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![‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
‘unambiguous stand against the report of the Peel Commission, which, published on7
July 1937, recommended partition and the establishment of a Jewish state. At the same
time, it became clear that the High Commissioner's fear that pressure from the Mufti’s
left-wing might lead him to abandon his moderate attitude was not groundless. This
pressure, however, was not exerted by the quarter from which the High Commissioner
hhad expected it, but by the middle cadre which was still represented on the national
‘committees, and which was represented daily by groups of dispossessed peasants and
‘unemployed workers in the cities and the countryside.
Thus, the only course left to the Mufti was to flee. He avoided arrest by taking,
refuge in the Haram al-Sharif, but events forced him into a position which he had not
been able to take up a year earlier. In September 1937, Andrews, the District Commis-
sioner of the Galilee district, was shot dead by four armed commandos outside the
Anglican church in Nazareth. Andrews was “the only official who administered the
Mandate as Zionists consider it right...he never succeeded in winning the confidence
of the Fellahin [Palestinian peasants]”. The Arabs regarded him asa friend of the Zion-
s and believed that his task was to facilitate the transfer of Galilee to the Zionist state
that had been demarcated by the partition proposal. The Arab peasants disliked him
and accused him of facilitating the sale of the Huleh lands, and the commandos who
Killed him are believed to have belonged to one of the secret cells of the Qassamites
Although the Arab Higher Committee condemned this incident on the same night,
the situation, exactly as had happened when al-Qassam was killed, had got out of the
control of the Mufti and his group, so that, if they wanted to remain at the head of the
rational movement, they had to hang onto it and mount the rising wave, as had hap-
pened in April 1936, This time, however, the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses
was more violent, not only because of the experience they had acquired during the past
year, but also because the conflict that was taking place before their eyes had become
increasingly clear. tis certain that this stage of the revolt was directed substantially, if
not entirely, against the British rather than the Zionists. The growth of the conflict had
led to the crystallisation of more clear-cut positions; the peasants were in almost com-
plete control of the revolt, the role of the urban bourgeoisie had retreated somewhat,
and the wealthy people in the country and the big middle peasants were hesitant to
support the rebels, while the Zionist forces had effectively gone on the offensive.
There are two important questions to be considered as regards this stage of the
revolt: “The Arabs contacted the Zionists, proposing that they reach some kind of an
agreement on the basis of a complete severance of relations with Britain, But the Zion-
ists immediately rejected this, because they regarded their relations with Britain as
27 Neville Barbour, Nis! Dominus, London, pp. 183-193.](3639palrevolt 48.png)
THE 1936-39
REVOLT IN
PALESTINE
GHASSAN
KANAFANI
CONTENTS
COLOPHON
INTRODUCTION TO GHASSAN KANAFANI
POLITICAL WRITINGS OF GHASSAN KANAFANI
POEM FOR GHASSAN KANAFANI
THE 1936-39 REVOLT IN PALESTINE.
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND: THE WORKERS.
BACKGROUND: THE PEASANTS.
BACKGROUND: THE INTELLECTUALS,
THE REVOLT
LETTER FROM GAZA BY GHASSAN KANAFANI
TRIBUTE TO GHASSAN KANAFANI
COLOPHON
PUBLISHER + Tricontinental Society, London (1980), Committee
for a Democratic Palestine, New York (1972)
DESIGN & EDITING + Danah Abdulla (dabdulla.com)
TYPESET « Palatino, Work Sans
SOURCE + newjerseysolidarity.org/resources/kanafani
INTRODUCTION TO
GHASSAN KANAFANI
GhiassaN Kanafant was born in Acre in 1936, and his family was expelled from Pal-
estine in 1948 by Zionist terror, after which they finally settled in Damascus. After
completing his studies, he worked as a teacher and journalist, first in Damascus, and
then in Kuwait. Later, he moved to Beirut and wrote for several papers before start
ing AI Hada (The Target), the weekly paper of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), in 1968.
To begin with, Kanafani was an active member of the Arab Nationalist Move-
ment, the forerunner of the PFLP, but later, along with his comrade Geonge Habash,
he became a Marxist, believing that the solution to the problems which faced the
Palestinians could not be achieved without a social revolution throughout the Arab
world,
Kanafani was killed when his car exploded in July 1972, murdered by Zionist
agents, His sister wrote:
“On the morning of Saturday, July 8, 1972, at about 10:30am, Lamees (Kanafani’s
niece) and her uncle were going out together to Beirut, A minute after their de-
parture, we heard the sound of a very loud explosion which shook the whole
building. We were immediately afraid, but our fear was for Ghassan and not for
Lamees because we had forgotten that Lamees was with him and we knew that
Ghassan was the target of the explosion. We ran outside, all of us were calling for
Ghassan and not one of us called for Lamees. Lamees was still a child of seventeen
years. Her whole being was longing for life and was full of life. But we knew that
‘Ghassan was the one who had chosen this road and who had walked along it Just
the previous day, Lamees had asked her uncle to reduce his revolutionary activi-
ties and to concentrate more upon writing his stories. She had said to him, “Your
stories are beautiful,” and he had answered, “Go back to writing stories? I write
well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day Ieave these principles, my
stories will become empty. If I were to leave behind my principles, you yourself
would not respect me.” He was able to convince the girl that the struggle and the
defence of principles is what finally leads to success in everything.
In the memoir which Ghassan Kanafani’s wife published after his death, she
wrote:
“His inspiration for writing and working unceasingly was the Palestinian-Arab
struggle...He was one of those who fought sincerely for the development of the
resistance movement from being a nationalist Palestinian liberation movement
into being a pan-Arab revolutionary socialist movement of which the liberation
of Palestine would be a vital component. He always stressed that the Palestine
problem could not be solved in isolation from the Arab World's whole social and
politica situation.”
This attitude developed naturally out of Kanafani’s own experiences, At the age
of twelve he went through the trauma of becoming a refugee, and thereafter he lived
san exile in various Arab countries, not always with official approval. His people
‘were scattered, many of them making a living in the camps or struggling to make a
living by doing the most menial work: their only hope lay in the future and in their
children, Kanafani himself, writing to his son, summed up what it means to be a
Palestinian:
“Lheard you in the other room asking your mother, ‘Mama, am I a Palestinian?”
When she answered “Yes' a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if
something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, then - silence.
Afterwards... heard you crying. I could not move. There was something bigger
than my awareness being born in the other room through your bewildered sob-
bing. It was as if blessed scalpel was cutting up your chest and putting there the
heart that belongs to you... was unable to move to see what was happening in the
other room. I knew, however, that a distant homeland was being born again: hills,
olive groves, dead people, torn banners and folded ones, all cutting their way into
a future of flesh and blood and being born in the heart of another child..Do you
believe that man grows? No, he is born suddenly ~ a word, a moment, penetrates
his heart to a new throb. One scene can hurl him down from the ceiling of child-
hood onto the ruggedness of the road.”
““To our departed and yet remaining Comrade; you knew of two ways in life, and
life knew from you only one, You knew the path of submission and you refused it.
‘And you knew of the path of resistance and you walked with it. This path was chosen
for you and you walked with it. And your comrades are walking with you.”
POLITICAL WRITINGS OF
GHASSAN KANAFANI
I THE Last week of October 1977, the Israeli occupation authorities banned the perfor-
mance of a theatrical adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun. The play was
tobe presented in Nazareth by a local theatrical group. In preventing the performance,
the Zionist authorities in effect expressed a profound fear of any literature and art that
expresses a sense of deep attachment to Palestinian identity
It was noteworthy that the banned play is written by a Palestinian writer who was
assassinated at the hands of Zionist terrorists, Why was Kanafani a target of Zionist ter-
ror? Kanafani’s writings were influential and instrumental in evoking and crystalising
the conviction that Palestinians, particularly of his generation, had a total and overrid-
ing duty to remain Palestinian, His words, ina simple yet profound manner, expressed
and articulated the Palestinian cause. His writings were a source for the rejection of the
status quo, for he believed in a future that would deliver a free Palestine.
In one of his novels, Return to Haifa (1969) Kanafani emphasised that
“The greatest crime anybody can commit is to think that the weakness and the mis
takes of others give him the right to exist at their expense.”
Moreover, in addition to being a prolific writer, Kanafani was an astute political
‘commentator. “The Resistance and its Problems”, a pamphlet by comrade Kanafani,
published by the PFLP in 1970, was, atthe time of its publication, the most daring and
responsible critique of the dynamics of Palestinian resistance. He identified the major
drawbacks that prevent the forging of the Palestinian people's victory. As a evolution-
ary, Comrade Kanafani in subjecting the resistance movement to critical evaluation,
sought through praxis to enrich and clarify the theoretical basis ofthe struggle so as to
lay the basis for inducing changes in the objective conditions. In
identified the basic factors of analysis as an evaluation of three interconnecting criteria:
is critical pursuit, he
‘+ The political-theoretical line of the resistance;
‘+ The question of praxis — particularly the armed dimension;
‘+ The question of organisation and leadership which provides the first two factors
with the necessary dialectical connection,
Seven years after its publication, the method and framework of analysis he pre
sented remain the most useful of approaches in conducting a critical evaluation of our
predicament.
Ghassan believed that a people who struggle for liberation must know their history
However, existing written history reflects the views ofits writers ~ colonial history. To
fill in the gap, he set out to write the moclern history of the Palestinian people's struggle.
‘The initial piece was a study of the famous 1936-39 revolt in Palestine. Due to his assas-
sination, he never completed the rest of the project.
Comrade Kanafani’s multi-cimensionality extends beyond his literary and political
abilities. In addition, he was a painter and a skilful literary critic. Through his efforts,
the Arab reader outside Palestine was introduced to what he called the “Poets of resis-
tance.” Mahmud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, two currently well-known Palestinian
Arab poets were first discovered by Kanafani. Comrade Kanafani was not satisfied with
studying Palestinian literature, for he believed that to know one’s enemy one must study
his literature. He thus became the first Arab writer to interpret Israeli-Zionist literature.
‘Comrade Kanafani was pethaps the first Arab writer to be martyred in the course of the
process of liberation,
He consciously chose to abandon and forego many bourgeois opportunities and
offers as he delved more and more into political and organisational tasks within the
framework of the PFLP. Such an option was basically consistent with one of the dom-
inant themes pervading most of his literary writings. He expressed the idea that the
Palestinian who prefers
doomed to failure
is own private happiness to the destiny of the Palestinians is
Not surprisingly, Kanafani’s funeral was perhaps the biggest political demonstra-
tion in Lebanon since Nasser’s death. As a martyr however, his impact on the Palestinian
predicament and consciousness is an ever present fact. The Israelis tried to silence him,
but his spilt blood has served well in nurturing the militancy of the present and future
‘generations of Palestinians.
The Israeli occupation forces tried to silence and prevent our people from seeking
to assert their new identity ~liberation. The theatre in Nazareth might have been forced
into closure, but the people ofthe surrounding towns organised demonstrations and ral-
lies expressing their anger. Tewrik Zayyad, the Palestinian poet and mayor of Nazareth,
addressed the crowd telling that their action proves Israel's impotence in confronting,
Palestinian self-assertion,
POEM FOR GHASSAN
KANAFANI
GHASSAN KANAFANI + “MEN IN THE SUN”
Ghassan, when the hatred of the enemy exploded, your life ended.
They thought that in killing you, they had disrupted our path.
Instead, our determination to continue along that path increased,
‘The pen in one hand and the gun in the other
Your presence among us increases every day.
Ghassan, we remember well and never forget
‘That the path is not easy and that few are worthy of it.
Ghassan, we remember well that you are the one who said,
“He is wrong who says that we are the generation of revolution.
Rather we are the generation who will give it life”
‘And the homeland which you were far from,
You were the closest of people to it
The homeland in which you should have been living,
was living in you.
You were the homeland,
You were the revolution,
You were the pen and the gun.
a
THE 1936-39 REVOLT
IN PALESTINE
GHASSAN KANAFANI |
PUBLISHER: COMMITTEE FOR DEMOCRATIC PALESTINE 4
INTRODUCTION
vere setback at the hands of three separate enemies that were to constitute to-
gether the principal threat to the nationalist movement in Palestine in all subse-
quent stages ofits struggle:
B=: 1936 and 1939, the Palestinian revolutionary movement suffered a se-
+ the local reactionary leadership;
+ the regimes in the Arab states surrounding Palestine;
+ the imperialist-Zionist enemy.
The present study will concentrate on the respective structures of these separate
forces and the dialectical relations that existed among them.
The intensity of the Palestinian nationalist experience, which emerged since 1918,
and was accompanied in one way or another with armed struggle, could not reflect
itself on the upper structure of the Palestinian national movement which remained
virtually under the control of semi-feual and semi-religious leadership, This was due
primarily to two related factors:
1. The existence and effectiveness ofthe Zionist movement, which gave the nation-
al challenge relative predominance over the social contradictions. The impact of
this challenge was being systematically felt by the masses of Palestinian Arabs,
who were the primary vietims of the Zionist invasion supported by British im-
perialism,
2. The existence of a significant conflict of interests between the local feudal-re-
ligious leadership and British imperialism: It was consistently in the interest
of the ruling class to promote and support a certain degree of revolutionary
struggle, instead of being more or less completely allied with the imperialist
power as would otherwise be the case. The British imperialists had found in the
Zionists “a more suitable aly.”
The above factors gave the struggle of Palestinian people particular features that
did not apply to the Arab nationalist struggle outside Palestine. The traditional leader-
ship, as a result, participated in, or atleast tolerated, a most advanced form of political
action (armed struggle); it raised progressive slogans, and had ultimately, despite its
reactionary nature, provided positive leadership during a critical phase of the Pales-
tinian nationalist struggle. It is relevant to explain, however, how the feudal-religious
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
leadership succeeded in staying at the head of the nationalist movement for so long
(until 1948). The transformation of the economic and social structure of Palestine,
‘which occurred rather rapidly, had affected primarily the Jewish sector, and had taken
place at the expense of the Palestinian middle and petty bourgeoisie, as well as the
‘Arab working class. The change from a semi-feudal society to a capitalist society was
accompanied by an increased concentration of economic power in the hands of the
Zionist machine and consequently, within the Jewish society in Palestine. It is signifi-
cant that Palestinian Arab advocates of conciliation, who became outspoken during
the thirties, were not landlords or rich peasants, but rather elements of the urban up-
per bourgeoisie whose interests gradually coincided with the expanding interests of
the Jewish bourgeoisie. The latter, by controlling the process of industrialisation, was
creating its own agents
In the meantime, the Arab countries s
conflicting roles. On the one hand, the Pan-Arab mass movement was serving as a
catalyst for the revolutionary spirit of the Palestinian masses, since a dialectical rela-
tion between the Palestinian and overall Arab struggles existed, on the other hand, the
established regimes in these Arab countries were doing everything in their power to
help curb and undermine the Palestinian mass movement. The sharpening, conflict in
Palestine threatened to contribute to the development ofthe struggle in these countries
in the direction of greater violence, creating a revolutionary potential that their respec-
tive ruling classes could not afford to overlook. The Arab ruling classes were forced to
support British imperialism against their counterpart in Palestine, which was in effect
leading the Palestinian nationalist movement
Meanwhile, the Zionist-Imperialist alliance continued to grow; the period between.
