The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (33 page)

In the middle of 1919, al-Hajj Amin was still the family’s leading radical. First he helped set up Palestinian representation in Damascus to support Faysal’s peace conference demands, then he worked hard in Jerusalem to achieve a coherent Palestinian stance in favor of unification with Syria. But in this he differed from the rest of the family. His kinsmen Jamal and Said had not yet formed a clear opinion either on Syria or – in contrast to Ismail – on Zionism.

Jamal and Said made efforts to understand Zionism’s direction and impact. They met Haim Kalvarisky, a Zionist mystery man and something of a charlatan, who expressed support for a bi-national solution while remaining strongly associated with the Zionist leadership. Unlike other Jewish friends of the family, such as Gad Frumkin, Kalvarisky was widely known as a man of intrigue, and everyone had heard the story of his meetings with Jamal Pasha, the Ottoman governor during the war. ‘Kalvarisky,’ the governor had said, ‘one day I’ll see you hanging from the gallows.’ ‘No doubt, your highness,’ Kalvarisky had replied, ‘but first I’ll sell you the rope.’
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Despite his dubious reputation, Kalvarisky’s ideas were sometimes surprisingly well received. In mid-May he persuaded Said and Jamal and their close associates Salim Ayub and Bhajat al-Nashashibi to take part in a meeting aimed at creating a permanent apparatus for joint arbitration between the Zionist movement and the traditional Palestinian leadership on inter-communal problems in the Jerusalem area. Kalvarisky was hoping to persuade these families to act against the Muslim-Christian Association, and when young al-Hajj Amin heard this he was furious. Each of the four participants received an anonymous letter signed ‘The leading young Arab men in Jerusalem’, warning that if they continued to meet Kalvarisky they would be regarded as traitors and collaborators with Zionism. The letter concluded on an ominous note, saying that ‘peaceful people might resort to violent actions in the face of such behavior’. Most of the family concluded that the negotiators of the Zionist peace camp were insincere, and those who did not think so, such as Fawzi al-Husayni (about whom more will be said later), would pay with their lives. The national cause demanded obedience to the family leadership, something that had been unheard-of in previous generations. Tradition, Ottoman politics and existential needs had always obliged the family to adopt a joint policy based on internal understanding
and consent, not on violence. Nationalism was less tolerant and much more ruthless.
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On 7 June 1919, Faysal convened a Greater Syria conference at the Arab Club in Damascus and invited Palestinian representatives. Though the occupying authorities barred Palestinian participation in such pan-Arab gatherings, since they could not prevent individuals from traveling to Damascus certain Palestinians were appointed to key positions in Faysal’s administration. Izzat Darwaza was appointed secretary of the congress, Awni Abd al-Hadi personal secretary to the king. The Husaynis were offered a higher post than they had expected: Said was chosen to be the kingdom’s foreign minister. But the ailing fifty-nine-year-old Said was unable to leave his house in Jerusalem, and so Abd al-Hadi received this post too. Amin Tamimi was appointed adviser to Faysal’s prime minister, and several other Palestinians were placed in senior positions because Faysal appreciated their abilities. There were also many Palestinians in the leadership of Faysal’s Istiqlal Party – for example, three of the eight members of the executive committee.
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Faysal instructed his people to tell the King-Crane mission they wanted unity, independence and, if possible, an American or British mandate. While Damascus was preparing to receive the mission, the Palestinians had to be ready for it because they were the American observers’ first stop. On 4 April 1919, Governor Storrs invited al-Hajj Amin and Khalil al-Sakakini to his office and informed them that the American mission would arrive in the summer. The next week was spent in intense discussions at Sakakini’s house about how to present the Palestinian case to the Americans. The sitting room was too small to contain all the individuals who wished to express their views. A group of Nablus notables took part in one of these meetings, and eventually the unelected young leadership of the emergent Palestinian nationalists had to decide how to respond to the international poll on the future of Palestine. Unable to reach an agreement, they decided to consult Ismail al-Husayni. They took a carriage from Sakakini’s Silk House to Ismail’s residence. The fact that the crucial decision-making meetings took place at the house of the head of their family assured many Husaynis that, despite the dramatic reversals caused by the Great War, they were still center stage, or had returned to it after the upheaval.
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Musa Kazim and the heads of other families also attended the consultation, and the presence of these veterans enabled the young men
to create a solid Palestinian position. In this house, which later served the Palestinian leadership from the First Intifada in 1987 until the outbreak of the second in 2000, they resolved that the Arabs of Palestine would join the call for an independent Greater Syria while preserving Palestinian autonomy and opposing Jewish immigration.

