thus preventing one of the most ancient and glorious nations of the world from fulfilling its modern destiny. They called on the Arab states to convene a congress that would take practical measures to effect that one overarching Arab state. The signatories of this document were


185

not young rebels of the rising generation, but members of the old guard, like Awni Abd al-Hadi, Subhi al-Hadra, Izzat Darwaza, Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, and Asàd Daghir.81 Another example is the succession of congratulatory cables received by the Istiqlal party of Nablus on the occasion of its establishment. Senders were such figures as Yasin alHashimi from Iraq, Shukri al-Quwwatli from Syria and Riyad al-Sulh from Lebanon – all major figures of the traditional effendiyya.82 All the messages praise the Pan-Arab focus in the agenda of the new party, and place much emphasis on the glory of classical Islam, when the Arabs were united, as compared to their miserable condition in the present, when they constitute a series of small states. Relevant to this Pan-Arab impulse is also the popular convention held in Nablus in 1935 to mark the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, to which some Pan-Arab leaders were invited. One of them was Abd al-Rahman Azzam, the most ardent Pan-Arab activist of the inter-war period. Azzam assured his listeners that the Arab nation, amounting to 70 million, would never allow a Jewish state to take over Palestine.83 The Syrian leader Jamil Mardam was also present, and he chose another Pan-Arab (and Pan-Islamic) motif, describing the present miserable state of Palestine, the wounded heartland of Arabism, land of the prophets and freedom fighters for Islam, obviously referring to the Crusades. His statement is a classic case of blurred genres: Palestinian, Arab and Islamic values brought together to a head symbolized by the holy sites of Jerusalem and their defense during the Crusades.84 This is in line with what we have seen above, namely, that the new Arabism was not necessarily a revolt of the new middle class against the old one, but more an awareness of the glorious Arab past as compared with the mediocrity of the present. The memory of this past was not reinvented; it had been kept well in mind throughout. What may have brought this issue to the fore at that moment was perhaps the fact that as the Arab states were coming closer to independent status, their weakness in the international arena vis-à-vis the great powers was becoming all too obvious. An extremely important and interesting document that sheds much light on the ideology of the Palestinians during the Mandate is the speech given by Hajj Amin al-Husayni in April 1936 to the Iraqi parliamentary delegation that visited Palestine en route to Egypt.85 In a dazzling text featuring Islam and far-reaching Pan-Arabism, Amin said inter alia that Iraq was “our” land no less than theirs, and Palestine their land no less than “ours”; that the Arabs are one nation, created as such by God; the present frontiers in the Middle East are artificial, and are bound

186


to disappear, without a shadow of doubt, for no human force can break apart what God has created as one whole. A body that has been created as one shall not be able to exist other than as one and unified, hence “Arab unity is coming without a doubt.” The unified Arab nation had in the past created the loftiest civilization the world has ever known, and will do it again when it manages to reunite. He went on to religious topics and asked the delegates “to convey to Iraq, your country and ours, the greetings of this wounded Holy Arab country, which contains your First Qubla [sic for Qibla] and Masjid el-Aqsa, and which is the gate to the Arab Peninsula”, and the link between Western Asia and Africa. This small country has suffered more than any other Arab country, and it deserves sympathy in proportion to its agony and “[its] holy and revered position.” And, finally, he says, “We are brethren, the fingers of one hand and members of one nation – the best nation ever created.”

7 Palestinian Nationalism after 1948

Since the main topic of this book is the development of Palestinian nationalism during the Mandate, and the relation between that period and the one preceding it, the present chapter requires some justification. Whereas in the chronological chapters surveying the Mandate I was mainly concerned with showing popular nationalism, in the post1948 period this no longer seems to be an issue. The old Palestinian elite was more or less crushed out of existence in the 1948 war and its aftermath; it certainly lost forever its leadership position. One outcome of this was that the question of popular versus elite nationalism ceases to be of real interest. As soon as Palestinian nationalism was reawakened in the 1960s, its popular basis was never in doubt. Hence, the focus of interest of the present chapter reverts to the question I suggested in the Introduction as my main subject of inquiry: the historical antecedents of Palestinian nationalism and the influence of these antecedents on Palestinian nationalism in the last generation. To observe this, I will take the old identity elements detected in the period from the Crusades onwards, and see how they help shape to modern Palestinian nationalism. Put differently, what was the main dynamo that sustained and propelled Palestinian nationalism? In an earlier part of the book I argued that this was Jerusalem, its role in Islam, and the Palestinians’ role in defending it, as well as some other central values inherited from the past. In this latter part of my study I investigate the question in relation to the period after 1948. We shall thus also test to the limit the ethnosymbolist theory (claiming that the past exerts strong influence on nation-formation in the present, while rejecting historical determinism), a test I believe it passes. This test means that identities are not set in concrete, that they can change, and sometimes (rarely, I think) can even break up. In most cases this will not happen. The Palestinian 187

188


case was destined to be one of those that survive and I think that for good reason. In any event, it seems that the ethnosymbolist theory proves useful in explaining the later phase of Palestinian history. Before we go any further, it seems advisable to pick up the chronological trail where we left it and connect it to the post-1948 period. In Chapter 5 we left the Palestinians at the end of the Great Revolt, which ended with a certain political achievement, but also some very negative results on balance. Militarily the revolt was subdued, as the British forces were reinforced to the level of two divisions. It is true that Palestinian resistance was far from over, and would probably have continued for some time, but in September 1939 World War II broke out, and in Palestine, as anywhere else, perceptions, politics, and psychology all took a sharp turn. Quite obviously, everybody understood that Great Britain, in a battle for life and death, was not going to make new colonial decisions. Continuation of the revolt was pointless, and it ground to a halt quite quickly. With political struggle suspended, the main activity during the war was in the province of economics. Miraculously, while the entire world was undergoing untold hardship, Palestine enjoyed its greatest period of well-being since the beginning of the Mandate: several hundred thousand British troops were billeted in the country and all of them needed new bases and regular supplies of food and other provisions. All this led to unprecedented prosperity, which for the first time did not overlook the peasants. The economic boom of course came to an end in 1945. Already in the last months of the war politics made a fierce return, with the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion. Illegal immigration became rife, as was arms smuggling. British soldiers became the target of attack, as did various military installations. Again, huge military reinforcements were brought in, and a mini-war ensued between the British and the Yishuv. But it does not take a particularly keen eye to observe that this war was completely different from that waged by the British against the Palestinians a few years before. The harsh measures that had been employed against the Palestinians were absent: no city centers were demolished, as Jenin had been in the wake of the killing of the district officer Mr Moffat in the summer of 1938; no Jews were forced to sit on locomotives and serve as human shields against road mines; and women were not stripped of their clothes to make sure they were not men. If any real proof was needed that a distinct cultural-racial discrimination between Jews and Arabs existed in the eyes of the British, this was certainly provided. The simple, though of course unarticulated truth was that Great Britain could not bring itself to wage a total war against

Palestinian Nationalism after 1948

189

the Jews, as they had cheerfully done against the Palestinians. The effect of the Holocaust must have been present, no doubt, but the difference in attitude was probably older than this, and to my mind it would be naïve to rule out racial preferences and a colonial pattern of thought. This is one major explanation for Palestinian failure during this period, an explanation that does not have to resort to accusation of lack of nationalist enthusiasm. The British government’s reluctance to resort to real force obliged it to hand over the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations, which in 1947 nominated a committee of investigation to decide the fate of the country. This committee recommended partition, a recommendation accepted by the General Assembly in November 1947. The British now announced that they would leave the country on May 14, 1948. The war for Palestine began immediately upon the announcement of the partition resolution. For the Palestinians, a major consequence of the Great Rebellion now became evident: their whole leadership was in hiding outside the country. People were forced to rely entirely on the Arab states. This was a disastrous solution, for the Arab states did not come into this in order to restore Palestine to the Palestinians, but at most to enforce partition. Of course, they failed to do even this, since the contingents they sent into Palestine were inadequate for the job. One suspects that once again the British were involved, informally rather than formally or explicitly. In any event, neither Iraq nor Egypt – not to speak of Jordan – was at this time in a position to confront the wrath of Great Britain over the position of Palestine, with which that empire had been so intimately connected for nearly half a century. One of the more important consequences of the 1948 war was the expulsion and/or flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes inside Israel, and the refusal of Israel to allow them to return, despite an express UN decision calling on it to do so. A completely new chapter in the history of Palestinian nationalism thus began.1 The outcome of the 1948 war was that the state of Israel came into existence, mainly in the coastal region, the Galilee and the southern desert, while the central mountainous ridge and the Gaza strip remained in Arab hands. Jordan took control of the first, Egypt of the second. About 750,000 of the 900,000 strong Palestinian population were expelled, or fled, all completely terrorized and fearing for their lives. Many entered Lebanon and some Jordan and Syria, though the large part went to the Gaza strip (190,000) and to the West Bank (300,000), as central Palestine came to be known. In the long run, though the

190


Palestinians lost their homes and villages, and underwent a tragic uprooting, most of them remained in compact geographical areas, rather than being widely and definitively dispersed – a fact of supreme political importance for the region in the coming decades. Also noteworthy is the fact that most of them remained within the boundaries of historic Palestine. These two factors were to prove crucial from the point of view of the topic of this study. In the short run, though, all signs of collective identity ceased to be manifest, as if a Palestinian nation had never existed. But this diagnosis lacks conviction. The existence of Palestinian nationalism under the Mandate had been independently proved, and its temporary apparent disappearance calls for a different explanation. Since we know now that it took some twenty years for Palestine nationalism to again show signs of life, we may remind ourselves that this count of years has already been encountered in the long stretch of Palestinian history. It took some twenty years for the inhabitants of the Levant to pull themselves out of the trauma of the First Crusade. Much later, it took the Palestinians about twenty years to awaken from what may justifiably be called the trauma of the imposition of the Jewish National Home policy. Most notably, it would take the Palestinians some twenty years again to rise up from their torpor after the 1967 war. One is tempted to think this a magic number marking the duration of national traumas connected with occupation and subjugation. Or possibly there is a simpler explanation for these cases, in all of which there was a lull of twenty years after a severe communal trauma, followed by an uprising. Very possibly it took a new generation about twenty years to emerge, after the departure of the beaten and traumatized parents. It is quite obvious that after 1948 the Palestinians were in a state of shock. They were completely dependent on others and displayed no tendency toward self-organization. They completely lacked leadership. The old leaders had surrendered that position, perhaps out of shame; younger leaders were slow to appear. People were dependent on the authorities in Jordan and Egypt, and shunned politics in a total way. A point of major importance in understanding this period is that it coincided almost exactly with the great surge of Pan-Arabism associated with Gamal Abd al-Nasir (Nasser), who came to power in Egypt in 1952. Thus, no sooner were the Palestinians left without a homeland than a leader appeared who seemed able to rescue them. They accepted PanArabism with all their hearts, as the only viable option in the 1950s. Pursuing Palestianism not only appeared to lead nowhere, but it was illegal and would embroil them with the hosting authorities. Pan-Arabism


191

cannot be seen as a voluntary change of identity. Their old identity was pushed out of existence by the world, and had to be suspended. This hardly means that most Palestinians really forgot it or relinquished it. They hoped that Pan-Arabism would help them regain their homeland, and there was something rational about this belief. An additional point of importance was the hyper-sensitivity of the Arab countries hosting refugee population to the possibility that radical Palestinian activity would entangle them in border skirmishes, if not worse, with Israel. Palestinian political activity was severely restricted and closely monitored. Palestinian youths, in particular were singled out for surveillance because these young people tended to join ultraradical organizations that constituted a threat to all Arab regimes. Despite all this, the Palestinian leader Ahmad Shuqayri, who survived the debacle of the Nakba (chiefly because he was really on the sidelines of public affairs during the Mandate, not performing any public duty, though his name appears in various public documents), says in his memoirs that during the 1950s there were in Palestinian society various pressures and voices calling for revival of the national movement. He claims that he himself, as vice-president of the Arab League, tried to put the matter on the agenda of this body – without success. In 1964 a new opportunity presented itself. Israel started to carry out large-scale works that threatened to disrupt the water balance in the area. Nasser hurried to assert his leadership and organized two Arab summits during that year. In the first of the two Shuqayri was asked to devise ways to enhance the representation of the Palestinians in the Arab League. He seized the vague mandate, and went on to establish, in May 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian National Congress (PNC). The Palestinian national movement had come back to life. Shuqayri’s PLO was established as a political organization, not as an organization engaging in violent anti-Israeli activity. But another organization had been forming, in a private and secretive manner, with the intention of carrying out violent resistance. It was established, apparently in 1959, in Kuwait , by an engineer called Yasir Arafat. Important circumstances leading to the emergence of these organizations were, in the first place, the disintegration of the union between Egypt and Syria in 1961, a major blow to the prestige and credibility of Pan-Arabism and its ability to achieve lasting goals. In the second place, the Algerian national movement gained independence from France in 1962, unaided by other forces, Arab or otherwise. At least one notable historian of the Palestinians claims that the reappearance of Palestinian nationalism was in no way inevitable. Had the

192


Palestinians been treated in the host Arab states on a level of equality with the locals, they would have been absorbed into these societies. While I certainly subscribe to the notion that nothing in history is inevitable, I do not agree with this analysis. It counters the very logic of nation-formation. It is true of many subjected people in history that, had they received truly equal treatment, they would have disappeared as separate groups. This is exactly the meaning of what I have called the Mark II theory of Benedict Anderson (detailed in Chapter 1 earlier). It was discrimination and unfair treatment (denial of Parliamentary representation) that sent the early Americans to rebellion and independent nationhood. Likewise, it was the unequal treatment of the Arabs by the Turks on the eve of World War I, after centuries of complete equality, that turned Arabism into something approaching full-fledged nationalism. These examples could be multiplied. The point is that the Palestinians were not and did not become Lebanese, as Fawaz Turki has shown so lucidly. In this description, their life in Lebanon appears pretty much hellish. Living there, Turki felt hatred of those who discriminated against him and deprived him of work and proper living conditions, rather than of Israel. More important, it has to be borne in mind that there are several minorities in the Arab world (the Druze in Syria, the Copts in Egypt) who are obviously less than equal, yet have never developed communal feelings that could be called “national.” Could it be that the Palestinians did remember their older nationalism over the abyss of the Nakba and the dispersal? I very much believe so, though it is true that no hard evidence of this has so far come to light. The early PLO in fact did nothing tangible, and this was more or less the level of popular response it got. Yasir Arafat’s organization, on the other hand, started to carry out real guerrilla activities in late 1964. His movement was called Fath, an inverted acronym for Harakat Tahrir Falastin, that is, Palestine Liberation Organization. The word itself, Fath, means conquest, and conjures up especially the Islamic conquests of Syria and Palestine in early Islam. It started to attract volunteers and to expand. Other, more radical organizations appeared. The war of 1967 gave all of them tremendous encouragement. In the first place it was established in a very definite way that the Arab armies were woefully and fundamentally short of the capacity to oppose Israel successfully. If the Palestinians wanted to repeat the Algerian success, they would have to do it alone. But there was something else in the air, something more propitious to the Palestinian cause. The Arab countries surrounding Israel were defeated in a way that was both damaging and humiliating: all of them lost important territorial assets which they had no way of


193

retrieving, and these territories were lost in an embarrassingly short war. The feeling of revenge, the unsung and unacknowledged factor in international relations, played an inevitable role. A freer hand and even some encouragement and shelter for the Palestinian organizations was one answer, at least on the level of policy. This would account for the reticence discernible in allowing the organizations a free hand before the 1967 war, versus the almost free hand they enjoyed after it. There is nothing cynical about this analysis. As far as the Arab states were concerned the Palestinian cause was entirely just in the first place; but due to international constraints it was difficult for them to act on this realization before the war. Brutal defeat released the Arab countries from this psychological and political inhibition. It should also be kept in mind that between 1948 and 1965 a complete change took place in international relations: the non-aligned bloc of societies emerged, along with the sacred right of the subjugated societies to pursue independence by all means, violent if need be. This may be compared with the situation in 1948, when the UN General Assembly endorsed a draft resolution of partition, granting the Jewish state (with 35 percent of the population of Palestine) 57 percent of the surface of the country. After about 1960 the international atmosphere changed drastically, and such glaring partiality became a thing of the past. Armed resistance was now favored, and it was time for the Palestinians to try it again, this time with a strong ideological backing from much of the international community. But again, it is doubtful whether they would have done so had they really forgotten their old nationalism and local patriotism, and had they not remained in a solid territorial bloc in the West Bank and Gaza. It was in this way that the Palestinian organizations entered a flourishing period after 1967. Their case was considered overriding in every Arab forum, in fact almost sacred. It was morally obligatory to allow their bases to be located near the frontiers of states surrounding Israel, and for their headquarters to work from inside capital cities. States further afield felt equally morally obligated to contribute funds toward the organizations’ operations. Under this sort of umbrella the Palestinian organizations started to carry out operations of a military type against Israel. These went through successive stages that can be briefly summarized. The first notable operation, in the long run probably the most successful one, was the Karameh clash of March 21, 1968, which began with a raid by the Israeli army on a Fath camp in Jordan, a few kilometers east of the Dead Sea. Rather than avoiding the Israeli force, the Palestinian guerrillas fought back, costing the attackers 24 dead, the loss of two tanks which were