1936 and 1939 witnessed not only the crystallisation of the militaristic and aggressive
character of the colonial society that Zionism had firmly implanted in Palestine, but
also the relative containment and defeat of the Palestinian working class; this was sub-
sequently to have a radical effect on the course of the struggle. During that period,
Zionism, in collaboration with the mandatory power, successfully undermined the
development of a progressive Jewish labour movement and of Jewish-Arab Proletar-
ian brotherhood. The Palestine Communist Party was effectively isolated among both
‘Arab and Jewish workers, and the reactionary Histadrut completely dominated the
Jewish labour movement. The influence of Arab progressive forces within Arab labour
federations in Haifa and Jaffa diminished, leaving the ground open for their control by
reactionary leaderships that monopolised political action.
rrrounding Palestine were playing two
BACKGROUND:
THE WORKERS:
tional issue; it had direct implication on the economic status of the Arab
people of Palestine, affecting primarily the small and middle-income farm-
cers, workers and certain sectors ofthe petty and middle bourgeoisies. The national
and religious character of Jewish immigration further aggravated the economic
repercussions
Between 1933 and 1935, 150,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, bringing the
country’s Jewish population to 443,000 — oF 29.6% of the total - from 1926 to 1932
the average number of immigrants per year was 7,201. It rose to 42,985 between
1933 and 1936, as direct result of Nazi persecution in Germany. In 1932, 9,000 Ger-
rman Jews entered Palestine, 30,000 in 1933, 40,000 in 1934 and 61,000 in 1935, near-
ly three quarters of the new immigrants settling in cities If Nazism was responsi-
ble for terrorising the Jews and forcing them out of Germany, it was “democratic”
capitalism ~ in collaboration with the Zionist movement that was responsible
for directing comparatively lange numbers of Jewish migrants to Palestine, as il-
lustrated by the following; of 2,562,000 Jews that fled Nazi persecution, the US.A.
accepted only 170,000 (6.6%), Britain 50,000 (1.9%), while Palestine received 8.5%
and 1,930,000 (75.276) found refuge in the U.SS.R.' The severe economic impact of
the immigration into Palestine can be realised when it is considered that a com-
paratively large percentage of Jewish settlers were basically capitalists: in 1933,
3,250 of the latter (174) were considered as capitalists, in 1934, 5,124 or 12%, and
in 1935, 6,309 or 10%
According to official statistics, of the Jewish immigrants who entered Pales-
tine between 1932 and 1936, 1,370 (with 17,119 dependents) possessed PL* 1,000 or
more and 130,000 were officially registered as seeking employment, or dependents
T: issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine was not merely a moral or na~
1 Himadeh, Sai (ed.) Eoonomtc Organization of Palestine, American University of Beirut
Beirut 1999, p. 32
2 Menuihin, Moshe. The Decadence of Judaism in our Time Institute of Palestine Studies,
Beirut, 1969
3 Weinstock. Nathan, Le Sionisme ~ Contra Israel. Maspero, Paris, 196,
Toi
5 Palestinian Litas
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
of previous immigrants In other words, the immigration was not only designed
tocnsure a concentration of European Jewish capital in Palestine that was to domi-
nate the process of industrialisation, but also to provide this effort with a Jewish
proletariat. The policy that raised the slogan of “Jewish labour only” was to have
‘grave consequences, as it Ied to the rapid emergence of fascist patterns in the s0-
ciety of Jewish settlers,
Another result was the development of a competitive struggle between the
Palestinian Arab and Jewish proletariats and between Palestinian Arab peasants,
farmers and agricultural labourers and their Jewish counterparts, This conflict also
extended to higher classes, in as much as the Palestinian Arab small landowners
and urban middle bourgeoisie realised that their interests were being threatened
by growing Jewish capital
In 1935, for example, Jews controlled 872 of a total of 1,212 industrial firms
in Palestine, employing 13,678 workers, while the rest were Palestinian Arab-
controlled and employed about 4,000 workers. Jewish investment totalled PL
4,391,000 compared to PL. 704,000 in the Palestinian Arab industrial investment;
Jewish production reached PL 6,000,000 compared to PL 1,545,000 by Palestinian
‘Arab firms. In addition, Jewish capital controlled 90% of the concessions granted
by the British mandatory government, which accounted for a total investment of
PL 5,789,000 and provided labour for 2,619 workers.” An official census in 1937
indicated that an average Jewish worker received 145% more in wages than his
Palestinian Arab counterpart (as high as 433% more in textile factories employing
Jewish and Arab women, and 233% in tobacco factories)* “By July 1937, the real
‘wages of the average Palestinian Arab worker decreased 10% while those of a Jew-
ish worker rose 10%."
The situation resulted in an almost total collapse of the Arab economy in Pal-
estine, primarily affecting Palestinian Arab workers. In his report to the Peel Royal
‘Commission, George Mansour, the Secretary of the Federation of Palestinian Arab
‘Workers in Jafa, indicated that 98% of Palestinian Arab workers had a “well be-
low average” standard of living. Based on a census covering, 1,000 workers in Jaffa
in 1936, the Federation had found that the income of 57% of Arab workers was less
than PL 2.750 (the average minimum income required to support a family being
PL 11); 12% less than PL 4.250, 12% less than PL 6, 4% less than PL 10, 15% less
6 Himadeh, op. cit, p. 2627.
7 Weinstock, Op. cit.
8 Himadeb, Opt, p. 373.
9 bid. p. 376.
than PL 12 and 0.5% less than PL 15."” When the Mandatory Government refused to
allow nearly 1,000 unemployed Jaffa workers to hold a demonstration on 6 June 1935,
the Federation of Workers issued a statement warning the Government that unless
their problems were solved, “the government would soon have to give the workers
either bread or bullets” With the conditions of workers continuing to deteriorate, an
“uprising seemed imminent,
George Mansour (who had been previously a Communist Party member) came
‘out with striking illustrations in his report to the Peel Commission: by the end of 1935,
2,270 men and women workers were unemployed in the city of Jaffa alone, with a
population of 71,000.” Mansour pointed out five reasons for the high unemployment
rate, four of which were directly connected with Jewish immigration: 1) the settling of
new immigrants; 2) urban migration 3) dismissal of Arab workers from their jobs; 4)
the deteriorating economic situation; 5) the discriminatory policy of the Mandatory
Government in favour of Jewish workers.
Ina period of nine months, the number of Histadrut workers inereased by 41,000.
According to an Article published in issue No. 3460 of the newspaper Davar, Histadrut
‘workers numbered 115,000 at the end of July 1936, The offical 1936 government report
(p. 117) had showed their number at the end of 1935 to be 74,000.
The policy of dismissal of Palestinian Arab workers from firms and projects con-
trolled by Jewish capital initiated violent clashes. In the four Jewish settlements of
Malbis, Dairan, Wadi Hunain and Khadira, there were 6,214 Palestinian Arab work-
crs in February 1935. After six months, this figure decreased to 2,276, and in a year’s
time, went down to 617 Palestinian Arab workers.” Attacks against Palestinian Arab
‘workers also took place. On one occasion, for instance, the Jewish community forced a
Palestinian Arab contractor and his workers to leave their work in the Brodski build-
ing in Haifa. Among those who were systematically losing their jobs were workers in
orchards, cigarette factories, mason’s yards, construction, etc...
Between 1930 and 1935, Palestinian Arab pearl industry exports fll from PL 11,532
to PL 3,777 a year. The number of Palestinian Arab soap factories in Haifa alone fell
from 12 in 1929 to four in 1935. Their export value fell from PL. 206,659 in 1930 to PL
10 Collection of Arab testimonies in Palestine before the Brits Royal Commission. al-Itidal Press
Damascus, 1998, p. 54
Mid p. 58.
12 Himadeh. Op. cit. the number ofthe unemployed increased to 4000 in Jaffa alone after 1936,
see footnote 5, p55).
13 Collection. Op. cit, p55.
Ibid. p58.
15 Drvar No. 3462 (see footnote 13. p. 661.)
16 Collection. Op. Cit, p. 1,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
793311 in 1935.” It was clear that the Arab proletariat had fallen “victim to British colo-
nialism and Jewish capital, the former bearing the primary responsibility.”
‘Yehuda Bauer wrote: “On the eve of the 1936 disturbances, Palestine was possibly
the only country in the world, apart from the U.SSR,, that had not been affected by the
‘world economic crisis; in fact, it enjoyed real prosperity asa result of a massive import
‘of capital (over 30,000,000 in capital had entered Palestine). The imported capital had
even fallen short of the necessary funds needed for all the investment programmes.”
This prosperity, however, was based on rather shaky foundations, which collapsed
‘once the influx of private capital came to an endl because of fears ofthe outbreak of war
in the Mediterranean
“The loan system collapsed and there were indications of serious unemployment
and construction activity greatly diminished. Palestinian Arab workers were be-
ing dismissed by both Arab and Jewish employers, a number of them returning to
their original villages. National consciousness was rising due to the aggravating,
Bauer, however, omits the primary factor: continued Jewish immigeation. Sir John
Hope Simpson stated in his report that, “Itwas a bad, and pethaps a dangerous policy,
to allow lange sums of money to be invested in unprofitable industries in Palestine to
justify increased immigeation.” In effect, Bauer's statement was basically unfounded.
Since the influx of Jewish capital continued during the years he referred to and, in
fact, reached its climax in 1935; the number of immigrants also increased during these
years Moreover, the dismissal of Arab workers by Jevwish employers had begun long
before that time2* In the meantime, large masses of Palestinian Arab peasants were
being evicted and uprooted from their lands as a result of Jewish colonisation of rural
areas.” They immigrated to cities and towns only to face increasing unemployment.
‘The Zionist machine took full advantage of the rivalry between Palestinian Arab work-
cers and their fellow Jewish workers, “Israeli” leftists later observed that not once, in a
period of ity years, were Jewish workers mobilised and rallied around material issues
or the struggle of Labour Federation, to challenge the “Israeli” regime itself. “The Jew-
17 Ibid, p66
18 bid, p59.
19 Yehuda Bauer, “The Arab Revolt of 1936" New Outlook Vol No. 6 (81). Tel-Aviv, 1966. p50.
20 ibid, p.51
21 Capital invested in Jowish industries and commerce firms increased from PL5,371,000 in 1933,
to PL 11,637,300 in 1935; op. cit p. 323
22 In 1930, the number of Arab construction workers in Jerusalem dropped from 1,500 to 500,
While that of Jews went up from 550 to 1,600.
23 Up to 1931, the Zionists expelled 20,000 Palestinian Arab peasants after they bought the land
‘on which the latter used to work,
ish proletariat could not be mobilised around its own cause.”
The fact is that the situation was fully the result of efficient Zionist planning, to
recall Her21's words:
“Private land in areas allocated to us must be seized ~ from its owners, Poor inhab-
itants are to be quickly evacuated across the border after having secured for them.
jobs in the countries oftheir destination. They are to be denied employment in our
country; as fr large property-owners, they will ultimately join us.”™
The Histadrut summed up its policy by declaring that “to allow Arabs to penetrate
the Jewish labour market meant that the influx of Jewish capital would be employed
to service Arab development, which is contrary to Zionist objectives, Furthermore, the
employment of Arabs in Jewish industries would lead to a class division in Palestine
along racial lines: capitalist Jews employing Arab workers; should this be permitted,
‘we would have introduced into Palestine the conditions that had! led to the emergence
of anti-Semitism.”26 Thus the ideology and practices that underlined the process of
colonisation, with the escalation of the conflict with the Arab society in Palestine, were
developing fascist characteristics in Zionist organisations; fascist Zionism was using
the same tools as the mounting fascism in Europe. The Arab worker was atthe bottom
‘of a complex social pyramid and his condition grew worse as a result of the confusion
‘within the Arab labour movement. During the period between the early twenties and
carly thirties, the progressive labour movement ~ Arab as well as Jewish ~ suffered
crushing blows, which, together with the impact of purely subjective weaknesses, re-
sulted in its virtual paralysis. On the one hand, the Zionist movement which was rap-
idly becoming fascist in character and resorting to armed terrorism sought to isolate
and destroy the Communist Party, most of whose leaders were Jews, and that resisted
being contained by Zionist labour organisations. On the other hand, the Palestinian
feudalreligious leadership could not tolerate the rise of an Arab labour movement that
‘was independent of its control. The movement was thus terrorised by the Arab lead-
ership. In the early thirties, the Mufti’s group assassinated Michel Mitri, President of
the Federation of Arab Workers in Jaffa. Years later, Sami Taha, a trade unionist and
President of the Federation of Arab Workers in Haifa, was also assassinated. Inthe ab-
sence of an economically and politically strong national bourgeoisie, the workers were
directly confronted and oppressed by the traditional feudal leadership. The conflict oc-
casionally led to violent confrontations which were reduced whenever the traditional
24 Haim Hanaghi, Moshe Machover, Akiva Orr. “The Class Nature of Israe!” New Let Review
(65), Jan-Feb 1971, p.6.
25 Theodlor Hera, Selected Works, Newman Ea. Vol, Book 1. Tel Aviv, p. 86.
26 Exco Foundation for Palestine. Inc, Palestine. A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies. Vol.
Yale University Press. 1947, p. 56
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
leadership managed to assume direct control over trade union activiti result,
labour activity lost its essential role in the struggle. Moreover, with the sharpening of
the national struggle, a relative identity of interests united the workers with the tradi-
tional Arab leadership. Meanwhile, the Communist Party occasionally succeeded in
‘organising political action, On one occasion on 1 May 1920, a group of demonstrating
communists clashed with a Zionist demonstration in Tel-Aviv and were forced to flee
the city and take refuge in the Arab quarter of Manshiya in Jaffa. Later, a confrontation
took place with a British security force that was sent to arrest the Bolsheviks.27 In a
statement distributed on the same day, the Executive Committee of the Party declared:
“The Jewish workers are here to live with you; they have not come to persecute
‘you, but to live with you. They are ready to fight on your side against the capital-
ist enemy, be it Jew, Arab or British. Ifthe capitalists incite you against the Jewish
worker it is in order to protect themselves from you. Do not fall into the trap; the
Jewish worker, who is a soldier of the revolution, has come to offer you his hand as
a comrade in resisting British, Jewish and Arab capitalists... call on you to fight
against the rich who are selling their land and their country to foreigners. Down,
with British and French bayonets; down with Arab and foreign capitalists.”
The remarkable thing in this long statement was, not only the idealist portrait of
the struggle, but also the fact that nowhere did it mention the word “Zionist”, yet Zi-
‘onism represented to the Palestinian Arab peasants and workers a daily threat, as well
as to the Jewish communi
expelled to Jaffa, The Palestine Communist Party remained isolated from the political
reality until the end of 1930, which was the year its Seventh Congress was held. In the
resolutions passed by the Congress, the Party admitted that it had “essentially adopted
an erroneous attitude towards the issue of Palestinian nationalism, and the status of
the Jewish national minority in Palestine and its role vis-a-vis the Arab masses. The
Party had failed to become active among the Palestinian Arab masses and remained
isolated by working exclusively among Jewish workers. Its isolation was illustrated by
55 of whom were attacked by Zionists in Tel-Aviv and
the Party’s negative attitude during the Palestinian Arab uprising of 1929."
Although in practice the Party systematically attacked the Palestinian bourgeoi-
sie ~ which at the time was in a difficult position ~ and although it never adopted
the policy of popular fronts and alliances with the revolutionary classes, the records
of the Seventh Congress held in 1930-1931 provide a most valuable political analysis.
27 Kayyali,, Abdulwahhab. Modern History of Palestine. Arab Institute of Studies and Publication.
Beirut. 1970. p17
28 Documents ofthe Palestine Arab Resistance (1918-1939). Beirut, pp. 2225,
29 Action among the pensonts ond the struggle against Zionism, The Palestine Commis Party Theses
‘for 1931. ComoneistInternationalism and the Arab Revolution, Dar al-Hagig, Beirut, p. 54.
.own in these records; the Party considered solving the Palestinian Arab national
‘question as one of the primary tasks of revolutionary struggle: it viewed its isolation
from the Palestinian Arab mass movement as the result ofa “Zionist-influenced devia~
tion that prevented the Arabisation of the Party”. The documents mention “opportun-
ist efforts to block the Arabisation of the Party”. The Congress adopted the view that
it was the duty of the Party to expand the cadres of the revolutionary forces capable of
directing the activity of the peasants (that is, cadres of revolutionary Palestinian Arab
workers.) The “Arabisation” of the Party, its transformation into a real party of the toil
ing Palestinian Arab masses was the first condition of the success of its activity in the
rural areas.”
The Party, however, proved incapable of carrying out the task of mobilising Pal-
estinian Arabs, and the revolutionary slogans adopted by the Congress were never
translated into action: “Not a single dunum to the Imperialist and Zionis
“the revolutionary expropriation of land belonging to the government, to rich Jewish
developers, Zionist factions and big Arab landowners and farmers’, “No recognition
of agreements on the sale of land’, “the struggle against Zionist usuxpers”." The Con-
‘gress had also decided that “it is possible to solve all the burning issues and end op-
pression only through armed revolution under the leadership of the working class” ®
‘The Palestine Communist Party was thus never “Arabised”. The field was open for
the domination of the Palestinian Arab mass movement by the feudal and religious
leaderships. Perhaps one reason behind the line and practices of the Party at that time
was the uncompromising revolutionary attitude for which the Comintern” was
mous between 1928 and 1934. But despite their small number, their relative isolation
and their failure to reach the Palestinian Arab masses, particularly in the rural areas,
the communists threw all their weight into the 1936 revolt. They showed great cour-
age, cooperated with some of the local leaders, and supported the Mufti many of them
‘were killed and arrested. But they did not succeed in becoming, an influential force.
Apparently the slogan of “Arabisation” got lost somewhere later on, and nearly ten
years later, on 22 January 1946, Izvestia dared to compare the “struggle of the Jews” in
Palestine with the Bolshevik struggle before 1917.
In any case, the resolutions of the Seventh Congress of the Palestine Communist
Party have only been revealed recently; the process of Arabisation did not take place,
and despite the educational role played by the Party and the contributions it made to
the struggle inthis field, it did not play the role projected for itby its Seventh Congress
isurpers”,
fa
30 bid, pp. 121-122.
31 bid, p. 124
32 Ibid, p. 162.
133 The Communist International abbreviation
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
in the Palestinian national movement at that time, During the 1936 revolt, the Party
split, There was also another fundamental split in 1948, and another in 1965, for rea-
sons connected with Arabisation; the dissidents advocated a “constructive” attitude
towards Zionism,
This failure of the Communist Party, the weakness of the rising Arab bourgeoisie,
and the disunity of the Arab labour movement meant that the feudal-religious leader-
ships were cast to play a fundamental role as the situation escalated to the point of
explosion in 1936,
BACKGROUND:
THE PEASANTS
However, what we have considered so far dealt only with one domain in which
the conflict raged between the Jewish and Arab societies in Palestine and later
inside each of these societies,
The other domain is the rural areas, where the conflict assumed its primarily na-
tionalist form because of Jewish capital pouring into Palestine. Despite the fact that a
large share of Jewish capital was allocated to rural areas, and despite the presence of
S== the situation concerning the workers at the outbreak ofthe 1996 revolt
British imperialist military forces and the immense pressure exerted by the administra-
tive machine in favour ofthe Zionists, the later achieved only minimal result (a total of
6,752 new colonising settlers) in comparison to Zionist plans to establish a Jewish state.
