The film describes Palestine as a place with a population of 600,000 with a majority of Sunni Muslims. Yet, in the video, people of different religions live and pray together in peace, whether it be a Jew at the Western Wall or an Armenian pope walking in the holy streets. While Jews made up half the population of Jerusalem at the time, they made up five percent of the population of Palestine as a whole. Christians accounted for 10% and Muslims for 85%.
This evidence shows a peaceful Palestine – where Palestinian Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together – before the year 1900. So how is it that many have come to understand the region as one with constant discord? What happened to generate decades of conflict that continues to this day? People of multiple faiths lived and worshipped together in peace 100 years ago. Does it make sense for 700,000 Muslims, Palestinians, and Christian Palestinians to have simply left their homes in the later creation of Israel?
Then came Grand Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini
Appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921, Haj Amin al-Husseini was the most prominent Arab figure in Palestine during the Mandatory period.
Al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1897, the son of the Mufti of that city and prominent early opponent of Zionism, Tahir al-Husayni. The al-Husseini clan consisted of wealthy landowners in southern Palestine, centered around the district of Jerusalem. Thirteen members of the clan had been Mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husseini received a commission in the Ottoman Army as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the city of Izmir. In November 1916, he obtained a three-month disability leave from the army and returned to Jerusalem. He was recovering from an illness there when the city was captured by the British a year later.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.” According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Waters Taylor (financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine 1919-23) met with Haj Amin a few days before Easter, in 1920, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world...that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.
In 1919, al-Husseini attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year al-Husseini founded the pro-British Jerusalem branch of the Syrian-based ‘Arab Club’ (Al-Nadi al-arabi), which then vied with the Nashashibi-sponsored ‘Literary Club’ (al-Muntada al-Adabi) for influence over public opinion, and he soon became its president.
During the annual Nabi Musa procession in Jerusalem in April 1920, violent rioting broke out in protest at the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, allowing the Arab mob to attack Jews and loot their shops.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, organizer of Jewish paramilitary defenses, received a 15-year sentence. Al-Husseini, then a teacher at the Rashidiya school, had fled to Transjordan and was charged with inciting the Arab crowds with an inflammatory speech and sentenced in absentia to 10-years imprisonment by a military court.
Herbert Samuel, a British Jew, was the first high commissioner of Palestine. He pardoned al-Husseini and was pressured by British Arabists such as Ernest Richmond, assistant secretary of the civil secretary’s office, to appoint him as Mufti. Samuel met with Haj Amin on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” It was with this understanding, and some trepidation that the high commissioner granted him the position of Mufti.
Following these riots, Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools, and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. As the “Palestinian” spokesman, Haj Amin wrote to Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921, demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Churchill issued the White Paper of 1922, which tried to allay Arab fears about the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper acknowledged the need for Jewish immigration to enable the Jewish community to grow but placed the familiar limit of the country’s absorptive capacity on immigration. Although not pleased with Churchill’s diplomatic Paper, the Zionists accepted it; the Arabs, however, rejected it.
As the spokesman for Palestinian Arabs, Haj Amin did not ask that Britain grant them independence. On the contrary, in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1921, he demanded that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Al-Husseini focused his efforts on Pan-Arabism and the ideology of a Greater Syria in particular, with Palestine understood as a southern province of an Arab state, whose capital was to be established in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory of the entire Levant, now occupied by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
Three weeks later, riots in Jaffa and elsewhere left 43 Jews dead.
The struggle for Greater Syria collapsed after France defeated the Arab forces in July 1920. The frustration of pan-Arab aspirations lent an Islamic color to the struggle for independence and increasing resort to the idea of restoring the land to Dar al-Islam and blocking Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Despite the disturbances in 1920-1921, the Yishuv continued to develop in relative peace and security. Another wave of riots, however, broke out in 1924 after another wave of pogroms sent 67,000 Polish Jewish refugees to Palestine. After a week of skirmishes in Jerusalem between the Haganah and Arab mobs, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lay dead. The Yishuv’s main concern at that time was its financial difficulties; the economic crisis of 1926-1928 led many to believe that the Zionist enterprise would fail due to a lack of funds. Zionist leaders attempted to rectify the situation by expanding the Jewish Agency to incorporate non-Zionists who were willing to contribute to the practical settlement of Palestine.
The prospects for renewed financial support for the Yishuv upset Arab leaders who feared economic domination by the Zionists. Led by Haj Amin al-Husseini once again, rumors of a Jewish plot to seize control of Muslim holy places began to spread in August 1929. Violence erupted soon after, causing extensive damage. Rioting and looting were rampant throughout Palestine. In Jerusalem, Muslims provoked violence and tensions by building and praying on or near the holiest place in the world for Jews, the Western Wall. By late August, the Arabs, in a well-organized formation, attacked Jewish settlements near Jerusalem. The disturbances spread to Hebron and Safed, including many settlements in between, and on the Kfar Dorom kibbutz in the Gaza Strip.
On August 23, 1929, Arabs murdered 67 Jews in a massacre in Hebron. Three days later, the British evacuated the 484 survivors, including 153 children, to Jerusalem.
