by Ilan Pappe
Richmond was very active on al-Hajj Amin’s behalf. He translated petitions from Arabic into English for Storrs and enlisted him in the campaign, and so a pro-al-Hajj Amin lobby came into being.17 Storrs considered himself an expert on native affairs, and in this capacity advised the High Commissioner that petitions were a clear indication of a man’s popularity. Storrs was even persuaded to cancel the vote and accepted Richmond’s advice to consider raising al-Hajj Amin’s salary when he became mufti and to let him keep the title of Grand Mufti, which the government had granted to Kamil. Perhaps he hoped to restore the balance between the Husaynis and the Nashashibis, which had been disturbed by the dismissal of Musa Kazim from the mayoralty.
However, the High Commissioner ultimately rejected proposals to make al-Hajj Amin the Grand Mufti, to give him an official letter of accreditation and even to announce his appointment in the Palestine Gazette. But he did concede on the most important demand – to cancel the vote and appoint al-Hajj Amin as mufti. And so, although he had not completed his academic studies and had not been elected, and despite the possible availability of better candidates in his family, al-Hajj Amin became the mufti of Palestine at the age of twenty-six. There can be no doubt that the main reason for his success was the family’s campaign on his behalf.18
Now it was up to Storrs to resolve the legal problem of the disregarded vote. He persuaded Raghib al-Nashashibi to withdraw his candidacy, at the cost of a fierce argument with his family.19 Raghib even agreed to help Storrs get Husam Jarallah and Ali Jarallah (the other Nashashibi candidates) to withdraw their names. The problem was solved.
Samuel had reconciled the families, but he failed to reconcile Palestinian society, which by and large continued to regard him as the emissary of the Zionists. Wherever young urban and country men were frustrated in their search for employment and housing, political bitterness came to the fore. In Nablus and Jaffa groups of young men vented their desperation and their violent opposition to the Jews and the British.
On 1 May 1921, a few days after the Nabi Musa celebrations, clashes broke out between Jews and Palestinians in Jaffa. Oddly, the trouble began among the Jewish settlers when communist activists calling for a Soviet Palestine clashed with members of Poale Zion, a party that wanted a Zionist Palestine. The Zionist May Day procession entered a Muslim neighborhood, where a violent scuffle broke out. Young Palestinians gathered from all around to demonstrate, some confronting the army while others battled with young Jews. This pattern of escalation was repeated in several places, the worst being in the area of Tulkarem. As in 1920, the number of fatalities was almost equal on both sides – forty-eight Arabs, forty-seven Jews.20 The experienced British authorities appointed a court of inquiry known as the Hycraft Commission, which concluded that the riots had not been organized but had erupted spontaneously.
An outside observer would have noticed that in 1921 al-Hajj Amin was not yet the head of the family or of the national leadership. Musa Kazim and Jamal al-Husayni were regarded not only as the heads of the Husayni clan but also as the foremost representatives of the Palestinian community. Moreover, they had become its pro-British indicators. Fulfilling the promises he had made to the High Commissioner when they met immediately after the clashes, Jamal called on the inhabitants of Jaffa and Jerusalem not to be drawn into confrontations with the Jews and the authorities. The Hycraft Commission was particularly impressed by Musa Kazim, who had addressed the Palestinian community in the same spirit even before the skirmishes in Jaffa. He had publicly appealed to the Palestinians to place their trust in the British government,
‘which is famous for its justice, its concern for the welfare of the inhabitants, its protection of their rights and its response to their just demands. It will not fail the people’s hopes, because the voice of the mass is like God’s voice.’21
Others condemned the outbursts of rage, including the journal Al-Karmil, which was associated with the Palestinian executive.
