The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (49 page)

Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency prepared for a possible conflict with the Palestinians and built up a military infrastructure. In the course of 1935, it smuggled weapons into the country hidden inside civilian imports. On 18 October, while a shipment of cement was being unloaded from the Belgian vessel
Leopold
at the Port of Jaffa, a barrel fell on the dock and broke open, revealing a load of ammunition. The loud cry of a Jaffaite docker marked the start of a new and violent phase in relations between the communities in Palestine.
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This time al-Hajj Amin did not hesitate to recommend that the executive declare a general strike.

At that time Izz al-Din al-Qassam was in Jerusalem trying to persuade al-Hajj Amin to launch a
jihad
against the British and the Zionists. He had established a base in the north of Nablus and was preparing for a sweeping guerrilla campaign. Al-Hajj Amin recognized the value of militant Islamic action, and that year he was also in touch with the Muslim Brotherhood, on which al-Qassam had modeled his group. Al-Hajj Amin had known Abd al-Rahman, the brother of
Hassan al-Bana, founder of the movement; hence his familiarity with it and its methods.
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But al-Hajj Amin’s association with the al-Bana brothers did less for the Palestinians and remained just another chapter in the expansion of the Egyptian movement into a successful pan-Arabist one. So highly did the al-Bana brothers value the association that they published the extensive correspondence between Hassan and al-Hajj Amin as one of movement’s most important texts. The Muslim Brotherhood did manage to hold some impressive pro-Palestinian demonstrations, but their movement was more focused on the struggle against the British occupation of Egypt than on any other issue.
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When face to face with Izz al-Din al-Qassam, al-Hajj Amin did not adopt the line of Islamic militancy. He maintained that the time was not yet ripe for such action. The solution had to be political rather than militaristic. A few days after they met, al-Qassam tried a different tactic to pressure al-Hajj Amin. He sent one of his men, Mahmud Salim, together with a Jerusalem notable named Sheikh Musa al-Azrawi, to inform al-Hajj Amin that he was about to start a revolt in the north of Palestine and to suggest that al-Hajj Amin launch one in the south. The fact that al-Qassam placed himself on equal footing with the
mufti
precluded any possibility of coordination between them as much as the
mufti
’s objection to such action did.
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Al-Hajj Amin wanted to persuade the Arab rulers to pressure Britain to change its policy, and he believed that the Arab world needed to be united to achieve this.

Immediately after al-Qassam’s visit, al-Hajj Amin set out on his travels, accompanied by Izzat Darwaza, the General Secretary of the Pan Islamic Conference in 1931 and of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1936, whose memoirs are the basis for the present account. Their first stop was Cairo. In his white turban, al-Hajj Amin was taller than his companions, who all wore Western suits. He stuck to his traditional black robe and carried a walking stick, thus clearly standing out as the leader.

From Cairo this extraordinary delegation went to the Arabian Peninsula. This was not a courtesy visit or merely a request for support but an opportunity for al-Hajj Amin to practice real statesmanship. He took part in a conciliatory mission between the Saudi king Abd al-Aziz and the Yemeni
imam
Yahya, inveterate opponents on the peninsula who remained enemies despite al-Hajj Amin’s efforts.
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In the summer of 1935, al-Hajj Amin was still the most talked about and highly regarded Palestinian leader, as illustrated by the visit in August of the Tunisian leader Abd al-Aziz al-Thali, who came at
al-Hajj Amin’s invitation to open a new seminary for Islamic reform in the Abu Kabir quarter of Jaffa. But after the visitor departed, it was clear that a new star had risen in the Palestinian firmament.

In November 1935, al-Qassam launched his
jihad
. This time his men did not attack civilians but rather policemen near Ein Harod. They distinguished between Jewish police, whom they killed, and Muslims, whom they let go.
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This action made a powerful impression on Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, who at once organized a number of boys from the local Scouts movement into a guerrilla band and named it ‘The Green Hand’. The actions of this band were unimpressive but very important in the collective memory of Abd al-Qadir’s life. Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s action, however, was a real guerrilla operation that raised his profile in the eyes of the Palestinian public and won him a reputation as one of the Palestinian national movement’s foremost martyrs. The British police launched an extensive hunt for the group, and before the end of November British soldiers shot al-Qassam dead near Kufr Ya’abd.
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Al-Qassam’s death seemed to balance out that of Musa Kazim. The huge wave of sympathy that swept over the country and found expression in a mass funeral in Haifa produced a temporary unity in the Palestinian leadership. ‘Only the poor came to his funeral,’ wrote the Palestinian author and fighter Ghassan Kanafani. At first al-Hajj Amin hesitated and did not attend the funeral or the memorial ceremony. But when the
sheikh
’s posthumous reputation grew and he became a national martyr, al-Hajj Amin, urged by his advisers, called on the widow and gave her 10 Palestinian pounds. Jamal attended the memorial ceremony and made a speech at the Zaharat al-Sharq café before a crowd of 6,000 in which he prophesied – correctly – that ‘al-Qassam’s name will be remembered for ever and become a symbol in the history of the country’.
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Hamdi al-Husayni went further still, publishing a panegyric to al-Qassam in the family newspaper.

Six days after al-Qassam’s death, representatives of the five Palestinian parties called on the High Commissioner and handed him an unusually blunt memorandum. If they did not receive a satisfactory response, they warned him, ‘the situation may deteriorate further and extremism will prevail’.

Neither al-Hajj Amin nor Jamal had ever imagined that the death of the unknown preacher from Haifa would spark a revolt in the north and turn the leadership’s organized protests, strikes and demonstrations into an uprising against the British Empire. The timing was probably inauspicious – Britain had not yet felt any diminution of its
imperial power and was faced with a possible worldwide conflict when the Palestinians chose to challenge them.

