The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty
Page 39
Thanks to their status in the Arab world, the Husaynis were able to recruit prominent supporters in all these countries. In Egypt they were helped by the well-known author and intellectual Hussein Heikal, then a minister without portfolio in the Egyptian government, who committed his newspaper Al-Siyasa to the Palestinian cause. In Baghdad the family was helped by Naji al-Suweidi, a member of the ruling power. He was among a group of Iraqis who helped the mufti to move to Baghdad during World War II and turn it into a center of pro-Palestine activity.
The most successful stroke of the campaign was the opening of the Information Office in Damascus in 1938. Run by Akram Zuaytar and Izzat Darwaza and advised by Jamal al-Husayni, it published numerous manifestos. In exile the two Husayni leaders, Jamal and al-Hajj Amin, once again collaborated, with Jamal coordinating the work in the Arab capitals. Jamal traveled twice a week to al-Duq in Lebanon to see the mufti, and also looked after the finances. The funds were held in the Damascus branch of Misr Bank, in the accounts of prominent Syrians – it was essential not to keep them under Palestinian names. An elaborate network helped the Palestinians’ finances. Ali Masud, a Christian Lebanese employee of the Italian consulate in Cairo, transferred the funds raised in Egypt to the assistant manager of the Misr Bank, another member of the al-Azma family, who would withdraw the money and give it to Jamal.
The complex financial arrangement tied the leading Husaynis even closer to the Germans and the Italians during the months before World War II. The relationship began when Jamal received some help from the Italian and German consulates in Damascus. The German consulate supported the activities of a Palestinian youth club located near the exiles’ headquarters in the Salihiyya Quarter – a fine place with gyms, dance and game halls and a lecture hall. The British suspected that there were pro-Nazi Germans among the gym trainers, preparing the volunteers who were later smuggled into Palestine. But it seems it was mainly the Syrian authorities who usually supported such activities. The range of the projects aided by the Syrian government indicates that there was genuine solidarity between the government and administrative personnel, not merely fiery rhetoric as was the case with other Arab regimes at the time. So either the Husaynis were particularly successful in Syria in those days, or the Syrians, including the political elite, were less indifferent to the Palestinian plight than politicians in other Arab countries.13
Al-Hajj Amin’s thinking was complex, as shown by his incessant exploration of other ways of resolving the conflict. While building up a logistical and financial infrastructure, examining the possibilities of help from the Germans and Italians and searching for additional allies in the Arab world, he sent his nephew Musa Abdullah al-Husayni to London to represent him at the talks instigated by the unusual British official, Stuart Newcomb. Newcomb continued to believe in a British-Palestinian alliance even during the uprising. Like his Anglo-Jewish friend Albert Haimson – who had held a post in the Palestine British administration between 1921 and 1934 and had gone from being a warm supporter of the Zionist movement to being a critic of Zionism and the British attitude towards it – Newcomb also believed in the possibility of a Jewish–Palestinian understanding. In the midst of the bloody confrontation in 1939, Newcomb and Haimson outlined a nine-clause program for the resolution of the conflict, calling on both sides to make far-reaching concessions in order to achieve calmer conditions for prolonged negotiations.
Contrary to their formal positions and the overall escalation, both the mufti and leading members of the Jewish Agency decided to give this initiative a chance. The Jewish Agency appointed Yehuda Magnes to represent it in this endeavor. Though this probably escaped the mufti’s attention, Magnes’s having been chosen was an indication that the Zionist leadership did not consider the initiative too seriously. A reformist American rabbi who served as the first chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and as its president until he died in 1948, Magnes was a highly respected intellectual but was considered to be a naive politician. In the 1920s, he had adopted an interpretation of Zionism that led to him being ousted from the mainstream. He advocated the creation of a bi-national Arab-Jewish state in Palestine. Therefore any initiative he was involved in fell into the category of things the Zionist leadership considered insignificant but worth exploiting, less for the sake of coexisting with the Palestinians and more as means of sowing further discord between them.
