The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict
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It was one of the el-Husainis, Haj Amin, who was to emerge as the leading figure in Palestinian politics during the mandate period. He first began to organize small groups of suicide squads, fedayeen, to terrorize Jews in 1919 in the hope of driving the Jews out of Palestine.
Haj Amin found allies among the British Arabists in Palestine who believed Zionist ambitions conflicted with their goal of fostering British-Arab ties. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen—a one-time intelligence officer and later chief political officer for Palestine and Syria—explained in his diary (June 2, 1920) that the heads of the Palestine British Administration, both civil and military, “all worked against Zionism in the hopes of choking it while it was still young.” The extent to which Great Britain was willing to go to frustrate the Zionists was reflected by the Arabists’ complicity in the Palestinian riots.
On the Wednesday before Easter in 1920, Colonel Waters Taylor (financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine, 1919–23) had a meeting in Jerusalem with Haj Amin and told him that he could show the world that the Arabs of Palestine would not tolerate Jewish domination, and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, British officials would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home.
Haj Amin took the colonel’s advice and instigated a riot, during which an Arab mob attacked Jews and looted their shops. Afterward, the most outspoken leaders of Palestinian Arab radicalism, Haj Amin and Aref-el-Aref, were sought by the British authorities in Palestine because of their overt role in instigating the riot. The two Arabs evaded capture and fled to Jordan. Meanwhile, the Palestine Administration sentenced them each to 10 years’ imprisonment in absentia. However, a number of British Arabists eventually managed to convince Samuel to pardon Haj Amin and Aref. The open hostility toward Jewish settlement in Palestine coincided with the growth of the first Arab political organization to have any influence in Palestine: the Arab Executive Committee, formed in December 1920. Its first president, Mussa Kazim Pasha Hussaini, was the moving force of the organization. When he died in 1934, the committee fell apart. The absence of
Palestinian interest in nationalism relegated the Arab Executive Committee to secondary importance in Palestinian affairs. The most influential Arab in Palestine remained the mufti of Jerusalem.
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Hieroglyphics
The mufti was the religious leader responsible for interpreting Muslim law, who was held in high esteem by the population. The mufti’s opinion is expressed in a document called a fetwa.
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Meet the Mufti
The incumbent mufti of Jerusalem, Kamal el-Husseini, died in 1921, and it was up to High Commissioner Samuel to appoint a new one. The same men who convinced Samuels to pardon Haj Amin and Aref pressured Samuels to appoint Haj Amin as mufti.
Even though an electoral college of Muslim religious leaders listed Haj Amin last in a list of candidates whom they felt would be qualified to be mufti, and didn’t endorse him, Samuel appointed Haj Amin mufti of Jerusalem.
Haj Amin moved quickly to consolidate his power by establishing the Supreme Moslem Council, ostensibly for the purpose of creating an institution independent of British influence. After being elected president of the Council, Haj Amin took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools, and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position in Palestine without being loyal to the mufti.
As the Palestinian spokesman, Haj Amin wrote to Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921 demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. The mufti’s letter to Churchill, ironically, once again demonstrates the conspicuous absence of Palestinian nationalism. Haj Amin did not demand independence for Palestine; he wanted the reunification of Syria. This shows that even Haj Amin, the most outspoken and radical Arab in Palestine, recognized that Palestine was not a discrete political entity. The mufti had a profound impact on the Zionist movement. His uncompromising views forced the Zionists to abandon their efforts to reach an agreement with the native population. In fact, Haj Amin set a precedent that most Arab countries continue to adhere to today—namely refusing to negotiate directly with the Jews or reach any agreement with them.
The mufti’s success in pressuring the British to restrict Jewish immigration helped convince the Zionists that they would have to obtain control over the Jewish national home to guarantee that Jews would have free access to the country. In addition, the riots instigated by the mufti played a major role in the development of Jewish armed resistance in Palestine.
Riots Become an Arab Weapon
The Arabs found rioting to be a very effective political tool because the British attitude toward violence against Jews and their response to the riots encouraged more outbreaks of violence. In each riot, the British would prevent the Jews from protecting themselves, but make little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews. After each melee, a commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the riot. The conclusion was always the same: The Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jewish immigration. To stop the disturbances, the commissions routinely recommended that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration.
Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could stop Jewish immigration by staging a riot. Because it was the presence of any Jews in Palestine rather than just large influxes of immigrants that upset the Arabs, British policy virtually guaranteed an incessant circle of violence. Each time the process repeated itself, the British would retreat from their obligation under the Balfour Declaration. This policy of retreat and appeasement eventually led to the disintegration of the mandate.