Nevertheless, they seriously damaged the status of the Palestinian Arab rural popula-
tion. Ownership by Jewish groups of urban and rural land rose from 300,000 dunums
in 1929 to 1,250,000 dunums in 1930, The purchased land was insignificant from the
point of view of mass colonisation and of the solution of the “Jewish problem.” But
the expropriation of nearly one million dunums ~ almost one-third of the agricultural
land —led to a severe impoverishment of Arab peasants and Bedouins. By 1931, 20,000
peasant families had been evicted by the Zionists, Furthermore, agricultural life in the
underdeveloped world, and the Arab world in particular, is not merely a mode of pro-
duction, but equally a way of social, religious and ritual life, Thus, in addition to the
loss of land, the Palestinian Arab rural society was being destroyed by the process of
colonisation.
Until 1931, only 151 per thousand Jews depended on agriculture fora living, com-
pared to 637 per thousand Arabs. Of nearly 119,000 peasants, about 11,000 were Jews!
whereas in 1931, 19.1% of the Jewish population worked in agriculture and 59% of the
Palestinian Arabs lived off the land. The economic basis for this clash is very dangerous
‘of course but to comprehend it fully, we should see its national face.
In 1941, 30% of the Palestinian Arab peasants owned no land, while nearly 50%
of the rest owned plots that were too small to meet their living requirements. While
250 feudal landlords owned four million dunums, 25,000 peasant families were land-
less, and 46,000 owned an average of 100 dunums. 15,000 hired agricultural labourers
worked for landlords. According to a survey of 322 Palestinian Arab villages condtuct-
1 Himadeh; Ibid, p. 38
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
ced in 1936, 47% of the peasants owned less than seven dunums and 65% less than 20
<dunums (the minimum required to feed an average family was 130 dumums).?
Although they lived under the triple pressure of Zionist invasion, Arab feudal
‘ownership of the land and the heavy taxes imposed by the British Mandatory Govern-
‘ment, the Palestinian rural masses were primarily conscious of the national challenge.
During the uprisings of 1929 and 1933, many small Palestinian Arab peasants sold their
lands to big landlords in order to buy arms to resist the Zionist invasion and the Brit-
ish mandate. It was this invasion which, by threatening a way of life in which religion,
tradition and honour played an important role, enabled the feudal-clericalleaderships
to remain in a position of leadership despite the crimes they had committed. In many
«cases, it was feudal elements who bought the land to sell it to Jewish capital
Between 1933 and 1936, 62.7% of all the land purchased by Zionists belonged to
landowners residing in Palestine, 14.9% to absentee landlords, and 22.5% to small peas-
ants, whereas between 1920 and 1922, the figures were 20.8% from resident landlords,
75% from absentee landlords and 3.8% from small peasants.* The laws passed by the
Mandatory Government were designed to serve the objectives of Jewish settlement,
although they were framed in such a way as to suggest that peasants were protected
against being evicted or forced to sell. In reality, they provided no such protection. This
‘was illustrated in the cases of Wadi al-Hawarith, an area of 49,000 dunums, the village
‘of Shatta with its 16,000 dunums, and many other villages where the land was seized
by Zionists after having evicted its inhabitants. As a result, the 50,000 Jews who lived
in agricultural settlements owned 1,200,000 dunums — an average of 24 dunums per
inhabitant — while 500,000 Arabs owned less than 6,000,000, an average of 12 dunums
per inhabitant. The case of the 8,730 peasants evicted from Mayj bn Amer (240,000
‘dunums), where the land was sold to Zionists by the Beirut feudal family of Sursock,
remained suspended until the end of the Mandate in 1948.
“Every plot of land bought by Jews was made foreign to Arabs as if it had been
amputated from the body of Palestine and removed to another country.”* These words
‘were those of abig Palestinian feuclal leader, He added: “ According to the Jews, 10% of
the land was purchased from peasants, and the rest from big landlords...But in fact 25%
2 Communist internationalism, pp. 135-145.
3 Weinstock. Ibid
4 Collection. p34
5 The Sublime Porte had granted this land to the Sursuk family of Lebanon in return for
services, See also: Hadawi, Palestine Under the Mandate, 1920-1940, Palestine Studies, Kuwait
‘Alumni Association, p34, 36,
6 Collection. p34,
of the land belonged to peasants.”” This apologetic attitude on the part ofthe feudalist
does not change the fact that (as reported by Jewish sources) ofthe total land acquired
by three lange Jewish companies by 1936 (which accounted for half the land purchased
by Jewish capital up to that date), 52.6% belonged to absentee landlords, 24.6% to re-
siding landlords, 13.4% from the government, churches, and foreign companies, and
9.4% from individual peasants.*
This transfer of land ownership created an expanding clas
of di ed peas-
ants who tured to seasonal salaried labour. The majority eventually made their way
to the cities and sought unskilled labour. “For a peasant who was evicted from his land,
it was impossible to secure other land, and the compensation was usually very small
except in cases where the Mukitar (Mayor) or other village notables were involved.”*
The majority of dispossessed peasants thus moved to cities and towns. “In Jaa,
most ofthe street cleaners were ex-villagers; the Arab Cigarette and Tobacco Company
in Nazareth reported that most of its workers were also of village origin.” The follow-
ing illustrates the fate of migrating peasants:
“"We asked the Company how many workers it employed and the answer was 210.
The total weekly wages paid to the workers were PL62, amounting to an average of
2955 piasters per worker per week.”
At that time, the average weekly wages of a Jewish woman worker in tobacco
factories ranged from between 170 and 230 piasters a week.11 Even in government
employment, an average Jewish worker earned over 100% more than his Arab counter-
part.12 In 1930, the Johnson-Crosby commission estimated the average annual income
of a peasant at PL 31.37, before tax deductions. The report further indicated that aver-
age tax deductions amounted to PL 3.87. If we further deducted the PL that the aver-
age peasant paid as interest on his loans, the net income would amount to PL 19.5 an-
rally. According to the same report, the average sum required to cover the expenses
ofa peasant family was PL.26.
“The peasants, in fact..were the most heavily taxed group in Palestine..the policy
pursued by the government clearly aimed at placing the peasant in an economic
situation that would ensure the establishment of a Jewish national home."
7 Ibid, p39,
8 Hadawi, Op. cit, p.29.
9Collection.p. 25
10 bid, p58.
11 Himadeh, Op. ct, p. 376
12Collecton, p60.
13 bid, pp. 62-63
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
Clearly then, Jewish immigration and the transformation of the Palestinian econ-
‘omy from an essentially Arab agricultural economy to an industrial economy domi-
nated by Jewish capital, affected primarily the small Palestinian Arab peasants. Tax
exemptions were granted meanwhile to Jewish immigrants
cring the imports related to Jewish industries, such ascertain raw materials, unfinished
products, coa..ete. Customs duty on imported consumer goods rose. The average im-
port tax rose from 11% atthe beginning of the Mandate to more than 26% by 1936; 10%
‘on sugar, 149% on tobacco, 208% on petrol, 400% on matches, and 26% on coffee."*
An illustration of government policy is provided by the following story told by
Archbishop Gregorius Hajjar to the Peel Commission: “I was once in the village of
Roma in the Acre district, where the inhabitants live off the production of olive oil. For
«long time, they had been complaining to the High Commissioner about the Oil Com-
pany. The Company received help from the government in the form of tax exemption
‘nits imports of groundnuts from which it extracted oil and mixed it with olive oil and
sold it at lower prices. The people in the village asked that their product be protected
against the Company's product, and the government formed a committee to hear the
villagers’ complaints. When the committee went to Roma the villagers were furious to
find out that its chairman was none other than the director of the Company.
On the other hand, the tax system was clearly discriminatory in favour of the rich.
(On a yearly income of PL 22.37 the tax rate was 25% while salaries and earnings that
exceeded PL 1,000 per year were subject to 12% in taxes."
The small and middle peasants were not only impoverished as a result of losing,
their land, but were also the victims of Zionist practices that were based on the slogans
of “Jewish labour only” and “Jewish products only.” Jewish industrialists employed
only Jewish workers, paid them higher wages and sold their products at higher prices.
“Jews were encouraged to give preference to Jewish products although at higher prices
than those of Arab competitors.”"” Raw materials were exempted from custom duty,
while high taxes were imposed on imported goods, particularly if similar goods were
locally produced by Jewish factories
On the other hand, the class that was known as the “effendi class” and lived in
the town, derived their income from agricultural land rented to peasants and from
interests on loans to peasants (the Effendis did not begin to invest in industry until the
sas well as exemptions cov-
14 Ibid, p62
15 Ibid, pa
16 bid, p63,
17 Rony E. Gubbay, A Politic Stuly ofthe Ara-Jewish Conflict, Librairie de Droz, Geneve, 1958,
129.108. Sife, Op. ct, pp. 131-132.
19403). This form of exploitation was by far more ruinous to the peasants than Zionist
colonisation.
Another rural group was the “Bedouins’, who counted 66,553 in 1931 (in 1922
there were 103,000 Bedouin in Palestine). They were to play a principal role in the 1936
revolt, as they did during the August 1929 uprising It drew the attention of the Pales-
tine Communist Party in the congress referred to previously. The Bedouins, who made
‘up nearly 35% of the population, constituted a potential revolutionary force. “Turned
desperate because of severe impoverishment and constant hunger, they were always
con the verge of armed uprisings. Their participation in the August uprising showed
that they could play a leading role in a mass revolt, and at the same time i appears
early that the leaders of these tribes could be spoilt by money. They were constantly
providing the army of landless peasants and semi-proletarians with new hands and
mouths
In the meantime, the fragmented Arab urban petty-bourgeoisie was in a state of
confusion, indecision and fragmentation: the speed at which society was being trans-
formed into a Jewish industrial society gave neither the growing bourgeoisie nor the
feudalists the chance to take part in or to profit from the process. Therefore, it was by
no means surprising that most ofthe Palestinian leaders who testified before the Peel
‘Commission in 1937, and before the previous commissions, had eulogised Ottoman
imperiatism and praised the way it had treated them in comparison with British im-
perialism. They had been the instrument of the Porte, the bulwark of the Sultan, and
fn integral part of the system of domination, oppre
British imperialism had dismissed them from the post of chief agent, because it had
found a better qualified, more firmly established and more highly organised agent in
the Zionist movement. In this way, the main outlines of the fundamental role that the
feudal-clerical leadership was to play were established — it was to be a “struggle” for
‘a better position in the colonialist regime. But they could not engage in this “struggle”
without rallying around their support, the classes that were eager to free themselves
from the yoke of colonisation. With this end in view, they drew up a programme that
‘was clearly progressive, adopted mass slogans, which they were neither willing nor
able to push to their logical conclusions, and followed a pattern of struggle which was
quite out of character,
sion and exploitation, whereas
18 Communist Internationals. pp. 143-144
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
Of course these leaderships did not have absolute freedom of action, as many peo-
ple like to suggest; on the contrary, they were exposed to all the pressures that were
shaping the course of events, to the increasing intensity of the conflicts and to all the
influences we have already discussed. This explains why there developed from time to
time partial contradictions between their interests and those ofthe ruling classes of the
Arab countries surrounding Palestine, although they upheld the same class interests. It
also explains their wide scale alliances within the class structure of Palestine.
BACKGROUND: THE
INTELLECTUALS
cation admitted in his report that: “Since the beginning of the occupation, the
government has never undertaken to provide sufficient funds for the building
‘ofa single school in the country,” and in 1935, the government turned down 41%
of the applications by Palestinian Arabs for places in schools. In the 800 villages in
Palestine there were only fifteen schools for girls and 269 for boys and only fifteen
village girls got as far as the seventh elementary grade.
There were 517 Palestinian Arab villages which had neither boys’ nor girls’
schools and there was not one secondary school in the villages. Moreover, the gov-
cemment “censored books and objected to al cultural links with the Arab world, and
did nothing to raise the educational level of the peasants..”"
Thus in 1931 among Palestinian Muslims 251 per thousand males and 33 per
thousand females had attended school, and among the Palestinian Christians 715
per thousand males and 441 per thousand females (for Jews the figures were 943 per
thousand males and 787 per thousand femal
These figures give an idea of the educational situation in the rural areas, but
‘not ofthat in Palestine as a whole, which had played a pioneering role in education.
since the start of the Arab resurgence at the beginning of the 20 century. In fact, a
large number of printing presses had been established in Palestine before the Brit-
ish occupation, about fifty Arabic newspapers appeared between 1904 and 1922,
while at least ten more with a wide circulation made their appearance before the
1996 revolt,
‘A number of factors, which it is not possible to deal with at length here, had
made Palestine an important centre of Arab culture, and the persistent efforts of in-
tellectuals migrating into and out of Palestine were a basic factor in establishing the
cultural role of Palestine and in the establishment of literary associations and clubs
which began to appear in the early twenties.
This cultural development, which was constantly fed by a flow of Arab gradu-
ates from Beirut and Cairo, was accompanied by an extensive activity in the field
of translation from French and English. The foreign miss
| 171930, after thirteen years of British occupation of Palestine, the Director of Edu-
i that were primarily
1 Collection, p52.
2 Himadeh, Op. cit, p. 45.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
attracted to Palestine for historical and religious considerations, placed a prominent
role in disseminating an atmosphere of education in the cities. However, it is not the
general cultural climate in Palestine during that period that is of concern to us, but
rather, in particular, the influence of the aggravating economic and political crisis on
the literary movement. The development of a certain “popular culture” was very sig-
nificant. It represented a certain awareness that existed in rural areas despite the wide-
spread illiteracy, an awareness that was spurred by the rapidly developing economic
and political reality. Popular poetry in particular reflected a growing concern on the
part ofthe rural masses over the course of events, This spontaneous awareness led toa
spirit of mobilisation in the villages.
The majority of urban intellectuals, for their part, were of a feudal or commercial
pelty-bourgeois class affiliation. Although they basically advocated a type of bourgeois
revolution, the objective conditions were by no means favourable to the development
of the class that would logically lead such a struggle. As political activists, they thus
remained under the control of the traditional leadership. Their work nevertheless re-
flected a degree of awareness that, in general, was not shared by their counterparts in
other Arab countries.
The struggle between advocates of revolution and reactionaries in the rural areas,
and between revolutionary militants and defeatist elements in the cities was devel-
oping in favour of the revolution. We do not know of a single Palestinian writer or
intellectual in that period who did not participate in the call for resistance against the
colonial enemy. There is no doubt that the intellectuals, even though they were not, in
‘general, mobilised by a revolutionary party, played an important role in the national
struggle.
The position of Palestinian intellectuals was unique. Having completed their stud-
ies and returned to their towns, they became aware of the incapacity of the class they
belonged to of leading the national struggle. But at the same time, they suffered from
their own inability to participate and benefit from the process of industrial develop
ment that was essentially controlled by an alien and hostile community. On the other
hand, in the rural areas of Palestine, the peasants, who for centuries had been subject
to class and national oppression, lived in a most archaic society where local feudal
and religious leaders exercised absolute authority. Popular poetry often reflected the
submissiveness of peasants’, which the Palestinian intellectuals, and in particular the
3 Examples of such proverbs: He who eats from the Sultan’s bread, strikes by his sword; Let no
‘grass grow after mine; Today’s egg is better than tomorrow's hen (A bird inthe hand is worth
tovo in the bush); When we started selling coffins people started dying; The most severe of pains
isthe present one; He runs ater the loaf of bread and the loaf of read runs before him; Life
‘goes well with the well to do. (“Arab Society” by Dr. Ali Ahmed Issa, quoted in Yusra Amita,
Folkloric Ars in Palestine. Beirut, Palestine Research Center, PLO. p. 187.)
poets, could not combat easily: Certain intellectuals attempted to overcome the submis-
sive mood of the rural masses and played a prominent role in disseminating progres-
Wadi al-Bustani, a poet of Lebanese origin who graduated from the American Unie
versity of Beirut and settled in Palestine, played an important role as a progressive
intellectual, He was the first to war against the Balfour Declaration ang its challenges,
the very month it was issued. His period, (as Palestine was on the verge of armed
revolt) produced a powerful vanguard of revolutionary poets whose works became
part ofthe cultural heritage of the masses.' On 29 January 1920, the British Mandatory
Government sent a leter to the editor of the cultural magazine Karmel, which was then
published in Haifa, requesting the publication of a poem by the celebrated Iraqi poet
Ma'ruf Al-Risafi that was dedicated to the British High Commissioner and that praised
and eulogised him along with a Jewish speaker called Jehuda. The editor agreed to
publish it along with a reply to it, AFBustani wrote the reply in the form of a poem
‘which said the following
“Juda's speech? Or acts of witchcraft? And Rasafi's saying? Or lies of poetry
Your poetry is of the choicest words, you are well-acquainted with the jewels of sea
But this sea is one of politics ifjustice spreads high its low tide begins
Yes! He who has crossed the Jordan River is our cousin but he who comes from
across the sea is suspicious" >
This long poem, which, atthe time, became very famous, was in fact a unique po-
litical document; it not only made AF-Risafi look like a fool, but also asserted, even at
that early date, politica facts of great importance. It not only mentioned Jewish immi-
‘gration and the danger it constituted, but als
the Palestinian Arabs, the Balfour Declaration, and its implications, et.
A short time before this, on 28 March 1920, Al-Bustani had himself led a demon-
summoned to
an inquiry, and the following appears in the records of the inquiry conducted by the
the role played by Britain in fragmenting
stration, which chanted a song that he had composed himself. He wa
Public Prosecutor:
4 According to Taufig Ziyad, a resistance poet in occupied Palestine (Nazareth): “Our
revolutionary poetry (Mahmud Darwish, Sami al-Qasim and myself) is an extension of the
revolutionary poetry of Ibrahim Tugan, Abd al-Rahim Mahmud, Mutlag Abd al-Khalig and
others..because our battle is an extension of theirs.” (On Popular Poetry, Dar al-Thawa, p. 18)
5 Yaghi, Dr. Abdul Rahman. Modern Palestinian Literature. Beira, p. 232.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
Public Prosecutor: Statements have been made that you were carried shoulder
high, and that you said to the people who were following behind you: “Oh Chris-
tians, Oh Muslims”
‘The Accused: Yes.
