1936–39 Arab Revolt in Palestine

1936–39 Arab Revolt in Palestine, popular Palestinian Arab uprising against British governance, driven largely by opposition to British policies toward the Zionist movement. Although sparked by escalating violence between Arabs and Jews in 1935–36, the rebellion began in April 1936 as a general strike. The demands of the strike were an end to the rapidly growing wave of Jewish immigration (the Fifth Aliyah), a prohibition on land sales to Jews to prevent further Arab dispossession, and independence from British rule. The violence that preceded the strike continued after the strike ended in October, and by the end of 1936 the unrest assumed the dimensions of a national revolt. The rebellion intensified in 1937 after the Peel Commission sidestepped Arab demands, but it was eventually quashed in 1939.

The revolt presaged the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, spurring the disparate factions of Arabs and Jews to consolidate their national movements and prompting the British to propose for the first time dividing the Palestine mandate into an Arab state and a Jewish state. Despite earlier protests and riots by Palestinian Arabs, the revolt was the first event during the British mandate period to unite Palestinian Arabs across geographic, economic, and sociopolitical divisions, and, at the close of the revolt, it succeeded in effecting restrictions on immigration and land transfers. At the same time, the strike accelerated the Jewish community’s push to establish institutions independent of Arab or British influence, and the violence stimulated the growth of underground Zionist militias, as the British permitted the Haganah to take up arms and trained its volunteers to help quell the Arab rebellion. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed and, in addition to the high number of casualties, resulted in the first wave of Palestinian Arab refugees in the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1947 the general recommendation for dividing the mandate was revived, and the United Nations adopted a partition plan in Resolution 181, which Arab forces resisted in an ensuing civil war and the subsequent 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Background

The frustration leading up to the uprising began with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the beginning of British administration of the region. In exchange for Arab support in the war, Arabs had expected the United Kingdom to support Arab self-rule (see Hussein-McMahon correspondence [1915–16]), including among the Arab population inhabiting Palestine. The British had also promised “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the Balfour Declaration (1917) in effort to rally support from the Zionist movement, which aspired to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Throughout the mandate period, the British administration facilitated Jewish immigration on a large scale, and the sudden and rapid growth in population and land purchases caused disruption, confusion, displacement, and conflict.Throughout the 1920s Arabs protested British policies on these central issues, but Jewish immigration to Palestine was allowed to increase rapidly in the 1930s amid the developments in Europe, especially the Nazi accession to power in Germany in 1933 and the widespread persecution of Jews throughout central and eastern Europe. By 1936 the Jewish population of Palestine had reached almost 400,000, or one-third of the total. The influx of middle-class professionals saw an enormous surge in land purchases as well as investment in land development. Most of the Arabs (nearly nine-tenths) had been employed in agriculture, despite deteriorating economic conditions, but, as ownership of land changed hands, many Arab tenant-farmers faced eviction. They were displaced to bloated urban centers—often crowded into shantytowns on the city edges—where they struggled to find work. The influx drove a rapid and uncertain transformation in Palestinian economic and social life.

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In October 1935 an illegal shipment of arms was uncovered that was intended for the Haganah, a Zionist military organization that was proscribed by the British authorities. The discovery, which was covered sensationally in the Arab press, fueled the Arabs’ long-held fears that Zionist militias were arming themselves on a large scale. In November Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an activist and militant who had ministered to many of the displaced Arabs, began mobilizing an armed uprising among the fellahin (rural agrarian class) in Samaria and Galilee. British forces subdued him only days into his campaign, but Arabs hailed his death a martyrdom and inspired spontaneous acts of violence in the months that followed.

Meanwhile, on November 25 the Arab political parties presented demands that Jewish immigration cease, land transfer be prohibited, and democratic institutions be established. A boycott of Zionist and British goods was proclaimed. In December the British administration offered to set up a legislative council of 28 members, in which the Arabs would have a majority. The British would retain control through their selection of nonelected members. Although Arabs would not be represented in the council in proportion to their numbers, Arab leaders favored the proposal, but the Zionists criticized it bitterly as an attempt to freeze the national home through a constitutional Arab stranglehold. In any event, London rejected the proposal.

On April 15, 1936, a band of Qassam’s followers stopped all vehicles that were passing along the road between Tulkarm and Nablus, demanding money to help fund armed resistance. They shot three Jews who had been passing through, two of whom died as a result. A series of reprisals in Jaffa and Tel Aviv saw violence escalate in the following days, and the Arabs became particularly agitated by the intervention of British forces, who killed two Arabs in Jaffa.

