This course will discuss the developments in the Middle East from the early 20th century to the present. It will discuss the rise and retreat of Arab nationalism, the problems of internal cohesion of the Arab states, issues of religion and state, and the evolution of Islamist politics. It will also focus on the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its impact on the region and will conclude with an in depth analysis of the “Arab Spring” by placing these contemporary revolutionary events in their historical context. Please note that this course builds upon a previous course - The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part I Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!
6.4.1 The Arab Rebellion and the Jewish Response - Part 1
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The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part II
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WEEK 2
The beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict
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Professor Asher SusserSenior Research Fellow
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Thus, we have in 1936 the outbreak of the Arab rebellion.
The Arab rebellion against the Zionists, against the British, but
a rebellion to bring an end to this idea under the auspices of the British Mandate
to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
Now the British faced their very basic dilemma.
How could they coordinate between the two components of the Balfour Declaration.
That is, on the one hand the recognition of the right of the Jews to a national
home in Palestine while not prejudicing the rights of the non-Jews in Palestine.
How could the creation of the Jewish national home in Palestine not affect
the rights of the Arabs in Palestine?
And here the British faced a dilemma from which there was no really easy solution.
Even before the outbreak of the Arab rebellion, there were those on the Arab
side in Palestine who believed that there had to be a result to force.
Petitions and requests of the British would no longer suffice.
And the leader of the idea of armed rebellion against the Zionist and
against the British was a Muslim preacher originally from Syria, but
in the 1930s active in Haifa in northern Palestine, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.
And it was Izz ad-Din al-Qassam who preached the beginning of jihad,
religious war, against the Zionists and against the British.
And Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is an iconic figure in Palestinian history,
both among secular Palestinian nationalists like in the Fatah movement or
Islamist Palestinians like in the Hamas movement, and
he is this iconic founding father
of the armed struggle of the Palestinians against the Zionist enterprise.
And those of you who follow the news and hear of Qassam
rockets that are fired every now and then from Gaza into Israel in recent years and
months, they are named after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam about whom we are speaking now.
There was much disappointment amongst the Palestinians in the early 1930's,
not only were they increasing Jewish population, but the disappointment with
British policy, that the British did not carry out the Passfield White Paper and
backed a, backed away from it because of Zionist opposition.
So with the ideas of armed rebellion Izz ad-Din al-Qassam,
was killed by the British in a clash in November 1935 and his, his death
was a huge national event amongst the Arabs of Palestine, and
it is against that background that we see the outbreak
of the rebellion in early 1936.
Spontaneous riots began in April 1936 which were followed by a general strike
that was eh, issued amongst the Arabs in Palestine.
This was the most significant Arab opposition
that had been expressed to the Zionist enterprise until then.
And the Jews in Palestine were shocked once again to encounter the ferocity
of Arab resistance.
And Arab resistance was based both on Islamic religious opposition, and
nationalist motivation.
So on the one hand, there were armed bands of men fighting against the British and
against the Jews and there was at the same time, a social movement to impose
stricter religious observance amongst the Muslim population of Palestine,
such as the wearing of the veil by women.
The Zionists were seen as an extension of British imperialism.
And as eh, Joe Migdal and Baruch Kimmerling have written,
the Arabs in Palestine shared an id,
ideology that totally negated any Jewish political right over the country.
Was the rebellion of 1936 that went on for
three years until 1939, was it a success or a failure?
The general strike that was initiated in April 1936 only lasted for a few months.
And the question was, against whom was the general strike really effective?
It hurt the Arab population actually more than it hurt the Jews.
The Jews, as a result of the general strike, became more economically
independent, less reliant on the cooperation of the Arab population in
Palestine and the building of it, of a port in Tel Aviv was a good example.
The port that the, the Jews in Palestine used most frequently
particularly in the Tel Aviv area was the Arab port of Jaffa.
But because of the strike this was no longer possible, and
the Jews built a port of their own.