Al-Hajj Amin’s temporary disappearance from center stage may have been due to his uncertain political position. It is difficult to pinpoint where he stood at that time with regard to current events. There is some evidence that the outbreak of violence in Jaffa was linked to the group known as the Black Hand, later called the al-Fida’iyya. As mentioned before, in 1919 al-Hajj Amin had created this group, which sprouted offshoots all over Palestine, and its members, who were his contemporaries, remained loyal to him throughout his life.22 A good number of the Tahiri Husaynis thought al-Hajj Amin was endangering the family – notably his nephew Tahir III, who accused him of incitement and of having organized the ‘riots’. The rest of the family referred to those events as an uprising or revolt; only people who adopted the Zionist or government terminology called them riots.23 Tahir’s animosity was not surprising. He had hoped to succeed his father as mufti and regarded his uncle al-Hajj Amin as a usurper. Yet at that time, the British authorities described al-Hajj Amin as a trustworthy and moderating leader.
Al-Hajj Amin returned to center stage, not to replace Musa Kazim or Jamal but to join them. The three became the family leaders – al-Hajj Amin at its head, flanked by the aged Musa Kazim, who sometimes acted as his firm supporter but who gradually began to undermine his leadership, and Jamal, who would remain loyal to al-Hajj Amin until the end of the British Mandate. All three belonged to the Tahiri branch of the family, but as we have pointed out, the different branches no longer had any significance in local politics. Nevertheless, the Husayni women say that marriages were kept within each branch.24 The reason for this was entirely material: Muslim laws of inheritance stipulated that in most cases the family’s estate did not pass to the eldest son or to a chosen heir but rather was divided among the men of the family branch. Clearly, it would have been imprudent not to enlarge the branch by adding new members.
Politically, the Husaynis in the 1920s were a unified clan, and everything the Palestinians did was associated with it. Thus during the sitting of the Hycraft Commission, it seemed as if the British government would again charge al-Hajj Amin, and implicitly his family, with being responsible for the outbreaks. A wave of arrests and speedy trials of suspected participants followed the events, but surprisingly the Husaynis were cleared of all suspicion. Sir Herbert expressed sympathy for al-Hajj Amin and his family, and the mandatory government announced that it would halt Jewish immigration as a gesture of goodwill towards the Palestinians. This decision was made public together with the announcement of al-Hajj Amin’s appointment as mufti – perhaps the first British attempt to conciliate the Palestinians. Al-Hajj Amin had obtained his position thanks to his family’s history, the weakness of other Husayni candidates and his having won the support of the new government. It is not correct to say that the British enthroned al-Hajj Amin, as certain history books maintain. Rather, they decided to accept the social and religious hierarchy that had existed in Muslim Jerusalem in the Ottoman period and to apply it to the country as a whole.
In the following months, the authorities made a few more moves to please the Palestinian population. However, these were very small compared with their basic policy, which remained principally to support the Jewish claim to a ‘national home’ in Palestine. In the name of this claim, they reopened the gates to Jewish immigration and enabled the immigrants to purchase land and establish independent institutions. Before long this led to outbursts of rage and protests by irate young Palestinians, and the sympathies of certain pro-Arab officials could not sweeten the pill. The policy as a whole was perceived as anti-Palestinian.
The Palestinians’ hopes for change were soon dispelled. On 29 May 1921, the fourth Palestinian Congress met in Jerusalem and resolved to send a delegation to London to demand an independent Arab Palestine. This was a necessary move: many Palestinians had supported the idea of a Greater Syria until the bitter end, and now it was time to demand independence. The idea of sending such a delegation was encouraged by certain pro-Palestinian British figures, such as Lord Sydenham and Lord Leamingt
on, the owners of the daily Morning Post. The delegates were chosen by a vote – another opportunity for the family to test its standing amid the dramatic upheavals in the country. Musa Kazim received the most votes but was the only Husayni in the delegation. The opposition had not relented, and the journal Al-Karmil maintained that the composition of the delegation was unsatisfactory, despite its being widely supported.25 The High Commissioner tried to dissuade them from going to London but acquiesced when they assured him that they would not conduct negotiations but only present their views.