After six days of rioting, the British finally brought in troops to quell the disturbance. Even though Jews had been living in Gaza and Hebron for centuries, following these riots, the British forced Jews to leave their homes and prohibited Jews from living in the Gaza strip and Hebron to appease Arabs and quell violence. By the end of the rioting, the death toll was 133 Jews, including eight Americans, and 110 Arabs (most killed by British security forces).
More than 200 Arabs and 15 Jews were tried and sentenced for their role in the unrest in 1929. Out of 27 capital cases involving Arabs, only three of the death sentences were carried out, the others were granted “mercy” and their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir were put to death on June 17, 1930, because they were convicted of particularly brutal murders in Safad and Hebron.
The British approved payment of nearly 100,000 pounds to Jews for “loss of life and permanent incapacity, and proportionately up to the limits of the sum available in respect of damage to property” by Arabs in the 1929 riots. A “special Jewish Fund for relief and reconstruction purposes to repair the losses suffered by the disturbances of 1929” allocated another 433,000 pounds.
Like the riots earlier in the decade, afterward the British appointed Sir William Shaw to head an inquiry into the causes of the riots. The Shaw Commission found that the violence occurred due to “racial animosity on the part of the Arabs, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future.” The report claimed that the Arabs feared economic domination by a group who seemed to have, from their perspective, unlimited funding from abroad. The Commission reported that the conflict stemmed from different interpretations of British promises to both Arabs and Jews. The Commission acknowledged the ambiguity of former British statements and recommended that the government clearly define its intentions for Palestine. It also recommended that the issue of further Jewish immigration be more carefully considered to avoid “a repetition of the excessive immigration of 1925 and 1926.” The issue of land tenure would only be eligible for review if new methods of cultivation stimulated considerable growth ;of the agricultural sector. The Shaw Commission frustrated Zionists, but the two subsequent reports issued on the future of Palestine were more disturbing.
The Hope Simpson report of 1930 painted an unrealistic picture of the economic capacity of the country. It cast doubt on the prospect of industrialization and incorrectly asserted that no more than 20,000 families could be accommodated by the land. The Hope Simpson report was overshadowed, however, by the simultaneous release of the Passfield White Paper, which reflected colonial Secretary Passfield’s deep-seated animus toward Zionism. This report asserted that Britain’s obligations to the Arabs were very weighty and should not be overlooked to satisfy Jewish interests. Many argued that the Passfield Paper overturned the Balfour Declaration, essentially saying that Britain should not plan to establish a Jewish state. The Passfield Paper greatly upset Jews, and interestingly, also the labor and conservative parties in the British Parliament. The result of this widespread outcry to the Secretary’s report was a letter from British Prime Minister MacDonald to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, reaffirming the commitment to create a Jewish homeland.
Fearful that increased Jewish immigration to Palestine would damage Arab standing in the area, the Mufti engineered the bloody riots against Jewish settlement in 1929 and 1936.
The Arabs found rioting to be a very effective political tool because the British attitude toward violence against Jews, and their response to the riots, encouraged more outbreaks of violence. In each riot, the British would make little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews. After each incident, a commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the riot. The conclusions were always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jewish immigrants. To stop the disturbances, the commissions routinely recommended that restrictions be made on Jewish immigration.
Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop Jewish immigration by staging a riot. Despite the restrictions placed on its growth, the Jewish population increased to more than 160,000 by the 1930s, and the community became solidly entrenched in Palestine. Unfortunately, as the Jewish presence grew stronger, so did the Arab opposition. The riots brought recognition from the international Jewish community to the struggle of the settlers in Palestine, and more than $600,000 was raised for an emergency fund that was used to finance the cost of restoring destroyed or damaged homes, establishing schools, and building nurseries.
The Mufti was dismissed from his position following the riots of 1936. After supporting the pro-Axis revolt in Iraq, he fled to Berlin in 1941 where he was paid to make anti-British radio brodacasts to the Middle East to mobilize support for Germany among Muslims and urge Arabs to attack Allied forces and kill Jews. According to historian Benny Morris, “He also toured Yugoslavia to recruit Muslims for Germany’s SS and Wehrmacht and wrote letters to various European leaders, urging them to bar Jews from leaving their countries (thus perhaps indirectly contributing to their demise in the Holocaust).”
In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler. In the fall of 1943, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler heaped praise on the Mufti, stating that the Nazi leadership has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs – and especially in Palestine – against the Jewish invaders. Himmler ends the letter by bidding the Mufti warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory.
On July 23, 1947, prior to the UN decision to partition Palestine, al-Husseini wrote to Pope Pius XII “to reinforce the friendly bonds” between the Holy See and the “Arab and Islamic worlds” to “avoid together the dangers of the so serious destroying principles that threaten all the religions, all the beliefs, and all the morals.” Husseini added that “the support of the Venerable Pontifical See to the Arab cause of Palestine” would evoke “vivid gratitude” from the Arab and Islamic worlds.
In the Pope’s reply to Husseini, he spoke noncommittally of “the interest that the Holy See has never stopped to have for this holy land of Palestine” and wished “a just and real peace through comprehension, mutual agreement, respect of the rights of everyone.” He concluded that he would “promote from His high authority and within His spiritual mission the establishment of the harmonic order on which everybody’s happiness depends.”
Although he continued to be involved in politics, al-Husseini's influence gradually declined after the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948.