But this was symbolic of what was happening as a result of the rebellion.
The Arabs suffered a great deal from the economic loss of the strike and
of the continued rebellion, whereas on the Jewish side, political and
economic autonomy were enhanced even further.
There was great weakness in the Arab community in Palestine.
Considerable internal dissension between the great families
of the Palestinians that were organized in political organizations on a family basis,
the Husseinis, those who supported the leader of
Palestine Haj Amin el-Husseini and the Nashashibis who were their opponents.
There were rivalries between different cities.
Rivalries between city and village.
Rivalries between Muslims and Christians.
And this was a deeply divided society.
The peasants of Palestine were the backbone of the Arab rebellion.
But the peasants were also fighting not only against the Jews and
against the British, they were also fighting a war
based on Islamic religious convictions and also class motivation.
The rebellion took place, for the main part, in the rural inland of Palestine.
And there were now Jews in the rural inland of Palestine.
So why did the rebellion focus there?
It was very much part of a class struggle of the peasants against the city, against
the landowners and the moneylenders in the Palestinian Arab community,
who were their social rivals and enemies.
In its later years, the revolt was turning on its own.
The armed bands carried out attacks and
extortion of people, of wealth, and at times, also against Christians.
And as a result of these attacks from the armed bands, there was
counter-organization of other armed bands to protect those who were being attacked.
The result was a mini civil war amongst the Arabs of Palestine, which weakened
the Palestinians enormously as the conflict with the Zionists continued.
When the Arab rebellion began in 1936, the Arabs in Palestine formed a leadership
committee which was called the Arab Higher Committee, again,
headed by the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini.
After the killing of a senior British official by an Arab gunman in the summer
of 1937, the Arab Higher Committee was outlawed, and
the leadership was exiled from Palestine shortly thereafter.
This created a huge disadvantage for
the Palestinians in their struggle against the Zionists.
The leadership of the national movement for decades thereafter was left outside
the country and had to control affairs from a distance.
The rebellion, however, did allow for the formation of an national identity.
And the rebellion was an expression of the gradual progression of
Palestinian nationalism.
As Kimmerling and Migdal have written, the revolt helped to create a nation
even while crippling its social and political basis.
And this crippling of the social and political basis
of the Palestinian community by internal dissension and conflict was an attrition
of the Palestinians that lasted until 1948, when they entered the war
in a situation of exhaustion when they met the Jews in the battlefield.
Exiled from Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini maintained his leadership
position by physically eliminating his competitors in Palestine.
This only caused greater internal dissension and conflict, and
enhanced the lack of unison and
unity amongst the Palestinians in their struggle with the Zionists.
In the Arab rebellion, more Arabs were killed by other Arabs than Jews and
British combined.
During the Arab rebellion, there were other
indications of a certain political and social weakness in Palestinian society.
The Palestinians, recognizing their relative weakness and their internal
divisions, tended to rely ever more from the Arab rebellion onwards on outsiders.
Arab volunteers from outside Palestine fought for
the Palestinians in the Arab rebellion, just as the Arab states intervened
in Palestine in 1948, eventually leading to a situation with the Palestinians
because of increasing Arab intervention on the side of the Palestinian Arabs.
The Palestinian Arabs themselves gradually lost control of their destiny.
The internal intervention also led to the reality in the Arab rebellion,
and again in 1948, where amongst the Palestinian Arabs there were
different commanders competing for authority.
There was no clear hierarchy of command in organization
as there was on the Jewish side.
And generally speaking, the Palestinian national movement from
the 1930s onwards vacillated between two extremes, the one,
self-reliance, and the other, independence on the external Arabs.
And what was happening in this period of the 1930s and the 1940s,
self-reliance was declining, and the Arabs in Palestine were becoming ever more
dependent on the good or the ill will of their Arab neighbors.
So what was the response of the Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv,
as it was called?
The rebellion led to the expansion of the Jewish self-defense force
known as the Haganah.
