On April the 19th 1936, the Palestinians launched a national strike to protest against mass Jewish immigration and what they saw as Britain's alliance with the Zionist movement.
The British responded with force.
During the six months of the strike, over 190 Palestinians were killed and more than 800 wounded.
Wary of popular revolt, Arab leaders advised the Palestinians to end the strike.
The statement was signed by Prince Abdullah and the Imam of Yemen. They appealed to the Palestinians to end the strike. They said their ally Britain would resolves the issues.
1937 - Palestinian leaders bowed to pressure from the Arab heads of state and agreed to meet the British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Lord Peel.
In its report of July 1937, the Peel Commission recommended the partition of Palestine.
The report drew the frontiers of a Jewish state in one-third of Palestine and an Arab state in the remaining two-thirds to be merged with Transjordan.
A corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa would remain under British Mandate.
The Commission also recommended transferring where necessary Palestinians from the lands allocated to the new Jewish state.
The Commission's proposals were widely published and provoked heated debate.
The Zionists were very happy with the Peel Commission report because it stated the principle of transferring people from one territory to another based on their nationality or religion. For the Zionists, the principle of transfer could lead to a 100% Jewish state with the permission and endorsement of the Mandate. For the Zionist movement, this was the best part of the Peel Commission.
The ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from Palestine had been planned for decades by the Zionist movement.
It is known that there was a transfer committee headed by Yosef Weitz who was the right hand of Ben-Gurion in the 1930s. This confirms that the Zionist planners had considered the necessity for a systematic cleansing of the Arabs The Zionists could later promote the idea of 'a land without people for a people without land'.
The Jews had wiretapping service in the 1930s. They were taping calls made by the Mufti, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini. So they knew if any Jews were communicating with Hajj Amin's group. They would warn those Jews against doing this, even if they hadn't revealed any secrets.
As the Palestinian revolt continued, Britain's response hardened.
Between 1936 and 1937, the British killed over 1,000 Palestinians. 37 British military police and 69 Jews also died.
In September 1937, Britain declared martial law and disbanded the main Palestinian political organ - the Arab Higher Committee - headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini.
Five of its members were exiled to the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, a remote British colony.
One of these was the mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Al-Khalidi.
Outcast in the Seychelles, he wrote a diary condemning British policy and its support for Zionism.
In October 1937, fearing imprisonment, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini and other Palestinian leaders fled to Lebanon.
The political leadership of the Palestinians was now in exile.
1938 - A school text book from this period shows what Palestinian schoolchildren were learning.
The book defines Palestine as bordering Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Within ten years, all this was to change.
The revolt continued despite the absence of the Palestinian leadership.
To crush the protests, Britain sent in reinforcements.
Britain assigned its most renowned generals to break this revolution. General Wavell, General Dill, General MacMichael and General Ritchie. These four all fought in World War I and had great military experience.
British troops spared no effort in seeking to disarm the Palestinians.
This included widespread searches for weapons.
If they found an empty cartridge by the door, they would blow the entire house up.
Britain banned everyone from owning weapons and would prosecute anyone who had a single bullet. In our entire town there were only four rifles.
They would come to search. They would mix the flour with the wheat, and the wheat with the corn and lentils. They would wreck the house and leave.
They forced palestenians to gather in the school and said bad words to us. They searched the entire town. They humiliated of palestians.
The British herded the women into the mosque. Meanwhile, they would search the houses looking for men. As soon as the tanks and airplanes appeared, the revolutionaries would run away.
The reaction of the British authorities was very violent. They created concentration camps in Palestine, and put thousands of Palestinian citizens in those concentration camps. Detention.
Arrested without charge.
As the death toll rose during the revolt, the Palestinian press captured the mood of its community.
1938 - The Jewish Settlement Guards
While the British authorities disarmed the Palestinians, they armed and equipped special Jewish forces to ostensibly act as protective militia for Jewish settlements.
The Palestinians saw this as further evidence of British bias and injustice.
In 1938, an underground Zionist paramilitary organization. Called Irgun began to increase the number of attacks against Arab targets.
In July of that year the group carried out a succession of bombings in civilian areas in Haifa and Jerusalem.
