The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty

by Ilan Pappe

  In the meantime, the national struggle in Palestine was carried on by less prominent members of the family, alongside the Khalidis and Alamis. Mainly it proceeded thanks to the perseverance of other social strata – farmers, merchants and professionals. But though these groups would later form political structures that better reflected their world and aspirations, this did not detract from the Husayni predominance in Palestine.

  Al-Hajj Amin and Jamal preserved the family’s primacy from abroad, while Jamal’s older brother Tawfiq Salih did so at home. Munif, too, did his share. In 1939 he was released along with the other Palestinians from detention in the Seychelles and was royally welcomed by the Egyptian Wafd Party, led by Nahas Pasha. Munif became the family’s ambassador to Cairo.

  While the Husaynis led the Palestinian uprising, they were not sure how to evaluate it. Though the family guided the revolt against the British and their policies of enlarging the Zionist presence in the country, the uprising was doomed to end with a military defeat. Britain did change its policy and was serious about limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases – not to enable a Palestinian state but to freeze the conditions that prevailed in 1939. These seemed best suited to British interests – a small Jewish community, a leaderless Arab majority and a mollified Arab world. Under such circumstances, Britain could confront the Nazi war machine in Europe and the Japanese in Asia.

  CHAPTER 11

  World War II and the Nakbah

  In the Midst of the Revolution in Iraq

  In October 1939, the mufti was in the Iraqi capital. Within less than a year he would become a major factor in Iraq’s internal politics and get involved in the senior officers’ attempted pro-Nazi coup against the monarchy and the British protectorate. But before al-Hajj Amin moved against Britain, Britain moved against him.

  Iraq’s prime minister Nuri al-Said had tried and failed to get the mufti to issue a public statement supporting the Allies and was advised to place him in complete isolation. But Nuri al-Said did not dare to act against the man described in the Iraqi press as the most honest figure in the entire Arab world. The mufti had been enthusiastically welcomed in Baghdad, and the newspapers lauded him as ‘the hero of the Arab nation’, to his great satisfaction.1

  In March 1940, his standing grew even stronger when a new government was formed in Iraq that included some of his personal friends. These friends took pains to increase the mufti’s financial subsidy and influenced their government to adopt a pro-Palestinian policy. Most of the money was meant for the budget of the Office for Palestinian Exiles, which ran the affairs of the large group of refugees from the uprising. Al-Hajj Amin had hoped to use the funds to restart the armed struggle, but there was not enough for that purpose.

  For a short time, these connections made al-Hajj Amin a pivotal factor in the political power play in Iraq – at least that is what the contemporary British documents claimed. It may have been an exaggeration, but most historians have taken this claim at face value. There is no doubt that al-Hajj Amin enjoyed a personal reputation of decency and probity – outstanding amid the endemic corruption in Arab politics in general and Iraqi politics in particular – extensively documented in the Arab press at the time.

  Since al-Hajj Amin’s position was so strong, the British government considered taking various extreme measures against him. The Colonial Office prepared a plan to abduct and even to assassinate him, but the Foreign Office scotched it. For one thing, it feared that an attack on the mufti would anger the Muslim community in India, which was still loyal to Britain, unlike the Hindu majority in the subcontinent. The Foreign Office even rejected a more moderate proposal by the intelligence office in Cairo to discredit al-Hajj Amin by publicizing his contacts with the Axis governments. This would actually have done him little harm, as Britain’s international standing, like that of France, had been declining since some time before the war. This British vacillation would be seen again in 1945.