The mufti’s choice for exploring this option was an equally respectful member of the family but one who was often regarded as a dreamer rather than part of the hardcore body of political decision-making. This was Musa Abdullah al-Husayni. He belonged to al-Hajj Amin’s branch of the family (not that it mattered any more) and saw al-Hajj Amin as his ‘uncle’. He is known in the West only as the chief plotter of the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951, which will be covered later on. At this point, he was still a medical student, like so many others in the Tahiri branch, in London. Soon after his arrival he was attracted to the socialist ideology of the Fabian Society and he dreamed of leading a Palestinian leftist movement, hardly a typical Husayni vision. But he did not persevere in this direction. Being a political pragmatist like his uncle al-Hajj Amin, he looked for those he thought would have the power to help the Palestinians – and these were not the socialists. He decided that the future lay in Germany, where he moved when the war broke out, marrying a local woman and integrating into the local society for a while. But in 1936 his pinkish politics appealed to Yehuda Magnes and made a dialogue possible.
British intelligence depicted the whole affair as a subversive socialist attempt to undermine British power in Palestine and convinced the government to withdraw its support for the Haimson–Newcomb initiative. Their focus was now once more on the political and even physical elimination of the mufti. Their open hostility pushed him even further into the hands of Berlin and Rome.
But while this bizarre dialogue went on, it revealed that on both sides, for sincere or cynical reasons, some individuals were willing to offer far-reaching compromises and concessions. Speaking in the mufti’s name, though possibly without his knowledge, Musa Abdullah reported to Magnes that, in view of the crisis, al-Hajj Amin was willing to consider the establishment of a small Jewish state along the lines of the Peel recommendations, provided it did not include Haifa and Galilee. But first Jewish immigration had to be reduced to levels acceptable to the Palestinian population. The delighted Magnes rushed to report the news to the leader of the Zionist movement, David Ben-Gurion, who was known for having accepted the recommendation of the Peel Commission. But that had been a year earlier and was done to appease the British; it was not a sign of Zionist moderation, as Israeli historiography suggests. It was off the agenda in 1938, and Ben-Gurion showed no interest in the Palestinian position in general or the rather marginal Musa Abdullah in particular.14
But let there be no mistake – most of al-Hajj Amin’s efforts were directed towards boosting the guerrilla struggle against British and Zionist targets in Palestine. The burden of the uprising fell mainly on the rural population, and many of the commanders on the ground were local men. Yet this brought them no political gains, which may have been the reason why they did not come forward when the Husaynis tried to rally them once more to the greater and more vital battle in 1947 and 1948.
Some of the Husaynis did fight. For these young men and women of the family it was a formative experience to find themselves in the vanguard of a national struggle. Romantic dreams mingled with the dark reality of bloodshed, casualties and imprisonment, and the experience released the frustration and rage that had built up since 1929. It was also the first time that members of the family had actually taken part in an armed conflict. At least the younger generation felt that they had a role in a wider struggle. Their actions were typical of popular uprisings against an occupying military force and foreign colonialist settlers: they threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at lorries, offices and government premises, and they attacked individual Jewish settlers and more
rarely entire outposts. The results were much less important than their having participated in the struggle.
The two sons of al-Hajj Amin’s cousin Muhi al-Din, Mustafa Nafiz and Ali, were involved in actual fighting, while other members of the family, such as Yaqub Abd al-Salam, helped Abd al-Qadir to direct the fight in Jerusalem. The young Fawzi, Jawad, Muhammad and Sami (the last-named was Abd al-Qadir’s brother) took part in battles and in operations against British and Zionist targets in Jerusalem. Jamal’s younger brother Daud organized the uprising in Jaffa, but before long he was put on the British wanted list and escaped to Damascus. He slipped back repeatedly, bringing arms for the rebels. It was said that during one of these forays in October 1938, he killed Sidqi al-Dajani, the Husaynis’ traditional rival in Jaffa, but there is no evidence to support this suspicion or that the British authorities ever considered it.