Public Prosecutor: And you also said: “To whom have you left the country?”
‘The Accused: Yes.
Public Prosecutor: Then you said: “Kill the Jews and unbelievers.”
‘The Accused: No, That violates the metre and the rhyme, I could not have said that,
What I said was both rhyming and metrical. Itis called poetry*
In the subsequent periods, poetry played an increas
pressing, on all sorts of occasions, feelings of the helpless masses. Thus, when Balfour
‘ame from London to attend the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1927,
the ceremony was also attended by Ahmad Lutfi al-Said, as the delegate of the Egyp-
tian government, and the poet Iskandar al-Khuri wrote the following lines addressed
to Balfour:
igly important role in ex-
“Running, from London you came to stir the fire of this battle
‘Oh Lord I cannot blame you for you are not the source of our misery:
For Egypt is to be blamed as it only extends to us empty hands.””
Ibrahim Tugan, Abu Salma (Abd al-Karim al-Karmi) and Abd al-Rahim Mahmud
were, since the beginning of the 1930, the culmination of the wave of nationalist poets
‘who inflamed the whole of Palestine with revolutionary awareness and agitation. As‘af
alNashashibi, Khalil al-Sakakini, Ibrahim al-Dabbagh, Muhammed Hasan Ala al-Din,
Burhan al-Abbushi, Muhammed Khurshid, Qayasar al-Khuri the priest George Bitar,
Bulos Shihada, Mutlag Abd al-Khaliq and others.
The work of Tugan, al-Karmi and Mahmud displays an extraordinary power of
appreciation of what was going on, which can only be explained as a profound grasp
‘of what was boiling in mass circles. What appears to be inexplicable prophecy and a
power of prediction in their poems is, in fact, only their ability to express this dialecti-
cal relationship that linked their artistic work with the movement that was at work in
society.
The fact that we have concentrated on the role played by poetry and popular po-
etry does not mean that other manifestations of cultural activity in Palestine did not
6 Ibid, p. 237,
17 Taig Ziyad described this poem in the following words: “I have not known a poetry work
‘equivalent in the strength, sacrifice and bravery in this great poem. ” (rom Literature and Popular
Literature, Dar al-Awda, p. 30)
play any role, or that their role was insignificant. Literary newspapers and articles,
stories, and the translation movement all played a significant pioneering role, For ex-
ample, in an editorial published by Yusuf al-Isa in Al-Nafi‘s in 1920, we read: “Pales-
its Muslims are Arab ~its Christians are Arab — and its Jewish citizens are
Arab too, Palestine will never be quiet if itis separated from Syria and made a national
home for Zionism...” It was expressions of this kind at the beginning of the 1920s that
fashioned the revolutionary cultural tide in the 1930s, which was to play an important
role in promoting awareness and sparking off the revolt — writers such as Arif al-Arif,
Khalil al-Sakakini (a mocking writer of fiery prose, and son of a master carpenter),
Asaf al-Nashashibi (a member of the upper bourgeoisie who was influenced by al-
Sakakini and adopted many of his views), Arif al-Azzuni, Mahmud Saif al-Din al-Irani
and Najati Sidqi (one of the early leftist writers who, in 1936, extolled the materialism
of Ibn Khaldun and deplored idealism). Sidgi was probably the first chronicler which
the Arab nationalist movement had from the beginning of the renaissance who used a
materialist analysis of events. He published his research in Al-Tali‘a in 1937 and 1938,
Abdullah Mukhlis (who in the mid 1930s started calling for the view that colonialism
isa class phenomenon, and maintaining that artistic production must be militant), Raja
al-Hlurani, Abdullah al-Bandak, Khalil al-Badiri, Muhammad Izzat Darwaza and Isa
ri (whose eulogy of the death of al-Qassam had a profoundly revolutionary sige
nificance), This effervescence in the Palestinian cultural atmosphere, which reached its
climax in the 1930s, was expressed in a variety of forms, but for many reasons related to
the history of Arabic literature, the greatest influence was always exercised by poetry
and popular poetry.
This alone explains the role which poetry took upon itself in this period, which
was almost direct political preaching. Ibrahim Tagan, for example, commenting on
the 1932 establishment of the “national fund” to save land in Palestine from being
sold to the Zionists (this was the fund established by the feudal-clerical leadership on
the pretext of preventing the land of poor peasants from falling into the hands of the
Zionists) says: “Bight of those responsible for the fund project were land brokers for
the Zionists”
As early as 1929, Ibrahim Tagan disclosed the role that the big landowners were
playing in connection with the land problem
“They have sold the country toits enemies because oftheir greed for money; but itis,
their homes they have sold. They could have been forgiven if they had been forced
to doo by hunger, but God knows that they have never felt hunger or thirst.”
“If only one of our leaders would fast like Gandhi - perhaps his fast would do
some good. There is no need to abstain from food —in Palestine a leader would die
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
without food. Let him abstain from selling land and keep a plot in which to lay his
bones."
In the same year, Tagan had written his epic on the death sentences passed by
the Mandatory Government on the three martyrs, Fuad Hijazi of Safad, and Muham-
mad Jumjum and Ata al-Zir of Acre. This poem became extremely famous, and came
to be regarded as part of the revolutionary heritage, like the poem of Abd al-Rahim
Mahmud written on 14 August 1935 in which he addressed the Amir Saud who was
Visiting Palestine: “Have you come to visit the Aqsa Mosque, or to say farewell to it
before it is destroyed?”
This poet was to lay down his life in the battle of Al-Shajara in Palestine in 1948,
bbut before that he was to play a prominent role, along with Abu Salma and Tagan, in
laying the foundations of Palestinian resistance poetry, which later, under Israeli oc-
cupation, was to become one of the most conspicuous manifestations of the endurance
of the Palestinian masses.
Poetry and popular poetry accompanied the mass movement from the early 1930s,
expressing the developments that preceded the outbreak of the revolt. The poem of
[Abu Salma, in which he chronicled the 1936 revolt, courageously describes the bitter
disappointment caused by the way the Arab regimes abandoned it
“You who cherish the homeland revolt against the outright oppression
Liberate the homeland from the kings liberate it from the puppets,
I thought we have kings that can lead the men behind them
‘Shame to such kings if kings are so low
By god, their crowns are not fit to be shoe soles
We are the ones who will protect the homeland and heal its wounds.”
Mention must also be made of the popular poet “Awad” who, the night before his
execution in 1937, wrote on the walls of his cell in Acre a splendid poem ending with
the lines:
“The bridegroom belongs to us; woe to him whom we are fighting against ~ we'll
cut off his moustache with a sword. Shake the lance with the beautiful shaft; where
are you from, you brave men. We are men of Palestine ~ welcome with honour.”
“Father of the bridegroom, do not worry, we are drinkers of blood. In Bal'a and
Wadi al-Tuffah there has been an attack and a clash of arms...Oh ye beautiful wom-
cen sing and chant, On the day of the battle of Beit Amrin you hear the sound of
gun-shooting, look upon us from the balcony.”*
‘8 Yaghi, Dr. Abdul Rahman. Modern Palestinian Literature, Beira, p. 283
9 Our Popular Songs. by Nime Sithan. Jordan, Ministry of Culture and Information, p. 157.
The anger felt against all three members of the enemy trinity ~ the Zionist
invasion, the British mandate and Arab reaction, both local and otherwise, grew
constantly as the situation grew more critical
At that time the countryside, with the escalation of the conflicts and the out
breaks of armed uprisings, was developing its new awareness through the con-
tacts of its “cultural” elements, with the towns and the multiplication of factors
inducing such awareness:
“Good people, what is this hatred? A Zionist with a Westerner?"10 and “the
gun appeared, the lion did not; the muzzle of the gun is wet with dew,” or: “His
rifle, with the salesman I say my heart will never rest till buy it His rifle got
rusty from lack of use but
Indeed, the inflammatory call to revolt went to such extraordinary lengths
that, after all the inherited proverbs which counselled submissiveness, and con-
stituted a lead with the infallible authority of traditions, popular poetry suddenly
became capable of saying: “Arab, son of weak and poor woman, sell your mother
and buy a gun; a gun will be better than your mother when the revolt relieves your
cares.”
{As the conflict became more and more acute, the “gun” was to become the
instrument which destroyed the age-old walls of the call to submissiveness and
suddenly became able to pierce the heart of the matter, and the revolt became the
promise for the future — better than the warmest things in the past, the mother and
the family. But over all this effervescence the patriarchal feudalism was ossified
with its impotent leadership, its authority and
In the midst of these complicated and heated conflicts, which were both ex-
panding and growing more profound, and which mainly affected the Arab peas-
ants and workers, although they also pressed heavily on the petty and middle
bourgeoisie and the middle peasants in the country, the situation was becoming
ever more critical, expressing itself in armed outbreaks from time to time (1929-
1933). On the other hand, the Palestinian feudal-clrical leaders felt that their own
interests were also threatened by the growing economic force — Jewish capitalism
allied with the British Mandate. But their interests were also threatened from the
‘opposite quarter ~ by the poor Arab masses who no longer knew where to turn.
For the Arab urban bourgeoisie was weak and incapable of leadership in this stage
ff economic transformation which was taking place with unparalleled rapidity
reliance on the past
10 bid, pp. 299.300.
11 Ti, p. 301
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
and a small section of this bourgeoisie became parasitic and remained on the fringe of
Jewish industrial development. In addition, both their subjective and objective condi-
tions were undergoing changes contradictory to the general direction Arab society was
pursuing.
The young intellectuals, sons of the rich rural families, played a prominent role
in inciting people to revolt. They had returned from their universities to a society in
which they rejected the formula of the old relationships, which had become outdated,
and in which they were rejected by the new formulas which had started to take shape
‘within the framework of the Zionist-colonialist alliance, Thus the class struggle became
mixed, with extraordinary thoroughness, with the national interest and religious feel-
ings, and this mixture broke out within the framework of the objective and subjective
crisis which Arab society in Palestine was experiencing, Due to the above, Palestinian
Arab society remained a prisoner of the feudal-clerical leaderships. In view of the so-
ial and economic oppression which was the lot of the poor Palestinian Arabs in the
towns and villages, it was inevitable that the nationalist movement should assume
advanced forms of struggle, adopt class slogans and follow a course of action based on
class concepts. Similarly faced with the firm and daily expressed alliance between the
invading society built by the Jewish settlers in Palestine and British colonialism, it was
impossible to forget the primarily nationalist character of that struggle. And in view of
the terrible religious fervour on which the Zionist invasion of Palestine was based, and
‘which was inseparable from al ofits manifestations, it was impossible that the under-
developed Palestinian countryside should not practice religious fundamentalism as
manifestation of hostility to the Zionist colonialist incursion.
Commenting on the emergence of the Black Panther movement in “Israel,” the
leftist Hebrew-language magazine Matzper (No. 5, April 1971) wrote:
conflicts in Israel sometimes tend to take the form of confessional conflicts.
conflicts, even when translated into the language of confe
from the start lain at the heart of Zionism.”
jonalism, have
Of course this statement applies to an even greater extent to the role played by
religion against the Zionist incursion, as being a form of both national and class perse-
ction. For example:
“One of the results of Zionism was that celebrations of the Prophet's Birthday were
turned into nationalist rallies under the direction of the Mufti of Haifa and the poet
Wadi al-Bustani and were attended by all the Christian leaders and notables, not
a single Jew being invited. In this way, saints’ days, both Muslim and Christian,
st tinge in the towns of Palestine.”
The feudal-clerical leaderships proceeded to impose themselves at the head of the
movement of the masses. To do this they took advantage of the meagreness of the
Arab urban bourgeoisie, and of the conflict which was, toa certain extent, boiling up
between them and British colonialism, which had established its influence through
its alliance with the Zionist movement; of their religious attributes, of the small size
of the Arab proletariat and the meagreness of its Communist Party, which was not
only under the control of Jewish leaders, but its Arab elements had been subjected to
‘oppression and intimidation by the feudal leadership ever since the early twenties.
It was against this complicated background, in which the interlocked and extremely
complicated conflicts were flaring up, that the 1936 revolt came to the forefront in the
history of Palestine,
THE REVOLT
that took place in various places as the reason for the outbreak of the 1936
revolt. According to Yehuda Bauer, “the incident that is commonly regarded as
the start of the 1936 disturbances” occurred on 19 April 1936, when Palestinian Arab
crowds in Jaffa attacked Jewish passers-by.
In the view of Isa al-Sifr, Salih Mas’ud Buwaysir® and Subhi Yasin‘, the first spark
‘was lit when an unknown group of Palestinian Arabs (Subhi Yasin describes it as a
assamist group including Farhan al-Sa‘udi and Mahmud Dairawi) ambushed 15 cars
‘on the road from Anabta and the Nur Shams prison, robbed their Jewish and Arab
passengers alike of their money, while one of the three members of the group made a
short speech to the Palestinian Arabs, who formed the majority of the passengers, in
‘which, according to al-Sifri, he said, “We are taking your money so that we can fight
the enemy and defend you.”*
Dr. Abd al-Wahhab al-Kayyali thinks that the first spark was lit before that in Feb-
ruary 1936 when an armed band of Palestinian Arabs surrounded a school which Jew-
ish contractors were building in Haifa, employing Jewish-only labour. But all sources
rightly believe that the Qassamist rising, sparked off by Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam
was the real start of the 1936 revolt.
However, the report of the Royal Commission (Lord Peel) which Yehuda Bauer
regards as one of the more authoritative sources written about the Palestine problem,
sidesteps ignores) these immediate causes for the outbreak ofthe revolt, and attributes
the outbreak to two main causes: the Arabs’ desire to win national independence and
their aversion to, and fear of, the establishment of the “Jewish national home" in Pal-
estine. Itis not difficult to see that these two causes are really only one, and the words
in which they are couched are inflated and convey no precise meaning, However, Lord
H istorians are at odds with each other with regard to the different incidents
1 Yehuda Bauer, Op. it p.49
2 Sif Issa. Arab Palestine Under the Mandate & Zionism, The New Palestine Bookshop. Jaf,
1937. Vol. Ip. 10
3 Palestinian Struggle over half «century, by Saleh Bouyissir.l-Fatah House, Beirut, p. 180.
4 The Great Arab Revolution in Palestine al-Hana House, Damascus. Subhir Yasine,p. 30
5 Bouyissir,Op. ct, p. 181
6 Kayyali, Op. cit, p- 302.
Peel mentions what he calls “secondary factors” which contributed to the outbreak of
the “disturbances” These are:?
‘+ The spread of the Arab nationalist spirit outside Palestine
‘+ Increasing Jewish immigration since 1933
‘+ The fact that the Jews were able to influence public opinion in Britain
‘+ The lack of Palestinian Arab confidence in the good intentions of the British
government
‘+ The Palestinian Arabs’ fear of continued land purchases by Jews
‘+ The fact that the ultimate objectives of the Mandatory government were not
clear
The way the then-leadership of the Palestinian national movement understood
the causes can be deduced from the three slogans with which it adorned all its de-
mands, These were:*
1, An immediate stop to Jewish immigration
2. Prohibition of the transfer of the ownership of Palestinian Arab lands to Jewish
settlers
3. The establishment of a democratic government in which Palestinian Arabs
‘would have the largest share in conformity with their numerical superiority
But these slogans, in the bombastic versions in which they were repeated, were
quite incapable of expressing the real situation, and in fact to a great extent, all they
did was to perpetuate the control of the feudal leadership over the nationalist move-
ment. The real cause of the revolt was the fact that the acute conflicts involved in
the transformation of Palestinian society from an Arab agricultural-feudal-clerical one
into a Zionist (Western) industrial bourgeois one, had reached their climax, as we have
already seen.
The process of establishing the roots of colonialism and transforming it from a
British mandate into Zionist settler colonialism as we have seen, reached its climax
in the mid-1930s, and in fact, the leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement
‘was obliged to adopt a certain form of armed struggle because it was no longer ca-
pable of exercising its leadership at a time when the conflict had reached decisive
proportions. A variety of conflicting factors played a role in inducing the Palestinian
then-leadership to adopt the form of armed struggle ~ firstly: the Izz al-Din al-Qassam
movement; secondly: the series of failures sustained by this leadership at a time when
they were atthe helm of the mass movement, even with regard to the minor and par-
tial demands that the colonialists did not usually hesitate to yield to, in the hope of
7 Collection. p. 96.
SHadawi. Op. ct, p.38,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
absorbing resentment (the British took a long time to see the value of this manoeuvre;
however, their interests were safeguarded through the existence of competent Zionist
agents) thirdly: Zionist violence (the armed bands, the slogan of “Jewish labour only”
tc. in addition to colonialist violence (the manner in which the 1929 rising had been
suppressed).
In any discussion of the 1936-1939 revolt, a special place must be reserved for
Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam. In spite of all that has been written about him, itis not
too much to say that this unique personality is still really unknown, and will probably
remain so, Most of what has been written about him has dealt with him only from the
‘outside and because of this superficiality in the study of personality, several Jewish his-
torians have not hesitated to regard him as.a “fanatical dervish”, while many Western
historians have ignored him altogether. In fact, itis clear that itis the failure to grasp
the dialectical connection between religion and nationalist tendencies that is respon
sible forthe belitting of the importance of the Qassamist movement.