  But in the summer of 1940, the British government changed direction and sought to conciliate al-Hajj Amin. The Nazis had just scored some major victories, and Rommel’s advance towards Alexandria seemed unstoppable. The British government, particularly Colonial Secretary Lord Lloyd, decided to open channels to the exiled Palestinian leadership in Baghdad. Colonel Stuart Newcomb was dispatched to Baghdad and, through the mediation of Nuri al-Said, met with Jamal al-Husayni. Newcomb wished to know whether the Palestinians’ attitude towards the White Paper they had previously rejected had now changed. He proposed a broader British plan for the future consisting of an independent state of Palestine, with guaranteed equality for all the inhabitants, irrespective of religion or race, and with each community enjoying considerable autonomy in running its own affairs.2

  The proposal was discussed in Baghdad for two weeks, and Newcomb accepted Jamal’s demand that the British government demonstrate its goodwill by implementing the White Paper as soon as the war ended, after consultation with the Arab governments. But this welcome signal from London was extinguished before it awakened any real hopes. Prime Minister Winston Churchill rejected the plan altogether, probably under massive Zionist pressure. Al-Hajj Amin himself, it seems, was less than enthusiastic about the new move, partly because the British government forbade Newcomb to meet with him.

  The demise of this option impelled al-Hajj Amin to open intensive contacts with the Nazis, beginning on 15 July 1940. Al-Hajj Amin sent several emissaries to prepare the ground for a future understanding with Germany, among them Naji Shawqat, Iraq’s minister of justice, who contacted Franz von Papen, Germany’s ambassador to Turkey. The first approach included a letter addressed to Hitler, which opened with compliments to the Nazi Führer. Here al-Hajj Amin for the first time adopted the Nazi discourse – a move which would later cost him and his people dearly. He spoke of the dangers of international Jewry as a force that had recently appeared in Palestine, which meant that Nazism and the Palestinian nation had a common enemy. The communications channel through the German embassy in Istanbul was temporarily blocked by the German Foreign Ministry’s instructions not to meddle overmuch in the ‘Arab territory’ – it was supposed to be Italy’s sphere of interest, rather than Germany’s.3

  A month later, al-Hajj Amin obtained a permit for his personal secretary, Kemal Haddad, to visit Berlin. But once there Haddad met only minor officials. Al-Hajj Amin was trying to impress the Nazis by declaring that he had created a pan-Arab organization that was ready to cooperate closely with Germany. In return, he demanded a German–Italian declaration on the right to independence of Arab nations from Sudan to Syria, including Palestine. Such a declaration, al-Hajj Amin affirmed, would spur a pan-Arab revolt (financed by the Axis) against the British throughout the Middle East. This reflected al-Hajj Amin’s ambitious notion of reenacting with new allies the revolt of Sharif Hussein, the grandee from Mecca who had rebelled against Turkey during the First World War and helped the British replace Ottoman rule with European colonialism. The Germans remained unimpressed.4

  The third attempt, in January 1941, was more successful. Al-Hajj Amin’s confidant in Damascus, Dr Said Fatah al-Imam, coordinated propaganda positions with the Nazis. The climax of these contacts was a letter al-Hajj Amin sent Hitler on 20 January 1941, dealing mainly with the disastrous consequences of Franco-British colonialism in the Middle East. The rather lengthy analysis included references to an insidious but abortive British plan to settle millions of Indians in Iraq, harsh criticism of the Franco-Syrian accord of 1936, the injustices of Britain’s domination of Egypt and finally a reference to events in Palestine. Until he met Hitler, al-Hajj Amin did not appreciate the centrality of anti-Jewish hatred in the Nazi worldview. He devoted his entire letter to the Arab hostility towards Britain, even in connection with Palestine. Only one sentence echoed the Nazi discourse (though this theme would intensify as the relationship developed). He described world Jewry as ‘dangerous enemies, whose secret weapon is wealth, corruption and intrigue’. Elsewhere he emphasized the Anglo-J
ewish connections – the Jews of the world, he said, were intimately linked to England, and therefore ‘the Palestinian problem united the Arab countries in a common hatred against the British and the Jews’.5

  The letter was taken to Berlin by al-Hajj Amin’s secretary Haddad, who was instructed to add verbal explanations and clarifications. The mufti was asking for German assistance to withstand the massive aid given by the Jews of the United States. In return, he would commit the Palestinian people to support anyone who fought against the British– Jewish coalition, as Germany did.