The middle generation made its contribution mostly as organizers and advisers. Sawfat Yunis, director of the Higher Arab Committee, and the lawyer Ibrahim Said al-Husayni, the son of Said and director of the religious properties in Hebron, were responsible for smuggling arms to the rebels in Mount Hebron. Jamal’s brothers were especially prominent. Hilmi acted as the liaison between Jamal and the rebels, even involving his wife in the dangerous missions. He was helped by the Haifaite Yaqub, who was a customs official and who used his position to organize operations in the Haifa area. Yaqub was caught in 1937 and like many of the Husaynis paid personally for the national cause.
A glance at the lists of detainees in the British camps shows which of them paid with his liberty for taking part in the uprising. In Aujat Hafir it was Ahmad Jamil and Munif, who were released in November 1936 but repeatedly rearrested. In Sarafand it was Jamil and Tawfiq Rafat; in Jerusalem Muhammad Yunis, director of the Agricultural Bank, who was arrested in 1938, and Rasim Yunis al-Husayni, who was arrested in 1937 and tortured. A few gave their lives for the cause – Salim’s son Ali, Abd al-Qadir’s right-hand man, fell in a battle with British forces in 1938, and Umar, an engineer, (the grandson of Hussein) who fell in the great battle at Bani Na’im (located between Hebron and Bethlehem) when Abd al-Qadir confronted the British army.15
Ali’s father, Salim Hussein, the brother of Musa Kazim, was the last of the generation of 1920s leaders to remain in the country. (He must not be confused with the mayor of Jerusalem on the eve of the Great War, though of course he belonged to the same branch of the family.) His house was the meeting place for the rebels who had not yet been caught or exiled. In the early 1940s, he joined al-Hajj Amin in Europe but did not engage in any more political activity.
The women of the family also took part in the struggle for Palestine, notably Salma, the wife of Raja’i al-Husayni. She and other Palestinian women joined the pan-Arab women’s conference that was held in 1938 at the initiative of the Egyptian feminist Huda al-Sha’arawi. Al-Sha’arawi became the most prominent woman writer in the Arab world and made an impact on the public status of Arab women. She and Asma, the wife of Syria’s Nabih al-Azma, had helped promote the Bludan Conference. When the wives of the leaders of Syria and Lebanon formed the Women’s Palestine Defense Committee in Damascus, it got off to a modest start. In September 1938, al-Sha’arawi called summoned the women of the Mashreq (the eastern flank of the Arab world) to Cairo to attend a conference for Palestine, which took place on 15 October. In the Palestinian delegation, each of prominent notable families had two representatives. We do not know whether this was on purpose or whether the worthy women regarded themselves as representing families. Wahida and Samiha al-Khalidi and Fatma and Zahiya al-Nashashibi joined Salma and Su’ad (the wife of Fahmi al-Husayni). The heroine of the occasion was Mamina, the widow of Sheikh al-Qassam.16
The involvement of Husayni women in politics, if belated, reflected the social transformation in the family as a whole. In the past, the women’s political contribution had been confined to arranging the marriage ties that underpinned the alliances with other families. In the twentieth century, women were far more literate and self-assertive than the previous generations; some of them, like so many teenage girls all over the Middle East, were sent to Europe and America to marry or to join relatives who did well there. One such family member was Amina, the granddaughter of Salim al-Husayni and sister of Musa Kazim, who was married at age fourteen to her cousin Muhammad al-Husayni. She traveled with him to Germany, where he studied medicine and she studied X-ray technology. When they returned to Palestine she became the first Muslim woman to learn to drive and was seen driving her car in the streets of Jerusalem. (She was preceded by Asya al-Halabi, the first Christian Palestinian woman to drive a car.) Amina helped her husband with the X-ray machine, especially after he developed heart trouble. When her children grew up she worked for charity organizations, often in cooperation with Zaliha al-Shabani, the president of the first charity club in Palestine, whom she later succeeded. Amina began to engage in political activity only after 1948, and during the 1960s was a highly respected member of the Palestinian National Council as the representative of the women’s organizations.