194


abandoned on the site, and drawing out the operation for 24 hours, which necessitated major Israeli reinforcements to evacuate the raiding force. For an amateur band of volunteer fighters this was a huge success, even if we keep in mind that Jordanian artillery took part. The affair was celebrated as a major victory throughout the Palestinian diaspora. It was an enormous boost to morale, immediately translated into a large number of volunteers. Soon afterwards it was also translated into political capital when Arafat was elected to replace Shuqayri as the PLO leader in July 1968. Fath and the PLO in effect became one, and the long stretch of Arafat’s undisputed leadership of the Palestinians began. The PLO activity proliferated in Jordan, and the audacity of the organization grew to make it a state within a state. Confrontation with the Jordanian government and army was inevitable and imminent. It came in September of 1970, after three international flights were hijacked and blown up in a Jordanian airport. In the showdown that ensued the organizations were severely damaged and in fact were forced to flee Jordan altogether. They moved camp to Lebanon, which became a safe haven for 12 years. Again, they built on their Pan-Arab legitimacy to create what amounted to a state within a state, particularly in the refugee camps and in the south of the country, which became a base of operations against Israel. At the same time the early 1970s were a time of experimentation in international operations, of which the notable example was the attack on Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. The next important phase came in 1973, which saw a new round of war between Israel and the Arab states. It was after this war that clear signs of peace overtures appeared for the first time, this also being the post Nasser period, with the swift decline of fervent Pan-Arabism. For the Palestinians this meant pressure to come into line from countries such as Jordan and Egypt, which had largely lost interest in war. Various Palestinian documents throughout the 1970s indeed reflect a growing moderation, but it was a painful and slow process. A major crisis was still needed to speed it up, and this was supplied by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which ended in the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut and the transfer of its headquarters to Tunis. Nothing apart from diplomatic maneuvering took place over the next 5 years, until the first Intifada (uprising) broke out in Gaza and the West Bank (December 1987). It was a popular rebellion, the first since the revolt of the 1930s. It took the PLO by surprise, though it was quick to try and seize the initiative in leading it. It remained basically a popular


195

mass movement. Since 1967 leaders such as Arafat had tried to arouse the people in the territories, and nothing had happened. The rising came when the young generation was ready. There are many explanation for the eruption, and they are all true: the level of living was falling after several years of strong improvement after 1967 – a classic explanation of revolutions. Israeli oppression was onerous. To make Palestinian life miserable may not be an official Israeli policy, but it is a well-known Israeli pastime as far as the man on the ground is concerned. Often particularly tough “security measures” are nothing more than a way of finding enjoyment in visiting hardship on the Palestinian in the street. Only the most naïve commentator will deny the existence of this side of the situation. All this is no doubt true in partly accounting for the Intifada, but it ignores the nationalist element. It is impossible to imagine that this element was absent, but it had taken some length of time to ripen. Perhaps the post-1948 trauma (and its duration of 20 years) is in the final analysis the most important factor in explaining the Intifada’s long delay. The uprising was largely one of low-scale violence – mainly demonstrations and stone throwing. Its main power was in its massively popular nature, and the related evidence that it was invincible. All Israeli efforts to subdue it were in vain. And I rather support the unprovable theory that it had much to do with the Israeli willingness to negotiate with the PLO after the return of the Labour party to power in 1992. These negotiations eventually led to the Oslo Accords, where the PLO recognized Israel, and Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Few then or today have commented on this total lack of balance. The Israeli side thought it was receiving the ace card (a promise to end “terrorism”) for the paltry price of recognizing the legitimacy of the PLO; nothing of the traditional concerns of the Palestinians was so much as mentioned. No state, no 1967 borders, no Arab Jerusalem, not a word about the refugees. Israel gave nothing, and received everything in one magic stroke – recognition by its arch enemy with a special bonus – a promise to end terrorism. The Oslo agreement was badly worded in other respects as well. Small wonder that it was not destined to work. The Oslo process was structured to include two stages – “Gaza and Jericho first,” including a Palestinian authority based in them, then, within five years, final status negotiations, to cover all the outstanding issues between the parties. That second phase never materialized, for reasons to be explained. The euphoria around Oslo lasted for about half a year. Within six months the first cracks appeared, and from then on

196


it was down hill. In my understanding, the process failed because the two parties did not internalize strongly enough that a continuing peace process requires a real atmosphere of compromise. In more empirical terms, the cracks appeared as Islamic Palestinian militants started, in early 1994, to carry out suicide bombings directed against Israeli civilians, possibly motivated to some extent by the massacre perpetrated by a militant Jewish settler in Hebron in March 1994 of 28 Arabs during prayer in the Great Mosque. As Israel was pulling out of Palestinian cities during 1995, several suicide bombings, obviously intended to derail the process, gradually eliminated support for the Oslo Accords within the respective publics. The Palestinian Authority that came into being in 1994 was unable to rein in the Islamic militants without sliding into civil war, and the Israelis were not ready to push the Oslo process forward before that happened. As support for the process dwindled, a right-wing anti-Oslo government came to power in Israel in May 1996, after which date implementation was all but at an end, as acrimonious mutual feeling mounted. Labor was returned to power in Israel in 1999, with apparently renewed vigor and enthusiasm for the continuation of the peace process. But a year was wasted in a futile attempt to reach an agreement with Syria, and a peace conference was finally convened at Camp David in July 2000. This conference failed to break the deadlock between the parties, and dissolved in bitterness. Soon thereafter another uprising broke out, and it is quite common among Israeli observers to claim that Arafat planned this outbreak of violence all along, the Oslo Accords having been no more than a bluff on his part. However, this does not make much sense. If Arafat had wanted to employ such tactics at Camp David, he would more probably have signed a treaty that would have given him more territory, broken it on some trivial excuse, and launched his campaign from a much improved position. Moreover, by giving up one square kilometer of land (of Jerusalem) he could have earned the applause of the entire Western world. He shunned all this and chose to stick to a principled and well-explained stand despite all the difficulties. He certainly proved that he respected what he would sign. Anyone who reads Yazid Sayigh’s massive history of the PLO must come away with the strong impression that in the ten years or so before 1993 Arafat realized that the destruction of Israel was an unattainable dream, and that he was settling for a small state. To paraphrase Sayigh, the idea of Falastin al-Thawra (“Palestine the Revolution”, the title of the organization’s newspaper, meaning conquering the whole of Palestine) became in effect Falastin al-dawla, Palestine the state, meaning any


197

state, of any size. Anyone aware of the huge investment by the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s in the tourism industry, looking to the millennium and beyond, cannot accept the simplistic idea that the renewal of terror was preconceived. But it does stand to reason that Arafat knew that if the basic demands of the Palestinians were not met in the final status negotiations, return to resistance was an inevitable outcome. I am still not of the opinion that he deliberately launched the September 2000 al-Aqsa Intifada, or even that he was really “responsible” for the ensuing events. Much like Hajj Amin in the 1930s, it seems more likely that he was dragged along by the popular direction of developments. He was the leader, and people looked to him as to no other. To go strongly against the masses would jeopardize his leadership position, a danger that did not affect lesser leaders, who could speak freely of the damage caused by the Intifada. Arafat was led by the Intifada rather than really calling the shots. If we compare the achievements of the Palestinian national movement during the Mandate to the post-1948 period, the most distinct difference is utter failure in the first period as against partial success in the later. It is true that even in the later period not all the national goals were achieved, but part of them certainly were, and most important, the movement survived, which, in a tremendously hostile environment, was no mean thing. It may be interesting to consider the reasons for this partial success. There seem to be two main causes for it. The first and obvious one is a factor already mentioned above in another context: since the end of World War II a process of decolonization began all over the world, and the Palestinians were more and more conceived as a classic case of a Third World society whose national rights were being totally denied. There was hardly any audience for this voice in international councils before 1948, but now it was becoming a more and more common political attitude. As more and more small nations and societies in Asia and Africa became independent after 1950, their weight in international relations grew, and with it support for the Palestinian national movement, as it revived after 1965. A second and no less important explanation is the support of the Arab countries, which after the War became independent in practice, not only in theory, as before. As we saw in Chapter 5, a telephone call from the British ambassador to Egypt could affect the wording of the final decision of a conference, and prevent arms being sent to insurgents in Palestine. A pre-war Arab country could not have become a base of operations against the emerging Zionist state. All this changed after the War. The PLO could establish safe havens in Arab states and

198


achieve the first desideratum of a successful guerrilla war – a base of operations beyond the reach of the adversary, or at least relatively beyond its reach. To this must be added the upsurge in Pan-Arab feelings after the rise to power of the charismatic Gamal Abd al-Nasir (Nasser) to power in Egypt in 1952. Was Nasser the reason for this upsurge, or was he a product of it? I believe the second to be nearer the truth. As the Arab countries were becoming more truly independent, suppressed yearnings for unity and greatness resurfaced, having been nipped in the bud by Britain and France after World War I. In any case, after the breakdown in 1961 of the actual attempt to unite Egypt and Syria, the Palestine case became the main remaining flagship of Pan-Arabism, expressed in massive financial support from the oil-rich countries, and political support and bases of operations from states surrounding Israel. One should not belittle the personal success of Yasir Arafat in all this. That he managed to survive as leader at the head of a series of rival organizations and to neutralize all his enemies, is remarkable enough. It is even more remarkable that he was able to nurture the support of the international community, by constant journeys around the globe, undoubtedly also thereby creating a substantial media exposure for the Palestinian cause. In the end he became the icon of the Palestinian nation and endeavor.

PLO ideology The ideology of the Palestinians under the PLO and Arafat passed through several phases. In the early stage of the PLO (roughly the 1970s) the ideology was strongly secular, rarely engaged with religion, and never, it seems, mentioned the Crusades; even Jerusalem was seldom mentioned. The key ideological terms were revolution and liberation. Characteristically, the reference was not to a revolution in the classic sense of overturning a regime. Revolution was defined in national terms, as the revolution to recapture Palestine and move the clock back. Furthermore, the revolution was not defined in class terminology, no class being depicted as an enemy. The real ideology was nationalist; if socialist phraseology occurred, this was a thin veneer appealing to international actors. Another key phrase was “secular democratic state.” This term sought to accommodate the Jews who would remain in Palestine after the liberation. On the face of it, then, the argument proposed in this book appears negated: Jerusalem and the role of the Palestinians in preserving Jerusalem from real or imagined Crusaders is


199

pushed into the margins, and the dominant Palestinian ideology is seen as changing. But I think that matters were more complicated.2 We must bear in mind that there were specific reasons for the direction Palestinian political thought took in the 1970s. Probably not enough scholarly attention has been devoted to the international success of the Palestinian organizations. The Palestinian guerrilla emerged at a time when the nonaligned group of nations were at the peak of their success in international relations. This group accepted the Palestinians with enthusiasm as the quintessential phenomenon of national liberation. The period was still in the aftermath of the liberation of Africa, with its exuberant and explosive discourse of independence. But whereas Africa was already in crisis, the Palestinians seemed the hope of a successful liberation movement. Recently emerged states embraced the Palestinians and formally recognized them. Arafat became an international celebrity, moving incessantly from one capital to another. Other supportive countries were mainly socialist, such as Romania or East Germany. A Ceausescu or a Honecker would hardly have responded to terms such as the First Qibla or the Third Haram. They did however perfectly understand terms like revolution, secular and democratic state, liberation, anti-imperialism, and similar stock-intrade of Palestinian phraseology at the time. Against talk (mainly by Israelis, journalists, and others) in Arafat’s later life about Arafat seeing himself in later life as a modern Salah al-Din, Yezid Sayigh, maybe the foremost Palestinian historian of the PLO, remarked in an interview that he had never heard the terms Crusades or Salah al-Din ever mentioned in internal meetings of PLO activists.3 This saying captures what I have tried to convey in the last paragraph, that in the seventies and much of the eighties the Islamic symbols were submerged and even mute. Speaking more factually, however, it has been shown that religious terminology was present even in this early period, though in a subdued kind of way. Nels Johnson points out that PLO army units were named after major Islamic battles, and that when Arafat visited the Iranian revolutionary regime, he described the Iranians and the Palestinians as sitting in the same Islamic trenches, defending Islamic values such as Jerusalem. He did not sound less sincere when talking about Jerusalem than about revolution.4 In fact, as I have said above, the name itself of the organization (Fath) means Conquest, not in the secular sense, which would be rendered by ihtilal, but rather in the medieval-Islamic meaning, calling to mind the battles to conquer the Fertile Crescent. Moreover, if there is some sensitivity about the connection with Salah al-Din, it is


common knowledge that Arafat saw himself as spiritually close to the Mufti, Hajj Amin, who, together with his entire generation, was extremely proud to be associated with Salah al-Din, as we have seen in former chapters.5 In addition, there is no denying the reliability of the story surrounding the minbar (preacher’s stand, pulpit), of Salah al-Din, brought to al-Aqsa Mosque after the liberation of Jerusalem in 1187. This minbar was partially burnt down in 1969 by an Australian youth who intended to set the entire mosque on fire. Subsequently a fierce competition took place between Jordan and Arafat as to who would restore the reconstructed minbar to its rightful place.6 There can be no doubt that, below the surface neither Jerusalem nor Salah al-Din were forgotten for one moment, as in the case of Joan of Arc in a thoroughly secularized polity like France. There are also signs in the domain of academic research that the high profile of Jerusalem’s place and centrality was not diminished throughout this period.7 It may be assumed that Islamic-Palestinian values and symbols were close to the minds of activists even when socialist values were in vogue. There can hardly be any doubt that after 1993, as it was becoming clear that there would have to be a compromise on the country, in other words when it was necessary to prioritize, the core values of Jerusalem and al-Aqsa resurfaced. These were not lately constructed or discovered or invented. To put it somewhat differently, in the 1970s the struggle was over the entire country. What was Jerusalem’s singular importance if we are going to regain the whole land? In the 1990s the discussion over the whole country came to an end, and the question was what specific areas would be retained for Palestine. It was now time to turn to Jerusalem.

The Camp David conference, July 2000 8 The Camp David conference took place between July 11 and July 25 of 2000. The background had been what was stipulated in the Oslo Accords, namely that the agreement was for the duration of five years, in the course of which talks were to be held on the final status of the Palestine/Israel conflict. Another major factor leading to the conference was the determination of the Israeli Prime Minister to avoid honoring the agreement with the Palestinians and to ignore the “third withdrawal” clause. His idea was, rather, to combine it with the withdrawal surely to be agreed in a final settlement, to be achieved at a swift and decisive peace conference.