The expansion of the Jewish self-defense force was conducted with
British permission.
The British, after all, were very pleased to have more Jewish military
force that would allow them cooperation in the suppression of the Arab rebellion.
So Jewish auxiliary forces were established with British permission, and
sometimes even under British command, such as The Field Companies or
the Special Night Squads that were established by the British officer,
Orde Wingate, and enhanced the Jewish military potential quite significantly.
The Jewish forces in Palestine, as a result of the Arab rebellion,
began to assume a more regular army style, more than an underground organization.
And it was in the 1930s that the, the Jewish military force also developed
its intelligence capabilities and generally enhanced its military potential.
No Jewish settlements were abandoned durade, during the Arab rebellion.
In fact, many more were built, and
the building of settlements was continued with the idea of partition in mind.
That is, the building of settlement in blocks that will allow eventually for
the partition of Palestine into two states.
The fact that a port was built in Tel Aviv was an indication of
the developing transport capabilities of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
And generally, the Yishuv became more autonomous in just about every respect.
Jews and Arabs became more physically separate.
Two separate communities living apart
is the way things were developing in Palestine.
And the rebellion had its limits and much of a boomerang effect of the strike, for
example, on the Arab community.
The Arabs were weakened by the strike economically and socially,
as they were also, and even more so, by the general internal divisions.
And as a result, it is they who arrived exhausted to the struggle in 1948.
Arab society in Palestine was deeply divided and leaderless.
And there were divisions on many levels between factions, village and
town, Muslims and Christians, notables and peasants, and one can go on and on.
The rebellion, as we have noted, lasted for three years from 1936 to 1939.
Shortly after the rebellion broke out the British, as they usually did
in circumstances such as these, appointed a commission of inquiry.
And that commission of inquiry, known as the Peel Commission since it was headed by
Lord Peel, investigated the situation in Palestine and
published a most impressive report, one of the most impressive pieces of scholarship,
one could say, on the problem of Palestine ever written.
And the Peel report recognized that the rebellion
proved that in Palestine there were two national movements.
This was a radical departure from the British policy of the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration, after all, had only recognized Jewish national rights.
Here, one can point to the change that was effected by the Arab rebellion.
The Arab rebellion had many failures, to which we have already alluded, but
the Arab rebellion also had a number of important successes.
And that was to convince the British and the Zionists that there was indeed
an Arab national movement in Palestine that could not be ignored.
This drove the British to the logic of partition.
If there were two national movements in Palestine, it made sense to create two
states in Palestine, to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
And when the report was published in July 1937,
it indeed signified partition as the solution to the Palestine question.
The Jews were given a state that included the coastal plain and the Galilee,
some 20% of the territory of Palestine, and
the rest was given to the Arabs of Palestine.
Jerusalem was not included in either the Jewish state or the Arab state.
It was to be included in an area that would still be run by the British Mandate.
The Arab state that was to be created in Palestine would not be independent,
but would be annexed to the state of Trans-Jordan.
And thus Trans-Jordan would become a big Arab state that
would encompass both sides of the Jordan River.
Since there was a large Arab population within the boundaries
of this Jewish state, particularly in the Galilee,
the Peel report came up with the idea of transferring.
The Arabs of the Galilee, some voluntarily,
and others by coercion to the Arab state.
Arab opposition to the Peel report was complete, with one exception.
The Amir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan who was to of course,
acquire the Arab part of Palestine, came out in support of the program.
But no other Arabs did.
As for the Jews, they rather grudgingly accepted the British
decision to give them some 20% of Palestine, which on the one hand,
was a historical recognition of the idea of Jewish statehood.
But in only 20% of Palestine, many on the Jewish side, favored rejection.
But in the end, majority of the Jews went along with the partition idea,
most of them believing that this would be a basis for
further discussion with the British when the time came.