Sixty-eight Palestinians were killed. [July 6, 1938] Two car bombs at a market in Haifa.
July 7, 1938]
[Bombing of a market in Jerusalem [July 8, 1938] Bombing of a bus station in Jerusalem.Zionism without violence whether before or after the establishment of the state of Israel.
In some cases, British officers were actively engaged in training Jewish paramilitaries.
A Jewish paramilitary force called Haganah was trained by Orde Wingate a British officer and ardent supporter of Zionism.
Orde Wingate was very racist towards the Arabs. During his role as a British army officer in the Arab revolt that he decided to include Jewish soldiers in his units, and he taught them how to occupy Palestinian villages, expel them, destroy them. And the ideas of ethnic cleansing that would be perpetrated on the ground in 1948.
In 1976, BBC ran a TV series about Wingate's life containing a scene on his activities in Palestine.
Commander to Wingate: "He gave full approval for your scheme of using a combined force of British and Jewish Personnel."
Wingate to Soldier: "British soldiers and Haganah men will assemble at 19:00 hrs on May 15, 1938."
Moshe Dayan later Israel's defense minister looked up to Orde Wingate as a mentor.
Wingate organized special night raids of armed Haganah and British volunteers against Palestinian villages suspected of harbouring revolutionaries.
The Palestinian revolution reached its peak in the summer of 1938.
There were about 65 local leaders and 14 district leaders.
60-70% were followers of Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam. [Yousef Hijazi ] For example in upper Galilee, there was the Qassami commander Kahlil Al Isaa who participated in the battle of Ya'bad with Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam. In lower Galilee the commander was also a follower of Al-Qassam. Tawfeeq El Ibrahimi.
This is why we say the revolution was an extension of the Al-Qassam revolution.
The Palestinian resistance leader in the Jenin area was Farhan Al Saadi.
The Nablus region was commanded by Mohammed Saleh Al Hamad, who was killed in May 1938.
Abdel Fatah Mustafa took over command.
In Jerusalem, the Palestinian commander was Abd Al-Qadir Al-Husseini.
In Jaffa, Hasan Salama.
By 1938, the Palestinians were beginning to form into more coordinated groups in their uprising against British occupation and Jewish immigration.
The Commander in Chief of the revolutionaries was Abdul Rahim Al Haj Mohammad.
Abdul Rahim Al Haj Mohammad warned that if the Palestinian political leadership did not toughen its stance, then the revolution would be defeated.
A few days later Abdel Rahim was killed in an ambush set up by the British in the village of Sanur.
Abdul Rahim left behind him four sons.
The ambush of the leader Abdel Rahim Al Haj Mohammad and his murder in Sanur in March 1939 is still a classified file in both the British and Israeli archives.
The leadership at that time did not understand the situation on the ground.
Between 1938 and 1939, the British held dozens of military tribunals.
112 Palestinians were executed.
Among them Farhan Al Saadi, the 80-year-old revolutionary from Jenin executed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The British kept records of all Palestinians with patriotic tendencies, those who, from the British perspective, were trouble-makers.
One such Palestinian, patriot or troublemaker, was the Greek Catholic bishop of Acre, Gregorios Hajjar.
He had warned against the Jews wishing to take over Palestine.
Bishop Hajjar is known as "The Bishop of the Arabs".
In 1940 he was killed in a car crash on the way to Haifa. Local police reports suggested it was not an accident.
Today he is held in esteem by both Christian and Muslim Palestinians.
Britain also used collective punishment to exert pressure on the citizens. They burned fields and rounded men up and made them walk on burning coal and cactus plants. People were tortured. Food staples like oil and sugar were deliberately mixed together. The population was starving. There were home demolitions and long sieges on hot summer days.
All this lowered the morale of the Palestinians. It reduced their capacity to continue the revolution especially after the execution of a number of revolutionaries.
In addition to the targeting of its leaders, the revolution was also infiltrated.
Jews collaborated with British intelligence. If a Jew received information from an Arab collaborator, he would inform the British army and they would go together to make arrests. Because at that time the Jews didn't have an official army.
The Jews had good relations with the British. They would ask the British to release a revolutionary if they thought they could turn him into a collaborator. Islamic nationalist clubs were set up and financed by the Zionists to speak out against the nationalist movement. When delegates from the nationalist movement went to London those clubs would send telegrams criticizing them they didn't represent them. So the Zionists established Islamic clubs?