However, whatever view is held of al-Qassam, there is no doubt that his move-
ment (12-19 November 1935) represented a turning, point in the nationalist struggle
and played an important role in the adoption of a more advanced form of struggle in
confrontation with the traditional leadership which had become divided and splin-
tered in the face of the mounting struggle.
Probably the personality of al-Qassam in itself constituted the symbolic point of
encounter of that great mass of interconnected factors which, for the purposes of sim-
plification, has come to be known as the “Palestine problem.” The fact that he was
“Syrian” (born in Jabala on the periphery of Latakia) exemplified the Arab nationalist
factor inthe struggle. The fact that he was an Azharist (he studied at Al-Azhar) exem-
plifies the religious-nationalist factor represented by Al-Azhar at the beginning of the
century. The fact that he had a record of engaging in nationalist struggle (took part in
the Syrian revolt against the French at Jabal Horan in 1919-1920 and was condemned
to death) exemplified the unity of Arab struggle, Al-Qassam came to Haifa in 1921
with the Egyptian Sheikh Muammad al-Hanafi and Sheikh Ali al-Hajj Abid and im-
mediately started to form secret groups. What is remarkable in al-Qassams activities
is advanced organisational intelligence and his steel-strong patience. In 1929, he
refused to be rushed into announcing that he was under arms and, in spite of the fact
that this refusal led to a spit in the organisation, it did succeed in holding together and
remaining secret
According to a well-known Qassamist,al-Qassam programmed his revolt in three
stages, psychological preparation and the dissemination of a revolutionary spirit, the
formation of secret groups, the formation of committees to collect contributions and
9 Yasin, Subhi. Op. ct, pp. 22-23,
‘others to purchase arms, committees for training, for security, espionage, propaganda
and information and for political contacts, and then armed revolt. Most of those who
knew al-Qassam say that when he went out to the Ya’bad hills with 25 of his men on
the night of 12 November 1935, his object was not to declare the armed revolt but to
spread the call for the revolt, but that an accidental encounter led to his presence there
being disclosed, and in spite ofthe heroic resistance of al-Qassem and his men, a British
force easily destroyed them. It appears that when he realised that he could no longer
expand the revolt with his comrades, Sheikh al-Qassam adopted his famous slogan:
“Die as Martyrs.” It is due to al-Qassam that we should understand this slogan in a
“Guevaris”” sense, if we may use the expression, but at the ordinary nationalist level,
the litle evidence we possess of al-Qassam's conduct shows that he was aware of the
importance of his role as the initiator of an advanced revolutionary focus.
This slogan was to bear fruit immediately. The masses followed their martye’s
body 10 kilometres on foot to the village of Yajur. But the most important thing that
happened was the exposing of the traditional leaders in the face of the challenge con-
stituted by Sheikh al-Qassam. These leaders were as conscious of the challenge as was
the British Mandate. According to one Qassamist, a few months before al-Qassam went
into the hills, he sent to Hajj al-Amin al-Hussaini, through Sheikh Musa al-Azrawi,
to ask him to coordinate declarations of revolt throughout the country. H
fused, however, on the ground that conditions were not yet ripe.’ When Al-Qassam
‘was killed, his funeral was attended only by poor people.
The leaders adopted an indifferent attitude, which they soon realis
take, forthe killing of al-Qassam was an occurrence of outstanding significance which
they could not afford to ignore. Proof of this is to be found in the fact that represen-
tatives of the five Palestinian parties visited the British High Commissioner only
days after the killing of al-Qassam, and submitted to him an extraordinarily impudent
memorandum in which they admitted that
ini re-
sd was a mis-
“if they did not receive an answer to this memorandum which could be regard-
‘ed as generally satisfactory, they would lose all their influence over their follow-
cers, extremist and irresponsible views would prevail and the situation would
deteriorate.”
They obviously wanted to exploit the phenomenon of al-Qassam to enable them
to take a step backwards. However, by his choice of the form of struggle, al-Qassam
hhad made it impossible for them to retreat, and this in fact is what explains the differ-
cence between the attitude of the Palestinian leaders to the Killing of Sheikh al-Qassam
10 Ibid. p. 22
11 Kayyali, Op. cit. p. 296.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
immediately after it happened, and the attitude they adopted at the ceremony held on
the fortieth day after his death. During these forty days, they discovered that if they
did not try to mount the great wave that had been set in motion by al-Qassam, it would
engulf them. They therefore cast off the indifference they had displayed at his funeral
and took part in the rallies and speeches at the fortieth day ceremony.
Clearly Hajj Amin al-Hussaini was to remain aware ofthis loophole in later times.
Even more than 20 years later the magazine Filastine, the mouthpiece of the Arab
Higher Committee, tried to give the impression that the Qassamist movement was
nothing buta part of the movement led by the Mufti, and that the latter and al-Qassam
had been “personal friends”.12 As for the British, they told the story of al-Qassam in
the report on the incidents of 1935 that they submitted to Geneva as follows:
“There were widespread rumours that a terrorist gang had been formed at the in-
spiration of political and religious factors, and on November 7, 1935, a police ser-
geant and a constable were following up a theft in the hills of the Nazareth District,
when two unknown persons fired on them, killing the sergeant... his incident soon
led to the discovery of a gang operating in the neighbourhood under the leadership
of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a political refugee from Syria who enjoyed considerable
prestige asa religious leader, He had been the object of strong suspicion some years
before, and he was said to have had a hand in terrorist activities.”
“Sheikh al-Qassam’s funeral in Haifa was attended by very large crowds, and in
spite of the efforts made by influential Muslims to keep order, there were demon-
strations and stones were thrown. The death of al-Qassam aroused a wave of pow-
«erful feelings in political and other circles in the country and the Arabic newspapers
agreed in calling him a martyr in the articles they wrote about him”."°
The British, too, were aware of the challenge represented by the killing of al-Qas-
‘sam, and they too tried to put the clock back, as is shown by the view expressed by the
High Commissioner in a letter he wrote to the Minister for the Colonies. In this letter
he said that if the demands of the Arab leaders were not granted, “they would lose all
their influence and all possibility of pacification, by the moderate means he proposed,
‘would vanish”.
12 Palestine. No.94.1 January, 1969. Arab Higher Committee. Beirut,
13 bid,, No. 94. p. 19.
1 Kayyali,Op. cit, p. 296
But it was impossible to put the clock back, for the Qassamist movement was, in
fact, an expression of the natural pattern that was capable of coping with the escala-
tion of the conflict and settling it It was not long before this was reflected in a number
‘of committees and groupings, so that the traditional leadership was obliged to choose
between confronting this escalating will to fight among the masses or to quell their
‘will and to put them under their control
Although the British took rapid action, and proposed the idea of a legislative
assembly and mooted the idea of stopping land sales, it was too late: the Zionist
movement, whose will began to crystallise very firmly at that time, played its part in
diminishing the effectiveness of the British offer. All the same, the leadership of the
Palestinian nationalist movement had not yet decided its attitude, but was extraordi-
narily vacillating, and up to2 April 1936, the representatives ofthe Palestinian parties
were prepared to form a delegation to go to London to tell the British government
their point of view. However, things blew up before the leadership of the nationalist
movement intended, and when the first flames were ignited in Jaffa in February 1936,
the leaders of the Palestinian nationalist movement believed that they could still ob-
tain partial concessions from Britain through negotiations.
But they were surprised by the following events. All who were closely associated
with the events of April 1936 admit that the outbreak of violence and civil disobedi-
cence was spontaneous and that, with the exception of the acts instigated by the sur-
vviving Qassamists, everything that happened was a spontaneous expression of the
critical level that the confit had reached.
Even when the general strike was declared on 19 April 1936 the leadership of
the nationalist movement lagged behind. However, they soon got on the bandwagon,
before it let them behind, and succeeded, for the reasons already mentioned in our
analysis of the social-political situation in Palestine, in dominating, the nationalist
movement
From the organisational point of view, the Palestinian nationalist movement was
represented by a number of parties, most of which were the vestiges of the anti-Ot-
toman movements that had arisen at the beginning of the century. This meant both.
that they had not engaged in a struggle for independence (as was the case in Egypt,
for example) and that they were no more than general frameworks, without definite
principles, controlled by groups of notables and dependent on loyalties rooted in and
derived from the influence they enjoyed as religious or feudal leaders or prominent
members of society; they were not parties with onganised bases,
Apart from al-Qassam himself (and the Communists, naturally) not one of the
leaders ofthe Palestinian nationalist movement at this time possessed any organising,
ability; even Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, who had unusual administrative abilities, had no
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
conception of organisation as applied to struggle. Organisational responsibilities were
most often based on individual talents in the subcommittees and among the middle
cadre, However, they were usually incapable of transforming their abilities into policy.
(On the eve of the revolt, the situation of the representatives of the nationalist move-
ment in Palestine was as follows: with the dissolution of the Arab Executive Commit-
tee in August 1934 six groups emerged:
1. The Arab Palestine Party, in May 1935, headed by Jamal al-Hussaini; it more or
less embodied the policy of the Mufti and represented the feudalists and big city
merchants;
2. The National Defence Party, headed by Raghib al-Nashashibi; founded in De-
cember 1934 it represented the new urban bourgeoisie and the senior officials;
3. The Independence Party, founded in 1932, with Auni Abd al-Hadll as its head. It
included the intellectuals, the middle bourgeoisie and some sectors of the petty
bourgeoisie, This contributed to its left wing playing a special role;
4. The Reform Party which, founded by Dr Husain al-Khalidi in August 1935, rep-
resented a number of intellectuals;
5. The National Bloc Party, headed by Abd al-Latif Salah;
6. The Palestine Youth Party, headed by Ya‘qub al-Ghusain
‘This multiplicity was purely superficial; it was not a clear and definite expression
of the class configuration in the country. The overwhelming majority of the masses
‘were not represented (according to Nevill Barbour 90% of the revolutionaries were
peasants who regarded themselves as volunteers)
A glance at the class structure in Palestine in 1931 shows that 59% of the Palestin-
ian Arabs were peasants (19.1% of the Jews), 12.9% of the Arabs worked in construction
industry and mining (30.6% of the Jews), 6% of the Palestinian Arabs worked in com-
munications, 8.4% in commerce, 1.3% in the administration, etc.° This means that the
‘overwhelming majority of the population was not represented in these parties which,
although they represented the feudal and religious leaders, the urban compradors and
certain sectors of the intellectuals, they were always subject to the leadership of the
Mufti and his class, which represented the feudal-clerical leaders, and was more na-
tionalist than the leadership which represented the urban bourgeoisie. The latter was
represented by the effendis ata time when they were starting to invest their money in
industry (this trend became more pronounced ater the defeat of the 1936-1939 revolt),
The petty-bourgeoi all traders, shopkeepers, teachers, civil ser-
vvants and craftsmen) had no leadership. As a class they had had no influence and no
importance under the Turkish regime, which depended on the effendi class, to which
je in general (s
15 Paestine’s Economic Future. Percy, Lund H. London, 1946. p. 61
the Turks gave the right of local government due to the fact that it had grown in con-
junction with the feudal aristocracy.
The labour movement was newly established and weak, and, as a result, was ex-
posed to oppression by the authorities, crushing competition from the Jewish proletar-
iat and bourgeoisie, and persecution by the leadership, of the Arab nationalist move-
ment.
Before the Arab Higher Committee was formed, with Hajj Amin al-Hussaini at its
head on 25 April 1936, Jamal al-Hussaini, the leader of the Arab Party, had been dissat-
isfied by people's growing belief that the English were the real enemy, and the National
Defence Party which represented, first and foremost, the growing urban comprador
lass, was not really disposed for an open clash with the British
Only two days earlier, on 23 April 1936, Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist move-
ment, had made a speech in Tel-Aviv in which he described the Arab-Zionist struggle,
which was beginning to break out, as a struggle between destructive and constructive
elements, thereby putting the Zionist forces in their place as the instrument of colonial-
ism on the eve of the armed clash. This was the position on both sides of the field on
the eve of the revolt!
In the countryside the revolt assumed the form of civil disobedience and armed in-
surrection. Hundreds of armed men flocked to join the bands that had begun to fan out
in the mountains, Non-payment of taxes was decided on at the conference held in the
Raudat al-Ma‘aref al-Wataniya college in Jerusalem on 7 May 1936 and was attended
by about 150 delegates representing the Arabs of Palestine. A review of the names of
the delegates made by Isa alSafril6 shows that it was at this conference that the leader-
ship of the mass movement committed itself to an unsubstantial alliance between the
feudal-religious leaderships, the urban commercial bourgeoisie and a limited number
of the intellectuals. The resolution adopted by this conference was brief, but it was a
lear illustration ofthe extent to which a leadership of this kind was capable of reach-
ing.
“The conference decided unanimously to announce that no taxes will be paid as of
15 May 1936 ifthe British government does not make a radical change in its policy
by stopping Jewish immigration.”
The British response to civil disobedience and armed insurrection was to strike
at two key points: the first was the organisational cadre which was, for the most part,
‘more revolutionary than the leadership, and the second the impoverished mas
had taken part in the revolt and who in fact had nothing but their own arms to protect
them
‘5 who
16Sifs, Op. cit, pp, 39-40.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
This goes a long way towards explaining why the only two people who were com-
paratively proficient at organisation ~ Auni Abed el-Hadi and Mohammad Azat Dar-
swazeh — were arrested, while the rest were subjected either to arrest or to harassment
to the extent that they were totally paralysed. This is shown by the fact that 61 Arabs
responsible for onganising the strike (the middle cadre) were arrested on 23 May. How-
ever, these arrests did not prevent Britain from giving permits to four of the leaders of
the revolt, Jamal al-Hussaini, Shibli al-Jamal, Abd al-LatifSalah and Dr: Izzat Tannus to
travel to London and meet the Minister for the Colonies, which took place on 12 June,
‘There was nothing unusual about this incident, which was to be constantly repeated
throughout the subsequent months and years. The British High Commissioner had
observed with great satisfaction that “the Friday sermons were much more moderate
than I had expected, ata time when feelings are so strong, This was mainly due to the
Mufti”
From the outset, the situation had been that the leadership of the Palestinian na-
tionalist movement regarded the revolt of the masses as merely intended to exert pres-
sure on British colonialism with the object of improving the conditions of the masses
asa class, The British were profoundly aware of this fact and acted accordingly. They
did not, however, take the trouble to grant this class the concessions it desired. Lon-
don pe
Palestine to the Zionist movement and, moreover, it was during the years ofthe revolt
~ 1936-1939 ~ that British colonialism threw all its weight into performing the task of
‘supporting the Zionist presence and setting it on its feet, as we shall see later
The British succeeded in achieving this in two ways: by striking at the poor peas-
ant revolutionaries with unprecedented violence, and by employing their extensive
isted in meeting its commitments by handing over the colonialist heritage in
influence with the Arab regimes, which played a major role in liquidating the revolt.
Firstly, the British Emergency Regulations played an effective role, AI-Sfri cites a
‘group of sentences passed at the time to show how unjust these regulations were:
“six years imprisonment for possessing a revolver, 12 years for possessing a bomb,
five years with hard labour for possessing 12 bullets, eight months on a charge of
misdirecting a detachment of soldiers, nine years on a charge of possessing explo-
sives, five years for trying to buy ammunition from soldiers, two weeks imprison-
ment for possessing a stick...ete.""
According to a British estimate submitted to the League of Nations, the number
of Palestinian Arabs killed in the 1936 revolt was about 1,000, apart from wounded,
missing and interned. The British employed the policy of blowing up houses on a wide
17 Kayyali, Op. cit, p. 31.
18Sifs, Op. cit, p60,
scale ~ they blew up and destroyed part of the city of Jaffa (18 June 1936) where the
‘number of houses blown up was estimated at 220 and the number of persons rendered
hhomeless at 6,000. In addition, 100 huts were demolished in Jabalia, 300 in Abu Kabir,
350 in Sheikh Murad, and 75 in Arab al-Daudi. It is clear that the inhabitants of the
‘quarters that were destroyed in Jaffa and of the huts that were destroyed in the out-
skirts were poor peasants who had left the country forthe town. Inthe villages, accord-
stimate, 143 houses were blown up for reasons directly connected with
the revolt-19 These houses belonged to poor peasants, some medium peasants and a
very small number of feudal families. Secondly, Amir Abdullah of Transjordan20 and
Nuri Said started to take action to mediate with the Arab Higher Committee. However,
their mediation was unsuccessful, despite the readiness of the leadership to accept
their good offices. But the movement of the masses was not yet ready to be domesti-
cated in 1936 although these contacts did have a negative effect on the revolt, and left a
feeling that the conflict then in progress was amenable to settlement, In fact, this initia~
tive, which started with failure, was to be completely successful in October ofthe same
year, only about seven weeks later.
Not that these contacts were the only form assumed by the dialectic ofthe relations
between Palestine and the neighbouring Arab countries. This dialectic was more com-
plicated and reflected the complexity of the conflicts, we have already seen what al-
Qassam represented in this field; and in fact the Qassamist phenomenon in this sense
continued to exist. Large numbers of Arab freedom fighters poured into Palestine;
among them were Sa'id al- Killed in October 1936, Sheikh Muhammad
alAshmar and many others. This influx also comprised a number of adventurist na-
tionalis officers, the most prominent of whom was Fauzi al-Qawugji who shortly after
entry into Palestine at the head of a small bandl in August 1936 declared himself com-
mander in chief of the revolt, Although these men improved and expanded the tactics
of the rebels, the greater part of the burden of revolutionary violence in the country and
‘of commando action in the towns, continued to be borne by the dispossessed peasants.
