by Ilan Pappe
So Abd al-Qadir was the first of two family members to fill the void that al-Hajj Amin and Jamal left behind during their exile. The other one is less known: Jamal’s eldest brother, Tawfiq Salih, the director of the Muslim orphanage in Jerusalem who was greatly admired for his social work. He served in the British Immigration Department and tried his best to bar the entry of Zionists to the country. Al-Hajj Amin sometimes appointed him deputy head of the committee, but he had no official title.
Quite a different contribution was made by Ishaq Musa al-Husayni. The literary-minded Ishaq Musa persuaded his journalistic cousins to publish his early essays. The first discussed the weaknesses of Palestinian Arab society. It displeased the heads of the family, who ignored his warning of how unfit and ill-prepared the Palestinian leadership was to meet the dangers Zionism posed to them and to Palestinian society as a whole. Ishaq Musa was probably the most scholarly member of the family. He studied and then taught at the American University in Cairo, and in 1934 completed his doctoral studies at the University of London under the supervision of the renowned Orientalist Hamilton Gibb. After he returned to Jerusalem, he taught Arabic literature at the Arab College. During the revolt, he became the supervisor of Arabic language tuition in Palestine, a post that acquired special significance amid the uprising and the struggle against Zionism.
But not all the Husaynis enrolled in the fight. The most notable dissenter was Arif Yunis al-Husayni, a scion of the branch that had filled the post of sheikh al-haram for long periods. This post was restored to the Husaynis in the early twentieth century, but since it had lost its importance, the branch that held it was also minor. Whether for that reason or because he held strong views of his own, Arif Yunis opposed al-Hajj Amin’s leadership, and did so publicly. The chief of police in Jerusalem became concerned for his safety and placed a permanent guard near his house, which foiled an attempt on Arif Yunis’s life. Another member of the family who tended to the opposition was Abd al-Salam Shaker, the editor of the weekly Al-Wahada, which maintained a position similar to that of Musa al-Alami’s camp.
However, most of the Husaynis supported the uprising and engaged in its daily undertaking. Out of all of them, al-Hajj Amin was the one most occupied with his personal fate: since he had been expelled from Palestine, his future was unclear. The uprising in Palestine broke out when he was looking for a refuge for himself. Political drama overshadows all other existential activity. Only when the historian examines the years of the revolt from the viewpoint of the average inhabitant does it become evident that the uprising did not affect the whole population all of the time. Even some of the Husaynis were engaged in other activities that, on the face of it, seemed less heroic at the time. But in retrospect these would become the kinds of struggles that Palestinians were engaged in as ordinary citizens of an occupied land throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Such was the struggle of Arif Yunis al-Husayni. He confronted the Zionist municipality of Jerusalem head-on. Mayor Daniel Auster mixed municipal issues with wider ideological concerns. Under his leadership, the municipality wanted to widen various roads, gates and pavements. One of the spaces that fell within the widening project was Arif Yunis’s garden, which contained some of the family tombs. Unlike the great national struggle, this one was concluded successfully. The non-nationalist Arif Yunis won, while the exiled al-Hajj Amin lost his inheritance not to the city but to the Zionists. Al-Hajj Amin’s property in the Nahlat Ahim area was expropriated and given to the Jewish National Fund. Only the school that stood on that property was spared, and the municipality had it moved it elsewhere.20
Together with other Palestinian landowners, the Husaynis fought a rearguard battle against the rapid urban development driven by British officials and the Zionists. The population of Jerusalem in the 1930s was 150,000, and some of the neighborhoods were more crowded than the slums of London. Accelerated construction came at the expense of the green spaces and public parks. However, during the uprising the municipality took some steps to preserve the city’s ‘green lungs’.