The declaration presented to the American observers was drafted with the help of Kamil, Said and al-Hajj Amin, and read:

Syria, from the Taurus Mountains to the Suez Canal, is absolutely independent and part of the overall Arab unity. Palestine, being an integral part of Syria, is independent in domestic matters and will choose its own rulers from among its inhabitants. The people of Palestine are utterly opposed to Zionist immigration and aspirations, but recognize that the Jews who were in the country before the war have the same rights as the local inhabitants.
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In view of the preparations for the Greater Syrian Parliament, they decided to hold another nationwide conference of all the Muslim-Christian Associations as a kind of parliament that would give legal validity to the Palestinian position on the country’s future. For the second time in a matter of months, a general gathering of these associations met on May 24 and confirmed the above resolutions verbatim.

The King–Crane mission was received warmly when it arrived in the summer. The United States was believed to be the great friend of the Arab cause, and the presence of the president’s personal envoys awakened hope that it might still be possible to turn the clock back and undo the Balfour Declaration. Wherever the Americans went they were met by enthusiastic young Palestinians, members of the Arab and Literary Clubs and other organizations. The mission called at thirteen locations, and at each of them delegations from the surrounding villages awaited them.

The fact-finding mission proceeded to Damascus, and in August 1919 it presented its conclusions to the Paris Peace Conference. Its statement must have sounded like
naya
(flute) music to the ears of all who had convened in Ismail’s house in the spring: ‘As for Palestine we recommend to reject the extreme Zionist scheme of unlimited immigration with the purpose of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.’
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It went on in this vein. The Palestinians themselves could not have drafted a more damning report. However, it soon became clear that the
chief players on the Middle Eastern stage, Britain and France, did not intend to consider the report. First they put off all serious discussion about it, and later, after the US Congress did not subscribe to the president’s wish to share in all these world-shaping postwar agreements, the report was quietly deposited on a shelf in the American National Archives, where it is still available for historians to peruse. Meanwhile, the statesmen turned their gaze to the holiday resort of Deauville in the north of France, where something they considered more important was taking place.

In Deauville, in September 1919, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau was forced to bow to the infuriating and humiliating dictate of his former ally, British prime minister Lloyd George, and renounce France’s claim to some of the territories that had been designated during the war as a French sphere of influence, such as the oil-rich region of Mosul in Iraq. He also had to agree to Palestine being included in Britain’s sphere of influence rather than being internationalized, as formerly agreed. Lloyd George’s secretary would later report that the future of Palestine was resolved amid loud shouts and bitter protests. As for Greater Syria, France was assured that the British forces backing Faysal would soon withdraw, leaving the amir to face the French forces that had landed on the coast of Lebanon. Clearly Faysal would have no chance at all against a superior army like the French.
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In fact, in July 1920 Faysal’s army was trounced in a short battle in Maysalun on the Syria–Lebanon border. Less than a year later the British government compensated him by making him king of Iraq, but it was a bitter setback for the supporters of Greater Syria. The dizzying pace of events forced whoever wished to remain politically significant to adapt rapidly to change. Some of the Husaynis, such as al-Hajj Amin, Jamal and Musa Kazim, did so by replacing the idea of Greater Syria with that of independent Palestine, thereby ensuring the family’s continuing centrality in the Palestinian national movement.