In fact, it was the “officers” who emerged from the ranks of the peasants themselves
‘who continued to play the major role, but most of them were subject to the leadership
of al-Mufti. They also represented legendary heroism for the masses of the revolution,
Although the British officials in Palestine did not completely agree with London's
policy of reckless support for the Zionist movement, they thought that there was room
for an Arab class leadership whose interests were not linked with the revolt, to co-
‘operate with colonialism. Britain finally accepted, so it seems, on 19 June 1936, the
ing to al-Sifr’s
s, who was
19 bid, p.93.
20 Transjordan i the Fast Bank ofthe River Jordan, while the West Bank is part of Palestine
(Editon,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
“importance of the organic link between the safety of British interests and the success
of Zionism in Palestine” * Britain decided to strengthen its forces in Palestine and to
increase repressive measures,
Frightened by this decision, the leadership ofthe Palestinian nationalist movement
‘vacillated and lost its nerve, Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, Raghib Nashashibi and Auni Abd
al-Hadi hastened to meet the British High Commissioner, and it is clear from reports
he sent to his government at the time they confirmed that they were prepared to end
the revolt if the Arab kings asked them to do so. They did not, however, dare to admit
to the masses that they were the originators; of this tortuous scheme, and repeatedly
denied it. After this, large numbers of British troops, estimated at 20,000, poured into
Palestine, and on 30 September 1936, when they had all arrived, a decree was issued
enforcing martial law. The mandatory authorities stepped up their policy of relentless
repression, and September and October witnessed battles ofthe greatest violence ~ the
last battles, in fact, to cover nearly the whole of Palestine.
On 11 October 1936, the Arab Higher Committee distributed a statement calling,
for an end to the strike, and thereby the revolt: “Inasmuch as
of their Majesties and Highnesses, the Arab kings, and to comply with their wishes is
one of our hereditary Arab traditions, and inasmuch as the Arab Higher Committee
firmly believes that their Majesties and Highnesses would only give orders that are
in conformity with the interests of their sons and with the object of protecting their
rights; the Arab Higher Committe, in obedience to tie wishes of their Majesties and
Highnesses, the Kings and amirs, and from its belief il the great benefit that will result
from their mediation and cooperation, calls on the noble Arab people to end the strike
and the disturbances, in obedience to these orders, whose only object is the interests
of the Arabs
Exactly a month later (on 11 November 1936) the “General Command of the Arab
Revolt in Southern Syria-Palestine” announced that it “calls forall acts of violence to
be stopped completely, and that there should be no provocation towards anything li-
able to disturb the atmosphere of the negotiations, which the Arab nation hopes will
succeed and obtain the full rights of the country”.* Ten days later, the same command
issued another statement in which it declared that it had “eft the field, from its con-
fidence in the guarantee of the Arab kings and amirs, and to protect the safety of the
negotiations’ 2 As Jamil al-Shuqairi says: “So, in obedience to the orders of the kings
s, the strike was called off, and the activities of the revolt came to an end
and ami
21 Kayyali, Op. cit, p. 319.
22 Documents, p45
23 Ibid, p. 487
24 Ibid, p. 8.
within two hours of the cal being published” *
Although at that time Britain was challenging the Palestinian leaderships on pre-
cisely the point over which they had deceived the masses — the question of Jewish
immigration to Palestine ~ and although these leaders decided to boycott the Royal
‘Commission (the Peel Commission), the Arab kings and amirs obliged these leader-
ships to obey them for the second time in less than three months. King Abdul Aziz. Al
Sa’ud and King Ghazi wrote letters to Hajj Amin al-Hussaini s
confidence in the good intentions of the British government to do justice to the Arabs, it
isouropinion that your interest requires that you should meet the Royal Commission”.
In fact this incident, which appears trivial, shattered the alliance in the leadership of
the nationalist movement, as the forces to the right of Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, led by the
Defence Party, immediately opposed the decision to boycott the Peel Commission, and
{gave numerous indications of their desire to accept the settlement that Britain was to
propose. The leaders ofthis party, which represented mainly the urban effendis, relied
‘on the discontent felt by the big merchants in the towns and on the dislocation of the
interests of the urban bourgeoisie, which depended on close economic relations em-
bodied in the agencies they held from British, and sometimes Jewish, industrial firms.
The Arab regimes, especially that of Transjordan, strongly supported the attitude
of this right wing, and Hajj Amin al Hussaini and what he represented had no incli-
ration to tum to the leftist front which, in fact, he had started to liquidate, Thus his
attitude began to be increasingly vacillating and hesitant, and it was clear that he had
{got into a position where he could not take a single step forward with the revolt, and
where, equally, retreat could no longer do him any good. However, when the Brit-
ish thought that they could now achieve the political liquidation of the Mufti in the
period of quiet that followed the end of the strike, they found that this was not true,
and that the Mufti’s right wing was still much too weak to control the situation. The
British High Commissioner maliciously continued to realise how great a role the Multi
could play while he was restricted to that position between the Defence Party on his
right and the Independence Party (its left wing) and the young intellectuals’ move-
ments on his left. This High Commissioner realised Britain’s ability to take advantage
of the wiele mangin between “the inflexibility (obstinacy) of the villagers who resisted
for six months, receiving little pay but not indulging in plunder” and the weakness
or non-existence of great qualities of leadership in the members of the (Arab Higher)
Committee”
The correctness of the High Commissioner’s view of the limited role that the
Mutti’s right-wing could play was shown when the Defence Party failed to take an
ying: “In view of our
25 Collection p..
26 Kayyali, Op. cit, p. 326
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
‘unambiguous stand against the report of the Peel Commission, which, published on7
July 1937, recommended partition and the establishment of a Jewish state. At the same
time, it became clear that the High Commissioner's fear that pressure from the Mufti’s
left-wing might lead him to abandon his moderate attitude was not groundless. This
pressure, however, was not exerted by the quarter from which the High Commissioner
hhad expected it, but by the middle cadre which was still represented on the national
‘committees, and which was represented daily by groups of dispossessed peasants and
‘unemployed workers in the cities and the countryside.
Thus, the only course left to the Mufti was to flee. He avoided arrest by taking,
refuge in the Haram al-Sharif, but events forced him into a position which he had not
been able to take up a year earlier. In September 1937, Andrews, the District Commis-
sioner of the Galilee district, was shot dead by four armed commandos outside the
Anglican church in Nazareth. Andrews was “the only official who administered the
Mandate as Zionists consider it right...he never succeeded in winning the confidence
of the Fellahin [Palestinian peasants]”. The Arabs regarded him asa friend of the Zion-
s and believed that his task was to facilitate the transfer of Galilee to the Zionist state
that had been demarcated by the partition proposal. The Arab peasants disliked him
and accused him of facilitating the sale of the Huleh lands, and the commandos who
Killed him are believed to have belonged to one of the secret cells of the Qassamites
Although the Arab Higher Committee condemned this incident on the same night,
the situation, exactly as had happened when al-Qassam was killed, had got out of the
control of the Mufti and his group, so that, if they wanted to remain at the head of the
rational movement, they had to hang onto it and mount the rising wave, as had hap-
pened in April 1936, This time, however, the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses
was more violent, not only because of the experience they had acquired during the past
year, but also because the conflict that was taking place before their eyes had become
increasingly clear. tis certain that this stage of the revolt was directed substantially, if
not entirely, against the British rather than the Zionists. The growth of the conflict had
led to the crystallisation of more clear-cut positions; the peasants were in almost com-
plete control of the revolt, the role of the urban bourgeoisie had retreated somewhat,
and the wealthy people in the country and the big middle peasants were hesitant to
support the rebels, while the Zionist forces had effectively gone on the offensive.
There are two important questions to be considered as regards this stage of the
revolt: “The Arabs contacted the Zionists, proposing that they reach some kind of an
agreement on the basis of a complete severance of relations with Britain, But the Zion-
ists immediately rejected this, because they regarded their relations with Britain as
27 Neville Barbour, Nis! Dominus, London, pp. 183-193.
fundamental’ ® This was accompanied by a rise in the number of Zionists serving
in the police in Palestine; from 365 in 1935 to 682 in 1936, and at the end of that year
the government announced the recruitment of 1,240 Zionists as additional policemen
armed with army rifles. A month later, the figure rose to 2,863” and British officers
played a prominent role in leading Zionist groups in attacks on Palestinian Arab vil-
lages.
The fact that the leadership of the revolt was outside Palestine (in Damascus)
made the role of the local leadership, most of which were of poor peasant origin, more
important than it had been in the previous period. These were closely linked with the
peasants, This does much to explain to what extent the revolt was able to go. In this
period, for example, Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj emerged as a local commander, and the
‘Communists say that they were in contact with him and supplied him with informa-
tion.” This development might have constituted a historic turning point in the revolt
had it not been for the weakness ofthe “left” in both the relative and the true sense, and
hhad not these local commands been obliged to maintain their organisational link, to a
certain extent, with the “Central Committee for Struggle” (Jihad) in Damascus, not only
because oftheir traditional loyalty to it, but also because they depended on it to some
extent for financing. In the whole history of the Palestinian struggle the armed popular
revolt was never closer to victory than in the months between the end of 1937 and the
beginning of 1939, In this period, the British forces’ control of Palestine weakened, the
prestige of colonialism was atits lowest, and the reputation and influence ofthe revolt
became the principal force in the country. However, at this time, Britain became more
convinced that it would have to rely on Zionists who had provided them with a unique
situation that they had never found in any of their colonies ~ they had at their disposal
local force which had common cause with British colonialism and was highly mobil-
ised against the local population
Britain began to be alarmed at the necessity of diverting part of its military forces
to confront the ever more critical situation in Europe. Therefore Britain viewed with
increasing favour “the rapid organisation of a Jewish volunteer defence force of 6,500
men already in existence”.* It had already gone some way in pursuing a policy of rely-
ing on the local Zionist force and handing over to it many of the tasks of repression,
which were increasing. However, it did not destroy the bridge which it had always
maintained with the class led by the Muff, and it was in this field, and at this time in
particular, that the British played a major role in maintaining the Mufti as the undis-
28 Kayyali,Op. cit, p. 338
29 jewish Observer, 20 September 1963, London, pp. 13-14.
30 Abdul Qadir Yasin. al Kat, No. 121. April 1971 p. 114
‘31 Kayyali. Op. cit, p. 346
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
puted representative of the Palestinian Arabs. Their reserves of the leadership on the
right of the Mufti were practically exhausted so that if the Mufti were no longer regard
ced as the sole leader, this would “leave no-one who can represent the Arabs except the
leaders ofthe revolt in the mountains”, as the British High Commissioner for Palestine
said.® There can be no doubt that this, among other reasons, contributed to keeping the
Mufti at the head of the leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement in spite, of
the fact that he had left his place of refuge in the Aqsa Mosque in a hasty manner, and
had been in Damascus since the end of January 1937,
British oppression, which had escalated to an unexpected level, and the escalation
s throughout 1937 and 1938, weakened the
revolt but did not end it. The British had come to realise that both in essence and sub-
stance, and in regards to its local leadership, it was a peasant revolt. As a result ofthis,
the revolutionary spirit that prevailed throughout the whole of Palestine led to every
‘one in the towns wearing the peasant headdress (kefiya and aga!) so that the country-
rman coming into the town should not be subjected to oppression by the authorities
Later, all were forbidden to carry their identity cards, so that the authorities should not
be able to distinguish a townsman from a countryman
This situation indicates very clearly the nature of the revolt and its influence at
that time. The countryside in general was the cradle of the revolt, and the temporary
‘occupation of towns in 1938 was achieved after attacks by peasants from outside." This
meant that it was the peasants and villagers in general who were paying the highest
price
In 1938, a number of peasants were executed merely for being in possession of
arms. A rapid glance atthe lst of the names of those who were sent to prison or to the
gallows shows us that the overwhelming majority were poor peasants. For example,
“all the inhabitants of the village of Ain Karem, three thousand in number, were sen-
tenced to go ten kilometres every day to report to the police station”.** During that
period, Britain sentenced about 2,000 Palestinian Arabs to long terms of imprisonment,
demolished more than 5,000 homes, and executed, by hanging, 148 persons in Acre
prison. There were more than 5,000 in prison for varying terms.*
Britain, which in November 1938 had abandoned the partition proposal recom=
mended by the Peel Report, now began trying to gain time. The Round Table Confer-
Of police raids, mass arrests and execution
32 Ibid, p. 346.
33 In May 1938, the rebels occupied Hebron after they had already occupied the old port of
Jerusalem. On 9 September, they occupied Beersheba and released prisoners. On 5 October, they
‘occupied Tiberias; in early August parts of Nablus ete.
34 Bouyissie. Op. cit, p. 247.
235 Ibid, p. 247
cence held in London in February 1939 was a typical illustration of the dubious transac-
tion that was going on silently all the time between the command of the Palestinian
revolt and the British, who knew for certain that the command was prepared to bargain
at any moment. OF course Jamal al-Hussaini did not go to the Round Table Conference
in London alone; he was accompanied by representatives of the “independent” Arab
countries, Thus the Arab regimes which were subject to colonialism were destined for
the second time in less than tivo years to impose their will on the Arabs of Palestine
through the identity (latent and potential) of interests of all those who sat around the
Round Table in London.
The speeches made by Jamal al-Hussaini, Amir Faisal (Gaudi Arabia), Amir Hus
sein (the Yemen), Al Mahir (Egypt) and Nuri alSa‘id (Iraq), who declared that he was
speaking as a close friend of Britain and who did not want to say a single word that
might hurt the feelings of any Briton, because he was their friend from the bottom of
his heart,* only confirmed the success ofthe policy which Britain had for so long been
carefully pursuing vis-A-vis the leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement; it
did not abandon it, and kept it constantly at the end of an open bridge. And the Brit-
ish were conficeent that Iraq and Saudi Arabia “were prepared to use their influence
‘with the Palestinian leaders to put an end to the revolt and ensure the success of the
Conference”
However, the revolt in Palestine had not subsided (according to official figures, in
February 1939, 110 were killed and 112 wounded in 12 engagements with the British,
39 villages were searched, curfews were imposed in three towns three times, about 200
villagers were arrested, there were fires in five government departments, ten Arabs
‘were executed on charges of carrying arms, there were attacks on ten Zionist settle-
ments, the oil pipeline was blown up; a train between Haifa and Lydda was mined,
and a search post was set up in the Aqsa Mosque). The British figures presented by
the Colonial Secretary show that “between 20 December and 29 February, there were
548 incidents of assassination, 140 acts of sabotage, 19 kidnappings, 23 thefts, nine
mine and 32 bomb explosions, while the Army lost 18 dead and 39 wounded, and the
Palestinians lost 83 dead and 124 wounded; these figures do not include casualties to
the rebels...” Things continued in this way until September 1939, the month in which
the Second World War broke out. In the meantime, the Palestinian Arabs suffered ir-
replaceable losses; the leadership quite apart from the spirit of compromise that was
afoot, was outside the country; the newly constituted local commands were falling one
after the other on the various fields of battle, British oppression had reached its climax,
and Zionist violence had been constantly escalating since the middle of 1937. There
36 Ibid, p. 258
237 Al-Alirm, 1 Masch 1939, Caio.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
‘ean be no doubt that the British concentrated presence and the persistence that ac~
‘companied it in the Palestinian theatre had exhausted the rebels, who, with their
leadership, no longer really knew who they were fighting against or why. At one
moment, the leadership would talk of traditional friendship and common interests
swith Britain, at another went so far as to agree to the granting of autonomy to the
Jews in the areas where they were settled. There can be no doubt that the vacillation
of the leadership, and its inability to determine a clear objective to fight for, played
its part in weakening the revolt.
But this must not lead us to neglect the objective factor: the British used two di-
visions of troops, several squadrons of planes, the police, and the Transjordan Fron-
tier Force, in addition to the 6,000 strong quasi-Zionist force; all this was thrown
in to gain control of the situation. (The Peel Commission admitted that security
expenditure in Palestine had risen from PL. 826,000 in 1935 to PL2,223,000 in 1936).
‘This campaign of terrorism and the efforts that were made to cut the rebels’ links
swith the villages, exhausted the revolt. The killing of Ab al-Rahim al-Hlajj Muham-
mad in March 1939 came as a erushing blow to the revolt, depriving it of one of the
bravest, wisest and most honest of the popular revolutionary leaders. After that the
local commands started to collapse and leave the field. Moreover, the Franco-British
rapprochement on the eve of the Second World War certainly made it easier to sur-
round the rebels; Arif Abd al-Razzag, wom out by hunger and pursuit, was handed
over to the French, along with some of his followers; Jordanian forces arrested Yusuf
Abu Daur and handed him over to the British, who executed him. Also, British and
Zionist terrorism in the villages had made people afraid to support the rebels and
supply them with ammunition and food, and doubtless the lack of even a minimum
of organisation made it impossible to surmount these obstacles,
At the time the Palestinian Communist Party attributed the failure of the revolt
to five principal causes:*
The absence of the revolutionary leadership;
The individualism and opportunism of the leaders of the revolt
The lack of a central command for the forces ofthe revolt,
The weakness of the Palestinian Communist Party.
The inauspicious world situation.