201

The conference of course failed, and led to the second Intifada. People have assigned an endless number of reasons for this failure. One more analysis will not make much of a contribution. It was certainly one of the worst run conferences that ever took place. Most of the time was wasted on small talk, there being no schedule and no organization. The conference was hastily organized, without any prior discussions. Clinton was about to end his presidency, a fact which imparted a strong sense of urgency to the event, but also put the parties in a defensive corner lest they make a fatal mistake in negotiation. This certainly seems to have afflicted particularly the Palestinians, who had every reason to be suspicious about the supposed neutral position of the Americans (their stand was strangely and starkly pro-Israeli, as it turned out). This list of defects could be piled up, but they were not the true reason for the conference’s failure. It failed because there was no agreement on the most basic issue. Israel was adamant in having sovereignty over Jerusalem, particularly the al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) area, but also the entire area of the Old City. The Palestinians demanded the same area for themselves.9 The conference is important for this study because in the process of wrangling one of the most interesting documents concerning the Palestinian ideological position over Jerusalem was produced. It is true that the conference had no official protocol, but several people kept notes, and when these are compared a fairly accurate picture emerges. In fact, the conference had some antecedents, where Arafat’s views could already be sensed. At a meeting with Arafat in Nablus in June 2000, an Israeli minister said to Arafat that the Palestinians had enjoyed autonomy in the Haram since 1967, and that no one was going to take this away from them in an agreement. Arafat answered bluntly: “Al-Quds concerns the Arabs, the Vatican, the Christians, the Muslims. I remind you ... of the Umar pact. Will there be an Arab, a Muslim that will accept your proposal? That the issue of Jerusalem remain unsolved? Forget it. I will be kicked ...” In the course of the Camp David conference things became clearer. Arafat spoke about Jerusalem several times. It was abundantly plain that it was the foremost issue on his mind. Here are some of the main examples. At a certain point midway in the conference Clinton asked for two two-man groups for a marathon designed to form an agreed paper. Arafat sent Muhammad Dahlan and Sa’ib Ariqat, telling them: “Work with your heads ... bring a good paper. Only on one issue do not budge. The Haram is more dear to me than anything.”10 On a different occasion, Clinton, exasperated by the lack of progress, dictated to the parties a sort of draft peace agreement, in which the


sovereignty over Jerusalem was given to Israel. Although the President exerted a great deal of pressure, Arafat, not bowing to this pressure, said: “A billion Muslims will never forgive me if I do not get sovereignty over east Jerusalem. I have no mandate to give in. It is not me, it is the entire Muslim world.” This was by no means an isolated or accidental utterance by Arafat. In the months after the end of the conference negotiations continued in all sorts of forums and places, always revolving around Jerusalem. In early September 2001 Arafat affirmed on CNN that he could not betray the Arabs, Muslims, and Christians, by giving up their holy places, which were not his to give.11 An interesting continuation of this stand was expressed by Faisal Husayni (minister for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian Authority and a veteran activist for Palestinian Jerusalem), who met Yossi Beilin in the days after the end of the Camp David conference. The total misunderstanding of this issue on the Israeli side is exemplified in Beilin’s resentment of Palestinian insistence on having East Jerusalem as de jure capital. Husayni answered that it was true that the Palestinians were already holding Jerusalem (i.e. the Haram), but one could imagine a situation where the mosques were ruined by an earthquake, and a right wing Israeli government would not allow their rebuilding. While Beilin brushed aside these ideas as ridiculous, it is only fair to note that several television programs broadcast during 2005–6 revealed that the number of Israelis pondering the destruction of the mosques was growing at an alarming rate. This is again the ethnic election argument, in its present version, emphasizing less God’s command and more the trust placed in the Palestinians by an entire civilization. The Haram is not ours. We are mere guardians of it for the entire Muslim world. It would be a betrayal of trust to give it up or even to compromise on any part of it. Amin al-Husayni in the 1930s would have spoken as lucidly and as clearly as this. An eighteenth-century mufti would have expressed himself very similarly.

Hamas12 The most recent chapter in the development of the Palestinian national idea is the ideology and activity of the Hamas movement, the party that rose to power in the Palestinian authority in January 2006. It was important enough long before that date to be considered a relevant part of the discussion in this study. It is a party fully committed to total war against Israel and to turning the future state of Palestine into a Shariàbased state and society.


203

The PLO developed in special circumstances, compared with other national liberation movements. It did not arise from the blood and suffering of the oppressed population, but outside it, in a diaspora, along the frontiers of Israel, in host countries that half grudgingly gave it asylum because they were committed to the same ideology. No less important, it developed in the international arena, through the shuttle diplomacy of Yasir Arafat, which proved extremely successful, whether because of his personal charisma or because the ground was ripe. But whatever the explanation, this was not the usual story of a people rising up against its oppressors. That description fits only the Hamas. Hamas could not have arisen before 1987, the year of the first intifada. One may wonder why a movement with such an ideology had not emerged in the Palestinian political field earlier. At this point I do not have in mind the armed struggle aspect of its ideology. What I mean by Hamas ideology is its conversion of the specialness of the Palestinians into a full-fledged ideology. Hamas as a political movement was established in December of 1987. Until that time it had existed as a charitable organization, in origin an offshoot of the Muslim Brothers of Egypt. It remained active under various forms after the Muslim Brothers were crushed in Egypt in 1954, keeping a very low profile. In 1978 it was reorganized as an independent association under the name al-Mujamma` al-Islami, still basically of social purpose. One has to keep in mind the process of Islamization in the Arab and Muslim world since the early 1970s, possibly beginning a little earlier. Some attribute this process to the devastating effects of the June 1967 war and the fall of Jerusalem to Israel. There were probably deeper factors. A similar process of religious radicalization was taking place in Israel, for which the war ended in victory rather than defeat. In any event, it is clear that the re-Islamization was the key factor in the rise, even if slow, of Hamas. A great stimulus to the progress of Hamas was also the Iranian revolution of 1979, which was looking for friends in a hostile world, and also the Islamist movements in Egypt which were extremely successful in the 1970s and 1980s. As far as Iran was concerned, supporting the Palestinian cause, especially on an issue not in dispute between the Shià and the rest of Islam like the sanctity of Jerusalem (and the Palestinian question in general), was a natural choice, with very positive response on the Palestinian side. In any event the Iranian revolution sent waves of shock throughout the Arab world, and the main Palestinian beneficiary would be Hamas. The movement had been in the process of radicalization since the early eighties, probably as part of the general radicalization taking place around it. The organization was under pressure to move to active

204


resistance, but it could only do this under circumstances of insurrection. Pressure was mounting, as for some years there had already been a Muslim resistance group working mainly out of Damascus (the Islamic Jihad, founded in the early eighties). Hamas as a movement of armed struggle springing from the local population could only emerge in 1987, and only as part of the Intifada, which was a total popular insurrection. A movement committed to armed struggle can flourish only as part of a popular revolt. In isolation it can easily be suppressed by the ruling power. But under conditions of general insurrection, suppression may prove difficult, and sometimes impossible, which proved to be the case also in the case of Hamas. In this way the organization began to take part in the Intifada, and while the PLO was already deep in the process of what may be termed a bourgeois transformation, accepting the unpleasant but necessary fact that Israel has to be accommodated, with Hamas the élan of pristine purity was fresh and biting. It certainly surpassed the PLO in anti-Israeli activities, mainly in waves in 1992 and early 1996. Hamas power was on the rise throughout the period of the Palestinian authority, that is after 1993. Corruption was rife, and Hamas preserved an image of purity. The death of Arafat in November 2004 also gave it a tremendous advantage. But one may wonder if its special branch of ideology did not have something to do with its success. I do not have in mind their tactic of suicide bombing so much as their return to more intimately Palestinian values, of Jerusalem, the Isra’, Mi`raj and the like. It is here that we must go in some detail into Hamas ideology. Ideology of Hamas13 Outwardly the ideology of Hamas is straightforwardly IslamistFundamentalist. It calls for the establishment of an Islamic state and the reinstatement of Sharià law. A closer look reveals that there are other elements as well. What emerges is that Hamas is as much a nationalist Palestinian movement as an Islamic one. First, Hamas has no branches in other countries, Arab or Islamic; it is a unique and specific Palestinian movement. Second, it is useful to compare Hamas to other fundamentalist Islamic movements in terms of ideology. Possibly the most central idea of fundamentalist Islam is Sayyid Qutb’s notion that Muslims are currently living in a new age of Jahiliyya, or ignorance, originally the term used by Islam to describe the period of pagan darkness before the advent of Islam. It is a most basic idea in Islamic theology that with the coming of Islam that period came to an end. To declare Muslim societies today as living in Jahiliyya is a


205

radical departure from the Muslim understanding of orthodoxy versus heretical behavior. For a non-Muslim to become a Muslim one had simply to pronounce the Shahada, the statement of recognition that Muhammad is God’s true messenger to the world. To relinquish Islam a Muslim would have to adopt another religion or explicitly renounce his belief in the Islamic message. It would not be enough for him to behave as a bad Muslim (by not fasting, or not acting in accordance with other Sharià laws.) The new element in radical Islam is the idea that any breach of Sharià law means renouncing Islam, and thus justifying internal jihad. According to this analysis Sayyid Qutb’s idea is a new departure, in fact a momentous one. In the Ottoman Empire he would have been given a two-day grace period to retract his view before being put to death. There is no trace in Hamas ideology of such an extreme approach to ordinary Muslims. Hamas makes no theological statements about Islam. All its statements are about Palestine, be they political or religious. Hamas does not utter any doubts about the orthodoxy of normal Muslims or Palestinians. The surrounding society is not the enemy. Moreover, even nationalism does not seem to be Hamas’ enemy. It has never taken the PLO to task for fighting for national causes; it merely suggests it can do better. Also it suggests that its ideology better reflects the “true” spirit of the Palestinian people. It seems to me that in Hamas one has a typically Palestinian product of religious nationalism, where the blend is so tight and seamless that there is no sense in looking at the separate components in isolation. All this is made abundantly clear in the basic ideological document of Hamas, the so-called Hamas Covenant, written by Sheikh Ahmad Yasin a few months after the establishment of the movement. One major issue dealt with in the Covenant is the religious status of Palestine in Islam. This is a classic case of the way religion and nationalism can be inseparable. Some writers dealing with Hamas ideology have been surprised to “discover” that to Hamas Palestine is a Holy Land, pointing out that Islam takes a staunch position against Holy Lands.14 This may be true in general, but as we have seen above this interpretation does not suit Palestine. In seeing Palestine as a holy Muslim land Hamas is simply following views prevalent among Palestinians for centuries. Even the Qur’an, it will be remembered, refers to Palestine as a Holy Land. In the Hamas Covenant the country is holy mainly because in it are situated sites of major importance to Islam. The Covenant of course cites the famous verse (Qur’an 17:1) which mentions the Aqsa Mosque (discussed in Chapter 2 earlier).


A topic of major importance in the Hamas Covenant is the Crusades, which figure in the document no less than five times. In fact, one whole section is devoted to the Crusades, and they are quite evidently a major preoccupation of the organization. The Covenant says that Hamas draws a central lesson from the Crusades, in two ways. In the first place, foreign powers have always wished to lay their grasping hands on parts of Palestine; in the second place, history will repeat itself, and as there was victory over the first Crusaders, so will there be over the current ones. But an infinite amount of patience is required, for the saying (hadith) of the Prophet has already proclaimed that the people of Sham (Syria) and Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem and its surrounding land) will be embattled soldiers in fortresses (murabitun) until the Day of Judgment. Moreover, the Covenant emphasizes that the nations from which the Crusaders came have devised ways to return, preparing the ground by the intellectual work of missionaries and Orientalists. The Covenant recalls with evident relish the episode at the end of World War I, where generals Allenby and Gouraud spoke of their exploits as the last Crusade, thus demonstrating that the West had planned the renewal of the Crusades all along. Hamas deviates from standard radical Islam also in its international approach. Hamas does not call for a jihad against the West in general or against specific states, even the US. It certainly does not call for enmity or combat against other Arab countries. Israel is seen as its sole enemy. Even here jihad is called for not because the Jews are unbelievers, but because they have seized the rightful Palestinian homeland. This is a serious deviation from any pure fundamentalist Islamic stand. It presents Hamas as basically a nationalist Palestinian organization harnessing readily available Islamic values to its nationalist cause. This of course does not mean that the religious belief is not entirely sincere. It only means that the nationalist undertones, some of them possibly subconscious, are in effect much more important than outward appearances (the green flag for example) would lead one to believe.


This study set out to investigate two basic and related questions. The first was: were there any meaningful historical antecedents to Palestinian nationalism before the beginning of the twentieth century, or was it a pure invention, fabricated to counter Zionism; the second: to what extent was nationalism in Palestine in the twentieth century truly Palestinian, in the sense of being focused on the country, and in the sense of being grass-root nationalism rather than being confined to a thin elite? The first question was investigated by means of a historical study of the question of traces of Palestinian identity in the past and their possible influence on the mode of nation formation in Palestine in the twentieth century. Abundant traces of Palestinian identity in the past were indeed found to have existed. In the first place, the term Palestine itself is not new, and contrary to the widespread belief that it was forgotten after 1250, it has been shown here that on the social-local level it went on being used and was probably known to everybody in the country throughout the ages. Moreover, the term is often found as part of the formula “the country,” or “our country,” thus clearly signifying that it was the focus of a certain community. More importantly, community in Palestine in those centuries was created by an awareness that the country as a whole and its central city, Jerusalem, were considered sacred in Islam, and at the same time were being coveted by another civilization, as exemplified by the episode of the Crusades. Contrary to a widespread consensus, the study showed that the memory of the Crusades remained alive and vivid in Palestine throughout the ages, not least because there was a constant effort, intellectual and practical, on the part of the Christian world to revive them. Memory of the Crusades was based among other things on commemoration rites, chief among which was the proto-national 207


holiday peculiar to Palestinian Islam, the Nebi Musa pilgrimage, when a week before the Easter “assault” on Jerusalem by Christian pilgrims, Muslims from all over the country would assemble to do just that, then proceed to the tomb of Moses near Jericho, where they would celebrate and worship for a week. There is enough evidence to indicate that they were fully aware they were commemorating the Crusades. Around Nebi Musa a country-wide community was formed, and it was a community uniting the lower classes and the elite. All these rites and memories, however fragmentary, brought about a situation whereby on the eve of the Great War the inhabitants of the country were fully and intensely aware of the fact that they were Palestinians, though they were also Arabs and Ottomans, though the last identity was becoming shakier by the day. Their Palestinian identity was important in deciding their future identity. Circumstances might arise that could change the fate of Palestine; but their past identity nevertheless exerted a powerful influence on them in the direction of “Palestine.” I see the situation as something akin to an uneven die: somewhere between determinism and pure contingence. The early Mandate period (1918–22) is a key period in this study, since it was then that full-fledged Palestinian-Arab nationalism took shape, and it is interesting to observe how this came about. Particularly interesting is it to observe what happened in 1918 (something not done in the existing literature), since in this year the notion of an Arab state in Syria was not yet on the table (Syria being still in the hands of the Ottomans). What we see in this year is that the clear demand was for a Palestinian state, completely independent of any other power. Only when the Syria of Faisal was formed after December 1918 did the Palestinians start to present the land as “Southern Syria,” emphasizing that this was the true name of the country, rather than the prevalent name of “Palestine” (the irony is too obvious to spell out). It would be a primodialist mistake to claim that the Syrian solution was less authentic or that it could not have worked in the long run; but it would be a post-modernist mistake to disregard the fact that even as the Palestinians were apparently joining Syria with all their hearts they were persistently looking to preserve the internal autonomy of Palestine, and that they were strangely indifferent to this Syrian identity when Syria fell to the French in July 1920. The same early period of the Mandate is also a key period in elucidating the topic of popular nationalism. The whole [Jewish] National Home policy of the British in Palestine was based on the assumption that the Jews coming into Palestine would be free to take control of the country,


209

because the Arabs already living in it were devoid of any nationalism, nor were they likely to develop one in the future, because they were a dispersed lot, not possessing any sense of continuity or community. This was one of the basic suppositions of Zionist ideology concerning the Palestinians, and it was an analysis successfully imparted by them to the British. The Balfour Declaration was the direct outcome of this shared vision. But as soon as the first British officials came to rule Palestine in late 1917 they sensed that there was no basis for this analysis. They started to bombard the government in London with messages to the effect that the whole country was bursting with nationalist feelings, gripping all classes from top to bottom. Many of them were infuriated by the Zionist proposition that these feelings were the outcome of shallow and self-seeking incitement. The officials were of the opinion that what was afoot was an authentic and grass-root nationalism that was about to burst forth and jeopardize the British hold on the country. The credibility of these analyses has been debated ever since. It seems to me that the chief consideration lending authority to the officials’ views is the fact that they went counter to the views held in London. However liberal the British Empire, no one in the government liked to hear such intransigent opinions, which in extreme cases brought about the expulsion of officials from the service. Certainly it took some courage to express contrary views, and I believe that we ought to take them seriously, in the sense of conveying a measure of scientific truth. I also found a large measure of popular nationalism in the episode of the 1929 Wailing Wall Riots, which I tend to interpret as a reaction of the inhabitants of the country, long accustomed to the dangers posed to the Mosques of Jerusalem by Europeans, to another and similar threat. The vociferous nature of the Zionist movement’s demands that the British help it in gaining control of the Western Wall, combined with unequivocal signs in various contemporary Jewish publications calling for a takeover of the entire Holy Sanctuary, appear to have been causes strong enough to bring the situation to the a head without recourse to the usual conspiracy theory connected with the Mufti. I am also of the opinion that the episode is to be interpreted as nationalist no less than religious. We have seen in Chapter 1 Hastings’s view that nationalism is often supported on the shoulders of religious values, and this event is another classic example: the Aqsa Mosque was a universalIslamic value, but it was specifically the Palestinians who stood guard over it for the world of Islam. Popular nationalism among the Palestinians went from strength to strength during the early thirties. This period was characterized by a