But al-Hajj Amin lost more than his property; his political standing was no more secure. In the winter of 1938, the British government changed its tactics. Instead of trying to crush the uprising, it looked for ways to calm the country. Al-Hajj Amin was not part of their plans. A new commission of inquiry led by Sir John Woodhead recommended ditching the idea of partition (which Britain would again support in 1943) and severely criticized the conduct of the High Commissioner during the uprising. Chancellor was unceremoniously dismissed and replaced by the Orientalist Sir Harold MacMichael. Though an expert ‘Arabist’, MacMichael aggravated relations between Britain and the Palestinians and was largely responsible for the perception, etched in the Palestinians’ collective memory, that Britain betrayed them even in the last years of the mandate. Al-Hajj Amin certainly regarded the British as the enemy, perhaps even more than the Zionists. 21
An examination of Britain’s wider politics at this time, however, reveals that this judgment is excessively severe. In 1938 Britain abandoned the idea of partition and attempted to freeze the demographic balance in the country, despite the increasingly desperate plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. But this British U-turn came too late. When tensions mounted in Europe, the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia and British troops began to withdraw from Palestine, the leadership of the Palestinian uprising was more impressed by the reduction of Britain’s military presence than by its change of policy. When the Woodhead Commission left, the uprising flared again. In response, the British government sent back some of the withdrawn forces and launched a frontal attack on the rebels – while continuing to tilt its policy in favor of the Palestinians. At this time, there was a wave of pan-Arab support for Palestine, prompting the British government to renew the diplomatic maneuvering. In February 1939, after nineteen years of rule over Palestine, the government brought the two sides to a roundtable conference at St James’s Palace in London.
The government in Jerusalem wanted to determine the composition of the delegation. It suggested that Jamal be the de facto representative of the Palestinians, but Raghib al-Nashashibi would be its official head. (Jamal was still suspect due to his involvement in the revolt.) The mufti was persona non grata in London, not only because he had led the uprising but because he was tainted by his growing friendship with Germany and Italy. The connection between the mufti and the Damascus consulates of Germany and Italy – especially the latter – had begun during the uprising. The Germans tried now and then to send in weapons, but they were captured by the British. Most of the help came from the Italians. By and large, the Nazi regime did not meddle in the affairs of Palestine before the war, did not officially object to the Peel recommendations and until the outbreak of war did not prevent Jews from fleeing Germany to Palestine.
Syrian politician Adil Arslan urged al-Hajj Amin to form closer ties with the Italians. He not only talked to al-Hajj Amin about it, he published an exchange of letters between them in the newspapers Al-Jamaa’ al-Islamiyya and Filastin.22 The purpose of the correspondence was to show that Italy, unlike Britain, supported the Arab claims unreservedly. Arslan wrote the mufti that the Arab nation needed a European friend, and only Italy would fit the bill. Munif al-Husayni, the editor of Al-Jamaa’ al-Arabiyya, was such an enthusiastic supporter of an alliance with Italy that the British suspected him of being its agent and some of his staff resigned on that account. The journalists did not regard Italy as a possible ally but as a colonialist power crushing the Tripolitanians’ struggle for independence. The Nashashibi opposition used al-Hajj Amin’s courtship of colonialist Italy to accuse him of betraying the pan-Arab cause, though no one in the opposition criticized his later friendship with Germany.23
The opposition behaved very shabbily when the St James Conference was convened. Fakhri al-Nashashibi was the most vocal in objecting to al-Hajj Amin’s participation in the talks. He informed the British that not only did he himself support the
ir policy, he had actually created ‘peace bands’ that fought against the rebels. It seems that this posture embarrassed the more nationalist elements in the Nashashibi camp, and for a moment it looked as if they would denounce Fakhri’s action. Raghib even suggested inviting al-Hajj Amin to London as head of the delegation. Al-Hajj Amin must have felt for a moment that he was about to return to the center of politics in Palestine. To his great surprise, he was allowed by the British to travel to Egypt, only to discover that he had been brought there to be pressured by Egyptian prime minister Muhammad Mahmud to refuse Raghib’s invitation and to give Jamal al-Husayni the position as a head of the Husayni representative in the delegation.24
Not everyone in the British government treated the mufti with such hostility. By March 1938, when the new High Commissioner MacMichael took up his post, voices were heard in the British government suggesting the mufti be allowed to return to Palestine. But MacMichael detested al-Hajj Amin and would not allow it. Throughout World War II, the decision-makers in London were divided on the question of the mufti. The Colonial Office led the opposition to his return, followed by the War Office, whereas the Foreign Office sought to keep an open channel to the person it regarded as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs.25
Thus in the days leading up to the conference in London, al-Hajj Amin could have felt that he had not lost his power to influence events. He closely followed his colleagues’ efforts to convince the British government to convene the conference in the first place, and regarded the British agreement to do so as a very significant Palestinian achievement.
