The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty

by Ilan Pappe

  Young Hanna al-Laham got tired and stuck the flagpole in the ground. Some time later a British officer spotted it and, realizing it was a priceless symbolic souvenir of the war for Palestine, took it for himself. In Jerusalem he met the Swedish interpreter, who persuaded him to hand it over, as he had witnessed the occasion. The Swede kept it for a while but a few weeks later was told to return it to the British forces. When he refused he was arrested. Finally the commander of the London Division persuaded him to give the bed sheets to General Allenby, who delivered them to the Imperial War Museum in London.4

  British forces took Jerusalem on 9 December, and a few days later General Allenby entered the city. Emile al-Ghuri wrote that the general rode in on horseback, whereas Major Lock, who was present, said that he entered on foot. The commander’s gesture of respect for the ancient, war-weary city was also photographed. The conquest of Jerusalem was the climax of the British forces’ successful campaign and the beginning of the end of the Ottoman ‘Operation Lightning’.

  Earlier we noted that few foreign conquerors ever troubled themselves to include Jerusalem in their campaigns because it was strategically marginal.5 Nor was it a major strategic objective in the Great War, though it was of tactical importance. Its conquest concluded the campaign in the Levant and greatly improved the British position in Iraq. All of the Ottoman reserve forces, which for three years had pinned down the allies in the swamps of southern Iraq, had to be withdrawn and sent to defend Damascus, the last jewel in the Ottoman imperial crown. But the principal value of the conquest of Jerusalem was the moral one: Lloyd George, presented the holy city as the latest acquisition of the British Empire in time for Christmas. A devout Christian, he thought this was the finest gift to the people and armed forces of the empire. But the best news would come almost a year later, when the Ottoman Empire signed the armistice agreement that led to the end of the war.

  The conquest of Jerusalem was also of great political importance. A wartime agreement divided the Ottoman Empire’s possessions in the eastern Arab world between Britain and France. According to this agreement, known as the Sykes–Picot Pact, the district of Jerusalem (and indeed most of Palestine) was to be an international enclave. But the physical presence of the British expeditionary and other military forces all over the country, including Jerusalem, enabled Britain to claim the entire territory for its own direct rule when discussions on the Sykes-Picot Pact were renewed in 1919.

  Immediately after his arrival, Allenby summoned Mufti Kamil al-Husayni, Mayor Hussein al-Husayni, the heads of the Christian churches, the chief rabbi and many of the city’s notables to meet him at the foot of the Citadel. Allenby stood on a large podium at the end of the sloping causeway leading to the Citadel gate, while the Jerusalemites were crammed into the three or four meters between the podium and the gate and had to spread along the Citadel wall. The first to speak at this uncomfortable encounter was Allenby’s Arabic-language spokesman, General Jibril Pasha Haddad (a Lebanese-born officer who had served with the British forces in Sudan and had become Allenby’s aide when the war broke out): ‘To the townspeople of blessed Jerusalem and the surrounding inhabitants, the defeat my forces have inflicted on the Turks has led to the conquest of your city by my army …’6 These were his opening words. The tall general, his uniform dusty but his boots freshly polished, never moved a muscle throughout his spokesman’s speech. Haddad explained that the city would be under martial law but that all religions would be respected. He concluded his short speech with a sentence that sparked the first disagreement with the Arabs: ‘This is the end of the Crusaders’ wars.’

  Mufti Kamil al-Husayni jumped as if stung and took hold of the mayor; the two of them left the scene. They were joined by the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and some of the city’s notables. Had they been in England when the victory was celebrated, they would have been even more offended. On 12 January, at a thanksgiving service for the Order of St John, the Archbishop of York said, ‘If London is the commercial heart of the empire, Jerusalem is its soul.’7

  The mufti was called to a meeting with Haddad, who advised him to cooperate with the British and not to take Allenby’s words too seriously, but the mufti remained unconvinced. ‘Go and find someone else to cooperate with you,’ he said. Afterwards he secluded himself at the house of one of his relatives and refused all contact with the British. They, however, kept courting him.

