1934 Organised illegal Jewish immigration (Aliyah Bet) to Palestine begins, without permission of the Jewish Agency or British authorities.
1935
15 September Nuremberg Laws: German laws institutionalising the racial theories of Nazi ideology strip German Jews of their rights. Jewish immigration to Palestine rises dramatically.
16 October Cement Incident: large shipment of weapons, concealed in drums of cement, is discovered at Jaffa harbour destined for Tel Aviv. The Arab Executive calls for a general strike, and a demonstration in Jaffa turns into a riot.
20 November Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is ambushed and killed by British soldiers in the hills of Ya‘bad above Nablus.
December High Commissioner Arthur Grenfell Wauchope proposes a twenty-eight-member Legislative Council, with Palestinian Arabs holding fourteen seats. Palestinians accept in principle, but the proposal is defeated by pro-Zionist members of the House of Commons.
1936
15 April Following the murder of three Jews in a robbery incident near Tulkarem, two Arabs are murdered near Petah Tikva.
17 April During the funeral of one of the Jewish victims, rioting breaks out and three Jews are murdered. The Mandate authorities institute Emergency Regulations and impose curfews across Palestine.
20 April Arab National Committee forms in Nablus, followed by committees in all other Arab towns and villages, calling for a general strike.
25 April Arab Higher Committee, consisting of members from all Arab political parties, calls for the strike to continue indefinitely.
May “Village searches” begin: British pre-emptive campaign of terror to discourage Arabs from resisting British rule.
6 May National Committees announce a tax strike.
11 May British army reinforcements arrive from Malta and Egypt. Haganah and other organisations guarding Jewish colonies are legalized as the Jewish Settlement Police.
23 May British arrest sixty-one Arab “agitators” and intern them in detention camps; thirty-seven more are arrested at the beginning of June.
May–June Jaffa port is closed; sporadic attacks occur on the railways and Jewish settlements. Armed bands appear in the hill country.
17–29 June British army demolish large areas of Jaffa.
6 July British military “comb-out,” using four thousand troops, machine guns, and tanks, begins in the region between Nablus and Jerusalem.
4 August Collective Fines Ordinance: law issued by British authorities imposing collective punishments such as fines, mass destruction of property, curfews, and mass administrative detention.
August Jewish acts of retaliation begin.
30 September Martial law is declared in Palestine.
11 October Arab Higher Committee calls an end to the strike, and thereby the revolt.
November Casualty figures from hospital records give the number of fatalities in Palestine during the six months of disturbances: 1,195 Arabs, 80 Jews, 21 British Army, 16 Police and Frontier Police, and 2 non-Arab Christians.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Ghada Hammad; to the unfailingly generous Said Kanaan, Randa, and Nour; to George Hintlian, for his encouragement and guidance; to Naseer Arafat; Albert Aghazarian; Kamal Abdulfattah; Nazmi Juubeh; Samih Hammoudeh; Qais Hammad; Aroub Bayazid; Abir Hammad; Ali Hammad; Faruq and Mona Hammad; Sami Hammad; Iyad Hammad; Khaled Kamal; Bassima Abu al-Huda; Waddah Kamal; Rami Kamal; Farid Kamal; Emad Kamal; Nejad Kamal; Nasser Kamal; Waddah Zuaiter; Rima Tarazi; Salim Tamari; Haifa Khalidi; Sharif Kanaana; Sahar Huneidi; Malak Husseini; Malak Abd al-Hadi and Samir Abd al-Hadi, on the will of whose grandfather, Salim Abd al-Hadi, Fuad Murad’s will is based; Faiha Abd al-Hadi; Beshara Doumani; Ted Swedenburg; Sonia Nimr; Azzam Abu Saud; Samih Abdo; John Tleel; Ghada Khoury; Nazeeha Tuqan; Rima Keilani; Siham Abu Ghazaleh; Fuad Shehadeh; Adel Abu Amsha; Salwa Masri; Fuad Halawi; Abdul Rahman al-Haj Ibrahim; Abdul Sattar Qassem; Rakefet Zalashik, and Raphael Koenig; thank you all for putting up with my questions, and sharing your knowledge and memories. And thank you, Zena Agha, for the maps.
To the best and most generous readers I could have asked for: Katharine Hammad, Joseph Minden, Allison Bulger, Coco Mellors, Steve Potter, Liz Wood, and Saad Hammad. For the conversations, advice, and wisdom, thank you Xanthe Gresham-Knight and Arthur Fournier.
Thank you to the adjudicators of the Harper-Wood Studentship at St John’s College, Cambridge, and particularly Ruth Abbott; thank you to Amy Hempel, Bret Johnston, and Rick Moody, and to everyone at NYU, especially Zadie Smith, Nathan Englander, and Deborah Landau. Thank you to the board of the Axinn Foundation, to Beatrice Monti and Andrew Sean Greer at the Santa Maddalena Foundation, and to the MacDowell Colony for the Arts.
I am especially indebted to the following books: Nablus: City of Civilizations by Naseer Arafat; Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 by Beshara Doumani; The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920–1948 by Ellen Fleischmann; Coutumes Palestiniennes: Naplouse et Son District by Antonin Jaussen; the memoirs of Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh, and of Awni Abd al-Hadi; Tarikh Jabal Nablus wa al-Balqa’ by Ihsan Nimr; The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1920), especially the speech of Marie Joseph Lagrande; Memories of Revolt: the 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past by Ted Swedenburg.
With special thanks to Georgia Garrett, Laurence Laluyaux, Stephen Edwards, and the rest of the team at RCW, Melanie Jackson, Michal Shavit, Elisabeth Schmitz, Morgan Entrekin, Katie Raissian, and Ana Fletcher.
To David Bradshaw and John Coulter, in loving memory.
Thank you to everyone who told me stories about Palestine. And thank you to Arthur, for listening to mine.
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