Had the political leaders among the Husaynis or their counterparts been able to sense the undercurrents, they might have controlled and diverted them into a more productive channel. But for that they would have had to be in constant touch with the Palestinian masses. Most of the members of the Palestinian Executive were landowners or merchants from the new bourgeoisie, both Christian and Muslim, who were similarly detached from the people and could not represent the peasant majority.
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The followers of al-Qassam, called the ‘
Qassamiyun
’, offered a violent outlet to the very real hardships of the majority. Thanks to their organization, the armed activity continued in early 1936, and the Palestinian consciousness went on battling against British policies and the Zionist presence. The large-scale economic and social processes that had given rise to the extensive anti-government actions in 1929 intensified in the 1930s. The huge influx of Jewish immigrants, the increase in the Jews’ purchasing power, the overwhelming spread of Jewish labor in the urban employment market and above all the sense that private and collective lands were being lost all heightened, or concretized, al-Qassam’s message. The message ran counter to the understanding that the Husaynis and Nashashibis, in fact the entire Palestine leadership, sought to convey. Al-Qassam had rejected the possibility of a political solution, while the leadership pinned all its hopes on one. In 1936 al-Qassam became the guide, and al-Hajj Amin his disciple.

The British woke up late. The High Commissioner decided to renew efforts to create a legislative council and managed to throw the Palestinian camp into confusion. The Nashashibis and their allies favored the proposals, if only because they might put a dent in the dominance of the Supreme Muslim Council. The Husaynis were divided on the issue. Jamal thought it better to make use of the British authorities rather than fight them, because the country would soon be filled with Jews. Thus he justified his public image as the only leader who placed principled considerations above personal ones. Al-Hajj Amin vacillated and neither endorsed the proposal nor rejected it out of hand.
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The public wanted a clear-cut stance, but assuming that the press did not only harangue but also expressed public sentiments, then it appears al-Hajj Amin was faithfully representing what most Palestinians wished for at the time. He seemed to sense that the public was not
eager to rise in battle. In February 1936, al-Hajj Amin summoned the religious dignitaries of Palestine, who must have felt that the public needed to be instilled with a fighting spirit, as their main resolution called for a unification of the
Qassamiyun
with the armed groups of young men organized by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni.
⁶⁵
But some politicians were still hoping to avoid a bloody conflict. That the leadership felt this way is illustrated by its attempts to reach an understanding with the Jewish Agency while deciding to confront the British.

Though that hot April in 1936 is thought to be the start of the Arab Revolt, no one knew it then. Events began to escalate, and we can only see their direction in hindsight. These were difficult days for al-Hajj Amin. The opposition was more radical than he, and the British High Commissioner apparently did not wish to maintain relations with the Palestinian leadership after the violent outbreak in Jaffa in April 1936. Yet at this time al-Hajj Amin chose to seek contact with the Jewish Agency. Some say that he feared for his position,
⁶⁶
which may have been the case. But perhaps he thought that it might be possible to prevent the conflict.

In the middle of July 1936, the principal of the Quaker school in Beirut, Daniel Oliver, arrived in Palestine. Following consultations with Weizmann in London, he hoped to mediate between the Jews and the Arabs. Al-Hajj Amin told Oliver that the demand to stop immigration was not absolute but would remain in force pending a decision by an international commission of inquiry.
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But the initiative never got off the ground: the Jewish leadership was not interested, and the British Parliament, which had been informed of it, quickly dismissed it. This utter disregard, added to the economic and social hardships and al-Qassam’s influence, was one of the immediate causes of the outbreak. But above all the uprising expressed the mounting bitterness and an intense desire to change the situation. As so often happens, the specific incident that triggered the revolt seems trivial in relation to the underlying causes. Historians are unsure which particular event set it off – an attack by the
Qassamiyun
in Nablus that left two Jews dead or a riot in Jaffa following the killing of two Palestinians by some Tel Aviv residents. Both events took place in April 1936.

Violence sparked still more violence, and by the end of the month the country was up in arms. The Arab Revolt, as it became known, had begun. Before the end of the month an eleven-member Higher Arab Committee was formed as a local Palestinian government replacing
the executives of the various conferences. The Husaynis were once more at the forefront. Along with the
mufti
, who was chosen as chairman, Jamal and another member of the family, Ahmed Hilmi, were on the committee. Though the latter was closer to Istiqlal than to the family party, during the revolt he remained loyal to the family. An ally of the family, Hussein al-Khalidi, was on the committee, and the Nashashibis had two representatives as well. The only two Christian members belonged to the Husayni camp.

Thus at the moment of crisis there was national unity. Some months later, the newspaper
Filastin
depicted the elation felt at that historical juncture in a caricature showing Chaim Weizmann horrified by the sight of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and Raghib al-Nashashibi shaking hands.
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But this charmed state of affairs did not last long.

After his election, al-Hajj Amin began to organize a countrywide strike that was meant to continue until Jewish immigration and land purchases had stopped and a representative national government was established. For the first time since the beginning of the mandate, he broke an explicit order from the High Commissioner forbidding him to travel about the country by taking the members of the committee on a tour. Their first stop was the tomb of Sheikh al-Qassam.
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Al-Hajj Amin had become a militant leader, spurred on not only by public opinion but by a new dynamic in internal Palestinian politics. The opposition encouraged a contest to see who was more national, the yardstick being the willingness to take on the British authorities. Al-Hajj Amin was called upon to resign from the presidency of the Supreme Muslim Council, since it was a mandatory government post. Raghib al-Nashashibi had already said as much to Jamal al-Husayni in March 1936. (We know this because of the eavesdropping and shadowing of the Jewish Intelligence Service, whose archive has been opened to Israeli historians but not to Palestinians, even though the bulk of its contents has to do with Palestinian history.)
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