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Ask the Sphinx
The Arab fear of being “displaced” or “dominated” was used as an excuse for their attacks on peaceful Jewish settlers. Interestingly, these riots were not inspired by nationalistic fervor—nationalists would have rioted not against the Jews but against their British overlords; they were motivated by racial strife and misunderstanding.
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The British appointed the Haycraft Commission (commissions generally became known by the name of their chairmen) to investigate the cause of the riots. Although the commission concluded that the Arabs had been the aggressors, it rationalized the cause of the attack: “The fundamental cause of the riots was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents.”
Churchill Tries White Out
Whether or not the Arab’s fears were legitimate was irrelevant to the British; the British were only interested in courting Arab favor and maintaining stability in Palestine. Consequently, the British did as the Arabs wished and placed restrictions on Jewish immigration. In a further attempt to appease the Arabs, Churchill issued a policy statement (called a white paper) in 1922 in which he tried to allay the Arab fear that the Balfour Declaration was meant to establish a Jewish state in Palestine:
When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take pride, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection.
In typical British diplomatic fashio
n, the Churchill White Paper had a little something for everyone. For the Arabs, it provided a clarification of the Balfour Declaration. The British had no intention of establishing a Jewish state or of converting Palestine into the Jewish national homeland; they simply offered to help establish a home for Jews in Palestine. The white paper also sought to justify the partition of Palestine and Transjordan on the grounds that the land east of the Jordan River was promised to the Arabs in the MacMahon Correspondence.
Churchill reaffirmed Great Britain’s support of the Balfour Declaration and admitted that the Jewish community in Palestine had already begun to assume “national” characteristics. He also recognized the historic right of the Jews to settle in Palestine. The white paper acknowledged the need for Jewish immigration to enable the Jewish community to grow, but placed the familiar limit of the country’s absorptive capacity on immigration.
The Zionists were not particularly happy about the white paper, but they were pleased that Churchill had reasserted the British position that Palestine was not included in the promises made in the MacMahon Correspondence. The Zionists grudgingly accepted the white paper. The Arabs, however, rejected it.
Arab Pogroms
The restrictions on Jewish immigration, combined with an economic downturn in the mid-1920s, not only reduced the number of Jews entering Palestine, it also induced many Jews to emigrate. About 7,000 Jews left Palestine in 1926, and more than 5,000 left the following year. Coincidentally, this was a period of relative calm in Palestine. The calm was shattered, however, in August 1929, when Arab propagandists succeeded in convincing the masses that the Jews had designs on the Temple Mount.
A Jewish religious observance at the Western Wall served as a catalyst to an outbreak of rioting that spilled out of Jerusalem into nearby villages and towns, including Safed and Hebron. Again the British administration made no effort to prevent the outbreak of hostility and, after the rioting began, the British did nothing to protect the Jewish population.
After six days of rioting, the British finally brought in troops to quell the disturbance. By that time, 67 Jews in Hebron had been killed and the 700-odd survivors were forced to flee to Jerusalem. In all, about 135 Jews were killed and nearly 350 wounded.
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Ask the Sphinx
One of the most controversial West Bank Jewish settlements is located in Hebron. After the 1929 massacre, few Jews remained there, and it became off-limits to Jews when Jordan seized the West Bank. After Israel captured the territory in 1967, Jews moved back, and it has been a center of dispute and numerous violent outbreaks ever since. When the Hebron Protocol was signed in 1998, Israeli forces withdrew, but they remained responsible for the security of the Jews living there (see Chapter 23).
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Jews Try Self-Defense
The Jews had naively expected to be welcomed with open arms into their homeland. When they were not, they were hesitant to fight, even for what they believed was rightfully theirs.
The first Jewish settlers had periodic disputes with their neighbors, usually over property and water rights, but they had no organized defense force. In 1907, some Jews formed a secret society called Bar-Giora (named after Simeon Bar Giora, the Jewish military leader in the war against Rome, 66–70 C.E.), to protect some of the settlements created by immigrants from the second aliyah.
Two years later, the group merged with a new organization founded by people who had fled Russia and were determined not to be defenseless in their new home. The Guild of Watchmen (Ha-Shomer) saw themselves as the core of a future Jewish army. However, at no time did the organization expand beyond 100 members.