The expansion of the borders might come later, but
the British withdrew the idea in 1938, the winds of war were blowing in Europe and
there was a need to placate the Arabs, the Arabs were a much more useful ally for
the British than the Jews who only had their problems to offer.
In early 1939, with no agreement in sight between the Jews and
the Arabs in Palestine, and as the Arab rebellion was grinding to an end,
the British convened a conference in London at the Palace of St.
James, and therefore known as the St. James Conference.
In which the Jews and the Arabs deliberated for
weeks on end with no conclusion, at the end of which, the British issued
a White Paper of their own, that is, a British statement of policy.
And essentially, this British statement of policy
from May 1939, the White Paper of May 1939,
was the final British abandonment of support for the Zionist idea.
The White Paper included three main points,
one was their Jewish immigration to Palestine would be restricted
to 75,000 in the five years ahead, 15,000 a year.
Jewish immigration would only be able to continue thereafter,
that is from 1944 onwards, with Arab consent.
But Arab consent for Jewish immigration would mean, in fact,
that there would be no more Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Land sales were also restricted to those areas where the Jews were already
predominant.
And Palestine was to become independent in ten years time.
What that meant was, that if Jewish immigration would only
continue at fifteen thousand a year until 1944, and
Palestine would become independent in 1949, Palestine would
be an independent Arab state in which the Jews would only be a minority.
That meant, in practice, the end of the Zionist idea.
This independent state in ten year's time was possibly to be part of a greater Arab
federation, so the British thought.
And they would, therefore, be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state.
But Palestine would be part of a greater Arab federation.
But in such a greater Arab state,
the Jewish minority would be even more inconsequential.
The timing of the White Paper in May 1939, was particularly unfortunate.
The Jewish plight in Europe was worsening from day to day, and as a result,
the White Paper was widely condemned by the opposition in Britain, and
was even rejected by the League of Nations as the lack of British
fulfillment over their mandate over Palestine.
Britain's argument, on the other hand, was that the national home already existed.
They had fulfilled their commitment completely.
There were half a million Jews in Palestine.
There were many Jewish settlements.
A vibrant Jewish community with its political institutions and organizations.
The British, so they argued,
had honestly fulfilled their commitment.
For the Zionists, this was a huge disappointment.
This was an abandonment by the British of the Zionist enterprise, and
the Arab rebellion in Palestine also presented the Zionists with a realization
that what they had ahead of them was a conflict between ideology and reality.
The project as they had hoped was not one of peace, but conflict.
On conflict with the Arabs was inevitable, eventually.
And as a result of that realization, there was some on the Zionist side who
questioned the very right of the Zionist to settle in Palestine and
to continue with the project, if this is what it entailed.
There were those who thought,
that the idea of Jewish statehood should be abandoned.
But for the majority of the Zionists, that was not the conclusion.
And their idea was to prepare for the fight that was certainly to come.
There was no choice but to face this reality, and it was the youth born
in Palestine who would have to follow and execute the policy of confrontation.
Active defense was the homeland style of Jewish defense and self-help.
As opposed to the Jews of the Diaspora, who were more
helpless in their confrontation with their enemies of the exile.
The White Paper, and its abandonment of the Zionist Project,
meant that cooperation with Britain was no longer possible.
And therefore, designers' project as one of evolution,
of graduality made no sense anymore.
There was no time for that.
Time was running out.
The predicament of the Jews in Europe was only getting worse and
British support had come to an end.
It was no longer an evolutionary process that would be satisfactory,
but a revolutionary process.
And a revolutionary process meant that, eventually, there would have to
be an armed confrontation with the Arabs in Palestine and perhaps,
the neighboring Arabs too.
But war was not to be initiated.
War was only to happen when all other options had been exhausted, and
when it was imposed by the other side.
The Jews therefore, at the end of the Arab rebellion had to prepare for
partition and for possible war.
Partition would not bring peace they knew, and therefore,
despite the fact that they were willing to concede on territory,
they realized that this would entail confrontation anyway.
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