Islamic nationalist. Not just Islamic.
The Palestinian revolt lasted from 1936 to 1939.
In that period, an estimated 5,000 Palestinians were killed and 14,000 wounded. Some 100 British soldiers and 400 Jews also died during the revolt.
One out of every ten Palestinian male youths of fighting age, between 18 and 40, was either in prison, killed, wounded or expelled from the country.
So the generation that could have formed an army to resist the Zionist movement in the 1940's was simply missing.
Anyone who took an active part in the revolution was killed, fled or executed, or fled.
There were almost no institutions left in the Palestinian society, no activists, nothing. Society was in a very poor state.
Palestinian society was leaderless in many ways, both militarily and politically. And although there was a Palestinian leadership in exile, it had very loose connections to the events inside Palestine.
The battle for Palestine was lost by the Palestinians not in 1948 but in the late 1930s, because Britain completely smashed to the ground the Arab revolt and the Arab irregular forces.
In 1939, Britain held a conference at St. James's Palace in London to discuss the partition of Palestine. The Arab and Jewish delegations refused to sit at the same table.
The Palestinian delegation was surrounded by the delegates from Jordan, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq.
In the same hall the Zionist delegation including Ben-Gurion, Weizmann and Sharett was accompanied by rich and powerful Jews from round the world. So, we went to the Mandate Government, the real partner of our enemy, to negotiate for what was left of our rights.
After five weeks of talks, the conference failed in delivering the goal of bringing peace to Palestine.
Later that year, the world was again at war.
Soon after the outbreak of WWII, Jews in Palestine were permitted to enlist in the British army.
Fighters from the Haganah paramilitary group were trained by the British. They would later form the core of the Israeli army.
As part of what appeared to be a deliberate plan, Jews joined the British army making up some of its brigades. Many Jews who'd played leading roles in the 1948 war, several of whom are still alive, served in the British army during World War II.
This undoubtedly had a tremendous impact on the events of 1948. Thousands of Jews were mobilised. They knew how to use heavy weapons, artillery, radios. All the expertise a professional army should have. The Palestinians completely lacked this.
The experience of World War II benefited Jewish soldiers in the Palestine war. In Palestine we saw Jewish soldiers experienced in using all types of weapons. The air force, tanks and even just basic weapons. They had all kinds of experience, even in military strategy. Jewish officers rose to high ranks in the British army.
As war engulfed the world, in Palestine according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe Jewish groups initiated an intriguing intelligence-gathering operation.
The first stage was the collection of material about every village in Palestine. This was called the 'Village File Project'.
They were quite amazing because they had information on every village in Palestine, mainly about the details of how good actually would be to take it over so, there was a lot of information about the quality of the land, how rich the people were to the extent that they even knew how many fruits were on each tree, what was the political affiliation of people, how easy or how difficult it would be to occupy it.
In the late 1930s, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They were actually exploiting Arab hospitality, because if you come to a village in Palestine, it doesn't matter who you are, you are invited and they used that hospitality to spy around. What they especially needed were two things: one was to know how to access the village later on in order to occupy it and to know what the village had in terms of assets and so on, so when they occupy it, so that people will not run away with what the Zionists wanted for themselves.
Zionists were keen to increase the numbers of Jews coming to Palestine.
But following the St James Conference in 1939 the British imposed limitations on Jewish immigration.
This change in British policy was met with opposition.
In 1940, a French-built ocean liner, the Patria, was at Haifa harbor carrying 1800 Jewish refugees who had earlier arrived from Nazi-occupied Europe.
The British were deporting them to Mauritius.
To prevent this, the Haganah group planted a bomb on-board to disable the ship.
A large hole was blown into the side of the ship and some 260 people on board died when the boat sank.
Details of this operation were disclosed 17 years later by the Haganah member who had planted the bomb.
1942 - The British were struggling to contain the situation in Palestine meanwhile in New York, in May 1942, an important meeting took place at the Biltmore Hotel.
Some 600 prominent American delegates and Zionist leaders attended.
The meeting was prompted by the realization that America, not Britain would henceforth play a part in the fulfillment of Zionist designs.