  But the clarifications did not help, and no real answer was ever given to the letter or to the verbal appeal. Until al-Hajj Amin went to Europe, the feelers he sent out on behalf of the Palestinian cause remained negligible. Nevertheless, this effort at cooperation with the Axis played an important part in the revolt against continued British rule in Iraq. It was largely inspired by the views of anti-British Iraqi politicians, and in effect the mufti helped the platform and agenda of pro-German Iraqi politics more than those politicians advanced the Palestinian cause.6

  Al-Hajj Amin himself claimed that the idea of approaching Germany was raised by his Iraqi allies:

  ‘They asked me to seek contacts with Germany. And why not? Our people were under the yoke of the British, not the Germans, and the Germans had shown us sympathy and friendship as far back as the time of Abdul Hamid II, which is why Hitler was so popular.’7

  Al-Hajj Amin thought of it as forming a relationship with Germany rather than with Nazism – at least at this stage.

  Al-Hajj Amin’s main activity in Iraq was not approaching the Axis government but rather getting involved in local Iraqi politics. The outbreak of World War II heightened the opposition’s hope that the pro-British Hashemite regime might be toppled. Facing the opposition for many years was Nuri al-Said, a hero of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire and a confidant of the Hashemites in Iraq. He was the strongman of Iraqi politics who had served as prime minister several times since 1930. At the outbreak of the war, he was again appointed prime minister but was challenged by a powerful anti-British opposition. In March 1940, he resigned, either to demonstrate to Britain the strength of the opposition or to prove to the Iraqi political establishment that he was indispensable.

  The opposition was led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, flanked by four army officers who would later be known as ‘the Golden Square’. Al-Hajj Amin worked wholeheartedly to help al-Gaylani and his ‘square’ become the core of Iraq’s next government. The man who guided the mufti’s moves from the shadowy background was François Ganeau, a tall, sturdy man, and a secret agent of the Vichy government who would later be dubbed France’s Lawrence of Arabia. In the few films shot in Iraq during this time, he is always seen at the mufti’s side, and it was he who would bring al-Hajj Amin to Il Duce’s palace in Rome and to the encounter with Hitler.8

  While in Baghdad, al-Hajj Amin created the Party of the Arab Nation to coordinate the struggle of all the Arabs against colonialism. The mufti’s neglect of the Palestinian issue in favor of the pan-Arab cause strained his relations with Jamal.9 But there was no way to influence al-Hajj Amin now that he had become for the first time a key factor in pan-Arab politics. Al-Hajj Amin’s progress to the summit of regional politics climaxed at the end of February 1941, at his temporary home in Baghdad, where the officers of the Golden Square and other supporters swore on the Qur’an to fight the enemies of the Arabs, beginning with Britain.10

  But beyond a dinner party and moral exhortations, al-Hajj Amin could offer no magic formula for victory over the British Empire. The only material aid that might have countered Britain’s might had to come from Germany and Italy, but al-Hajj Amin’s contacts with those two powers were fruitless. In February 1941, the British forced Gaylani to resign. Nevertheless, in April al-Hajj Amin and his associates in the Golden Square succeeded, without German military help, in bringing off a military coup that restored Gaylani to power. The Germans did help with money – $35,000 reached Baghdad, but it was not enough. The group lacked weapons, and these did not arrive. In May 1941, the rebels, backed by most of the army but without enough weapons, faced the British army, which was reinforced with units from the Transjordan Arab Legion.11

  But it seems that al-Hajj Amin did not lose heart at these critical moments while still on the summit of a pan-Arab revolution. He was euphoric about his involvement in a successful coup against the British Empire. As mufti, he cried ‘Jihad!’ against the British, who once again swung against him and even schemed to abduct him. To this end, they released from prison David Raziel, the commander of the Zionist underground known as the Irgun, but Raziel was killed in Iraq before he could attack the mufti.12

  The boldest of the Husaynis, Abd al-Qadir, did not limit himself to organizing the revolt but fought alongside the Iraqi rebels. He was caught by the British and held in detention for two years. When he was released, he went to the Hijaz, where he stayed for some eighteen months. His son Faysal, the future Husayni representative in the Palestinian leadership in the 1980s and 1990s, had been born in 1940 in a Baghdad hospital.