210


reinvigorated Zionist movement, which, after the rise of Hitler to power, doubled its numbers in Palestine in three years. The Palestinian resolve to prevent a Jewish majority grew in parallel, as did the radicalism of Palestinian youth, who now for the first time recognized the British Empire as their true enemy. It was only a matter of time before these pent-up feelings came to a head, early in 1936, in a revolt that was to last until 1939. Popular nationalism can be recognized in the Great Revolt of 1936–9. It was the most serious insurrection in the British Empire in the twentieth century, involving many thousands of combatants. Several thousand among them were “professional” fighters, but on many specific occasions whole villages joined in as a consequence of a fazà, a traditional village call to arms. However, several historians still believe that basically this was not a voluntary involvement on the part of the masses, but an outcome of intimidation by gangs. This hardly makes sense. The measures employed by the British army to suppress the revolt, particularly the highly efficient use of the air force, rules that out – the high number of rebel casualties in every encounter involving the air force made the whole affair more a massacre than a fair encounter, and I tend to assume that only convinced patriots would join in battles in which their chances of survival were not particularly bright. In a separate chapter I dealt with the debates on Palestinian ideology during the Mandate. One central debate revolves around the question whether the “Palestinians” were really such under the Mandate, or whether they were simply Arabs. Another claim is that in fact, they were not Arabs in the “full sense,” since that required a level of political development that they did not possess. The truth is simpler, and is made evident in many documents produced during this period: they saw themselves as Palestinian-Arabs, that is, they considered themselves (as they do today) as both Arabs and Palestinians, and would reject out of hand any effort to claim that a separation is possible or fruitful. Another important debate concerning Palestinian ideology at this time is whether it was confined to negative values of anti-Zionism and hatred of Zionism, or whether it was also based on positive values. Indeed, recourse to the available documents shows that positive values were not lacking. The right of self-determination was underscored in every document. So was ancestry in the country, and the Islamic and Arab nature of the land and the monuments standing on it. Often the people insist on their sacred role, assigned to them by God Himself, of guarding the Aqsa Mosque and its area. The blood shed by the inhabitants of the country in this cause in the past was always recalled with


211

enthusiasm and emotion. Frequent reference was made to the Crusades, which were perceived as a model for the present. The Crusades in fact imparted to the inhabitants of the country a feeling of chosenness: it was God’s assignment to them to be the living guardians of the holy sites of Islam for the whole Islamic world. The material exposed in this study highlights an interesting theoretical question in the study of nationalism, the relations between elite and masses. There is a general consensus in the literature that modern nationalism (that is, the transformation from pre-modern ethnicity to full-fledged nationalism) was the work of elites, such as intellectuals dealing with language, lexicography and history, or high bureaucrats, also of course part of various social elites. Something like this took place in the Middle East, where, it is widely agreed, Arab bureaucrats of some sort initiated Arab nationalism, being disappointed with their place in the empire. But in Mandatory Palestine we have observed that often there was much space for the lower classes, or subalterns, as they are sometimes called in the literature. Their role is revealed in several situations where they seem a great deal more radical than their leadership. We have seen at several points in this book, in the Jaffa Riots of 1921, in the 1933 demonstrations in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and at the beginning of the Rebellion in 1936, how the elite plays a moderating role, tries to cool things off, but is finally swept forward by stronger forces from below, threatening to make it irrelevant, if not to harm it physically. The subalterns in Mandatory Palestine obviously had real agency, and the theoretical question that arises is how to explain this? How was it possible for the lower classes to develop a model of nationalism that was more far-reaching than that of their leaders? I have quoted above Gelvin’s theory which suggested that this popular nationalism was brought about by the dislocations created by peripheral capitalism that reached the Middle East in the second half of the nineteenth century. But possibly in Palestine there was something else to it. I believe that the explanation is to be sought in the specific circumstances facing the lower classes in Palestine due to the presence of Zionism. Contrary to Porath’s conclusion that Zionism brought only positive changes to the Arab inhabitants of the country, the British archive overflows with information showing that the lower classes, though not the elite, were panic-stricken concerning the prospects of Zionist control over them. They particularly had in mind evictions of sharecroppers from the land and refusal to hire Arab laborers, and saw nothing cheerful there. It is quite possible that the actual number of Palestinian evicted was not “very large,” as many during the period claimed. This does not matter.

212


For the peasant this was a long-term policy that eventually was to engulf every one of them. It seems to me therefore that the ultra-radical nationalism of the masses in Mandatory Palestine was the reaction to Zionism, something that left the Palestinian elite unmoved. The war of 1948 brought on Palestinian disaster and dispersal, and was a psychological shock of great magnitude. The outcome was a willing submersion within Arabism, which soon thereafter started to peak with the rise of Nasser in Egypt. The Arabs were to repossess Palestine, and the Palestinians joined Arab movements in large numbers. But in a way strangely reminiscent of the Crusades (and the Intifada) the psychological shock lasted for about twenty years, after which a more worldly reaction ensued. A reawakened Palestinian national movement came into being in 1964, with the establishment of the PLO. Our main concern in this period is to understand the question of its ideological course. My purpose is the hazardous one of avoiding the simple programme of “describing what happened,” and opting for the thesis that the “chosenness” element dominated Palestinian behavior, not in any primordial sense, but by providing a more likely solution. In the first generation after 1948 the main ideological themes were universal and proto-socialist: Liberation and Revolution were the two main tenets of belief. As we advance in time the emphasis becomes more and more internal, more and more local. As the support of the Soviet Bloc ceased to be important, the Islamiclocal values of al-Aqsa, Jerusalem and Salah al-Din resurfaced. They had always been there of course, an important point to bear in mind. In the long run it was probably almost inevitable that they were destined to return to occupy the center of the stage. It might be claimed of course that Salah al-Din as a national hero is an invention of tradition, since Salah al-Din did not see himself as an Arab, let alone a Palestinian, but merely as a faithful Muslim. To portray him as a nationalist hero takes a great deal of forgetfulness and invention, in the best tradition derided by Gellner and a host of other modernists. But here is exactly the point where the ethnosymbolist theory shows its strength. Salah al-Din was part invention and part truth. His character as a hero is based on a kernel of truth: he was local, and he did work to redeem locals (Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians) from a terrible predicament that threatened to ruin their lives. What is more, he saw his main goal as saving Jerusalem, which always transcended its religious symbolism and was perceived as a communal, later national, icon. Thus, Salah al-Din was neither invented (as the modernists


213

would suggest) nor revealed as a full incarnation of historical reality (as nationalist thinkers would suggest). He is somewhere in the middle, as the ethnosymbolist analysis goes: modern national entities are usually strongly connected to their real past, but are never unproblematic derivations of it.

Notes

Introduction 1. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 2. Weldon C. Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation, London: Tauris, 2006. 3. I am applying here the ideas expressed in Anthony Smith’s most recent book – Chosen Peoples, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 4. James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire, Berkeley: University of Californian Press, 1998, p. 219. 5. Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. 6. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Introduction.

1


1. Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918–1929, London: Frank Cass, 1974, p. 63. 2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1982; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. 3. For a short introduction to the topic see John A. Hall, ed., “Introduction,” in John A. Hall, The State of the Nation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 1–2. On a wider scale the best general introduction to the topic is Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000. Also useful was John Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, London: Fontana 1994. 4. Anderson, Imagined Communities, Chapter 4. 5. Brendan O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner’s Diagnoses of Nationalism: A Critical Review, or, What is Living and What is Dead in Ernest Gellner’s Philosophy of Nationalism,” in Hall, ed., State of the Nation, p. 43. 6. Cited by O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner,” p. 43. 7. Cited in Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 28. 8. Ernest Gellner, “The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretation: The Myth of Nation and Class,” in G. Balakrishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation, London: Verso, 1996, p. 142. 9. Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 21. 10. O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner,” pp. 40–88. 11. O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner,” p. 55, the reference being mainly to Latin America and North America. 12. O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner,” p. 59. 13. Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 21; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 14. Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000, Chapter 3. 214

Notes 215 15. Smith, The Nation in History; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge, 1998, Chapter 8. The best short version of the debate between Smith and Gellner is the famous Warwick Debate, entitled “The Nation: Real or Imagined,” in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2 (1996), pp. 357–70. 16. Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 18. 17. See Hall, ed., State of the Nation “Introduction,” p. 6. 18. Miroslav Hroch, “Real and Constructed: The Nature of the Nation,” in Hall, ed., State of the Nation, p. 94. 19. See O’Leary, “Ernest Gellner,” p. 55. 20. Smith, The Nation in History, p. 61. 21. See Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, pp. 28ff. 22. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 23. Ibid., p. 205. 24. Ibid., p. 205. 25. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. 26. Juan R.I. Cole, and Deniz Kandiyoti, “Nationalism and the Colonial Legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia: Introduction,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34 (2002), pp. 189–203. 27. Ibid. 28. Haim Gerber, “The Limits of Constructedness: Memory and Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,” Nations and Nationalism, 10 (2004), pp. 251–68. 29. This is amply documented in Gabriel Baer and Amnon Cohen, eds., Egypt and Palestine: A Millenium of Association, Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1984. 30. Gerber, “The Limits of Constructedness,” pp. 258 ff. 31. These cases are documented in Gerber, “Limits of Constructedness,” p. 258. 32. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, New York: Capricorn Books, 1965, e.g. p. 64. 33. Zeine Zeine, Arab Turkish Relations and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism, Beirut: Khayat, 1958, Chapter 5. 34. James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Californian Press, 1998. 35. Haim Gerber, “Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Palestine: The Role of Foreign Trade,” Middle Eastern Studies, 18 (1982), pp. 250–64. 36. Alexander Scholch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882, Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993. 37. Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 38. See Haim Gerber, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985, Chapter 1. 39. Ibid., Chapter 1; Khalil al-Sakakini, Kadha Ana Ya Dunya: Yawmiyat Khalil al-Sakakini, Jerusalem: al-Matbaa al-Tijariyya, 1955. 40. Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987. 41. See Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969, pp. 289 ff, where the ideas of “middle peasantry” and “tactically mobile peasants” are suggested.

216

Notes

42. See Haim Gerber, “ ‘Foreign Occupiers and Stepchildren’: Zionist Discourse and the Palestinians,” in Asher Kaufman and Elie Podeh, eds., Arab Jewish Relations, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006, pp. 22–42; Haim Gerber, “Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 33 (2003), pp. 23–41. 43. Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration, London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1961, p. 625. 44. FO733/36, file 29223, June 19, 1922. 45. Weizmann to Churchill, FO733/16, No. 38128, 256ff, July 29, 1919. Another similar memorandum from this time is same to same, FO371/4170. No 25158, early 1919, pp. 263–6. 46. Needless to say, there is no Israeli account of Ben-Gurion’s thinking that is not hugely biased in his favor. But see Gerber, “Foreign Occupiers and Stepchildren.” 47. Shabtai Tevet, “Ben Gurion and the Arab Question,” Kathedra, No. 43 (1987), p. 63.[Hebrew]. Ben-Gurion was simply not telling the truth here of course. In fact, this is the point the biographer is trying to make in the article. But rather than treating this lie as a necessity that knows no law, he portrays it as a sign of Ben-Gurion’s resourcefulness. This is rather ironic given that any alleged lie by Yasir Arafat in the crises of the 1990s was greeted by a barrage of Israeli newspaper articles interpreting it as the natural product of “Arab culture.” 48. Porath, Emergence. 49. Porath, Emergence, pp. 44 ff. 50. Meir Litvak, “A Palestinian Past: National Construction and Reconstruction,” History and Memory, 6 (1994), pp. 24–56. 51. Ibid., pp. 25–6. 52. Ibid., pp. 26 ff. 53. Ibid., p. 31. 54. Ibid., pp. 31–2. The information is not quoted from page 21, as stated, but from pages 31–2. 55. Musa Budeiri, “The Palestinians: Tensions between Nationalist and Religious Identities,” in James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, eds., Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 191–206. 56. Ibid., p. 196. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., p. 195. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., pp. 194–5. 61. Much information on this topic is provided by Stein, The Balfour Declaration. 62. Cited in Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine. The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917–1929, London: Royal Historical Society, 1978, p. 55, n. 4. 63. National Archive, CO733/347/7, a file from 1937 reproducing all the 1917 documents relating to the cabinet meetings dealing with the suggested Balfour Declaration, prepared for the Peel Commission. 64. Robert Lloyd George, David and Winston, London: John Murray, 2005, p. 176. 65. National Archive, FO800/106ff, March 3, 1918. 66. CO733/14/157ff, No. 42114, August 22, 1921.

Notes 217

2 Elements of Palestinian-Arab Identity in the Past 1. On the notables (a`yan) of Jerusalem in Ottoman times, see Ehud R. Toledano, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research,” in Ilan Pappe and Moshe Ma’oz, eds., Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas, London: Tauris, 1997, pp. 145–62; Adel Manna, “Continuity and Change in the Socio-Political Elite in Palestine During the Late Ottoman Period,” Thomas Philipp, ed., The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992, pp. 69–89. 2. Dror Zeevi, An Ottoman Century, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. 3. Thomas Philipp, Acre: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian City, 1730–1831, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 4. Tania Forte, “Abu Hanna’s ‘Real’ Thousand and One Nights: Writing the Self into History in Turn-of-the-Century Galilee,” Jamaa, 6 (2000), pp. 33–57 [Hebrew]. 5. Manna, “Continuity and Change.” 6. Kamil al-Asali, Mawsim al-Nabi Musa fi Filastin, Amman: Al-Jamia alUrduniyya, 1990. 7. Alex Carmel, “The Activities of the European Powers in Palestine, 1799– 1914,” Asian and African Studies, 19 (1985), pp. 43–91. 8. Butrus Abu-Manneh, “Jerusalem in the Tanzimat Period,” Die Welt des Islam, 30 (1990), pp. 1–44. 9. Porath, Emergence, Introduction. 10. See e.g. Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, Ahl al-Ilm wa’l Hukm fi Rif Filastin, Amman: Jamiyyat Ummal al-Matabi al-Taauniyya, 1968, 9–10. 11. This is evident for example in inscription. See e.g. Amikam Elad, “Two Identical Inscriptions from jund Filastin from the Reign of the Àbbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 35 (1992), pp. 344 ff. 12. Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali, Al-Uns al-Jalil fi Ta’rikh al-Quds wa’l-Khalil, 2 Vols, Najaf: al-Matbaa al-Haydariyya, 1968. 13. See Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “Ottoman Jerusalem in the Writings of Arab Travellers,” in Sylvis Auld and Robert Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem, London: Altajir World of Islam Fund, 2000, pp. 63–72. 14. Mujir al-Din, Al-Uns al-Jalil, II, pp. 66–8. 15. Ibid., II, p. 73. 16. Ibid., II, p. 67. 17. Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, al-Fatawa al-Khayriyya li-Naf al-Bariyya, Istanbul: al-Matbaa al-Uthmaniyya, 1911. 18. Haim Gerber, “ ‘Palestine’ and Other Territorial Concepts in the Seventeenth Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 30 (1998), pp. 563–72. 19. Ghalib Anabsi, From the “Merits of the Holy Land” Literature, MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1992. The writer notes that Mujir al-Din was his most important source. He also states that he used information from Ebu Suud al-Imadi, the famous Ottoman Sheyhulislam (pp. 118–19). 20. Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “Filastin fi Ahd al-Uthmaniyin”, al-Mawsua al-Filistiniyya, Part 2, Special Studies, Vol. 2, Historical Studies, Beirut: Hay’at al-Mawsua al-Filistiniyya, 1990, pp. 695–990.