Five men went to London in the autumn of 1921. For most of them this was a first foray outside the Middle East. They made several stops in Europe. In Rome, they were received by the Pope, who, they were relieved to discover, was a warm supporter of the Palestinian cause. From Rome they went on to Geneva, the seat of the League of Nations, which had that year begun its debates – as it would go on doing until 1924 – on the nature and substance of the mandatory regimes in the Middle East. It seemed for a moment to Musa Kazim that it might be possible to stop the wheels of history and prevent the ratification of the British Mandate of Palestine and the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon. This unrealistic notion was put to him by Michel Latifallah and Riad al-Sulh, leading figures in the Lebanese national movement who proposed holding a pan-Syrian gathering in Geneva and presenting a unified protest to the League of Nations. But after the United States had withdrawn into its ‘splendid isolation’, the international body fell under the unfettered control of the two colonial powers. There was no chance whatsoever that the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese could change the colonial map of the Middle East without resorting to forcible struggles for national liberation. Such struggles would indeed take place before World War II and grow fiercer afterwards.26
After these frustrating meetings in Switzerland, the first-ever Palestinian delegation finally arrived in London at the end of September 1921. Five notables, all born into the Ottoman world and shaped by it, were confronted by the smoothly functioning British political establishment. They also faced the new but highly efficient Zionist lobby, which had already scored some major achievements.
On 2 November 1921, four years after the Balfour Declaration, Musa Kazim sat in his room in the Cecil Hotel on the Strand, writing gloomy letters to fellow notables in Jaffa, Nablus, Hebron and Jenin. He was feeling alone and helpless in the face of the supercilious Britons and the efficient Zionists, but above all he felt the humiliation of a Husayni having to cope with the minutiae of conducting such a diplomatic mission without a proper organization to help him. In his letters, he begged his associates to send him additional funds, not for public relations for the Palestinian cause but simply to finance his and his friends’ stay in London. The small amount that had been raised in Palestine before their departure was running out.27
Despite this awkwardness, Musa Kazim tried to hold serious talks with the persons in charge of the Middle East at the Colonial Office. His primary request was for the Balfour Declaration to be reconsidered, but in this matter he and his fellow delegates ran into a brick wall. None of the officials would consider the slightest change of policy. The delegates also demanded the revocation of the Jewish ‘national home’, an end to immigration and for Palestine not to be severed from its neighbors. These three demands were raised in three meetings with Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill and were rejected outright.
Despite this disappointment, the British government managed to pacify the country for a considerable length of time. Unwittingly, while they themselves attempted with little success to create a unified national movement, the Palestinian leaders provided the Zionist movement with a period of calm during which to lay the foundations of the future state. Between November 1921 and August 1929 there were almost no violent clashes between Jews and Palestinians or between Palestinians and the British authorities. The calm was achieved thanks mainly to the creation of the Supreme Muslim Council.
AT THE PEAK OF POWER: THE CREATION OF THE SUPREME MUSLIM COUNCIL
At the end of 1920, Samuel asked a committee of Muslim religious leaders in Palestine led by Kamil al-Husayni to consult with government officials on how to transfer the administration of their religious affairs to the Muslim notables. In March 1921, the committee submitted its proposal to create a Supreme Muslim Council. The demand for the council grew even greater when Norman Bentwich, a pro-Zionist Anglo Jew, was put in charge of the judiciary in Palestine, including the Shari‘a courts.28
Having considered the matter for several months, the ulama proposed replacing the old Ottoman structure that oversaw the religious properties and the religious law with an autonomous council. Departing from its usual policy of preserving existing customs, the British government agreed, perhaps to placate Palestinian anger about the Balfour Declaration. The electors of the Ottoman Parliament – that is, the persons who elected candidates from the district of Jerusalem to the parliament – were asked to elect the council, which in turn would choose its president, the rais al-ulama.