Hello, Haganah
In 1920, the Watchmen disbanded and were replaced by a new underground military organization known as the Haganah. The Haganah was a loose organization of local defense groups in the large towns and in several of the settlements. After the 1929 riots, the Haganah recruited young people and adults from throughout the country, initiated a training program, and ran officers’ training courses. The Haganah also began to produce weapons, smuggled in arms from abroad, and created secret caches to hide their arsenal from the British.
Later, dissidents who felt the Haganah was not militant enough and wanted to engage in direct attacks against the British and Arabs formed their own paramilitary organizations (see Chapter 7). The responsibility, however, for the defense of the Jewish community in Palestine—and most of the operations when the Jews went on the offensive—belonged to the Haganah. And the Haganah ultimately formed the nucleus of the army that was created after Israel’s declaration of independence.
Papering Over the Conflict
After the riots were over, the British ordered an investigation that resulted in another white paper. The Passfield White Paper, issued in 1930, concluded that the “immigration, land purchase, and settlement policies of the Zionist Organization were already, or were likely to become, prejudicial to Arab interests. It understood the mandatory’s obligation to the non-Jewish community to mean that Palestine’s resources must be primarily reserved for the growing Arab economy” This, of course, meant that it was necessary to place restrictions not only on immigration but on land purchases as well.
Despite the restrictions placed on its growth, the Jewish population increased to more than 160,000, and the community had become solidly entrenched in Palestine by the end of the 1920s. Unfortunately, as the Jewish presence grew stronger, so did the Arab opposition.
The Least You Need to Know
The British and French emerged as Middle Eastern powers after World War I and sought to expand their empires through a system of mandates that gave them control over strategic regions.
After World War I, the Jews and Arabs discovered that the British had made conflicting promises to them.
As Jewish immigration surged during the 1920s, Arabs remained convinced that the Jews would force them out of Palestine and were a corruptive influence on Islamic values.
The mufti of Jerusalem instigated riots against the Jews. Afterward, the British restricted Jewish immigration to appease the Arabs, all the while concluding that Arab fears were unjustified.
Chapter 7
This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land
In This Chapter
Jews flee Hitler and bolster community in Palestine
The Arabs rebel against the British
Partition becomes an option
Great Britain reneges on promise of Jewish home
The most important aspect of the Jewish community’s development in the 1930s was immigration. This also continued to be the most persistent cause of discontent among the Arabs.
As the following table indicates, Jewish immigrants trickled into Palestine at the beginning of the decade, and then began to flood the country as the restrictions of the Passfield Paper (see Chapter 6) were gradually relaxed. The record number of immigrants in 1935 was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British Administration considered the number of immigrants to have been too large in 1935, so the government informed the Jewish Agency that less than one third of the quota the agency asked for would be approved in 1936. This decision, in essence, condemned thousands of Jews to death in Nazi concentration camps.
Jewish Immigrants to Palestine, 1930–1941
1930
4,944
1931
4,075
1932
12,533
1933
37,337
1934
45,267
1935
66,472
1936
29,595
1937
10,629
1938
14,675
1939
31,195
1940
10,643
1941
4,592
Increasing Standards of Living for Jews and Arabs
The Jewish population increased by 375,000 between World War I and World War II, while the no
n-Jewish population rose by 380,000. Nevertheless, the Arabs continued to assert that they were being dispossessed. The Jews argued that the Arabs were not being displaced—rather, their condition was improving. To support their claim, the Jews cited the reduction in the Muslim infant mortality rate, which had resulted primarily from the improved health conditions established by the Jewish settlers. Arabs from neighboring states also immigrated (unrestricted by the British) to Palestine in large numbers to take advantage of the higher standard of living that the Jews made possible.
This standard was reflected by the per-capita income of the Palestinian Arabs, which more than doubled between 1920 and 1937 and was considerably higher than the averages in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The Arabs’ income, however, was still only a little more than half that of the Jews of Palestine.
The Arab population increased the most in cities with large Jewish populations, such as Haifa (216 percent), Jaffa (134 percent), and Jerusalem (90 percent). These phenomenal rates might be compared with the more modest increases that took place in Arab towns: 42 percent in Nablus, 40 percent in Jenin, and 32 percent in Bethlehem.
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Mysteries of the Desert
An interesting phenomenon was taking place during the uproar over Jewish immigration and the incessant references to the land’s absorptive capacity. During this period, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 19.6 percent in 1922 to only 14 percent in 1939. The result of this was an explosion of the non-Jewish population, which increased more than 75 percent. This astounding rate of increase can be compared to that of the Egyptians, whose population increased an otherwise exceptional 25 percent during the same period.