The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (25 page)

Khalil Baydas was born in Nazareth, where he attended the Greek Orthodox school. A charismatic teacher, he told his pupils that he had been a very mischievous boy and was subjected to severe physical punishment. His father died when he was five, and he was brought up by his grandmother after his mother remarried. In 1886 the Russians opened a school in Nazareth and invited Khalil to teach in it. Six years later, he was appointed supervisor of the Orthodox schools in Palestine and Syria. He spent two years in Homs and various places in Lebanon, and in 1908 he arrived in Haifa. The new Ottoman constitution prompted him to launch a scientific-literary magazine called
Al-Nafais
(Pearls), a fairly professional publication that came to be widely distributed through the Arabic-speaking world. When a council was created that year to manage the affairs of the Orthodox communities in Palestine and Jordan, his magazine’s popularity led to Khalil being chosen as the representative of northern Palestine. Consequently, he resigned his position as headmaster in Haifa and moved to Jerusalem. Khalil would later become known for publishing the best of Russian literature – chiefly Tolstoy – in Arabic.
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These teachers promoted a more secular worldview among the mayoral sub-branch within the Tahiri Husaynis – a branch based on the post of
mufti
, but which had an important presence among the Husayni mayors of Jerusalem. Both Nakhla and Sakakini respected and liked Mayor Hussein al-Husayni, whose sons they taught,
³⁰
and the three men would sit together in the afternoons in Anaste’s café. The Greek’s café and theater were well-known Jerusalem institutions located on the upper floor of a building just outside the city wall near the Jaffa Gate. It was there, beside the
mangal
(the urn on which coffee was kept heated and the coal for the
nargileh
was prepared), that the three discussed an idea that would effect a profound change in the political life of Palestinian society: the creation of a Muslim-Christian association.
³¹

The Christian teachers felt that the Tahiri branch of the family, notably its secular members, differed from the other Muslim families and would resist the attempt of the religious leaders (including some members of the Umari branch) to create a local Arab national
association dominated by Islamic scholars. Such a move would have led to further divisions between Muslims and Christians. But the idea of Christian-Muslim unity would fully take shape only after British forces clearly defined the boundaries of the country called Palestine and His Majesty’s Government gave the Jews a right to the land. That was when the Muslim-Christian Association (MCA) became the foundation of Palestinian nationalism in Mandatory Palestine.

CONFRONTING ZIONISM

The ‘nationalization’ of the Husaynis cannot be understood without putting Zionism in the picture. While contending with the impact of the Young Turks, many of the Husaynis wondered about the significance of the ongoing Zionist-Jewish immigration. Their interest in this new phenomenon suggests that the heads of the family had come to realize that their social position obliged them to look beyond their narrow family interests. Or, to put it more bluntly, the family now had political ambitions on a scale unimaginable during early Ottoman times. We have seen that their attitudes towards Zionism at its inception varied from individual to individual, depending on their respective positions. That of the
mufti
was naturally the most hostile. It should be emphasized, however, that once they understood that Zionism was a real political movement with a large following and one that was rapidly acquiring land, properties and positions, the differences in their attitudes towards it disappeared. They all saw it as an imperialist-colonialist movement whose one purpose was to rob the Palestinians of their country. The history of the Palestinian national movement is full of vain efforts to put an end to Zionism and occasional attempts to blunt its impact by negotiation. But no one, not even the movement’s founders, imagined how Zionism would develop or what its true nature would be.

The Palestinians’ failure to understand Zionism’s dangerous potential was due in part to their tendency to regard it as a component of a familiar phenomenon, that of the European powers’ efforts to colonize Palestine. And no wonder – the Zionists, like the Europeans before them, advanced economic projects and settled in well-defined colonies (at this stage the movement closely resembled that of the German Templars). It is only in hindsight that we perceive that it was a different phenomenon: another national group in the process of formation through the colonization of Palestine, and with the aid of European
colonialism; a settler project that focused as years went by on the dispossession of the indigenous population and the takeover of the land, or at least most of it. This colonialist nationalism had sprung from nothing – at least so far as the Palestinians were concerned – and concentrated all its efforts and hopes in survival. To begin with, its avowed aim was to save as many Jews as possible by gathering them in Palestine, and when this failed, the Zionists devoted their efforts to strengthening and expanding the small Jewish community that had already taken hold in Palestine. The most moderate Zionist conception of the Palestinian reality was that the Arab inhabitants could, in the words of the rabbi of Memel, leader of religious Zionism in Germany, ‘move a little’. If they did not, ‘we’ll hit them on the head and make them move’. The Palestinians would have to decide how to respond to the blow.
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During the Hamidi period it was not easy to distinguish between Zionist fantasies and reality, but in the time of the Young Turks the appearance of seven Zionist colonies provoked real agitation. The newspapers voiced it. First came the press from Egypt and Beirut, which was read by some of the notables and whose contents presumably spread by word of mouth in the cafés, office courts and the like. Later, reports appeared in the newspaper
Filastin
, founded in Jaffa in 1909 by the Greek Orthodox Isa al-Isa, and in its competitor, Najib Nassar’s
Al-Karmil
, also under Greek Orthodox ownership. Thanks to all of these, people who had never met a Zionist heard about the movement. The distribution of these newspapers was quite small, but they reached those who saw themselves as the leaders of the Jerusalem
sanjaq
, or of the two southern districts of the
vilayet
of Beirut (i.e. Nablus and Acre) – that is to say, the territory that would later be defined, to some extent because of Zionism, as Palestine.