218 Notes 21. Ibid., p. 887. 22. Walid Khalidi, “Kitab al-Sionism, aw al-Mas’ala al-Sahyiuniyya li-Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi al-mutwaffa sanat 1913,” in Hisham Nashshabe, ed., Dirasat Filastiniyya, Beirut: Muassasat al-Dirasat al-Filistiniyya, 1988, pp. 37–82. 23. Itzhak Hasson, ed., Fadail al-Bayt al-Muqaddas li Abi Bakr Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Wasiti, Jerusalem: the Magnes Press, 1979, pp. 51–2. 24. Hasson, Wasiti, p. 27. 25. Mujir al-Din, Al-Uns al-Jalil, I, pp. 65, 66, 94, 101. 26. Ibid., II, pp. 83, 190, 358. 27. Ibid., I, p. 303. 28. Ibid, II, p. 71. 29. Ibid., II, pp. 83–84. 30. Ibid., II, p. 377. 31. Ibid., I, p. 94 32. Muhammad al-Khalili, Kitab Fatawa al-Khalili, Cairo: Matbaat Muhammad Shahin, 1868–9. 33. Ibid., II, pp. 175–6. 34. For example, Khalili, Kitab Fatawa al-Khalili, I, p. 92. 35. Ibid., I, pp. 261–2. 36. Ibid., II, pp. 247–50. 37. Hasan al-Husayni, Fatwa, Princeton, Yahuda Collection, No. 5415. 38. Ibid., p. 42a ff; a chapter on land law, where some ten fatwas concern the timar system. Also in pp. 135b; 136a. 39. Ibid., pp. 66a–b; 78a–b. 40. Ibid., p. 160a. 41. Ibid, pp. 43a, 92a. 42. Ibid., p. 193b. 43. Ibid., pp. 121a–b. 44. Ibid., pp. 88b; 183b; 214b; 225b; 228a; and many more. 45. Ibid., pp. 176b–177a; 170a–b. 46. Ibid, p. 77b. 47. Ibid., p. 152a. 48. Ibid., p. 237a. 49. Ibid., 65b–66a. 50. Khalili, Fatawa, I, p. 216; II, p. 155. 51. Ibid., II, p. 34. 52. Ibid., I, p. 216. 53. Uriel Heyd, Ottoman Documents on Palestine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 42; Porath, Emergence, p. 6. 54. Heyd, Ottoman Documents. 55. Ibid., p. 41. 56. Ibid., doc., 28, p. 76. 57. Ibid., doc. 50, 52, 54, 66 and many more. 58. Ibid, p. 151. 59. There is a vast literature in this topic, but see in general Heribert Busse, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam,” Judaism, 17 (1968), pp. 441–68; Shlomo D. Goitein, “Sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in Early Islam,” in his Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, Leiden: Brill, 1966, Chapter 7; Emmanuel Sivan, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam,” in his Interpretations of Islam,

Notes 219

60. 61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Past and Present, Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1985, Chapter 3; Rashid Khalidi, “The Future of Arab Jerusalem,” in Derek Hopwood, Arab Nation, Arab Nationalism, London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 19–40. See Angelika Neuwirth, “Jerusalem in Islam: The Three Honorific Names of the City,” in Auld and Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem, pp. 77–93. Meir J. Kister, “You Shall Only Set Out for Three Mosques,” Le Museon, 82 (1969), pp. 173–96. Amikam Elad, “The Temple-Mount in the Early Islamic Period,” in Ytzhak Reiter, ed., Sovereignty of God and Man, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2001, pp. 73 ff. For a general introduction of the Crusades which takes the Muslim perspective into honest consideration, see Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Muslim Perspectives, New York: Routledge, 2000; Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, London: Saqi, 2004; Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford History of the Crusades, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benjamin Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of 1099 in Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades, 3 (2004), pp. 15–75. Emmanuel Sivan, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam,” in his Interpretations of Islam, Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1985, Chapter 3. Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 108 ff. See, e.g., Norman Housley, “The Crusading Movement, 1291–1669,” in RileySmith, ed., The Oxford History of the Crusades, pp. 291–322. On the problem of social memory see for example Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, New York: Harper and Row, 1927; Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History,” Representations, 29 (1989), pp. 7–25. Bernard Lewis, History, Remembered, Recovered, Invented, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, p. 84. Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Islam and the Crusades in History and Imagination, 8 November 1898–11 September 2001,” Crusades, 2 (2003), pp. 151–67, at pp. 151–2 and 160. Ahmed Jevdet, Tarih-i Jevdet, Vol. 1, Istanbul: Matbaa-i Osmaniye, 1309 (Hicri), p. 27. Christopher Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades, London: Macmillan Press, 1998, p. 1. An example is Jamal al-Din b. Taghri-Birdi, Al-Nujum al-Zahira fi Muluk Misr wal’-Qahira, Vol. 6, Cairo: al-Muassasa al-Misriyya li’l-ta’lif wal’-Tarjama wat’-Tibaa wal’-Nashr, n.d. Y. Frenkel, “Muslim Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Mamluk Period,” in Bryan F. Le Beau and Menachem Mor, eds., Pilgrims and Travelers to the Holy Land, Omaha: Creighton University Press, 1996, pp. 63–87. Mujir al-Din, Al-Uns al-Jalil, II, pp. 72–3. A. Cohen, “The Fortification of Ottoman Jerusalem: The European Dimension,” Kathedra, 63 (1992), pp. 52–64. Heyd, Ottoman Documents, doc. 113. Evliya Tschelebi, Evliya Tschelebi’s Travels in Palestine (1648–1650), Jerusalem: Ariel, 1980, pp. 18–19, 40, 48, 59. Dror Zeevi, An Ottoman Century, p. 22.

220

Notes

80. Ishaq Musa Husayni and Amin Said Abu-Layl, eds., Wathiqa Maqdisiyya Tarikhiyya, Jerusalem: Matbaat Dar al-Aytam al-Islamiyya, 1979. 81. Ibid, pp. 42, 43. 82. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 29. 83. A. Manna, Jerusalem between Two Invasions, Ph.D dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, p. 1. 84. Ibid., p. 2. 85. James Finn, Stirring Times, London: Kegan Paul, 1878. 86. Ibid., Chapter 25. 87. Ibid., Chapter 22. 88. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 107 ff. 89. Elizabeth Siberry, The New Crusades, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 95. 90. See M.C. Lyons, “ Europe and the Arab Hero Cycles,” in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy P. Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001, pp. 41–51. 91. See, e.g., Alex Carmel, “The Activities of the European Powers.” 92. Husayni, Fatawa, pp. 66a, 134a and more. 93. Beatrice St. Laurent and Andras Riedlmayer, “Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and their Political Significance, 1537–1928,” Muqarnas, 10 (1993), pp. 76–84. 94. See Amikam Elad, “The History and Topography of Jerusalem during the Early Islamic Period: The Historical Value of the Fadail al-Quds Literature: A Reconsideration,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 14 (1991), pp. 41–7. 95. Charles D. Matthews, Palestine – Mohammedan Holy Land, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949. 96. Matthews, Palestine, p. 29. 97. See Hasson (ed.), Wasiti, p. 41 98. Shihab al-Din Abu Mahmud al-Maqdisi, Muthir al-Gharam ila ziarat al-Quds wa al-Sham, Dar al-Jil, Beirut, no year of publication. 99. Joseph Sadan, “The Maqam Nabi Musa Controversy as Reflected in Muslim Sources,” Hamizrah Hehadash, 28 (1979), pp. 22–38; 220–38. 100. Donald P. Little, “Communal Strife in Late Mamluk Jerusalem,” Islamic Law and Society, 6 (1999), pp. 69–96. 101. Mujir al-Din, Al-Uns al-Jalil, II, p. 102. 102. Sadan, “Maqam Nabi Musa.” 103. Shmuel Tamari, “Maqam Nebi Musa Near Jericho,” Kathedra, 11 (1979), pp. 153–80 [Hebrew]. 104. Finn, Stirring Times, Chapter 17. 105. David Yellin, Jerusalem of Yesteryear, Jerusalem: Rubin Mass 1972, pp. 36–9; 225–7. These are descriptions of two “seasons” in the last decade of the nineteenth century. 106. Tewfik Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine, Jerusalem: Ariel, n.d. (originally 1927), pp. 193–214. 107. Lyons, “Europe and the Arab Hero Cycles,” pp. 41–51. 108. Reuven Amitai, “Some remarks on the inscription of Baybars at Makam Nabi Musa,” in David J. Wasserstein and Ami Ayalon, eds., Mamluks and Ottomans, London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 47, 51.

Notes 221 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

118.

Al-Nafir al-Uthmani, 14 Haziran, 1910. Ibid. Falastin, 14 Kanun I, 1912. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 154 f. Porath, Emergence, p. 20. Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hut, al-Qiyadat wal’Mu’assasat al-Siyasiyya fi Filastin, 1917–1948, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1981, pp. 38–40. Khalil, al-Sakakini, Kadha Ana Ya Dunya, Jerusalem al-Matbaa al-Tijariyya, 1956. National Archive, F0882/14, 254 ff, September 20, 1914. See David Kushner, A Governor in Jerusalem: The City and the Province in the Eyes of Ali Ekrem Bey – 1906–1908, Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1995, doc. 41, 42 [Hebrew]. Ekrem Bey’s mistake was to suggest that the “opening” of the new constitution would create Arab separatism; it was of course the hurdles put on the free pilgrimage (Anderson’s fruitful terms) that brought this about since 1910. Muhammad Y. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, Chapter 6.

3 The Formative Period: 1918–22 1. FO371/3391, No. 37361, February 28, 1918. 2. FO371/3391, No. 27254, February 12, 1918. 3. FO371/3389, No. 147225, August 27, 1918, which is an extensive report on the initial work of the Commission written by Ormsby-Gore himself. It is as pro-Zionist a document as could be. 4. FO371/3398, No. 36757, folio 617 ff, February 27, 1918. 5. Symes to Foreign Office, FO882/14, 358–358a, Cairo, April 20, 1920. 6. FO371/3388, No. 153681, September 7, 1918. 7. Albina to Sykes, FO800/221, pp. 62–78, June 15, 1918. 8. FO882/14, pp. 373 ff, July, 1918. 9. FO371/3398, No. 92392, folio 532 ff, May 24, 1918. 10. FO800/221, folio 477, August 9, 1918. 11. FO733/16, No.52260, October 20, 1921. 12. FO371/3386, 254 ff, December6, 1918. 13. FO371/3389, No. 147225, August 27, 1918. 14. See Doreen Ingrams, Palestine Papers, 1917–1922: Seeds of Conflict, London: John Murray, 1972, pp. 7, 186. 15. FO371/3385, 422 ff, December 2, 1918. 16. FO371/3386, 254 ff, December 6, 1918. 17. FO371/3384, f 38, September 21, 1918. 18. FO371/3398, 658 ff, November 18, 1918. 19. Porath, Emergence, pp. 103 ff. 20. FO371/3385, pp. 171–82, November 19, 1918. 21. FO371/4170, ff267–71, January 8, 1919. 22. See Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht, “The Nebi Musa Pilgrimage and the Origins of Palestinian Nationalism,” in Bryan Le Beau and Menachem Mor, eds., Pilgrims & Travelers to the Holy Land, Omaha, Neb.: Creighton University Press, 1996, pp. 89–118.

222 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Notes Clayton to Foreign Office, May 24, 1918, FO371/3391, No. 90245. Friedland and Hecht, “The Nebi Musa Pilgrimage,” p. 101. Ibid., p. 101. H.C. Luke, Prophets, Priests and Patriarchs, London: Faith Press, 1927, pp. 22–4. Porath, Emergence, p. 39. See Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, New York: Little Brown and Co., 2000, Chapter 6. FO371/5121, No. 9379, August 4, 1920. Ibid., ff 85–6. Ibid., f 161. Ibid. Segev, One Palestine, Complete, Chapter 6. Nimr Sirhan and M. Kabaha, Abd al-Rahim al-Haj Muhammad, Ramallah: Silsilat Dirasat al-Ta’rikh al-Shafawi Li-Filastin, 2000, pp. 11–13. Captain Brunton’s report, CO733/13, No. 32993, July 4, 1921. Y. Slutsky and others, The History of the Hagana, Vol. 2, Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 1964, pp. 79ff [Hebrew]. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid (my translation). CO733/3, No. 30263, June 17, 1921. CO733/13, No. 37529, July 27, 1921. CO733/3, No. 26711, May 30, 1921. Neil Caplan, “The Yishuv, Sir Herbert Samuel, and the Arab Question in Palestine, 1921–25,” in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, eds., Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, London: Frank Cass, 1982, pp. 1–51. Ibid., p. 15 CO733/3, No. 24660, September 21, 1921. Caplan, “The Yishuv, Sir Herbert Samuel,” pp. 18–20. Samuel to Colonial Office, June 27, 1921, CO733/3, No. 31760. CO733/3, No. CC30264, June 17, 1921. CO733/3, No. 41898, August 20, 1921. CO733/3, No. 29731, June 15, 1921. Meinerzhagen to Shuckbourgh, July 8, 1922, CO733/36, No. 33005. CO733/14, No. 42635, August 24, 1921. Porath, Emergence, p. 49. FO371/17, No. 55235, November 7, 1921. Samuel to Churchill, May, 20, 1921, CO733/3, No. 25095. Caplan, “The Yishuv, Sir Herbert Samuel,” pp. 21–2. E.g., Captain Brunton’s report, CO733/13, No. 32993, July 1921; ibid., No.41898, intelligence report, August 20, 1921. Samuel to Colonial Office, October 16, 1922, CO733/38, No. 51486.

4 From Riots to Radicalization: 1922–36 1. Anita Shapira, Visions in Conflict, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1997, pp. 293–306. [Hebrew] 2. CO733/160/17, April 7, 1928. 3. CO733/160/17, October 8, 1928.

Notes 223 4. CO733/160/17, September 30, 1928. 5. Ibid. 6. Newspapers clippings, in High Commissioner to Colonial Office, June 29, 1930, CO733/179/6, p. 45. 7. Porath, Emergence, e.g. Conclusion. 8. Phillip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983, Chapter 3. 9. CO733/163/5, pp. 104 ff, October 15, 1929. 10. Harry Luke to Colonial Office, August 17, 1929, CO733/163/4; Luke to Colonial Office, August 22, 1929, CO733/175/2, 113 ff. 11. Report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 – Cmd 3530, London, 1930; also in WO32/9616. 12. Ibid., pp. 74–5. 13. Segev, One Palestine, Complete, Chapter 14. 14. CO733/175/3, September 21, 1929, attached in Chancellor to Colonial Office. 15. CO733/182/9, January 17, 1930. 16. Ibid., p. 54. 17. High Commissioner to Colonial Office, October 1929, CO733/163/5. 18. FO733/5121 (the Palin Report), p. 116. 19. CO733/22, p. 390, May, 1922; CO733/23, No. 34884, July 13, 1922. 20. CO733/23, No. 34884, July 13, 1922. 21. Gordon to Shuckburgh, private, December 4, 1929, CO733/175/4, pp. 55 ff. 22. Ibid., memo by Williams. 23. Letter from Palestine, April 20, 1931, CO733/204/2. 24. M.A. Young to Colonial Office, October 20, 1931, FO371/15333, No. E5246. 25. FO371/16926, p. 32, March 13, 1933. 26. FO371/16926, p. 46, March 10, 1933. 27. FO371/16926, pp. 68 ff, April 15, 1933. 28. Ibid., p. 77, April 22, 1933. 29. FO371/16926, pp. 92 ff, June 2, 1933. 30. A new book, devoted mainly to the Istiqlal party, is mentioned in the Introduction: Weldon C. Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation, London: Tauris, 2006. As this party existed for only two years, in the present long-term study it cannot receive more than a few paragraphs. 31. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, 263 ff. 32. FO371/16926, pp. 2–3, January 5, 1933. 33. Ibid. 34. FO371/16926, pp. 31 ff, March 13, 1933. 35. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, p. 263. 36. FO371/16926, p. 46, report from March 10, 1933. 37. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, pp. 266–8. 38. Ibid., p. 271. 39. Ibid., p. 272. 40. FO371/16926, pp. 60 ff, report from April 1, 1933. 41. FO 371/ 16926, pp. 76–7, April 22, 1933. 42. FO371/16926, for example p. 56, report from March 25, 1933. 43. Ibid.

224 Notes 44. Wauchope to Colonial Secretary, December 3, 1933, CO733/257/1, Appendix, pp. 47 ff. 45. See, e.g., Haim Gerber, “Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians,” Sadan, Hamizrah Hehadash, pp. 30 ff [Hebrew]. 46. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, pp. 283 ff. 47. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, pp. 277–80. This was the opinion of Hut and the cited opinion of Izzat Darwaza. The interpretation of the importance of the demonstrations is mine. See Hut, Qiyadat, p. 291 ff on the 1933 demonstrations. 48. FO371/16926, p. 137, CID report of October 23, 1933; FO371/16926, pp. 134 ff, CID report of October 23, 1933. 49. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, CO733/258/2. 50. FO371/16926, pp. 134 ff, report from October 23, 1933. 51. CO733/257/11, pp. 7–18, December 23, 1933. 52. Ibid., p. 9. 53. Ibid., 19ff, CID report, September 8, 1933. 54. Ibid., p. 24. 55. Ibid., p. 25. 56. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, January 1934, CO733/ 258/1. 57. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, October 22, 1935, CO733/278/13. 58. FO371/20030, No. 317, January 20, 1936. 59. Ibid. 60. FO371/20030, No. 828, February, 15, 1936. 61. FO371/20030, No. 1515, March 20, 1936. 62. Hathorn Hall to O. G. R. Williams, CO 733/278/13, pp. 11ff. 63. Al-Hut, Qiyadat, pp. 324–5. 64. Ibid., p. 326. 65. Ibid., p. 320. 66. Akram Zuàytir, Yawmiyat Akram Zuàytir: Al-Haraka al-Wataniyya alFilastiniyya, 1935–39, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1980. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 8 ff and p. 30.