  The coup held out for twenty-six days, until the end of May, when it was crushed by the British Empire. On 29 May, before Nuri al-Said was brought back to Baghdad by the British, al-Hajj Amin and Jamal fled the city. Before leaving, al-Hajj Amin pointed to the Jews of Iraq as the party responsible for the failure of the coup, an explanation that satisfied several officers and hundreds of soldiers in the Iraqi army. On 1 June, when a large group of Jews went out to welcome the returning British army, these units attacked them and then turned on the Jewish homes in Baghdad. In this pogrom, known as the Farhud, 179 Jews were killed and many houses and shops were pillaged.13

  This was the first chapter in the mufti’s role in World War II. It made the Zionist Jewish community in Palestine hate him and placed him alongside Hitler in the collective Zionist memory of the enemies of the Jewish people. But the main chapter of that history was al-Hajj Amin’s activity in the Nazi capital during the Holocaust.

  COURTING MUSSOLINI AND HITLER

  In May 1941, when the short-lived coup collapsed, al-Hajj Amin and his wife, Aisha, escaped to Tehran. They were accompanied by other Husaynis – among them Jamal, Salim Hussein and Safwat Yunis – as well as the leader of the revolt, Rashid al-Gaylani, and eighty of their comrades. The Italians sent a special emissary, Count Alberto Malini, to act as liaison with the mufti and to see to his needs. At first al-Hajj Amin was royally received by the pro-German shah, but when British forces invaded southern Iran and the Russians moved into its north, the monarch’s position became precarious. Al-Hajj Amin had come to Iran at a bad time, just as the government changed and a pro-British orientation replaced the pro-German one.

  Jamal’s route was even less fortunate. He went straight into the British-occupied zone in southern Iran, was captured near the town of Ahwaz and was sent to a detention camp in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), where he remained until the end of the war. Al-Hajj Amin was luckier – he himself described how Malini came to the house where he was hiding in Tehran a few minutes ahead of the local police and spirited him away to the Japanese legation.

  The British did all they could to capture the mufti. The anti-British shah fell in September, and a new shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, took the throne, promising to favor the Allies in the war. This political reversal prompted the Reuters news agency to report that the mufti had been captured and would be brought to a swift trial in Baghdad.14 So confident were the British that it would be a simple matter to capture him that they worried what they would do once he was in their hands. They discovered that it was doubtful his arrest would serve their purpose – he might become a martyr to his cause. Using him as hostage to pressure the Husayni leadership in Palestine, however, might be more productive. In the event, they failed to capture him.

  Al-Hajj Amin remained in a small pavilion in the garden of the Japanese embassy for twenty days. He lost half his weight, which altered his appea
rance. In October he decided that this was insufficient and prepared for flight by shaving off his beard and moustache, dying his hair and putting on a Western suit. In this guise, he had a new passport photograph taken.15

  It was his third flight in October, an ill-omened month in his life. Again he disguised himself as a woman and set out with an Italian passport bearing a woman’s photograph. He mingled among the women of the Italian legation, who traveled on a local bus via Russian-occupied Iran to Turkey. He experienced some unpleasant moments at the border crossing, on the Iranian side, when the Russian officials became suspicious. But eventually he was allowed to proceed. He made the rest of the journey through Turkey in relative comfort on a train heading west to Istanbul.

  Once again, the Azma brothers came to the mufti’s aid. Nabih, who was romantically involved with a certain lady in the Intelligence Department of the German Foreign Ministry, represented al-Hajj Amin’s interests to the Germans. Even before the mufti’s flight, in July 1941, Nabih and Fawzi al-Qawuqji had been preparing a pan-Arab conference under Germany’s aegis, hoping to promote a new national authority and declare an alliance between the Arab nation and Germany. The memoirs of the Azma brothers reveal that they shared al-Hajj Amin’s hopes of reproducing the agreement Sharif Hussein had struck with Britain, but with a different power – an idea put forward by some senior figures in the German Foreign Ministry. Nabih’s brother Adil had been with Fawzi al-Qawuqji in Berlin since the beginning of 1941. Nabih wrote to his brother that before he and al-Hajj Amin headed for Germany, they wished to know ‘if the Arab nation would be supported’. If not, they would turn to the other side.16