  As early as February 1917, the Arab Bureau, a team of British Orientalists in Cairo whose best-known member was T. E. Lawrence, wrote a memorandum stating that the Husayni family ‘is one of the oldest and most respected families in Palestine, headed by the Mufti Kamil, who is not a fanatic and is generally friendly to foreigners. He does not have a strong character, but this would make it easier for the British to control him.’ However, Kamil was not the head of the family – Ismail and Said were its elders, and Hussein, as mayor, was also one of its heads. Only the death of Hussein in 1918, combined with the importance the British assigned to the post of mufti, made Kamil the head of the family.8 The idea that he could be easily manipulated by the new conquerors was not quite borne out in reality, though by and large Kamil avoided unnecessary friction with the British. Given the position of the family and the posts of mufti and mayor that it held, it stood to reason that it would cooperate with the conquerors and even adopt a pro-British stance in public.

  The new governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, spent three rainy days wandering about looking for the mufti and the mayor. At night in his room at the Morkos Hotel (which the Americans converted into a military hospital soon after the occupation), Storrs wrote that this walk at least persuaded his Egyptian valet Said that they had indeed arrived in Jerusalem. Until then his servant had been sure that it was Jaffa they had conquered, not Jerusalem.

  On 21 December, Storrs located Mayor Hussein al-Husayni, the president of the city council. The dignified Hussein, who was in his fifties, surprised his visitor with his fluent English. He told Storrs that in the final years of Ottoman rule he had lived ‘on his suitcases’, because the Ottomans, aware of his pro-British sympathies, threatened to exile him.

  They talked first about the holy city of Medina in Arabia. ‘Has it already been taken?’ Hussein asked. Storrs gave him the latest news and said that T. E. Lawrence was doing his best to complete the task. Then Storrs asked how many Muslim inhabitants there were in Jerusalem. ‘Eleven thousand,’ said Hussein, adding that the majority belonged to the Hanafi school, which had been predominant in the Ottoman Empire, and a minority to the Shafi’i school, which had been customary before the Ottoman conquest. The Husaynis held the post of Hanafi mufti, the only one approved by the Ottoman religious authorities. Storrs made a note of this information and advised his government to declare that this would be the only recognized post of mufti.9

  After this visit, Hussein sent a messenger to his cousin the mufti to inform him that Storrs would call on him the following morning. The mayor died a few weeks later, and Storrs was asked to appoint his successor. As we have seen, the Ottomans sometimes appointed the mayor and at other times allowed the city’s notables to elect him. The Young Turks were going to institute mayoral elections, but this democratization was halted by the martial law imposed on Palestine by the British authorities. It was simpler to appoint the mayor and so, following the old custom, they appointed a kinsman of the deceased mayor – his older brother, Musa Kazim al-Husayni.

  Thus ended Hussein al-Husayni’s presence on the stage of Jerusalem’s history. He was a remarkable man and was liked by all – the Jews (who had helped elect him), the Christians (whose demands he generally met and whose internal conflicts he arbitrated) and of course the Muslims. Foreigners in the city also enjoyed the company of Hussein, who had been educated in the United States and was broadly conversant with both Arab and Western cultures. But the generation that had reached maturity in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, that had received a mixed Ottoman and Western education and worked in the local and
imperial administration, had other prominent representatives, notably the mufti of Jerusalem, Kamil al-Husayni.

  The day after meeting the mayor, Ronald Storrs went to the Temple Mount to meet Mufti Kamil for the first time. The rain had stopped and the sun warmed the governor and his servant Said as they crossed the great plaza between the magnificent Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque and entered the mufti’s office. They found him sitting in a modest, spotless room behind a long table. The sheikh was then forty-five years old, a gentle, soft-spoken man and a pleasant conversationalist. He and Storrs at once found a common interest – Egypt, where Storrs had recently spent several happy years and where Kamil in his youth had studied at al-Azhar for four years. Kamil missed the newspapers of Cairo, above all Al-Muqatam. When Storrs promised to obtain for him the previous month’s issues, as well as publications in French – Kamil’s favorite language – his face lit up.