On the whole, thisis correct, but to these causes must be added the fact that the
‘Communist Party was close tothe leadership of Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, whom they
viewed as “belonging to the most extremely anti-imperialist wing of the national-
238 Yasin, Op. cit. p. 115
ist movement”, while it regarded his enemies as “feudalist” traitors.” And this in
spite of the fact that the Mufti’s group had absolutely no hesitation in liquidating
leftist elements who tried to penetrate labour circles.
The Communist left, in addition to being weak, was incapable of reaching the
‘countryside; it was concentrated in certain towns, It had failed to Arabise the Par-
ty, as the Seventh Comintern Congress had recommended, and was still a victim
ofits restricted view of Arab unity, and of relations,
‘cerned, with the rest of the Arab homeland, which had organisational repercus-
sions, Itis clear that the shortcoming that was mainly responsible for this defeat
was the great gap caused by the rapid movement of society in Palestine which, as
swe have seen, was undergoing an extremely violent transformation from an Arab
agricultural society into a Jewish industrial one. This was the real reason why the
Arab nationalist bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie did not play their historical
role in the Palestinian nationalist movement at the time, and allowed the feudal
religious leaders to lead this movement for a long period without rivals.
Dr. Abd al-Wahhab al-Kayyali adds other important causes. “Weariness with
fighting’, he says, “constant military pressure, and the hope that some aspects of
the White Paper would be applied, in addition to the lack of arms and ammuni-
tion, all played their part in making it difficult to continue the revolt. Moreover, in
‘view of the fact that the world was on the brink of the Second World War, France
suppressed the rebels’ headquarters in Damascus”.
‘To all this we can add two important interconnected factors which can be dis
‘cussed together, as they played a prominent role in frustrating the revolt. They are
the attitude of Transjordan as embodied in the attitude of the subservient regime
led by the Amir Abdullah, and the acti f the counter
revolution in the interior who were on the periphery of the terrorist activities of
the British and Zionist forces,
The Defence Party, led by Raghib Nashashibi, played the role of legal rep-
resentative of the subservient Transjordan regime in the Palestinian nationalist
movement. This link was probably a kind of camouflage because of the Party's in-
ability to reveal the links of subservience which connected it with British colonial
ism in the midst of a battle in which the principal enemy was that same colonial-
ism, Therefore, the link with the regime in Transjordan was a sort of camoutlage
accepted by both sides. The Defence Party consisted of a small group of urban
cffendis who chiefly represented the interests of the rising comprador bourgeoisie
and had begun to discover that its existence and growth depended on its being
s faras the struggle was con-
ty carried on by agents
39 Ibid, pts
440 Kayyali, Op. cit, p. 358.
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
linked not only with British colonialism but also with the Zionist movement which
controlled the industrial transformation of the Palestinian economy. Because of
this class situation it is possible to sum up their history by saying that they
“cooperated with the occupation authorities in the administrative field and
with Zionism in the commercial field, sold land to the Jews, acted as brokers,
disseminated misgivings, impeded nationalist activity, strengthened the link
between Abdullah and Hussain and the Zionists in 1923-1924 supported im-
migration and the Mandate in the twenties and partition in the thirties, advo-
cated the establishment of a Jewish national home in part of Palestine and the
surrender ofthe other part to Transjordan...etc."*
While the Amir Abdullah of Transjordan was suppressing the Transjordanian
mass movement which, on its own initiative, had decided at the popular confer-
cence held with Mithgal al-Faiz in the chair in the village of Umm al-Amd, to sup-
pport the Palestinian revolt with men and material, the British decided to consider
‘Transjordan as part of the field of action against the activities of the Palestinian
rebels. The role played by the subservient Transjordan regime was not restricted
to this; it closed the roads to Iraq to prevent any support arriving, and restricted
the movements of the Palestinian leaders who, after the construction of the barbed
‘wire entanglement along the northern frontier of Palestine, had been obliged to
increase their activities from Transjordan. The regime's activities culminated in
the arrest in 1939 of two Palestinian leaders. One of them, Yusuf Abu Durrar, was
handed over to the British whereupon he was executed
At the time, the forces of the Transjordan regime were engaged side by side
swith the British troops and the Zionist gangs in hunting down the rebels, There
‘an be no doubt that this role played by the Transjordan regime encouraged ele-
ments of the internal counter-revolution to step up their activities. A number of the
Defence Party leaders took part in the establishment of what they called “peace
detachments”, small mercenary forces which were formed in cooperation with the
English, and helped to hunt down the rebels, took part in engagements with them
{and evicted them from some of the positions they controlled. Fakhri al-Nashashibi
‘was a leader of one of these divisions, in arming them and directing their activi-
ties..this led to his being killed a few months after the end of the revolt.® Before
that, the savage British campaign to disarm the whole of Palestine had depended
‘on “encouraging elements hostile to the Mufti to supply them (the British) with in-
41 Sayegh, Anis, The Hashemite & the Palestine Question. Beirut, 1966. p. 150
42 Ibi, Soe also al-Talia'a, Not April7, 1971. Cairo, p. 98.
formation and to identify rebels”® The attitudes of Iraq and Saudi Arabia at that time
‘were not much better than that of the Jordanian regime. At the London Conference
they had expressed their readiness “to use their influence with the Palestinian leaders
to put an end to the revolt” * But all this could not make the leaders of the counter-
revolution (the agents ofthe British) a force that had any weight with the masses. On
the contrary, it strengthened the Mufti and his leadership, whereas the encouragement
of counter-revolutionary elements was intended, among other things, to curb the Mufti
and confine him within a field that could eventually be controlled, Throughout, the
British acted in accordance with their conviction that al-Nashashibi could never be a
substitute for the Mufti. The small marginal degree of manoeuvrability of the Mutti’s
‘command, which was the result of the minor disputes their in progress between French
colonialism in Syria and Lebanon and British colonialism, was not capable of leading
toa radical change in the balance of power, and it soon contracted to the point where it
hardly existed at all on the eve of the War.
These facts as a whole show that the Palestinian revolt was attacked and received
blows in its three most vital points:
The subjective point ~ meaning the incapacity, vacillation, weakness, subjectivity
and anarchy of its various leaders.
‘The Arab point meaning the collusion of the Arab regimes to frustrate it ata time
when the weak popular Arab nationalist movement was only interacting with the
Palestinian revolt in a selective, subjective and marginal way.
The international point ~ meaning the immense disequilibrium in the objective
balance of power which resulted from the alliance of all the members of the co-
lonialist camp with each other and also with the Zionist movement, which was
henceforward to have at its disposal a considerable striking force on the eve of the
Second World War.
The best estimate of Arab human losses in the 1936-39 revolt is that which states
that losses in the four years totalled 19,792 killed and wounded. This includes the ca-
sualties sustained by the Palestinian Arabs at the hands of the Zionist gangs in the
same period. This estimate is based on the first conservative admissions contained in
official British reports, checked against other documents.* These calculations establish
that 1,200 Arabs were killed in 1936, 120 in 1937, 1,200 in 1938, and 1,200 in 1939, In
addition, 112 Arabs were executed and 1,200 killed in various terrorist operations. This
48 Kayyali, Op. cit, p. 388.
44 A letter from Baghdad to the British Forvign Minister. 31 Oct, 1930. Quoted in Kaya, Ibe,
p49
45 Walid Khalidi (ed.) From Haven to Conquest. IPS, Beirut, 1971. pp. 836-849,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
makes the total of Arabs killed in the 1936-39 revolt 5,032, while 14,760 were wounded
in the same period. Detainees numbered about 816 in 1937, 2.463 in 1938, and approxi-
mately 5,679 in 1939
The real significance of these figures can be shown by comparisons. In relation to
‘numbers of inhabitants, Palestinian losses in 1936-39 are equivalent to losses by Britain
‘f 200,000 killed, 600,000 wounded and 1,224,000 arrested. In the case of America, the
losses would be one million killed, three million wounded and 6,120,000 arrested!
But the real and most serious losses lay in the rapid growth of both the military
and economic sectors which laid the foundations of the Zionist setter entity in Pales-
tine, It s no exaggeration to say that this economie and military presence of the Zion-
ists, whose links with Imperialism grew stronger, established its principal foundations
in this period (between 1936 and 1939) and one Israeli historian goes so far as to say
that “the conditions for the Zionist victory had in 1948 been created in the period of
the Arab revolt.”
The general policy followed by the Zionists during this period can be seen in their
profound determination to avoid any conflict between themselves and the manda-
tory authorities, even at a time when the latter, hard-pressed by the Arab rebels, were
obliged to refuse some of the vigorous demands of the Zionist movement.
The Zionists clearly knew that if they gave the British ~ who at the time had the
strongest and most aggressive colonial army in the world ~ the chance to crush the
Arab revolt in Palestine, this army would be doing a greater service to their schemes
than they ever could have dreamed of. Thus the main Zionist plans ran along two par-
allel lines: the closest possible alliance with Britain — to the extent that the 200 Zionist
‘Congress held in the summer of 1937, expressed its readiness to accept partition in its
determination to conciliate Britain and avoid any clash with it. Such a policy was pur-
sued 50 a5 to allow the colonialist empire to crush the Arab revolt that had broken out
again that summer. The other line of their policy consisted of the continuous internal
mobilisation of Zionist settler society, under the slogan adopted by Ben Gurion at the
time of “no alternative", which emphasised the necessity of laying the foundations of
a military society and of its military and economic instruments.
The question of the greatest possible conciliation with the British, in spite of the
fact that they had, for example, taken steps to reduce Jewish immigration, was a piv-
otal point in the history of Zionist policy during that period, and in spite of the fact
that there were in the movement certain elements that rejected what was called “self-
control”, the voice of this minority had no effect. The law that led the policies of the
Zionists during that period was that summarised by Weizman who said: “There is a
‘complete similarity of interests between the Zionists and the British in Palestine”.
46 Bouyissie, Op. cit, p. 21
During this period, cooperation and interaction between the two lines of policy ~
(1) alliance with the British mandate to the greatest possible extent, and (2) the mobili-
sation of the Jewish settler society —had extremely important consequences,
The Jewish bourgeoisie took advantage of the spread of the Arab revolt to imple-
ment many of the projects that they would not have been able to implement under
different circumstances. Suddenly freed from the competition of cheap Palestinian
Arab agricultural produce, this bourgeoisie proceeded to take action to promote its
economic existence. Naturally, it was not possible to do this without the blessing of
the British.
During the revolt, the Zionists and the mandatory authorities succeeded in build
ing a network of roads between the principal Zionist colonies and the towns which
‘were later to constitute a basic part of the infrastructure of the Zionist economy. Then
the main road from Haifa to Tel-Aviv was paved, and the Haifa harbour was expanded
and deepened, and a harbour was constructed at Tel-Aviv which was later to kill the
port of Jaffa. In addition, the Zionists monopolised contracts for supplying the British
troops who had started to flood into Palestine.
50 Zionist colonies were established between 1936 and 1939, and in between 1936
and 1938, Jews invested PL. 1,268,000 in building works in five Jewish towns, against
only PL 120,000 invested by Arabs in 16 Arab villages in the same period. Jews also
‘engaged extensively in the British security projects undertaken to absorb and employ
large numbers of unemployed Jewish workers, who were constantly increasing in
‘numbers on the frontiers of Palestine, for which “the British employed Jewish labour
at a cost of PL 100,000 to build”* as well as dozens of other projects. Figures published
later give us a more accurate idea: the value of exports of locally manufactured goods
rose from PL 478,807 in 1935 to nearly double that figure (PL. 896,875) in 1937, in spite
of the revolt.” This can only be explained by the greatly increased activity ofthe Jewish
economy. The scope of this mobilisation expanded from the economic field, in alliance
with the Mandate, to the military field, in collusion with it.
The British realised that their Zionist ally was qualified to play a role that no one
else could play so well. In fact, Ben-Gurion is only telling part of the truth when he
admits that the number of Jewish recruits in the quasi-police force armed with rifles
rose to 2,863 in September 1936, for this was only a part of the Jewish force ~ there
‘were 12,000 men in the Haganah in 1937, in addition to a further 3,000 in Jabotinski’s
47 Let us take as an example, wages paid by the growers of citrus fruits ~ the most important
agricultural produce in Palestine, In 1936, the General Agricultural Council fixed the wages of
Jewish workers at PLI2 per dunum per year, and of Arab workers at PLS.
448 Barbour. Op. cit p. 195
49 Hiimadeh, Op. cit, p.323,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
National Military Organisation.® The alliance of these, as the rel representatives of the
Zionist movement, with British colonialism, led to the idea of a “Quasi-Police Force”
in the spring of 1936, The idea served as a cover for the armed Zionist presence which
enjoyed the blessing and encouragement ofthe British,
This force served as a transition period for some months, during which the Haga-
nah prepared to move, at the beginning of 1937, to anew stage. Not only were the Brit-
ish aware ofthis, they actually helped it to take shape. This stage consisted of forays by
patrols and limited operations against the Palestinian Arabs, the main object of which
‘was to distract and confuse them. It would have been quite impossible to advance to
this stage and at the same time to maintain the “truce” (the alliance) with the Manda-
tory authorities had this not been the result of a joint plan. Ben Gurion affirms that
the additional Zionist police farce made an ideal “framework” for the training of the
Haganah.*
In the summer of 1937 this force was given the name “Defence of the Jewish Colo-
nies’, which was later changed to “Colony Police”. It was organised under the super-
vision of the British Mandate throughout the length and breadth of the country, and
the British undertook to train its members. In 1937, it was strengthened with 3,000
new members, all of whom played a direct role in repressive operations against the
Palestinian rebels, especially in the North. In June 1938, the British decided that offen-
sive operations must be undertaken against the rebels, Therefore, they held instruction
courses on this subject which provided training to large numbers of Haganah cadres,
who later became cadres of the Israeli army: At the beginning of 1939, the British
army organised ten groups of Colony Police into well armed groups, which were given
Hebrew names. Members of this force were allowed to abandon the Qalbaq, the offi
ial headgear, for the Australian bush hat, to make them even more distinctive. These
‘groups totalled 14,411 men, each being commanded by a British officer, who was as-
sisted by a second in command appointed by the Jewish Agency. By the spring of 1939,
the Zionists also had 62 mechanised units of eight to ten men each,
In the spring of 1938, the British command decided to entrust to these Zionist ele-
ments the defence of railways between Haifa and Ludd that were blown up frequently
by Palestinian commandos, and sent 434 members to execute this miss
only six months later, the Jewish Agency had succeeded in raising their numbers to
mn. However,
£800. This development was not only of service in the building up of Zionist military
strength, but also helped to absorb and employ large numbers of unemployed Jewish
workers, who were constantly increasing in numbers in the towns. In this way, the
50 Bouyissir, Op. cit, p. 323.
51 Ben Gurion. Op. cit, p.372
52 Ibid, p. 373.
Jewish proletariat was directed to work in repressive organisations, not only in British
security projects directed against the revolt, but also in the Zionist military force.
The foundations of the Zionist military apparatus were laid under British supervi-
sion. The Zionist force, which had been entrusted with the defence of the Haifa-Lydda
railway, was later given the defence of the oil pipeline in the Bashan plain. This pipe-
line, which had been recently constructed (1934) to bring oil from Kirkuk to Haifa,
had been blown up several times by the Palestinian rebels. This was of great symboli
value: the Arab rebels, who were aware of the value of the oil to the British exploiters,
blew up the pipeline forthe first time near Irbid on 15 July 1936 It was later blown up
several times near the villages of Kaukab, Hawa, Mihna Israil, Iksal, and between at-
Ufula and Bashan, and at Tell Adas, Bira, Ard al-Marj Tamra, Kafr Misr, Jisr al-Majami,
Jinjar, Bashan and Ain Daur. The British were unable to defend this vital pipeline, and
admitted as much, that the “pipe” as the Palestinian Arab peasants called it, was en-
shrined in the folklore which glorified acts of popular heroism. At any rate, the British
secured minimum protection for the pipeline in two ways: inside Palestine it was de-
fended by Zionist groups, while in Jordanian territory the task of guarding it was given
to “Shaikh Turki ibn Zain, chief of the Zain subdivision of the Bani Sakhr tribe, whom
the company authorised to patrol the desert by any means necessary” *
Ben Gurion almost reveals this fact directly when talking about British efforts to
establish a Zionist Air Force, whose task was to be to safeguard these interests. The
British, nan early stage, were able to see the strategy called by the Americans 30 years
later “Vietnamisation”. This was extremely important, because it was this incident that
strengthened Britain’s conviction that the formation of a Zionist striking force would
solve many problems connected with the defence of Imperialist interests accompanied
by efforts to form a Zionist armed force to protect these interes
In this field, the British officer Charles Orde Wingate played a prominent role in
translating the British-Zionist alliance into practical action. Zionist historians try to
sive the impression that Wingate’s efforts were the consequence of personal tempera-
ment and “idealistic” devotion, But itis clear that this intelligent officer, who was sent
to Haifa by his chiefs in the autumn of 1937, had been entrusted with a specific task —
the formation of the nuclei of striking forces for the Zionist armed force which had
been in existence for at least six months, but which needed crystallisation and prepa-
ration. This British officer, whom “Israeli” soldiers regard as the real founder of the
“Israeli” army, made the pipe-line problems his special task, however, this task led on
to a series of operations involving terrorism and killing, and it was Wingate who took
upon himself the task of teaching his pupils at Ain Daur ~ among whom was Moshe
Dayan ~ to become an expert in such operations
53 Sift, op.cit. pp. 131132,
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine » Ghassan Kanafani
There can be no doubt that, in addition to his qualifications as an experienced
imperialist officer, Wingate was equipped with an unlimited racialist hatred for the
‘Arabs, It is clear from the biographies written by those who knew him that he enjoyed
killing or torturing Arab peasants, or humiliating them in any way:*
Through imperialists like Wingate, and through reactionary leaders ofthe type of
the Amir Abdullah, the British were making it possible for the Zionist movement to
‘become at both military and economic levels, a beach-head to guard their interests, All
this happened from the conviction ofall concerned that the leadership of the Palestin-
ian nationalist movement was not sufficiently revolutionary to enable it to stand up to
these closely united enemies.