Attendees included David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency and Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organization.
At that conference, the Zionist Organization decided to look to the US, not Britain, for future support.
They had strong ties with Zionists in both Republican and Democratic parties.
Even today those ties are strong, the relationship evolved over time.
The U.S. from emerged from World War II as the leader of the western world, and correspondingly, Britain declined as an imperial power.
Where the sun had once never set, but was now completely absent. This encouraged the Jews to depend even more on the US and strive to win over leading figures from both American political parties using Zionist capital and propaganda.
1943 - The Biltmore declaration outlined support for what it called the establishment of a 'Jewish commonwealth' in all of Palestine.
It condemned Britain's limits on Jewish immigration.
Other Americans raised concerns about the Zionist programme.
In 1943, General Patrick Hurley, a former Secretary of War submitted a report to President Roosevelt following a visit to Palestine and a meeting with Ben-Gurion in Jerusalem.
In the report, Hurley was highly skeptical of the Zionist agenda.
He summarized its expansionist aims: "The Zionist Organization in Palestine has indicated its commitment to an enlarged program for ONE: A sovereign Jewish state which would embrace Palestine and probably eventually Transjordan;
TWO: The eventual transfer of the Arab population from Palestine to Iraq;
THREE: Jewish leadership for the entire Middle East in the fields of economic development and control.
Zionist supporters in America were undeterred.
In 1944, the World Jewish Conference met in Atlantic City in the state of New Jersey.
The speeches left little doubt about their drive to see the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.
A free and democratic Jewish commonwealth in Eretz Israel, on Eretz Israel, means nothing more than justice to the Jew, freedom for the Jew, and the equality of the Jewish people with all the free people of earth. A real solution of the Jewish problem cannot be brought about unless the Jewish people are given the right, with the help of the United Nations, to establish Palestine once and for all as a Jewish commonwealth.
This conference appeals to the United Nations to ensure that the general scheme of post-war reconstruction shall include the establishment of Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.
In 1945 following the end of World War II US President Harry Truman appeared to encourage the Zionist agenda by recommending the 100,000 displaced Jews in Europe be allowed to emigrate to Palestine.Always hoping that we finally arrive at the peace in the world, which we anticipated when we created the United Nations.
1945 - Haganah Back in Palestine, Britain was maintaining its new policy of limiting Jewish immigration. As a result, the different Jewish paramilitaries decided to begin coordinating attacks against the British military.
The main Jewish force the Haganah agreed to work with the Irgun and Stern gang. The Jewish Resistance Movement was formed.
David Ben-Gurion persuaded members of the Jewish community in America to fund the purchase of arms manufacturing machinery, so that the Haganah could produce its own weapons.
Meanwhile, Palestinian politician Musa Al-Alami went on a tour of the Arab world.
In Arab capitals he discovered complacency towards the situation in Palestine: the general view being that the Arabs vastly outnumbered the Jews and could control the Jewish minority.
For their part, the British realized how volatile the situation had become in Palestine. They began to evacuate British families.
Discussions went on between the Zionist movement and the British authorities.
Documents reveal that Chaim Weizmann held secret conversations in March and July of 1946 with the British High Commissioner Alan Cunningham.
In these talks, they discussed the partition of Palestine and how the parts of a viable Israeli state should be linked up, giving it control of both the Negev Desert and the waters of Galilee.
On the ground in Palestine, the British army continued to confiscate arms from both sides.
In the first half of 1946, over 300 Palestinians were arrested for the possession of weapons.
At this time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husseini was in France.
He had spent the war years in Italy and Germany - hoping the Axis countries would win World War II and that their victory would herald independence for Palestine.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem watching the Islamic Troops of the German Army.
Hajj Amin dreaded a new leadership in Palestine because he wouldn't have the same influence as before.
The Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin... We believe he had good intentions. Personally, I don't believe he was up to the standard required. Yet, we must put things in their context: the man was Palestine's Grand Mufti, and President of the Islamic Council. I didn't give him those positions...the British did.
In May 1946 the Mufti went to Egypt to participate in a summit meeting of Arab leaders.
The newly-formed Arab League's first item of agenda was to coordinate a response to the situation in Palestine.