  Now and then as they sat there, messengers came in to receive written fatwas on everyday matters. Storrs was impressed by how quietly the mufti’s subordinates and aides came and went. Finally, the mufti complained to the visitor that since the war his budget and that of the religious properties were insufficient for him to pay his staff of seventy. Storrs promised to help out.

  And so, after an awkward start, Kamil al-Husayni became a favorite of the British authorities, who came to trust and rely upon him. The family itself was astonished by the number of posts he was granted. First, he was made the Grand Mufti – al-Mufti al-Akbar. No longer was he the mufti of one school but of all Muslims, and not only of Jerusalem but of all Palestine. This was an idea hatched by the British officials in Egypt. There the religious hierarchy was headed by the Grand Mufti of Egypt and had been even when the country was under Ottoman rule. In addition, Kamil was appointed head of the Shari‘a court of appeal – which had traditionally been held by a member of the Khalidi clan – and guardian of all Muslim religious properties in the city. These added positions brought Kamil not only greater honor and social standing but also a substantial salary.10

  The family had grown very powerful in the final years of the Ottoman period and had become one of the country’s greatest landowners, possessing over 12,500 acres throughout the country. Rabah was the wealthiest Husayni, owning lands in various villages around Jericho, on Qastel Hill near Jerusalem and even on the inland plains.11 The new posts given to members of the family assured even greater wealth, and with it a formidable political position vis-à-vis the local population and the authorities. Political power entailed social, and perhaps national, responsibility. But the transition to national authority would not always deal kindly with the family or with the society it was supposed to represent. And yet no one offered else better leadership at the time, and were it not for the Zionist presence, history’s overall judgment of the family would have been much more favorable.

  In his memoirs, Storrs notes that the guiding principle of the British authorities in Jerusalem was to maintain the status quo. They left the existing institutions and their composition untouched. Thus, for example, the municipality remained predominantly Muslim, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was left in the care of the Nashashibis. Of course, the occupier was not that passive and eventually took more invasive steps. It began with effecting changes in municipal functions – sanitation, public order, road maintenance, repair of war damages – putting the city on its feet and ultimately changing the country’s identity and politics altogether.

  The Husaynis had not enjoyed such economic, social and political power since the final years of Abdul Hamid II’s reign. Storrs acceded to Kamil’s request to look after his younger brother, al-Hajj Amin, and attached him to the staff of General Jibril Haddad, who was about to be put in charge of security in Damascus.

  Al-Hajj Amin had not been unemployed – he ran the Rawdat al-Ma’arif (owned by Khalil Sakakini and cofounded in 1906 by another member of the family, Abd al-Latif III) – but his older brother knew he had greater things in mind. At this school, and at the secondary school al-Rashidiya, al-Hajj Amin taught the history of Islam in a modern form that fitted the spirit of national Arab education. In the early days of British rule, he had the means to purchase the Rawdat al-Ma’arif. Al-Hajj Amin also earned money writing articles for the journal of his friend and partner in national dreams, Arif al-Arif, who would later become a leading Palestinian historian. Together they followed a path from traditional Islamic thought to concrete political thought.

  It was Arif al-Arif who introduced al-Hajj Amin to Syrian politics in the final stages of the Great War. In late 1918, Faysal, the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, established himself in Damascus. According to Faysal’s Hashemi family, the British had promised them Greater Syria in return for their uprising against the Ottoman Empire. (This is confirmed by the correspondence between Sharif Hussein and British representatives in late 1915.) T. E. Lawrence interpreted the agreement between Hussein and McMahon in the same light, and persuaded General Allenby to install Faysal as military ruler of Syria on behalf of the Allies. Some historians claim that Lawrence also stage-managed the conquest of Damascus as a great Hashemi victory, though it was Australian troops, rather than Faysal’s men, who actually conquered the Syrian capital.12

  However it was achieved, Faysal’s presence was essential to countering the French claim to Syria. Syria had in fact been promised to the French in the summer of 1916 under the Sykes-Picot Pact. Faysal hoped to forestall British compliance with the agreement by establishing an independent kingdom including Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Directed by Faysal’s Damascus government – which lasted two years, until 1920 – Arif al-Arif referred to the three Ottoman districts of Mandatory Palestine as ‘Southern Syria’. This was also the name of his journal, in which al-Hajj Amin published his early political ideas.