In the midst of allthis, the Palestinian nationalist movement, which had been para-
lysed by the subjective factors we have mentioned and the violent attacks launched
both by the British and the Zionists, was in a difficult situation on the eve of the Second
‘World War. The claims of some historians that the Arabs “stopped” their revolt to allow
the British to wage its world war against Nazism, are naive, and refuted not only by
the facts, but also by the fact that Hajj Amin al-Hussaini took refuge in Nazi Germany
throughout the war,
This picture as a whole represents the political and social map that prevailed
through the years 1936-1999. Its this situation, with the dialectical relations involved
in it that explains the stagnation of the Palestinian nationalist situation throughout
the war. When the war ended, the British found that the Palestinian nationalist move-
ment had been pretty well tamed: its head was broken and scattered, its base had been
weakened and its social fabric worn out and disintegrated as a result of the violent
change that was taking place in society and of the failure of its leaderships and parties
to organise and mobilise it and also as a result of the weakness and confusion of the
left and the instability ofthe nationalist movement in the neighbouring Arab countries,
Thus, the Zionist movement entered the 1940s to find the field practically clear for
it, with the international climate extremely favourable following the psychological and
political atmosphere caused by Hitler’s massacres of the Jews, while the Arab regimes
in the neighbouring Arab countries were bourgeois regimes in the historical predica-
‘ment without any real power. Nor was there in Jewish society in Palestine at that time
any leftist movement to exert pressure in the opposite direction ~ practically the whole
of this society was devoted to settlement through invasion. The Palestinian left had,
with the Second World War, begun to lose the initiative with which it had started in the
mid-1930s, as a result of the change in Comintern policy, accompanied by the failure
to Arabise the Party. What is more, the communist left was becoming more and more
subject to repression by the defeated Arab leadership (for example, the Mufti's men
54 Khalidi, Op. cit, p. 375-378
assassinated the trade unionist leader Sami Taha in Haifa on 12 September 1947 and
before that, the assassination in Jaffa of the unionist Michel Mitr, who had played an
important role in mobilising Arab workers before the outbreak of the troubles in 1936),
All this enabled the Zionist movement in the mid-1940s to step up its previously
only partial conflict with British colonialism in Palestine, after long years of alliance,
‘Thus, in 1947 circumstances were favourable for it to pluck the fruits of the defeat of
the 1936 revolt which the outbreak of the war had prevented it from doing sooner. The
period taken to complete the second chapter of the Palestinian defeat - from the end of
1947 to the middle of 1948 — was amazingly short, Because it was only the conclusion of
‘long and bloody chapter which had lasted from April 1936 to September 1938.
LETTER FROM GAZA BY
GHASSAN KANAFANI
Dear Mustafa,
Ihave now received your letter, in which you tell me that you've done ev-
erything necessary to enable me to stay with you in Sacramento. I've also
received news that | have been accepted in the department of Civil Engi-
neering in the University of California. | must thank you for everything, my
friend. But it'll strike you as rather odd when | proclaim this news to you
= and make no doubt about it, | feel no hesitation at all, in fact | am pretty
well positive that | have never seen things so clearly as | do now. No, my
friend, | have changed my mind. | wor't follow you to “the land where there
is greenery, water and lovely faces” as you wrote. No, I'll stay here, and |
won't ever leave.
| am really upset that our lives won't continue to follow the same course,
Mustafa. For | can almost hear you reminding me of our vow to go on to~
‘gether, and of the way we used to shout: “We'll get rich!” But there's nothing
can do, my friend, Yes, | still remember the day when | stood in the hall of
Cairo airport, pressing your hand and staring at the frenzied motor. At that
moment everything was rotating in time with the ear-splitting motor, and.
you stood in front of me, your round face silent.
Your face hadn't changed from the way it used to be when you were growing
up in the Shajiya quarter of Gaza, apart from those slight wrinkles. We grew
up together, understanding each other completely and we promised to go on
together till the end. But.
“There's a quarter of an hour left before the plane takes off. Don't look into
space like that. Listen! You'll go to Kuwait next year, and you'll save enough
from your salary to uproot you from Gaza and transplant you to California.
We started off together and we must carry on..
‘At that moment | was watching your rapidly moving lips. That was always
your manner of speaking, without commas or full stops. But in an obscure
way | felt that you were not completely happy with your flight. You couldn't
give three good reasons for it. | too suffered from this wrench, but the clear-
est thought was: why don’t we abandon this Gaza and flee? Why don’t we?
Your situation had begun to improve, however. The Ministry of Education in
Kuwait had given you a contract though it hadn't given me one. In the trough
of misery where | existed you sent me small sums of money. You wanted me
to consider them as loans because you feared that | would feel slighted. You
knew my family circumstances in and out; you knew that my meagre salary
in the UNRWA schools was inadequate to support my mother, my brother's
widow and her four children.
“Listen carefully. Write to me every day...every hour..every minute! The
plane's just leaving. Farewell! Or rather, till we meet again!”
Your cold lips brushed my cheek, you turned your face away from me to-
wards the plane, and when you looked at me again | could see your tears.
Later, the Ministry of Education in Kuwait gave me a contract, There's no
need to repeat to you how my life there went in detail. | always wrote to you
about everything. My life there had a gluey, vacuous quality as though | were
a small oyster, lost in oppressive loneliness, slowly struggling with a future
as dark as the beginning of the night, caught in a rotten routine, a spewed-
out combat with time. Everything was hot and sticky. There was a slipperi-
ness to my whole life, it was all a hankering for the end of the month.
In the middle of the year, that year, the Jews bombarded the central district,
of Sabha and attacked Gaza, our Gaza, with bombs and flame-throwers. That
event might have made some change in my routine, but there was noth-
ing for me to take much notice of; | was going to leave this Gaza behind me
and go to California where | would live for myself, my own self which had
suffered so long. | hated Gaza and its inhabitants. Everything in the ampu-
tated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in grey by a sick man.
Yes, | would send my mother and my brother's widow and her children a
meagre sum to help them to live, but | would liberate myself from this last
tie too, there in green California, far from the reek of defeat which for seven
years had filled my nostrils. The sympathy which bound me to my brother's
children, their mother and mine would never be enough to justify my tragedy
in taking this perpendicular dive. It mustn't drag me any further down than it
already had. | must flee!
You know these feelings, Mustafa, because you've really experienced them.
What is this ill-defined tie we had with Gaza which blunted our enthusiasm.
for flight? Why didn’t we analyse the matter in such away as to
e it a clear
meaning? Why didn't we leave this defeat with its wounds behind us and
move on to a brighter future which would give us deeper consolation? Why?
We didn't exactly know.
‘When I went on holiday in June and assembled all my possessions, long-
ing for the sweet departure, the start towards those little things which give
life a nice, bright meaning, | found Gaza just as | had known it, closed like
the introverted lining of a rusted snail-shell thrown up by the waves on the
sticky, sandy shore by the slaughter-house. This Gaza was more cramped
than the mind of a sleeper in the throes of a fearful nightmare, with its nar-
row streets which had their bulging balconies...this Gaza! 8ut what are the
obscure causes that draw a man to his family, his house, his memories, as
a spring draws a small flock of mountain goats? I don’t know. All| know is,
that | went to my mother in our house that morning. When | arrived, my late
brother's wife met me there and asked me, weeping, if | would do as her
wounded daughter, Nadia, in Gaza hospital wished and visit her that evening.
Do you know Nadia, my brother’s beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter?
‘That evening | bought a pound of apples and set out for the hospital to visit
Nadia. | knew that there was something about it that my mother and my
sister-in-law were hiding from me, something which their tongues could not
utter, something strange which | could not put my finger on. | loved Nadia
from habit, the same habit that made me love all that generation which had
been so brought up on defeat and displacement that it had come to think
that a happy life was a kind of social deviation.
What happened at that moment? | don't know. | entered the white room
very calm. Ill children have something of saintliness, and how much more
50 if the child is ill as result of cruel, painful wounds. Nadia was lying on her
bed, her back propped up on a big pillow over which her hair was spread
like a thick pelt. There was profound silence in her wide eyes and a tear
always shining in the depths of her black pupils. Her face was calm and still
but eloquent as the face of a tortured prophet might be. Nadia was still a
child, but she seemed more than a child, much more, and older than a child,
much older.
“Nadial"
've no idea whether | was the one who said it, or whether it was someone
else behind me. But she raised her eyes to me and | felt them dissolve me
like a piece of sugar that had fallen into a hot cup of tea.
Together with her slight smile | heard her voice. “Uncle! Have you just come
from Kuwait?”
Her voice broke in her throat, and she raised herself with the help of her
hands and stretched out her neck towards me. | patted her back and sat
down near her.
“Nadia! I've brought you presents from Kuwait, lots of presents. I'll wait till,
you can leave your bed, completely well and healed, and you'll come to my
house and I'l give them to you. I've bought you the red trousers you wrote
and asked me for. Yes, I've bought them.”
It was a lle, born of the tense situation, but as | uttered it | felt that | was
speaking the truth for the first time. Nadia trembled as though she had an
electric shock and lowered her head in a terrible silence. | felt her tears
wetting the back of my hand.
“Say something, Nadia! Don’t you want the red trousers?" She lifted her gaze
‘to me and made as if to speak, but then she stopped, gritted her teeth and |
heard her voice again, coming from faraway.
“uncle!”
She stretched out her hand, lifted the white coverlet with her fingers and
pointed to her leg, amputated from the top of the thigh.
My friend...Never shall | forget Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the
thigh. No! Nor shall | forget the grief which had moulded her face and
merged into its traits forever. | went out of the hospital in Gaza that day, my
hand clutched in silent derision on the two pounds | had brought with me
‘to give Nadia. The blazing sun filled the streets with the colour of blood,
And Gaza was brand new, Mustafa! You and | never saw it like this. The stone
piled up at the beginning of the Shajiya quarter where we lived had a mean-
ing, and they seemed to have been put there for no other reason but to
explain it. This Gaza in which we had lived and with whose good people we
had spent seven years of defeat was something new. It seemed to me just
a beginning. | don't know why | thought it was just a beginning. | imagined
that the main street that | walked along on the way back home was only
the beginning of a long, long road leading to Safad. Everything in this Gaza
throbbed with sadness which was not confined to weeping. It was a chal-
lenge: more than that it was something like reclamation of the amputated
leg!
I went out into the streets of Gaza, streets filled with blinding sunlight. They
told me that Nadia had lost her leg when she threw herself on top of her
little brothers and sisters to protect them from the bombs and flames that
had fastened their claws into the house. Nadia could have saved herself, she
could have run away, rescued her leg. But she didn't.
why?
No, my friend, | won't come to Sacramento, and I've no regrets. No, and nor
will | finish what we began together in childhood. This obscure feeling that
you had as you left Gaza, this small feeling must grow into a giant deep with-
in you. It must expand, you must seek it in order to find yourself, here among
the ugly debris of defeat.
| won't come to you. But you, return to us! Come back, to learn from Nadia’s,
leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is
worth.
Come back, my friend! We are all waiting for you,
TRIBUTE TO
GHASSAN KANAFANI
CGuiassaN KaNAFANL, PALESTINIAN journalist, author and artist, member of PFLP’s Polit-
bureau and spokesman for PFLP, was assassinated in Beirut on July 8, 1972, by Israeli
agents. His ability to illustrate, beyond any. shadow of doubt, the deprivation and suf-
ferings of his people, as well as to transform an ideology and political line into popular
literature mace him a grave threat to the Zionist entity.
The following, are excerpts from a tribute to Ghassan by one of his colleagues, a
Palestinian author, S. Marwan, published in Al Hadaf on July 22, 1972. Al Hadaf (the
‘Target) is the weekly PFLP organ, of which Ghassan Kanafani was the founding editor.
THE STRUGGLE OF THE OPPRESSED OF THE WORLD.
“Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the
heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wher-
ever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution”,
Imperialism is not a myth or a word repeated by the news media, a motionless
picture that doesn't affect the human reality. In Ghassan Kanafani’s conception, it is a
mobile body, an octopus which colonises and exploits, spreading itself over the world
through western monopolistic enterprises. Imperialism is directing various forms of
aggression against the toiling masses of the world, and particularly in the underdevel-
oped countries
Based on the slogan: “All the Facts to the Masses” raised in AI Hadaf, Ghassan
Kanafani put his clear intellect in the service of the masses and their objective class
interests, leading him to state: “The desire for change which is sweeping through the
Arab masses, must be motivated by ideological and political larity, which is absolute.
‘Thus, Al Hadaf devotes itself to the service of that revolutionary alternative, as the in-
terests of the oppressed classes are the same as the goals of the revolution. It presents
itself as the ally of all those carrying on armed and political-ideological struggle to
achieve a liberated progressive nation’,
The natural base for 1s intellectual and artistic work was adopting and
defending the interests of the toiling masses, not only of the Palestinians, but also the
Arabs and the international oppressed classes. Because ofthis Fundamental base for all
‘of his work, Ghassan Kanafani, as a Marxist, adopted the path of armed struggle asthe
only way to defend the oppressed.
He was himself part of them; he lived and experienced the poverty caused by capi
talism and imperialism and he remained within the ranks of the oppressed masses, in
spite of the capitalists’ temptations and their attempts to encircle his journalistic life.
He remained a humble man who worked day and night to raise and develop the qual-
ity of human life out of the adversity imposed by history,
Addressing himself to a group of students, Ghassan said: “The goal of education
is to correct the march of history. For this reason we need to study history and to ap-
prehend its dialectics in order to build a new historical era, in which the oppressed
will live, after their liberation by revolutionary violence, from the contradiction that
captivated them’. Ghassan Kanafani had not only achieved the knowledge of histori-
cal materialism, but he applied it in his work. The concept that he believed in and
lived for was shown clearly in what he said and wrote. The primary contradiction, is
the one with imperialism. Zionism and racism. Its an international contradiction, and
the only solution is to destroy these threats by a united and steadfast armed struggle,
hhe encouraged and raised the spirit of internationalism among all the people he ad-
dressed or knew.
This belief made him reject all compromises, all bourgeois or divisive solutions,
‘which do not encompass or apply the thesis and development of the revolution and
its Iong path towards liberation, striking the interests of imperialism and consolidating,
swith the masses. He said in a comment about the martyred Patrick Arguello: “The mar-
tyr Patrick Arguello isa symbol for ajust cause and the struggle to achieve it,a struggle
without limits, He is a symbol for the oppressed and deprived masses, represented by
(Oum Saad and many others coming from the camps and from all parts of Lebanon,
‘who marched in his funeral procession”
In discussions about the imperialist reactionary schemes against the revolutionary
forces, he stated
“The results of the imperialist assault will be directed against the oppressed masses
to prevent them from mobilising and fighting”. This position was based on the analysis
of the stand of the Arab regimes and the regimes of the underdeveloped countries in
‘general, which retreat under the strokes of imperialism.
In the context of international revolution, he said: “Vietnamese revolutionaries
have been struggling against imperialism for tens of years. They will transfer their
revolution to other places; first, because their revolution is continuous, second, because
they are internationaliss...” “The Palestinian cause is nota cause for Palestinians only,
but cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and op-
pressed masses in our era’
As the struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism was the main
issue for Ghassan Kanafani, the conspirators behind his assassination feared his clear
and logical confrontation stand, which was revealed in his works and through the
‘western news media. This drove imperialism and its reactionary allies to stop the pen
‘which refused to surrender to their temptations or warnings. Ghassan Kanafani trans-
formed the Palestinian and Arab cause to a cause through which we adopt the struggle
of all the exploited and oppressed in the world.
Ghassan’s commitment will remain a monument for the struggling masses. He
said in a meeting with the staff of Al Hadaf. “Everything in this world can be robbed
and stolen, except one thing; this one thing is the love that emanates from a human be-
ing towards a solid commitment to a conviction or cause”
GHASSAN KANAFANI
(1936-1972)
Ghassan was a Palestinian journalist, novelist, and short
story writer, whose writings were deeply rooted in Arab
Palestinian culture, inspired a whole generation during
and after his lifetime, both in word and deed. He was
born in Acre, Palestine on 9 April 1936 and lived in Jaffa
until May 1948, when he was forced to leave with family
first to Lebanon and later to Syria. He lived and worked
in Damascus, then Kuwait and later in Beirut. In July
1972, he and his young niece Lamis were killed by Is-
raeli agents in a car bomb in Beirut. By the time of his
untimely death, Ghassan had published 18 books and
written hundreds of articles on culture, politics, and the
Palestinian people's struggle. Following his assassina~
tion, all his books were re-published in several editions
in Arabic and his novels, short stories, plays and essays
were collected and published in four volumes. Many
of Ghassan’s literary works have been translated into
various languages and published worldwide. Although
Ghassan’s novels, short stories and most of his other
literary work were an expression of the Palestinian peo-
ple and their cause, yet his great literary talents gave
his works a universal appeal.