The Revolt

The escalation prompted a call for a general strike and the nonpayment of taxes in Nablus on April 20, followed in the coming days by similar calls in towns across Palestine. On April 25 the Arab political parties came together for the first time to endorse the strike, forming the Arab Higher Committee. The loose-knit committee was presided over by the mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini but included his foremost rivals such as Awni Abd al-Hadi (as secretary) as well as Raghib al-Nashashibi and Hussein al-Khalidi. Seeking to represent the strike, the committee of Arab notables recalled the parties’ November demands to end Jewish immigration, a ban on land sales to Jews, and national independence. In October the committee called off the strike after several Arab rulers promised them that the British government would investigate the situation in good faith, but the end of the strike did not pacify the uprising. Arab rebels in the countryside of Samaria and Galilee, joined by a small number of volunteers from neighboring Arab countries, attacked Jewish settlements and British installations simultaneously with the strike and continued their efforts after the strike ended. By the end of the year, the movement had assumed the dimensions of a national revolt, the mainstay of which were the fellahin. Even though the arrival of British troops suppressed this phase of the revolt to some extent, the armed rebellion, arson, bombings, and assassinations continued.

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The British government followed up its promise of investigating the volatile situation with a royal commission of inquiry presided over by Robert Peel. In July 1937 the Peel Commission reported that the revolt was caused by Arab desire for independence and fear of the Jewish national home. It declared the mandate unworkable and Britain’s obligations to Arabs and Jews mutually irreconcilable. In the face of what it described as “right against right,” the commission recommended that the region be partitioned. The Zionist attitude toward partition, though ambivalent, was overall one of cautious acceptance. For the first time a British official body explicitly spoke of a Jewish state, albeit only in Galilee and the coastal area around Tel Aviv. The Arabs were horrified by the proposal. The commission not only allotted to this state an area that was immensely larger than the existing Jewish landholdings but recommended the forcible transfer of the Arab population from the proposed Jewish state. The momentum of the revolt intensified during 1937 and 1938 as a result.

In September 1937 the British declared martial law. The Arab Higher Committee was dissolved, and many officials of the Supreme Muslim Council and other organizations were arrested. The mufti fled to Lebanon and then Iraq, never to return to an undivided Palestine. The Arab Revolt nonetheless managed briefly to bring a large section of Palestine under rebel control and replace British administrative institutions with their own.

In 1938 the prospect of war in Europe loomed over the British government, and it could not afford to continue facing Arab hostility in Palestine if war were to break out closer to home. The Woodhead Commission, under Sir John Woodhead, was set up to examine the practicality of the Peel Commission’s proposal. In November 1938 it recommended against it—largely on the ground that the number of Arabs in the proposed Jewish state would be almost equal to the number of Jews—and put forward alternative proposals drastically reducing the area of the Jewish state and limiting the sovereignty of the proposed states. This was unacceptable to both Arabs and Jews. Seeking to find a solution acceptable to both parties, the British announced the impracticability of partition and called for a roundtable conference in London. Meanwhile, the Haganah had been given permission to arm itself, and it cooperated with British forces and the Irgun Zvai Leumi in attacks against Arabs. By early 1939 the tide had turned on the revolt. High casualty rates and firm British measures gradually eroded its strength.

No agreement was reached at the London conference held during February and March 1939. In May 1939, however, the British government issued a white paper, which essentially yielded to Arab demands and brought the revolt to its end. It stated that the Jewish national home should be established within an independent Palestinian state. During the next five years 75,000 Jews would be allowed into the country; thereafter Jewish immigration would be subject to Arab “acquiescence.” Land transfer to Jews would be allowed only in certain areas in Palestine, and an independent Palestinian state would be considered within 10 years. The Arabs, although in favor of the new policy, rejected the white paper, largely because they mistrusted the British government and opposed a provision contained in the paper for extending the mandate beyond the 10-year period. The Zionists were shocked and enraged by the paper, which they considered a death blow to their program and to Jews who desperately sought refuge in Palestine from the growing persecution they were enduring in Europe.

According to some estimates, more than 5,000 Arabs were killed and 15,000 wounded during the revolt while 5,600 were imprisoned and as many as 40,000 fled or were forced into exile. Although it signified the birth of a national identity, the revolt was unsuccessful in many ways. The general strike had encouraged Zionist self-reliance, and the Arabs of Palestine were unable to recover from their sustained effort of defying the British administration. Their traditional leaders were either killed, arrested, or deported, leaving the dispirited and disarmed population divided along urban-rural, class, clan, and religious lines. The Zionists, on the other hand, were united behind David Ben-Gurion, who ultimately led Israel to independence.