  But al-Hajj Amin wanted more. Thanks to his brother’s relationship with Storrs, he realized his great dream of serving in Damascus at the side of Faysal, who declared himself King of Greater Syria. As noted, Storrs got al-Hajj Amin appointed as aide to Haddad when he took up his new post as chief of general security. Amin used his stay in Damascus to establish close relations with his hero Faysal and his court. In 1919 he helped organize an all-Syria congress, a conference of representatives from the entire region, to demonstrate to the world its support for Faysal’s rule. Al-Hajj Amin’s job was to organize the delegation from the district of Palestine, which he did very well.

  This was an important stage in the politics of the region and the world. Faysal was trying to form a new kingdom in the face of local and regional forces, while preparing for the peace conference that was about to meet in Versailles to determine political arrangements in all of the countries where the war had been fought. Keeping with American President Woodrow Wilson’s ideas of self-determination, the ten victorious nations, including the Hijaz (the independent kingdom established by Sharif Hussein in 1916), decided that the arrangements should consider the wishes of the local population. Later we shall see how the colonial powers dealt with this difficult principle.

  Like any politically aware person in Palestine, al-Hajj Amin realized the importance of sending a Palestinian delegation to the conference. However, to do this in an international forum, it was necessary to create, almost from nothing, a local organization that could claim to represent the wishes of the native population. While it was obvious that only the notable families would take part, it was imperative to achieve a consensus among them regarding the Palestinian position.

  Sykes–Picot Agreement, 1916

  Al-Hajj Amin stayed only a short time in Damascus because Haddad was dispatched by Faysal to London and his successor, Ahmad Lahon, did not keep al-Hajj Amin on. The young Husayni returned to Jerusalem and gradually built up his position as head of the family, and the idea of ‘Southern Syria’ was replaced with that of ‘Independent Palestine’.

  With his Damascus career at an end, al-Hajj Amin turned his attention to Zionism. In later years, he would
claim that the question of how to stop Zionist settlement had preoccupied him since boyhood. But as noted in the previous chapter, it was only in Cairo that he had begun to think of Zionism as an enemy. Al-Hajj Amin’s brief stay in Damascus prepared him not only to become an inspiration in the struggle against Zionism, but above all to be the first of the Husaynis to enter the modern politics that developed in the Arab world after the Great War. Although other young Husaynis studied the intricacies of local and regional siyasa (politics), al-Hajj Amin was the most skillful, and his talent enabled the family to translate its social standing into modern terms of political parties and organizations.

  Many family members did not adjust to the change and chose other modern careers: Ishaq Musa al-Husayni chose literature, Ibrahim Said (brother of Raja’i) chemistry; Abd al-Salam III (great-grandson of Umar) became a journalist and essayist, Salim III an archaeologist and Musa Abdullah (another son of Musa Salih) a historiographer. Thus, despite the temptation to go into modern politics, Hassan’s scholarly bent, Tahir’s curiosity and Ismail’s studiousness were passed on to the family’s intellectual branch.13 But before this division occurred in the family – after centuries of representing the local aristocracy – all the inhabitants of Palestine, Jews and Arabs alike, had to adjust to the new British military occupation (1918–20) that was forced upon them.

  Having conquered the country, the British authorities did not assume legislative powers but administered it in accordance with the laws of its previous overlords. There was no civil law or judiciary, only the decision of the military governor (three army generals held this post in those two years: Mooney, Watson and Bowles) or of the local military governor (for example, Ronald Storrs in Jerusalem). The British were chiefly concerned with improving the infrastructure. The homes of the Husaynis and other Jerusalem notables were linked for the first time to modern sewerage and water supply systems. The city’s main streets were cleaned once a week, and public sanitation reduced the death rate, which delighted tourists, many of whom had been to Jerusalem in the past and were returning after the war.14