Amina was not the first woman in the family to break out of the confines of tradition. Fatma, the wife of Rafiq al-Husayni (son of Musa Kazim and brother of Abd al-Qadir), graduated from the English College in Jerusalem and went on to study at the American University in Beirut, where she completed her master’s degree. From there she went to Iraq to teach. Tragically, one day while on home leave she stepped on a nail, developed blood poisoning and died at the age of twenty-seven.17 Since this is a political biography, we are constrained to focus on the men of the family and leave to other researchers the strenuous reconstruction of the history of Palestinian women.
This complex group of men and women of the Husayni family had lost two of its leaders. Since al-Hajj Amin and Jamal were in exile, their places at the head of the family were taken by two others. The principal and best known was Abd al-Qadir, and the other was Tawfiq Salih. During the uprising Abd al-Qadir commanded the Jerusalem front in the rebellion, was wounded twice and was honored and admired by the fighting men. The first time he was wounded was in a battle against British forces near the village of al-Khadir, the first battle against British tanks. The Palestinian fighters managed to put one tank out of action, and though Abd al-Qadir was not personally responsible, the achievement is credited to him. At the end of that battle, he was caught and arrested. The highest price seems to have been paid by Abd al-Qadir’s father, Musa Kazim, in 1933.
For Abd al-Qadir, 1938 marked a decisive shift in his view of the conflict and his attitude towards Britain. His trust in Britain was shaken beyond repair when he witnessed the outcome of the British punitive operations. The worst was the massacre in Atil, where British forces blew up and set fire to many houses with their occupants inside. Some women were reportedly raped and abused.18 He was especially horrified by the British practice of tying a suspected nationalist activist with a rope to the door of his house and other ruthless methods used by the British army at the time.
Like other commanders of the uprising, Abd al-Qadir adopted the national anti-imperial discourse, mixing religious terms with the modern ones of the anti-colonialist struggle. Jihad became a national concept, and Abd al-Qadir often exhorted his men on the eve of a battle to give their all for the sake of the national anti-imperial holy war. The goal of the Palestinian national movement was now clearer than ever: complete independence.
In 1938, the ugly practice of killing village headmen who refused to shoulder the burden of the uprising reached its peak. Though Abd al-Qadir himself was not directly involved in these assassinations, his subordinates certainly were, notably Said Shuqair, a man from the vicinity of Ramallah, who carried out these acts of vengeance in Abd al-Qadir’s name. One of the reasons the uprising failed may have been this dissension, in which Abd al-Qadir actively participated, in a badly organized and unclear chain of command.
This two-front war – fighting against the occupying force and at the same time
waging an internecine struggle against collaborators or potential rivals in the chain of command – was plainly in evidence at the battle of Bani Na’im in December 1938. This large village in the district of Hebron was a stronghold of the opposition to the uprising – namely, the Nashashibi camp. Abd al-Qadir’s men surrounded the village and tried to persuade the inhabitants to join the uprising, but the planned time of the attack was leaked and a large British force was waiting. The British air force launched a merciless assault on Abd al-Qadir’s forces, and he himself was wounded.
Palestinian collective memory records every such battle as a clash with British forces, and together they are described as the first military campaign in the history of the Palestinian national movement. Abd al-Qadir’s willingness to lay down his life for the homeland stands out. He had been mentally prepared for the revolt since 1931, when he organized the young men of Jerusalem to act against the British. Two years later he and Emile al-Ghuri, a friend of the family, created the first-ever Palestinian military organization, Al-Jihad al-Muqaddas. There were only seventeen members in that ineffectual and short-lived organization, but it signaled Abd al-Qadir’s distinctive contribution to the Palestinian military inheritance. Nafiz, the son of Muhi al-Din, was just as active as his famous kinsman, but did not make it into the national history books. Khalid, a cousin of Abd al-Qadir’s, was one of his seconds-in-command, thanks to his experience in the ranks of the British police force; he had reached the rank of inspector in the Jaffa police.19