He succeeded in persuading an exhausted delegation to visit him to discuss the conference before returning to Palestine from London. Two of the delegates, Musa Alami and Izzat Tannus, wrote accounts of the meeting with al-Hajj Amin. They were hoping to get some rest before going on to Beirut to report to al-Hajj Amin, but on disembarkation they encountered the mufti’s car waiting for them at the Port of Tripoli. The car took them straight to the al-Zarq Hotel, where the impatient al-Hajj Amin had gathered the Palestinian exiles in Syria and Lebanon, including most of the membership of the Higher Committee. As Alami described it, Tannus as usual dominated the report to the mufti, until Amin al-Tamimi, a member of the executive, asked Alami humorously, ‘But were you not in London too, ya Musa?’ Alami nodded and said, ‘What’s more, I have the form of the agreement with MacDonald’ (Colonial Secretary Ramsay MacDonald, who gave his consent in writing to convene the conference). He pulled the document from his inside pocket. According to al-Hajj Amin, ‘Izzat Darwaza, another witness to that occasion, rose from his seat and with tears in his eyes embraced Alami, saying, “This is the declaration of Palestine’s independence!”’26
Al-Hajj Amin instructed Jamal to travel through the Arab world building support for what he now saw as an enhanced Palestinian position. Jamal met Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Maher (Mahmud’s successor), who complained that he still did not understand what the Palestinians really wanted. In reply, Jamal produced the agreement brought by Alami, adding in Egyptian argot, ‘Anyone who holds such a document should dance and rejoice till he drops and thanks God.’27 It is doubtful that the document clarified the Palestinians’ position to the Egyptian prime minister, or caused him to dance till he dropped. Like other Egyptian politicians, Ali Maher thought that the Palestinians had little cause for rejoicing, mainly because they had failed to unite around a single, well-defined goal. In Egypt, too, there were disagreements, but all parties were united by the goal of an independent Egypt freed from its British overlords. But the Palestinians did not define their aim, whether they wished to be part of some other Arab country or truly independent. Their distinctive plight was not clearly understood by most of the politicians in the Arab world at the time, either because of their basic disinclination to study the question or their dismay at the petty discords within the Palestinian camp. The Egyptian prime minister’s perplexity led to a pan-Arab initiative to help the Palestinians define their aims.
In the event, the Colonial Office and MacMichael succeeded in preventing al-Hajj Amin from taking part in the St James Conference but not from instructing the Palestinian delegation by telephone from Beirut. Exile weighed heavily on al-Hajj Amin, and witnesses reported that he waited impatiently for every scrap of information from London. He agreed to give Jamal a major role in the next moves. But he was too far from center stage to have an impact any more.
In fact, the Palestinian political elite as a whole ceased to play a significant role in Palestine’s destiny. At the conference in St James’s Palace, the Palestinian delegates were surprised to discover that Britain, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia had coordinated the search for a solution. The British government was eager to obtain the support of the Arab countries in case of a global war. After consultations with representatives of Egypt, Arabia and Iraq, but not with the Palestinians, the British Foreign Office drafted a planned solution: until 1944 a total of 75,000 Jews would be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, land purchases would be as restricted as possible and every Zionist project would require Arab consent. However, Arab independence in the whole country would require Zionist consent. Until then, of course, Britain would continue to rule over Palestine.
The plan was adopted as the government’s official policy and incorporated in a 1939 White Paper. The Jewish community was united in rejecting it. The Palestinian leadership failed to take advantage of the opportunity and ultimately rejected the last chance offered by the British to save Palestine.