5 The Great Rebellion and Its Aftermath 1. One of the aspects of the politicized history of the Mandate that makes objective weighing of the evidence difficult is the progress of the revolt itself. A famous real-time account by an insider is Subhi Yasin’s book, according to which all the main clashes between the army and the rebels were ended in rebel victory, or nearly so, to judge by the number of casualties. I tend rather to follow a new study on one of the revolt’s heroes in assuming that official British reports on the clashes and the course of the rebellion in general are more or less trustworthy. See Nimr Sirhan and M. Kabaha, Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad, Ramallah, Silsilat Dirasat al-Tarikh al-Shafawi li-Filastin, 2000. 2. FO371/20018, No 2593, May 7, 1936. 3. CO733/314/3, CID report on the beginning of the strike, May 8, 1936. 4. Foreign Office to Colonial Office, CO733/314/3, p. 95. 5. CO733/3171/1, p. 278, comments of Wauchope on Peirce’s Report. 6. FO371/20030, CID report, No. 5255, pp. 168 ff, August 19, 1936.

Notes 225 7. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, May 5, 1936, CO733/310/2. 8. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, September 12, 1936, CO733/311/4, pp. 47 ff. 9. Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, London: Frank Cass, 1977, p. 181. 10. CO733/351/8. 11. CO733/351/8, pp. 82–4, July 1937. 12. Air 5/1244. 13. Air 5/1244. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, October 24, 1938, CO935/21, report No. 10. 17. Ibid. 18. CO733/372/4, containing rebel leaflets from 1938. 19. Sirhan and Kabaha, Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad, p. 75. 20. CID report, FO371/23242, No. E121, January 5, 1939. 21. Wauchope to Ormsby-Gore, June 24, 1936, CO733/297/3. 22. Ibid. 23. CO733/366/4, No. 67, April 14, 1938. 24. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, Air/1884, 48 ff, March 27, 1938. 25. Booklet entitled “Narrative Despatches from the High Commissioner for Palestine to the Secretary of State for the Colonies,” September 26, 1937 to December 31, 1938, CO935/21, report No. 8, pp. 36ff, July 18, 1938. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., report No. 9, pp. 25 ff, September 13, 1938. 28. CO935/21, report No. 9, pp. 25 ff, September 13, 1938. 29. CO935/21, report No. 9, pp. 25 ff, September 13, 1938. 30. CO935/21, report No. 10, pp. 30 ff, October 24, 1938. 31. CO935/21, report No. 10, p. 31, October 24, 1938. 32. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, August 25, 1938, Air 2/3312, pp. 56 ff. 33. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, September 2, 1938, Air 2/3312, pp. 50 ff. 34. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, September 25, 1938, CO733/367/1, pp. 51 ff. 35. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, September 7, 1938, CO733/367/1, pp. 66 ff. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. CO733/398/10, February 28, 1939. 39. FO371/21881, No. 5674, memo of September 29, 1938. 40. FO371/21865, No. E6530, November 7, 1938. 41. FO371/21869, No. E7793, pp. 182–92, December 1938; (also in WO32/4562, pp. 443 ff, 1938). 42. Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, pp. 76–82. 43. Ibid., p. 183. 44. Ibid., p. 184. 45. Ibid.

226

Notes

46. Ibid., p. 186. 47. A comprehensive report on the role of the air force in the rebellion is given in Air69/18, on which the following paragraphs are based. Also relevant is file Air5/1248. 48. Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement, pp. 249 ff. 49. CO733/372/18, December, 1938. 50. FO371/20824/, pp. 180 ff, No. E1456, March 15, 1937, CID report on biographies of rebel leaders. 51. Sirhan and Kabaha, Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj Muhammad, p. 30. 52. CO733/359/10, pp. 27 ff, CID report, May 28, 1938 53. WO32/9499, Haining Report, pp. 32ff. 54. Memo to Cabinet, November, 1937, CO733/3541/1, pp. 58a–67b. 55. Wauchope to Dufferin, January 10, 1938, CO733/366/4, No. 6. 56. CO733/372/1, Report by Downie, undated. 57. Ibid. 58. CO733/386/13. 59. Ibid., pp. 25–6. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., p. 27. 62. FO371/21881, No. E5726, pp. 46 ff, August 30, 1938. 63. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, September 2, 1938, Air 2/3312, pp. 50 ff. 64. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, January 26, 1939, FO371/23221, No. E662. 65. FO371/21868, No.7349, pp. 40 ff, December 8, 1938. 66. FO371/21864, pp. 237 ff, October 12, 1938. 67. Lord Chatfield to MacDonald, April 12, 1939, CO733/410/11. 68. Niall Ferguson, Empire, London: Penguin, 2004. 69. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, report on the situation between February 7 and March 9, CO733/398/2. 70. Ibid., p. 38. 71. CO733/398/10, No. 55–67, from district officer of Samaria, February 28, 1939. 72. CO733/398/10, No. 56, February 27, 1939. 73. CO733/398/10, unnumbered report, February 28, 1939.

6 The Ideology of the Palestinian Arabs during the Mandate 1. For an example see Arthur Wauchope’s appreciation – High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, April 30, 1935, CO733/278/13, pp. 40 ff. 2. Akram Zuàytir, Watha’iq al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al-Filistiniyya, 1918–1939: Min Awraq Akram Zuàytir, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979, document 1, dated 1918.[Later cited as Zuàytir, Documents.] 3. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 4–5, pp. 4–5. 4. Àbd al-Wahhab, al-Kayyali, ed., Watha’iq al-Muqawama al-Filistiniyya alÀrabiyya did al-Ihtilal al-Baritani wa-l’ Sahyuniyya, 1918–1939, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1968, document 1, pp. 1–3. [Later cited as Kayyali, Documents].

Notes 227 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Zuàytir, Documents, No. 8, pp. 7–8, November 16, 1918. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 10, pp. 11–12, January 11, 1919. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 13, p. 17, February 8, 1919. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 12, pp. 16–17, February 8, 1919. For example, Zuàytir, Documents, No. 22, pp. 31–2, June 17, 1919. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 23, pp. 32–3, July 3, 1919. Porath, Emergence, p. 47. Porath, Emergence, p. 49. This is how I understand the conclusion of his discussion on PalestinianArab ideology. Particularly important is the sentence – “Resistance to Zionism was, as we shall see later, the prime motive force behind Palestinian nationalist activity ... ,” Porath, Emergence, p. 63. Litvak, “A Palestinian Past” p. 27. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 10, pp. 10–11, January 11, 1919. Kayyali, Documents, No. 9, pp. 16–17, December 18, 1919. Kayyali, Documents, No. 27, pp. 57–9, September 1, 1922. Kayyali, Documents, No. 47, July 26, 1928; No. 69, pp. 163–4, December, 12, 1929; Zuàytir, Documents, No. 169, p. 354, June 12, 1931. For example: Kayyali, Documents, No. 79, pp. 181–8, 1930. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 242, pp. 426–7, June 5, 1936. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 81, pp. 154–5, February 18, 1921. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 151, 1921. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 90, pp. 174–5, October 24, 1921; also in Kayyali, Documents, No. 15, pp. 34–5. Kayyali, Documents, No. 29, pp. 62–5, December 1, 1922. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 153, p. 307, July 26, 1922. Kayyali, Documents, No. 41, pp. 93–4, 1925. Kayyali, Documents, No. 51, pp. 127–8, 1928. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 209, p. 392, November 2, 1935. CO733/14, No. 42635, August 24, 1921. Akram Zuàytir, Yawmiyat Akram Zuàytir: Al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya, 1935–1939, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1980. Zuàytir, Yawmiyat, pp. 43, 44. Zuàytir, Yawmiyat, Preface. Zuàytir, Yawmiyat, p. 19. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 10, pp. 10–11, January 11, 1919. Kayyali, Documents, No. 4, pp. 8–9, March 30, 1919. Kayyali, Documents, No. 198, pp. 541 ff, January 14, 1937. E.g., Kayyali, Documents, No. 9, pp. 16–27, December 18, 1920. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 85, pp. 157–8, September 28, 1921. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 90, pp. 174–5, October, 24, 1921. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 91, pp. 175–82, November, 1921. CO733/16, pp. 256 ff, July 29, 1921 (A memorandum by Weizmann). Zuàytir, Documents, No. 113, pp. 222–3, March 15, 1922. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 103, pp. 203 ff, January 11, 1922. FO371/15, p. 249. Kayyali, Documents, No. 168, pp. 406–7, June 15, 1936. Litvak, “A Palestinian Past,” p. 26. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 41, pp. 61–2, 1921.

228 Notes 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

Zuàytir, Documents, No. 103, pp. 203–11, January 11, 1922. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 113, pp. 222–3, March 15, 1922. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 139, pp. 289–93, June 17, 1922. Kayyali, Documents, No. 84, pp. 228–31, February 21, 1931. Kayyali, Documents, No. 135, pp. 348–49, January 13, 1934. Kayyali, Documents, No. 158, pp. 388–89, May 9, 1936. Kayyali, Documents, No. 170, pp. 411–13, 1936. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 339, p. 523, December 1938. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 281, pp. 474–5, February 15, 1938. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 340, p. 523, December 2, 1938. See for example the proclamation sent by the people of Palestine in 1936 to the Muslims of the world, in CO733/367/9, pp. 29–30. Ibid. The reference is of course to Qur’an 17: 1. CO733/163/5, October 31, 1929. Executive’s memorandum to Churchill, 1921, CO733/13, No. 17771. Exchange between High Commissioner and the Mufti, 1929, CO733/163/5, pp. 133, 137. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 97, pp. 193 ff, 1922. Kayyali, Documents, No. 50, pp. 119–26, November 1, 1928. Kayyali, Documents, No. 98, pp. 250–51, November 29, 1931. Kayyali, Documents, No. 70, pp. 164–6, March 17, 1930. CO733/13, pp. 440 ff, 1921. CO733/367/9, pp. 29–30, Dhu al-Qi’da, 1356/1938. High Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, March 3, 1935, CO733/278/3. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 305, pp. 496–7, August 20, 1938. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 299, p. 490, August 6, 1938. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 190, pp. 373–4, April 19, 1933. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 216, pp. 398–9, November 20, 1935. Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt, Chapters 3–4. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 20, pp. 23 ff, 1919. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 103, January 11, 1922. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 183, pp. 367–8, November 2, 1932. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 218, pp. 399–401, November 21, 1935. Kayyali, Documents, No. 20, pp. 46–7, July 8, 1922. CO733/14, No. 42635, August 24, 1921. Kayyali, Documents, No. 100, pp. 254–5, December 13, 1931. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 181, pp. 365–6, September 10, 1932. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 211, p. 393, November 2, 1935. Zuàytir, Documents, No. 212, p. 394, November 2, 1935. FO371/20018, No. 1993, April 15, 1936.

7 Palestinian Nationalism after 1948 1. I have relied for this short summary mainly on Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 1949–1993, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; James Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Joel Migdal and Baruch Kimmerling, The Palestinian People: A History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003; Moshe Shemesh, The Palestinian Entity,

Notes 229

2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

1959–74, London: Frank Cass, 1996; Avraham Sela and Moshe Ma’oz, The PLO and Israel: From Armed Conflict to Political Solution, 1964–1994, New York: St Martin Press, 1997. William B. Quandt, “Ideology and Objectives,” in William B. Quandt et. al., The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University Press, 1973, pp. 94–112. From an interview with Ronen Bergman, in Ronen Bergman, Authority Given, Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2002, p. 86 [Hebrew]. Nels Johnson, Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Palestinian National Movement, London: Kegan Paul, 1982, Chapter 3. This study is important in being the only one on the early PLO period which shows the religious-cum-nationalist underpinnings of PLO ideology at a time when the front rhetoric revolved mainly around revolution and armed resistance. From the Bergman interview with Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle, p. 87. A chapter in the story of the minbar of Salah al-Din is narrated in Danny Rubinstein, “The Prayer Stand of Salah al-Din,” Haaretz, October 7, 2002 [Hebrew]. Important examples are A. L. Tibawi, Jerusalem, its Place in Islam and Arab History, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1969; Kamil J. al-Asali, Jerusalem in History, Buckhurst Hill: Scorpion Publishing, 1989. The main sources for this conference are Yosi Beilin, Guide to an Injured Dove, Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2001 [Hebrew]; Gilad Sher, Touching Distance, Tel Aviv, Miskal, 2001 [Hebrew]. Objectively speaking, it seems to me that the Palestinians stand commands more support simply because they are defending a living site, while the Israelis are talking in the name of a vanished temple, which may have been on the site, but of which there is no trace. It is a position that I do not even begin to comprehend. Sher, Touching Distance, p. 172. Beilin, Guide, p. 151. The best introduction to this topic is Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. See Andrea Nuesse, Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas, London: Routledge, 1998; Mishal and Sela, The Palestinian Hamas; Mati Steinberg, “Religion and Nationalism in the Ideology of Hamas,” in Neri Horowitz, ed., Religion and Nationalism in Israel and the Middle East, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2002, pp. 126–75 [Hebrew]. Nuesse, Muslim Palestine, p. 176.

Select Bibliography Archival sources National Archive of the United Kingdom Foreign Office (FO) 371 Colonial Office (CO) 733

Manuscripts, Books, Articles Abu Amr, Ziad, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 4 (1993), pp. 5–19. Adler, Raya, “The Tenants of Wadi Hawarith: Another View of the Land Question in Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 20 (1988), pp. 197–220. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1982. Asali, Kamil, Jerusalem in History, Buckhurst Hill: Scorpion Books, 1989. ——Mawsim al-Nabi Musa fi Filastin, Amman: Matbaat al-Jamia al-Urduniyya, 1990. Auld, Sylvia and Robert Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem, Vol. 1, London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000. Baer, Gabriel and Amnon Cohen, eds., Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association, Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1984. Bowden, Tom, “The Politics of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies, 11 (1975), pp. 147–74. Budeiri, Musa, “The Palestinians: Tensions between Nationalist and Religious Identities,” in Jankowski and Gershoni, Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, 190–206. Busse, Heribert, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam,” Judaism, 17 (1968), pp. 441–68. Canaan, Tewfik, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine, Jerusalem: Ariel, n.d. Caplan, Neil, “The Yishuv, Sir Herbert Samuel and the Arab Question of Palestine, 1921–25,” in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, eds., Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, London: Frank Cass, 1982, pp. 1–51. Carmel, Alex, “The Activities of the European Powers in Palestine, 1799–1914,” Asian and African Studies, 19 (1985), pp. 43–91. Cohen, Amnon, “The Fortification of Ottoman Jerusalem – the European Dimension,” Kathedra, 63 (1992), pp. 52–64. Cole, Juan R.I., and Deniz Kandiyoti, “Nationalism and the Colonial Legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia: Introduction,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34 (2002), pp. 189–203. Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

230

Select Bibliography 231 Doumani, Beshara, Rediscovering Palestine, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Elad, Amikam, “The Temple Mount in the Early Islamic Era,” in Yitzhak Reiter, ed., Sovereignty of God and Man, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies, 2001, pp. 57–110 [Hebrew]. Finn, James, Stirring Times, 2 vols., London: Kegan Paul, 1878. Forte, Tania, “Abu-Hanna ‘Real’ Thousand and One Nights: Writing the Self into History in Turn-of-Century Galilee,” Jamaa, 6 (2000), pp. 33–5 [Hebrew]. Friedland, Roger, and Richard D. Hecht, “The Nebi Musa Pilgrimage and the Origins of Palestinian Nationalism,” in Bryan F. Le Beau and Menachem Mor, eds., Pilgrims & Travelers to the Holy Land, Omaha, Neb.: Creighton University Press, 1996, pp. 89–118. Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Gelvin, James, The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Gerber, Haim, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985. ——, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987. ——, “ ‘Palestine’ and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 30 (1998), pp. 563–72. ——, “The Limits of Constructedness: Memory and Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,” Nations and Nationalism, 10 (2004), pp. 251–68. ——, “Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 34 (2003), pp. 23–41. ——, “ ‘Foreign Occupiers and Stepchildren’: Zionist Discourse and the Palestinians,” in Elie Podeh and Asher Kaufman, eds., Arab Jewish Relations, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006, pp. 22–42. Ghawri, Imil, Filastin abra Sitin Aman, Beirut: Dar al-Nahar li’l-Nashr, 1972. Goitein, Shlomo D., “The Sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in Early Islam,” in his Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, Leiden: Brill, 1966, Chapter 7. Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory, New York: Harper and Row, 1927. Hall, John A., ed., The State of the Nation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Al-Hanbali, Mujir al-Din, Al-Uns al-Jalil fi Ta’rikh al-Quds wa’l-Khalil, Najaf: alMatbaa al-Haydariyya, 1968. Hasson, Izhak, “The Muslim View of Jerusalem. The Qur’an and Hadith,” in Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai, eds., The History of Jerusalem: The Early Muslim Period, 638–1099, Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1996, pp. 349–85. Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Heyd, Uriel, Ottoman Documents on Palestine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, New York: Routledge, 2000. Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hroch, Miroslav, “Real and Constructed,” in Hall, ed., State of the Nation, pp. 91–106. Al-Husayni, Hasan, Fatawa, MS Yahuda Collection, Princeton University, No. 5415.