A follow-up meeting of Arab foreign ministers was held in Bloudan, Syria.
Present as an observer was the director of British Military Intelligence in the Middle East, Brigadier Iltyd Clayton.
Meanwhile, back in Palestine the British army was now the target of an increasing number of attacks from Jewish paramilitary groups.
Extremists wreck a train on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Armed crewmen inspect the hole where the explosion which caused the wreck occurred, and guards patrol the area.
Violence and death ride the ancient streets of Jerusalem and here is the climax: the blasting of police headquarters. Three men lost their lives in this attack. A moving van first shot at the station then launched high explosives. Soldiers culled the debris for other dead as turmoil heaves in the cradle of brotherly love. New High Commissioner Cunningham investigates. Tommies patrol the streets. Quiet reigns, but is it the calm before another storm?
The King David Hotel in Jerusalem: site of the largest and most audacious attack on the British Mandate forces.
The building was used by the British as their administrative and military headquarters.
On July 22 1946, a huge bomb explosion demolished the entire south-west side of the hotel.
Ninety-one people were killed, The attack was carried out by Irgun, the Jewish paramilitary group.
The King David Hotel was not to be their last target.
On March 1st 1947, Irgun blew up the British Officers Club at Goldsmith House in Jerusalem.
Jewish terrorist gang to intimidate authority.
16 persons died and 13 others are injured as extremists blow up the officers club in an unremitting campaign of violence. Universal's Cameraman on the scene minutes after the explosion, records the stunned and shaken victims as they are carried from the wreckage. Two of the 50 officer inmates of the club escaped injury as extremists under cover rifle fire hurled explosive-laden suitcases through the windows and doors of the building. Several of the injured died later of their wounds. The club is in shambles.
In July 1947 Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice.
They were abducted as retaliation for the arrest and scheduled execution of three Irgun members.
The British authorities carried out the executions of the three Jewish militants.
The following day, the two British soldiers were found hanging in a field near Netanya.
The sad hanging of the two British army sergeants probably accelerated the speedy exit from Palestine of the British Mandate.
The graves of the two British soldiers can still be found in a British military cemetery of Ramleh, south of Tel Aviv.
Following the so-called 'Sergeants Affairs', British forces in Palestine went on a heightened state of alert.
The leader of Irgun was Menachem Begin.
The group's symbol contained the map of a Jewish state that encompassed the whole of Palestine as well as Transjordan.
British authorities arrested Begin after distributing his photo with the slogan 'Wanted for Murder'. 30 years later, Begin became the prime minister of Israel.
During the last eight years of the British Mandate in Palestine, British documents recorded over 500 attacks by underground Jewish groups.
These included parcel bombs sent to British officials.
On January 12th 1947, another Jewish group the Stern gang parked a truck loaded with explosives outside a British police station.
From Haifa comes pictures showing the result of the recent outrage that shatter the brief lull in terrorists activity. The incident was caused by a man believed by some as one of the Stern Gang. Two British and two Arab policemen are killed and others are reported to be missing. More than 60 police, soldiers and civilians were injured. Many of casualties were caused by flying glass and a great deal of damage was done not only in the police headquarters but also in the neighborhood. Windows were broken as far as a mile away.
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill who had been a prominent and enthusiastic supporter of Zionism condemned the attack.
With attacks on British troops escalating, the British felt increasingly beleaguered in Palestine.
There were several reasons.
There were large numbers of Jews amongst the British security and police officers. They were aware of the British plans and tried to frustrate them. Secondly, the Zionist movement abroad had tremendous influence on the British government. They pressured the government into influencing its own officials, and the Mandatory Authority in Palestine. In February 1947 Britain announced its decision to end its Mandate in Palestine.
Its spokesman said his country would turn over the difficult situation to the United Nations.
“British public opinion will permit no more expenditure of life and treasure. It will acquiesce no longer in the use of British forces and the squandering of British lives to impose a policy in Palestine which one or other of the parties is determined to resist. It has brought down on our heads the execration of the Jews and the bitter resentment of the Arabs.
It has made us the butt of malicious criticism throughout the world. ["We have played our part”].
Britain was now washing its hand of Palestine.
Source : https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/search.html?search=1936#/18/75105
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