It was a foregone conclusion that al-Hajj Amin would be chosen, and so he was in March 1922. Once again the Nashashibis tried to block the Husaynis’ growing power. Raghib al-Nashashibi called for a boycott of the election, but to no avail. The significance of this new institution was very vague. The prerogatives seemed so extensive that the British officials feared they would supersede the local administration. For a moment, it looked as if the young national movement was coming into its own, and everyone echoed Jamal al-Husayni, who declared that the council’s creation was ‘a triumph of the national movement’, since even opponents regarded the council’s head as the national leader.29
The council’s chief importance lay in its combination of political and financial power. With an annual budget of 50,000 to 65,000 Palestine pounds (drawn mainly from the religious properties), al-Hajj Amin was able to increase his influence throughout Palestine. He could give favored areas preferential treatment in development and welfare and neglect others where his standing was weaker, such as Hebron, Acre and Haifa. He also had the authority to hire and dismiss staff in the Shari‘a courts.
Twenty-eight members of the Husayni clan received handsome incomes thanks to the council. Al-Hajj Amin was well aware of the value of this new post. Immediately after his appointment he made sure to inform all and sundry that it was a lifetime position, though this had probably not been the intention.
Future Israeli scholars would describe the new appointment as trickery, because the man chosen to fill the religious post was in fact a politician.30 But of course religion and politics have been intertwined since the dawn of history, and Mandatory Palestine was no exception. In fact, al-Hajj Amin erred in not expanding his political activity. Though he did bring in some members of rival families, he failed to recruit talented individuals into the system he ruled over, probably because his dominant personality could not tolerate disagreement or disobedience.
But politics was not the mufti’s only sphere of activity. As head of the council, he established an orphanage for 160 boys and girls, supported schools, renovated the school in the Haram and established a museum and library in the sacred precinct. He was probably inspired by Ismail’s extensive activity as head of the Board of Education in the late nineteenth century. On al-Hajj Amin’s initiative, 50,000 trees were planted on religious property, and the system of public clinics and other welfare institutions were expanded. To cap it all off, he renovated the shrines on the Haram al-Sharif.31 Though community welfare was not his main occupation, it should be included in the ledger of his career.
The creation of the council also enabled him to extend his influence over the educational system and to turn the Rawdat al-Ma’arif into a national college, an alternative to the system offered by the government and the missionary secondary schools. One of its first students was Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, the son of Musa Kazim, and the father would later praise the new college for undoing the bad influence of the missionary Sahayun School on his son’s p
ersonality.
Nonetheless politics were the mufti’s main occupation. The Palestinian delegation led by Musa Kazim returned empty-handed from London. In July 1922, the mandate was ratified and renewed, and a month later an ‘Order in Council’ (an official government announcement) was published in London. Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill placed before Parliament a proposed constitution for Mandatory Palestine predicated on the Balfour Declaration. The only local body it proposed was a Zionist-Palestinian (or in the lingo of those days, ‘Arab-Jewish’) legislative council that would help the High Commissioner to administer the country. Palestinian disappointment ran high, and it was against this background that the fifth Palestinian Congress was convened in Nablus on 22 August 1922.32
Angry and frustrated, the conference resolved to boycott the elections to the legislative council, using the imams in the mosques and the village heads to spread the word. Among the Husaynis, the divisions once more came to the surface. Musa Kazim feared aggravating relations with Britain. Nor did he care to fight against the Zionists, whereas al-Hajj Amin was more determined than ever to resist the British government’s policy.
Throughout these years, Musa Kazim sought channels of communication and even reconciliation with Zionism. Still, he refused to meet Chaim Weizmann, because such a high-level meeting, especially if held publicly, would have been viewed as complete Palestinian submission to Zionist demands. It seems that Musa Kazim came to dislike Weizmann personally, though he had never met him. However, he maintained close relations with Haim Kalvarisky, who became head of the Zionist Federation’s Arab Department after the British occupation.