So the Great Syria option was taken off the Palestinian agenda, and on 20 June 1920 everyone was ready to welcome the British Mandate’s High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel. The two years of military rule were over, and at least the elder Husaynis, including Ismail, Said and Musa Kazim, hoped to continue conducting the ‘politics of notables’ – that is to say, maintaining autonomous control of their society’s affairs with the blessing of the authorities and of society itself. Unlike the Ottomans, though, the British demanded greater
commitment and refused to rule by means of intermediaries, and they greatly reduced the power of the upper class. They appointed officials, some of them Jews, to senior posts that Husaynis or members of other notable families had held during Ottoman times.

The younger men led by al-Hajj Amin were too inexperienced to win the support of all the families and the general populace, and consequently those who were best placed to lead Palestinian society were unable to steer it off the path chosen by external authorities. Such a person was Musa Kazim, who under different circumstances might have changed the course of Palestinian history. He had retired before the end of the Great War, and his appearance in the early days of British rule showed that he was still living in the Ottoman era: he regularly wore his Ottoman medals and traditional headgear, and occasionally the tarbush, as befitted the family’s
sharifi
descent. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, he had not yet become interested in national politics. He had been a senior Ottoman official, loyal to his government, and like most of his family had had nothing to do with the Arab revolt.
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His appointment to the mayoralty in place of his brother looked like a continuation of the Ottoman way of doing things, but the British demand for absolute obedience to London’s policy on Zionism drove Musa Kazim, almost against his will, into a position of national leadership. In the next chapter we shall see how Musa Kazim provided the young al-Hajj Amin with the family’s backing in the struggle for power, though their alliance lasted too short a time to save Palestine.

Even as they turned their attention to national politics, the Husaynis remained profoundly Jerusalemite. They served in the municipality throughout the British Mandate – even after 1934, when a Jew was appointed mayor – and through it continued to affect the city’s character. One of the most dynamic political bodies on the scene was the Association for Jerusalem – an interfaith, inter-communal and bi-national organization that served as an ideal model to anyone in the international community who wished to solve the problem of Jerusalem. However, the nationalization of Jerusalem reduced the association to an obsolete entity that now seems impossible to resurrect. The initiative for this body probably came from Ronald Storrs, who hoped that it would help develop civil services that the military rulers did not tackle. Following the model of similar groups in the English cities of Oxford and Cambridge, the association concerned itself chiefly with the preservation of Jerusalem’s religious and cultural heritage.
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Two Husaynis were members of the association, Kamil al-Husayni and Musa Kazim. Together with a team of archaeologists, architects and government officials, they supervised the preservation of the holy city. In the final days of military rule, the
mufti
accompanied Storrs when he opened the renovated markets of the Old City. They conducted a strange ceremony reminiscent of guild rituals in Europe, giving each craftsman and apprentice a document obliging him to remain loyal to his craft. Among the recipients were Muslims, Jews and Christians, and no such general ceremony would take place again under the British Mandate or thereafter.

But architectural matters were not all that concerned the family during the first two years of British rule. Following the example of Ismail, some of the Husaynis became pillars of the educational system in the city – notably Ishaq Musa al-Husayni, who was the right-hand man of his old teacher Zurayq Nakhla and who served as deputy director of the English College in Jerusalem. Thanks to Zurayq, Ishaq Musa became a leading authority on the Arabic language and its preservation, and he advanced its research with modern methods adopted from the West. Another of his teachers, Musa Asaaf al-Nashashibi, had introduced him to Arabic literature, and Ishaq Musa regarded him as the person who helped shape his Arab identity during their close association from 1918 to 1920. Ishaq Musa noted in his memoirs that it was thanks to the Arabic foundation he had acquired from this mentor that he was able to preserve his Arabism during the many years he spent in the West.
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