The Higher Arab Committee met in Lebanon to discuss the White Paper once they realized that the Arab states would support it. Four members of the committee did support it, but the mufti hesitated. There was nothing in the document to promise an independent Arab Palestine, which al-Hajj Amin had come to regard as the quintessence of the Palestinian goal. It is important to note that had he examined the plan in minute detail, he would have found that it was less a document about Palestinian independence and far more a corrective to the Balfour Declaration through its severe limitations on immigration and land purchases. As such, it kept alive the option of independence in the future. But al-Hajj Amin convinced the members of the committee to focus on the issue of an independent state, and they decided to send Izzat Darwaza to London to find out if Britain would be willing to accelerate the implementation of the promise to establish one. When Darwaza returned empty-handed, al-Hajj Amin forced the rest of the committee to reject the White Paper.28
Why did al-Hajj Amin fail to discern the opportunity when it came his way? Why did he not connect the great sacrifices made by the Palestinians during the uprising with what was actually a substantial achievement? Some historians ascribe al-Hajj Amin’s rejection to personal vindictiveness, but there may be a better explanation.29 The longer he was in exile, and the more he hobnobbed with the foremost figures of the Arab world, the greater his aspirations for himself and for his people became. When he was in Lebanon, he would not accept anything less than an independent state. By the time he went to Rome and Berlin, he was demanding the independence and unification of the entire Arab world.
After the failure of the St James Conference, al-Hajj Amin had to curtail his activity even more, though he did have some minor successes. He found himself in direct conflict not only with the British and the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine but also with the enterprises of the Baron de Rothschild, primarily the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), which conducted its own policies and sought independent contact with the mufti. Its directors tried to reach al-Hajj Amin through Ibrahim Said, the son of Said al-Husayni who, as noted above, had once worked for the company in Jerusalem. When these attempts failed, they tried to frustrate the mufti’s efforts to recruit Bedouin tribes in the Golan and Galilee to the Palestinian struggle. They persuaded Amir Faur, a Bedouin sheikh in Syria, to reject the mufti publicly. Al-Hajj Amin responded at once, denouncing Amir Faur as a traitor until the sheikh lost all his political power.30 But these were minor tri
umphs, and on the whole al-Hajj Amin’s activity was quite limited.
When World War II broke out and Britain and France declared war on Germany, al-Hajj Amin was placed under house arrest for not supporting the Allies.31 He became increasingly gloomy, and his close advisers realized that he could not go on being inactive in Lebanon. In desperation he turned to the French chief of police in Damascus, Pierre Colombani, a dubious character who had been in the post after being accused of murdering a rival politician in France. In return for a bribe, Colombani arranged the mufti’s escape from Lebanon to Damascus. On his advice, al-Hajj Amin disguised himself as a Lebanese peasant woman in traditional dress and veil, thus hiding his identity from the French officers at the border crossing in Maysalun.
On 13 October 1939, exactly two years after leaving Jerusalem, al-Hajj Amin was on Syrian soil. He did not remain in Damascus for long. Aided by Izz al-Din al-Shawa, a Gazan known for his bold actions, al-Hajj Amin fled again. This time he went to Baghdad to meet with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, office chief of Abd al-Illah, Iraq’s heir to the throne and de facto ruler. The mufti appeared in al-Gaylani’s office on 16 October, signed his name in the visitors’ book, received the heir apparent’s blessing and went to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. From there he went to a house on al-Zahwi Street, where he resided during his exile in Baghdad, being feted and treated royally the whole time.32
After al-Hajj Amin’s arrival in the Iraqi capital, many other Palestinian exiles landed there, including Abd al-Qadir and his family. There, as in Damascus, they created various structures for independent action. It looked for a while to be a very pleasant chapter of al-Hajj Amin’s life, compensating for the last harsh two years. He enjoyed prominence and prestige in Iraq’s internal politics for a short period, and he measured his situation against the problem of Palestine. Whether in Baghdad or in Lebanon, he was unable to restart the uprising or even to persuade the British government to allow him to return home.33 Baghdad was the preamble to the grandest stage of his life. But the grandeur was misleading: just when al-Hajj Amin imagined himself the leader of the entire Arab nation, his ability to act on behalf of his people would further diminish.