232 Select Bibliography Al-Husayni, Ishaq Musa, and Amin Said Abu Leyl, eds., Wathiqa Maqdisiyya Ta’rikhiyya, Jerusalem: Matbaat Dara-Aytam al-Islamiyya, 1979. Al-Hut, Bayan Nuwayhid, Al-Qiyadat wa’l-Mu’assasat al-Siyasiyya fi Filastin, 1917– 1948, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1981. Hutchinson, John, Modern Nationalism, London: Fontana, 1994. Jankowski, James, and Israel Gershoni, eds., Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Johnson, Nels, Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Palestinian National Movement, London: Kegan Paul, 1982. Kayyali, Abd al-Wahhab, ed., Wathaiq al-Muqawama al-Filistiniyya al-Arabiyya did al-Ihtilal al-Baritani wa’l-Sahyuniyya, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1988. Kedar, Banjamin, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades, 3 (2004), pp. 15–75. Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. ——The Iron Cage, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Khalili, Muhammad, Kitab Fatawa al-Khalili, Cairo: Matbaat Muhammad Shahin, 1868–69. Litvak, Meir, “A Palestinian Past: National Construction and Reconstruction,” History and Memory, 6 (1994), pp. 24–56. Maalouf, Amin, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, London: Saqi, 2004. Mattar, Philip, The Mufti of Jerusalem, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Matthews, Weldon, C., Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation, London: Tauris, 2005. Mishal, Shaul and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Muslih, Muhammad Y., The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1988. Neuwirth, Angelika, “Jerusalem in Islam: The Three Honorific Names of the City,” in Auld and Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem, 77–93. Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History, Les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations, 26 (1989), pp. 7–25. Nuesse, Andrea, Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas, London: Routledge, 1998. O’Leary, Brendan, “Ernest Gellner’s Diagnoses of Nationalism: A Critical Review, or, What is Living and What is Dead in Ernest Gellner’s Philosophy of Nationalism,” in John A. Hall, ed., The State of the Nation, pp. 40–88. Philipp, Thomas, Acre: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian City, 1730–1831, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Porath, Yehoshua, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918– 1929, London: Frank Cass, 1974. ——The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 1929–1939, London: Frank Cass, 1976. Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, “Ottoman Jerusalem in the Writings of Arab Travellers,” in Auld and Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem, pp. 62–72. ——, “Filastin fi Ahd al-Uthmaniyin,” Al-Mawsua al-Filistiniyya, Part 2, Special Studies, Vol. 2, Historical Studies, Beirut: Hay’at al-Mawsua al-Filistiniyya, 1990, pp. 695–990. Al-Ramli, Khayr al-Din, Al-Fatawa al-Khayriyya li-Naf al-Bariyya, Istanbul: AlMatbaa al-Uthmaniyya, 1911. Sadan, Joseph, “The Maqam Nabi Musa Controversy as Reflected in Muslim Sources, Parts 1 and 2, Hamizrah Hehadash, 28 (1979), pp. 220–38; 22–38 [Hebrew].

Select Bibliography 233 Sayigh, Yezid, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, London: Clarendon Press, 1992. Schleifer, S. Abdullah, “The Life and Thought of Izz al-Din al-Qassam,” The Islamic Quarterly, 22 (1979), pp. 61–81. Segev, Tom, One Palestine, Complete, New York, Little Brown and Co., 2000. Siberry, Elizabeth, The New Crusaders, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Sivan, Emmanuel, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam,” in his Interpretations of Islam, Past and Present, Princeton: Darwin Press, 1985, Chapter 3. Smith, Anthony D., Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge, 1998. ——Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellner’s Theory of Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, 2 (1996), pp. 371–88. ——“Ethnic Election and National Destiny: Some Religious Origins of Nationalist Ideals,” Nations and Nationalism, 5 (1999), pp. 331–55. ——Chosen Peoples, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. St. Laurent, Beatrice and Andras Riedlmayer, “Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and their Political Significance, 1537–1928,” Muqarnas, 10 (1993), pp. 76–84. Swedenburg, Ted, Memories of Revolt, Menneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Tibawi, A.L., Jerusalem, Its Place in Islam and Arab History, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1969. Tyerman, Christopher, The Invention of the Crusades, London: Macmillan, 1998. Verete, Mayir, From Palmerston to Balfour, London: Frank Cass, 1992. Wolf, Eric, R., Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969. Yasin, Subhi, Al-Thawra al-Arabiyya al-Kubra fi Filastin, Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-Arabi, 1967. Zeevi, Dror, An Ottoman Century, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Ziene, Zeine, N., Arab Turkish Relations and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism, Beirut: Khayyat, 1958. Zuàytir, Akram, Watha’iq al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al-Filistiniyya, 1918–1939: Min Awraq Akram Zuaytir, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979. ——Yawmiyat Akram Zuaytir: Al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya, 1935–39, Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1980.


Index Abd al-Hadi, Awni, 110, 118, 125, 185 Abd al-Hadi, Fakhri, 152 Abd al-Nasir, Gamal, 190, 198 Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, 150, 151 Abd al-Rahim al-Lutf, 54 Abd al-Rahim Hajj Muhammad, 142, 149–50, 152 Abd al-Raziq, Arif, 142, 150 Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Wasiti, 70 Abu Durra, Yusuf, 142 Acre, 46, 60, 64–5 Air pin (air cordon), 151 Albina, A.P. on Palestinians’ anti-Zionist feelings, 84 view on Chaim Weizmann, 84 Aleppo, 59, 167 Allenby, Edmund, 67, 206 visit to Pakistan, 181 Altneuland, 31–2 America, 39 Amir, Abd al-Rahman, 28 Anatolia, 58 Anderson, Benedict, 2, 15 Mark II theory of nationalism, 16, 24, 25, 192 on nationalism, 2, 4 Andrews, Lewis murder of, 140 anti-British demonstration (October 1933), 127–34 anti-Zionism, 77, 103, 171–4 Antonius, George, 26 al-Aqsa Mosque, 6, 8, 9, 43, 57, 69, 110, 174 citation in Qur’an, 177 Arab congress, 184 Arabism, 35 and country-identity, 21–6, 41, 44 and Palestinianism, 75–9, 86, 92, 167–71 see also Pan-Arabism

Arafat, Yasir, 115, 138, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 200, 203 at Camp David Conference (July 2000), 9, 196, 201–2 death of, 204 Hamas movement, 203 Israeli-PLO accord and, 195–6 Palestine Liberation Organization, 191 al-Ard al-Muqaddasa, 37 Ariqat, Sa’ib, 201 al-Arz al-Muqaddasa, see Holy Land al-Awja, Arab, 98 a`yan (notables, traditional leaders), 37, 46, 47, 74, 78 Ayyubids, 60, 63 Azzam, Abd al-Rahman, 185 Bagallay, Lacy on Palestine partition, 158–9 Balfour Declaration, 32, 38, 39, 169 anniversary of, 185 announcement of, 80 impact, on local Arab population, 81–90 Zionists and, 81, 82 Barth, Fredrik, 36 Bateman, Charles Harold Hajj Amin al-Husayni, debate between, 157–8 Baybars, Mamluk Sultan, 72, 75 Bayt al-Maqdis, see Jerusalem Bedouin, 27, 28, 29, 30, 46, 56, 98 Beilin, Yossi, 202 Ben-Gurion, David, 31, 33–5, 126, 154 on Palestinian nationalism; lecture about, 35; socialism and egoism, tension between, 33–4; view of, 3–4 Betar demonstration, at Wailing Wall, 113 see also under Wailing Wall 235

236

Index

Bethlehem, 40, 143, 182 Bialik, H.N., 109 bilad, 23, 54 see also country Bolshevik Jews, 97 Boy Scout movement, 122–3 Brass, Paul and Francis Robinson, debate between; India and Pakistan separation, 20 British Commission of Inquiry, 119 Wailing Wall riots, report of, 113–14 British Empire, 37, 38, 39, 68, 90, 104, 105, 136, 154, 158, 159, 160, 209, 210 British Mandate, 3, 47, 81 Arab press and, 123 Istiqlal Party and, 124–6 Nebi Musa pilgrimage and, 92–7 Palestinian Arabs, ideology of, 163 political history of, 106 British Occupation Day (December 9), 131 Budeiri, Musa, 36 nationalist and religious identity, 36–7 Buraq Campaign, 111 al-Buraq Uprising, 37, 111 Bushe, Grattan, 156 Byzantines, 58 Cairo, 83 Camp David conference (July 2000), 9, 196, 200–2 Canaan, Tewfik Nebi Musa pilgrimage, description of, 94 saints and sanctuaries in Palestine, 74 Caplan, Neil, 100 Carlsbad, 173 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 199 Chamberlain, Neville, 162 Chancellor, John 1929 riots, report of, 116–17 Chelebi, Evliya, 56, 64–5

Churchill, Winston, 89, 98, 168 Arab executives’ memorandum to, 103, 169, 170, 173, 180, 184 Geneva delegation’s disappointment with, 169 Churchill White Paper (June 1922), 33, 104, 106, 167 Clayton, Gilbert, 40, 82, 83, 92 on existence of Palestinian nationalism, 88 Nebi Musa pilgrimage, description of, 93 Clinton, Bill, 201 Cole, Juan R.I. theory of nationalism and colonial legacy, in Middle East, 21–2 Collins, Michael, 158 Committee for the Defense of the Buraq, 40 constructivism, 19 country (diyar or bilad), 53–6 Crusades, 44, 58–61 fadail al-Quds literature and, 69 and Hamas covenant, 206 Jerusalem and, 58–60, 62–9, 70 Malikshah, Seljuk Sultan, 58 Nizam al-Mulk, 58 Nur al-Din, 59 in Palestinian documentary material, 180–1 Richard the Lionhearted, 60 Salah al-Din, 59–60 social memory and commemoration of, 61–8 Zengi, assassination of, 59 Curzon, Lord, 38, 39, 154 Daghir, Asàd, 185 Dahlan, Muhammad, 201 Damascus, 170 annexation of, 59 under Faisal, 90, 91 and Jerusalem, competition between, 72 Darwaza, Izzat, 111–12, 124, 172, 185 decolonization, 197 Deir Ghasana, 151 al-Din, Salah, 56–60, 71, 180, 181, 199–200

Index 237 diyar, 54, 56 Dome of the Rock, 69, 120, 179 Doubdan, Jean, 65 Doumani, Beshara, 27 Dufferin, Lord, 157 Eden, Anthony, 154 Jewish state in Palestine, memorandum of, 154–5 Edessa, 59 Efendi, Ebu Suud, 54 Egypt Arab folktales, studies on, 68 Crusades and, 62 Fatimid Egypt, 59 Islamist movements in, 203 Mamluk dynasty, 48 Napoleonic invasion in, 66 nationalism in, 23 1948 war and, 189 Pan-Arabism in, 153–4 ehl-i Salib, 62 Ekrem, Ali, 78 elitism, 19–20 entrepreneurship and Islam, 27 ethnosymbolism, 3, 18–21 Europe, 15, 47, 62 looming war and fear of Pan-Arabism, 156 process of nation creation in, 19 Executive Committee, of Palestinian Congress, 168 October 1933 anti-British demonstrations, 127–34 Extended Jewish Agency, 117 fadail al-Quds literature, 69–71, 72 Faisal, Amir, 79, 81, 90–1 as King of Syria, 91 Falastin (newspaper) 1914 article in, 76 Fath movement, 192 Fatimid Egypt, 59 fatwa, 5, 50, 52, 53, 54 Ferguson, Niall, 160 Fertile Crescent, 23, 24, 48, 60, 64, 166, 199 Fida’i, 37

Filastin, see Palestine Finn, James, 66–7, 73 Nebi Musa pilgrimage, description of, 93–4 France, 39, 47, 167 Franks, 44, 65 Friedland, Roger, 93 Galilee, 44, 46, 140, 141, 189 see also Upper Galilee Gate of Sitti Mariam, 93 Gaza, 55, 56, 189, 193, 194 Gellner, Ernest, 2, 15, 19 Anthony Smith’s criticism, 17 Brendan O’Leary, criticism on, 17–18 Miroslav Hroch, criticism on, 17 on nationalism, 2 theory of nationalism, in relation with industrialization, 16–18; economic modernization, 26 Gelvin, James, 5, 10, 26–7, 119 Geneva delegation disappointment with Winston Churchill, 169 George, Lloyd, 39 German Kaiser, 44, 61 Germany, 8, 80, 122, 199 Gordon, Harry Piri, 120 Gouraud, Henri, 206 Graham, Ronald, 38 Great Britain, 47 adverse effects, on Palestinians, 82–3 Churchill White Paper (June 1922), 104 Palestine occupation, first year of, 81–90 Palestinian delegation, in London, 103–4 Palestinian nationalism and, 37–41 and Yishuv, war between, 188 Zionists’ influence on, 38 The Great Fear, 87 the Great Revolt, 176 the Great War, 10, 41, 75–9, 96, 116, 181, 208 Ottoman governors, inactivity of, 76

238 Index Greece national revolution of, 18 al-Hadra, Subhi, 185 Haifa Istiqlal Party’s rally in, 125 Muslim-Christian Society, 179 Third Palestinian Congress in, 168 Haining, Sir Robert Hadden on Palestinian nationalism, 142, 143, 148–50 Hajj Amin al-Husayni, 93, 107, 109, 111, 157, 161, 162, 185 and Arthur Wauchope, talk between, 126 Hamah, 167 Hamas Covenant Crusades and, 206 Palestine religious status, in Islam, 205 Hamas movement (December 1987), 202–6 ideology of, 204–6 Yasir Arafat and, 203 Haram, 109, 113, 115 Jewish intentions to, 179 riots at, 110–11 al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), 7, 109, 110–11, 201 see also Wailing Wall al-Hashimi, Yasin, 124, 185 Hastings, Adrian theory of nationalism, in relation with religion, 20–1 Hattin, battle of (July 1187), 60, 67 Haycraft commission of inquiry, 182 “Hebrew Labor”, 97 Hebron, 49, 53, 78, 114 fadail al-Quds literature on, 70 massacres in, 112 resistance to foreign occupation, 78 violence at, 115 Hecht, Richard D., 93 Herzl, Theodor, 31 Altneuland, 31–2 Heyd, Uriel Ottoman archival documents, on Palestine, 56 Hijaz, 77, 120, 178

The History of the Hagana, 98 Hitler, Adolf, 122, 210 Hobsbawm, Eric, 18 Holocaust, 153, 189 Holy Land (al-Arz al-Muqaddasa), 39 Amin Husayni’s speech for, 175–6 Meir Litvak on, 174 Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali al-Ulaymi on, 52 Palestine as, 49, 51–3, 174–6; see also Palestine Holy Sepulcher, 58 Homs, 167 Honecker, Erich, 199 Hourani, Albert, 24 Hroch, Miroslav Ernest Gellner’s criticism, 17 Social Preconditions for National Revival in Europe, 19 Husayn, Sharif, 166 al-Husayni, Amin, 180, 202 objection against Zionists, 178 secular nationalism and, 175–6 Husayni, Faisal, 202 al-Husayni, Hamdi, 124 al-Husayni, Hasan country (diyar or bilad), 53–6 al-Husayni, Musa Kazim, 105, 150 Husayn–McMahon correspondence, 35, 82, 160, 166–7, 184 al-Husri, Sati`, 25 al-Hut, Bayan Nuwayhid, 76, 113 Ibrahim, Rashid al-Hajj, 133 identity, 47, 48, 76, 119 iltizam system, 29 India, 23, 122, 159 separation of Pakistan from, 20 Iran, 23, 203 Iraq, 23, 76 Pan-Arabism and, 185 Ireland, 157 Isa al-Isa, 48 al-Islami, al-Mujamma`, 203 Israel historiography of, 11 1948 war and, 189 Patriarchs, 52 Israeli–PLO Accords, see Oslo Accords

Index 239 Israel–Palestine conflict over Jerusalem, 192–6, 201 Issawi, Charles, 29 Istanbul, 47, 48, 69, 94 Istiqlal Party, 8, 123–6, 130 Allenby’s Palestine visit, comment on, 181 announcement of, 124 non-cooperation convention, effect on, 125 Pan-Arabism ideology of, 123, 124 Jaffa, 28, 114, 125, 135 legal situations at, 55 Muslim-Christian society; petition to British officials, 164, 165 1922 elections, boycotting, 169 October 1933 anti-British demonstration, 127, 128 orange exports of, 27 riots at, 97–9, 104, 211 Jahiliyya, 204–5 al-Jazzar, Ahmad, 46 Jenin, 188 Jericho, 7, 52 tomb of Moses, 71, 72, 73, 208 Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), 43–4, 47, 206 Crusades and, 58–60, 62–9, 70 and Damascus, competition between, 72 Israel-Palestine conflict over, 201 Lions’ Gate, 74 Nebi Musa celebration and, 71–3, 93, 94 October 1933 anti-British demonstration, 128 and Ottoman Palestine, 46 Palestinian identity, role in, 57–8 religious pilgrimage in, 62 sanctity in Islam, 57 Jevdet, Ahmed, 62 Jewish High Holidays of 1929, 110 Jewish Organization, 121 Jewish Temple, 120, 176, 178 Jihad, 37, 176, 205 Johnson, Nels, 199 Jordan, 104, 167 1948 war and, 189

and Palestine Liberation Organization, 194 Jund Filastin, 6, 48, 52, 73 Kandioti, Deniz theory of nationalism and colonial legacy, in Middle East, 21–2 Karameh clash, of March 21, 1968, 193 Kawkab (newspaper), 84 al-Khadra, Subhi, 124 Khalidi, Rashid, 6, 10–12, 42, 66 The Iron Cage, 11–12 al-Khalidi, Ruhi, 51 Khalili, Muhammad, 52–3 country (diyar or bilad), 55–6 Muslim-owned properties, preservation of, 65–6 Ottoman legislation, legality of, 52–3 King Faisal of Iraq, 124 Labor Zionism, 32 leadership, 124 League of Nations, 81, 91, 104, 105, 106, 169, 173 Lebanon, 36 Lewis, Bernard, 61 Lions’ Gate (Jerusalem), 74 Litvak, Meir on Holy Land concept, 174 on Palestinian nationalism, 168 Zionist historiography, of Palestinians, 35–6 Luke, Harry Nebi Musa pilgrimage, description of, 94 MacDonald Letter, 121 ma’dhana, 111 Malikshah, Seljuk Sultan, 58 Mamluk dynasty, 48 Mardam, Jamil, 185 Mark II theory, of nationalism, 16, 25, 192 Mattar, Philip, 112 Matthews, Charles, 70 Matthews, Weldon, 8

240 Index McDonald White Paper (1930), 121, 175 McDonald White Paper (1939), 13, 129, 153, 154, 161 McMahon, Sir Henry, 166 McMichael, Harold on Palestinian rural nationalism, 144–8 Meinerzhagen, 102 Money, Sir Arthur Wigram on popular nationalism, 90 Morris, Benny, 11 Mosul, 59 “Mother Palestine”, 84 mufti (jurisconsult), 5, 45 Muhammad al-Qalqili local population, in mid-1918; collective orientation of, 85; feelings of, 84–5 mujahid, 59 al-Mulk, Nizam, 58 Muslih, Muhammad Y., 79 Muslim-Christian society of Haifa, 179 of Jaffa; 1922 elections, boycotting, 169; petition to British officials, against Jewish National Home policy, 164; petition to British officials, against Zionist activities, 165 Nablus, 27, 28, 51, 52, 56, 78, 121 al-Najjah School, 122 nationalist congress at, 121–2 resistance to foreign occupation, 78 Nahalal, 133 naqib al-ashraf (head of the Prophet’s descendants), 45 Nashashibi, Fakhri, 151, 152 Nashashibi, Raghib, 132, 139, 158 nation, 2 National Home policy Arthur Wauchope’s support and, 144 Balfour Declaration and, 80 Chaim Weizmann comment on, 32–3, 173 Churchill White Paper (June 1922) specification over, 104, 106

Palestinian delegation and, 103 Supreme Muslim Council’s view on, 176 White Paper 1939 and, 153 nationalism, 179 historical origins, in Middle East, 21–6 historical sociology of, 15–18 Mark II theory of, 16, 25, 192 in relation with industrialization, 16–18 in relation with religion, 20–1 of Third World, 3, 18, 168 National Socialist Party (Germany), 122 Nebi Musa festival, 47, 71–5, 121 Nebi Musa pilgrimage, 7, 36, 47, 71–5 architecture of, 73 and origins of Palestinian nationalism, 92–7 Nur al-Din, 59 O’Leary, Brendan, 18, 19 Ernest Gellner’s criticism, 17–18 Orientalism, 22, 62 Ormsby-Gore, William, 82 on existence of Palestinian nationalism, 88–9 Oslo Accords, 195–6, 200 Ottoman Empire, 7, 21, 23, 25 Ottoman governors, inactivity of, 76 Ottoman land law (1858), 29 Ottoman legislation, legality of, 52–3 Ottoman Palestine autonomous regimes in, 45 economic changes in, 26–8 history of, 45–8; governors, 45–6 Jerusalem and, 46 land regime in, 28–30; iltizam system, 29; registration process, 29, 30; timar system, 29; transhumance system, of migration, 29 Ottoman Reform, 28 Pakistan separation from India, 20 Palaestina Prima, 48 Palaestina Secunda, 48

Index 241 “Palestine”, the term, 48–51, 165–5 see also Southern Syria Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 203 emergence of, 191 Fath movement, 192 ideology of, 198–200 Jordan and, 194 secular nationalism and, 198–9 Shuqayri and, 191, 194 Palestine Liberation Organizaztion– Israeli Accords, see Oslo Accords Palestinian-Arab identity, elements of, 42 country (diyar or bilad), 53–6 Crusades, 58–61; social memory and commemoration of, 61–8 fadail al-Quds literature, 69–71 the Great War, 75–9 Holy Land (al-Arz al-Muqaddasa), 49, 51–3, 174–6 Jerusalem, 46, 47, 49, 57–8; after Crusades, 68–9 Nebi Musa festival, 47, 71–5 Nebi Musa pilgrimage, 71–5 Ottoman Palestine, history of, 45–8 “Palestine”, the term, 48–51 Palestinian Arab nation, 168 Palestinian Arabs, ideology of, 163 anti-zionism, 171–4 blurred genres, 181–2 Crusades, 180–1 Palestine as Holy Land, 174–6 Palestinians, as Islam holy sites guardians, 176–80 Pan-Arabism, 184–6 popular nationalism, 182–3 Palestinian delegation, in London, 103–4 Palestinianism and Arabism, 75–9, 86, 167–71 Palestinian Mandate, see British Mandate Palestinian National Congress (PNC), 191 Palestinian nationalism after 1948, 187 Chaim Weizmann on, 86, 87 David Ben-Gurion on, 3–4, 33–5

Gilbert Clayton on, 88 Great Britain and, 37–41 Khalil al-Sakakini on, 75–7 Meir Litvak on, 168 military views, during revolt, 148–50 Nebi Musa pilgrimage and origins of, 92–7 Sir Robbert Hadden Haining on, 142, 143, 148–50 Stein on, 87–8 William Ormsby-Gore on, 88–9 Yehoshua Porath on, 139, 167–8, 170 Palestinian rebellion, of 1936–9 consequences and effects of, 153–62 first phase of, 136–40 general strike, 135–6 as national phenomenon, 143–8; kufiyya-àqqal episode, 145, 148 second phase of, 140–3; Lewis Andrews, murder of, 140; Sheykh Farhan al-Sa`di, capture of, 141; Um al-Fahm village, clash in, 141; Wadi Àmud, attack in, 141 social origins of, 152–3 suppression methods, 150–2 Palestinians British view on, 37–41 as Islam holy sites guardians, 176–80 partition, enforcement of, 189 Zionist view on, 30–7 Palin Report, 94–6 Pan-Arabism, 22, 123, 184–6 see also Arabism Paris Peace Conference, 81, 90 pax Ottomanica, 24–5, 26 Peace Conference, 32 Peake, F.G. Palestinian nationalism riots, report of, 115–16 Peel Commission report (1937), 140 Petah Tiqva, 98 PLO, see Palestine Liberation Organization

242 Index PNC, see Palestinian National Congress popular nationalism, 10, 81, 182–3 Sir Herbert Samuel’s analysis of, 100 populism, see popular nationalism Porath, Yehoshua, 14, 26, 35, 36, 42, 78, 94, 103, 111, 211 on Palestinian nationalism, 139, 167–8, 170 pre-1914 Palestinian national activity, 76 Wailing Wall riots, explanation of, 111–12 Zionist historiography, of Palestinians, 35 primordialism, 15, 91 protagonism, 15 al-Qasatli, Nu`man, 51 al-Qassam, Ìzz al-Din funeral of, 183 ideology of, 181 revolt of, 131, 132–4 al-Qawuqji, Fawzi (Fawz al-Din), 137 Qutb, Sayyid Jahiliyya, 204–5 racism, 83 Rafeq, Abdul Karim, 51 Ramallah, 143 al-Ramla, 49, 55, 110 al-Ramli, Khayr al-Din, 6, 50, 54, 185 religion in relation with nationalism, 20–1 religious and religio-legal institutions Palestinians’ establishment of, 107 Richard the Lionhearted, 60 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, 61 Robinson, Francis and Paul Brass, debate between; India and Pakistan separation, 20 Royal Air Force (RAF), 137, 141, 151 Russia, 39, 47, 179 Sadan, Joseph competition between Jerusalem and Damascus, studies on, 72

al-Sa`di, Sheykh Farhan, 141 Safad massacres in, 112 Said, Edward, 22, 62 and Saidians, debate between, 22 al-Sakakini, Khalil, 28, 44, 75, 76–7 on Palestinian nationalism, 75–7 Samaria, 140, 141 Samuel, Sir Herbert popular nationalism, analysis of, 101 speech of June 1921, 98, 99–102 and Zionists, debate between, 100 sanjak, 55 Sayigh, Rosemary, 36 Sayigh, Yazid, 199 Falastin al-Thawra, 196–7 Scholch, Alexander, 27 Shahid, 37 Sharià, 20 Shevket, Mahmud (Pasha), 25 Shuqayri, Ahmad, 191 Sivan, Emmanuel, 58 sanctity of Jerusalem, in Islam, 57 Smith, Anthony, 3, 4 Ernest Gellner, criticism on, 17 on nationalism, 3, 4 theory of ethnysymbolism, 18–21 social memory, of Crusades, 61–8 Ahmed Jevdet, 62 Bernard Lewis, 61 Edmund Allenby, 67 Evliya Chelebi, 64–5 James Finn, 66–7 Jean Doubdan, 65 Jonathan Riley-Smith, 61 Muhammad Khalili, 65–6 Rashid Khalidi, 66 Social Preconditions for National Revival in Europe, 19 Southern Syria, 49, 90–1, 166 see also Palestine Star of David, 120, 179 Stein, Leonard, 33 Stein, M. on existence of Palestinian nationalism, 87–8 Storrs, Sir Ronald, 38, 86, 87, 119

Index 243 Supreme Muslim Council, 36, 176 Sykes, Mark, 40, 84, 90, 92 Symes, G.S., 83 Syria, 5, 23, 76, 115 Syrian Congress (1920), 91, 166 Tamari, Shmuel, 220 Nebi Musa pilgrimage, architecture of, 73 Tanzimat reforms, 25, 28, 77 Tel Aviv, 135 Temple Mount, see al-Haram al-Sharif Third Palestinian Congress, 12, 168 Third World, 197 nationalism, 3, 15, 18, 168 timar system, 29, 54 al-Timurtashi, Salih b. Ahmad, 50 Trans-Jordan, see Jordan Tul Karm, 162 Turki, Fawaz, 192 Tyre, 60 al-Ulaymi, Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali, 5 Crusades, discourse of, 62–4 Holy Land, 52 Nebi Musa festival, description of, 72 “Palestine”, the term, 49, 50 Umar (the second Caliph), 178 al-Umar, Dahir, 46, 55 ummahat al-bilad, 23 United Nations, 189 Upper Galilee, 52 valley of Esdraelon, 28, 29, 67 Wadi Àmud, 141 Wailing Wall (Buraq), 34, 108–10, 120, 178 campaign for defense of, 109–10; see also Buraq Campaign riots, 108–9, 209; aftermath, 117–19; British views, 113–17 al-Walid, Khalid b., 123, 180 Wasiti, 51

Wauchope, Arthur, 139 and Hajj Amin al-Husayni, talk between, 126 October 1933 anti-British demonstration, report of, 129, 130 on Palestine partition, 155–6 Palestinian violence (1936), report of, 143–4 Weizmann, Chaim, 32, 33, 82, 85 Albina’s view on, 84 on Arab feeling toward Zionism, 86 on existence of Palestinian nationalism, 86, 87 speech against Palestinians, 83 Zionist Congress, speech at, 173–4 Zionists’ influence on Britain, 38 West Bank, 189, 193, 194 Wolf, Eric, 140 World War I, 22, 42, 80, 90, 124, 184 World War II, 8, 153, 188 Yarmuk, battle of, 67 Yasin, Sheikh Ahmad, 205 Yellin, David Nebi Musa pilgrimage, description of, 73–4 Yishuv, 11, 99, 188 and British, war between, 188 zawiya (Sufi covenant), 109, 111 Zaydan, 46 Zengi, Imad al-Din, 63 assassination of, 59 Zionism British policy on, 98 “Hebrew Labor”, 97 influence on Palestine, 1–2 and Palestinians, 30–7 Zionist Commission activities, in Palestine, 82–4, 91, 96, 97 feelings of Palestine and, 82–3 Zionist Congress (1928), 113, 117, 173 al-Zirikli, Khayr al-Din, 185 Zuàytir, Akram, 35, 123, 124, 133–4

Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present

Nationalism in Europe: 1850 to the Present

The Politics of Sentiment: Imagining and Remembering Guayaquil

Stories from the Crusades

Imagining and the Image

The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq

Law and identity in mandate Palestine

The Balkans Beyond Nationalism and Identity: International Relations and Ideology

New Frontiers In Women's Studies: Knowledge, Identity And Nationalism (Feminist Perspectives on the Past and Present)

The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq

The Balkans Beyond Nationalism and Identity: International Relations and Ideology

Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film

From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide

Imagining Objects and Imagining Experiences

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change

Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present

Immigration and asylum: from 1900 to the present, Volume 1

The Crusades

The Crusades

Organization Theory: From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond

Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present

Political thinkers: from Socrates to the present

Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

Greek Prepositions: From Antiquity to the Present

Ornithology: From Aristotle to the Present

Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present

The Remembering

Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present

Nationalism in Europe: 1850 to the Present

The Politics of Sentiment: Imagining and Remembering Guayaquil

Stories from the Crusades

Imagining and the Image

The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq

Law and identity in mandate Palestine

The Balkans Beyond Nationalism and Identity: International Relations and Ideology

New Frontiers In Women's Studies: Knowledge, Identity And Nationalism (Feminist Perspectives on the Past and Present)

The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq

The Balkans Beyond Nationalism and Identity: International Relations and Ideology

Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film

From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide

Imagining Objects and Imagining Experiences

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism

National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change

Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present

Immigration and asylum: from 1900 to the present, Volume 1

The Crusades

The Crusades

Organization Theory: From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond

Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present

Political thinkers: from Socrates to the present

Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

Greek Prepositions: From Antiquity to the Present

Ornithology: From Aristotle to the Present

Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present

The Remembering

Recommend Documents