A serious discussion about Zionism took place in the winter of 1910 at Ismail’s house. As previously noted, this was a significant year because of the elections for the mayoralty. The winter of 1910 resembled that of 1855, when the Husaynis first encountered the famous Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore. This time they were confronted with a different kind of Jewish presence. Once again snow fell and piled up in mounds, and there was nothing to do but sit at home and discuss current events. At this time,
Al-Karmil
was publishing portions of Theodore Herzl’s book
The Jewish State
as well as some of the resolutions adopted by the Zionist Congress in Basel. Being a parliamentary representative, Said was the most vocal against Zionism. Hussein, the mayor, was the most diffident – possibly because he owed
his election to the Jewish vote, since the Association of Ottoman Jews, headed by Dr Levy of the board of IPAC in Jerusalem, had campaigned for him.
³³
But Hussein’s position was apparently more principled than pragmatic, as became evident some years later when he defended his opinion that Zionism did not represent any danger. He wrote in the Egyptian newspaper
Al-Aqdam
:

I see no danger in the Zionist movement, because it is not a political but a settlement movement, and I am certain that no sensible Zionist would even conceive of the idea of creating a Jewish government in Palestine, as people claim. The Zionists have come to this country to live in it. They are educated and cultured people. They have no grandiose ambitions, and they are united among themselves. It is neither just nor humane for us to hate and resent this nation.

Events during the British Mandate would hardly reinforce this view in the minds of the Husaynis or of the Palestinians in general. And Hussein did show some caution:

Nevertheless, we must keep our eye on them. If we go on as we do and they go on as they do, all our landed property will pass to them. Our
fellah
is poor and helpless, and a poor man may sell his property to save his life.

Time would show that the
fellah
resisted Zionism fairly stolidly, whereas the landowners, including some of the Husaynis, could not resist the financial inducement. Hussein called for a law that would limit the sale of land to the Zionists.
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As noted before, the attitude towards the Zionist settlers was part of the overall confrontation with the Europeans. They appeared as a force during the time of the Young Turks, while Jerusalem was swamped with Christian pilgrims, as though it were altogether a Christian city. It especially lost its multi-faith character during the Christian holidays, above all during the Easter season.
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Both sides of the Via Dolorosa and nearby alleys were packed with hundreds of people watching the procession. Pilgrims filled the balconies, windowsills and roofs, and wooden boxes, each holding some twenty people, dangled seven to ten meters above the crowd, adding to the overcrowding. The procession was like a human snake five or six kilometers long.

No wonder the Zionists and Europeans appeared to be conspiring. That year the Nabi Musa procession threatened to erupt into violence. It began on 10 April 1910, and before the celebrants returned from Jericho a scandal rocked the Muslim community in Jerusalem. The immediate cause was the activities of a British archaeological expedition that was digging under the Temple Mount. Under the agreement made with the
sheikh al-haram
, the expedition’s workmen did their digging in the small hours of the night, when the outer gates were kept locked for four or five hours. They had been working for the past month when a rumor suddenly spread that they were searching for King Solomon’s sword and gold and that the excavation had been approved by the government. The rumor reached the Nabi Musa procession, led by Mufti Kamil al-Husayni, who made a fiery speech – though this was unusual for him, oration was an art his father had excelled in and a talent that his brother al-Hajj Amin would emulate. Kamil accused the governor of Jerusalem of taking part in an anti-Muslim conspiracy with the British infidels to turn the Haram into an archaeological site. The festive mood was shattered, the celebrants turned back and the procession was transformed into a mass protest. Kamil and his family received a lesson in popular resistance. Under their pressure the district governor, the district commander and the
sheikh al-haram
demanded a commission of inquiry. Their demand was met, and calm returned to the city after the protest of Mayor Hussein al-Husayni was formally noted.
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The debate about Zionism continued in 1911, when the power of the Jews in the districts of Palestine and Damascus was increasingly discussed in print. The notables were uncertain about their number – it appears that at the outbreak of World War I there were in Palestine some 85,000 Jews, including the old community and Zionist immigrants. The Husaynis relied on the data obtained by the parliamentary representative from Damascus, the editor of the daily
Al-Qabas
, Shukri al-Asali, who tabled a question about the precise number of Jews in the
sanjaq
. Getting the answer did not take long – 100,000.
³⁷

One of the rumors that spread in Jerusalem and that was quoted in the papers referred to the influence of the new Jews in the Young Turks’ power centers. The rumor originated among Arab students in Istanbul who heard that there were some Jews in the new Ottoman army’s high command who wielded great influence over policies. The Husayni family had at least two sons studying in the capital – the Umari Jamil and the Tahiri Mustafa III, who together with others organized the
Arab students against Jewish immigration and land purchases.
³⁸
But most of the family read about the rumors in the Egyptian newspaper
Al-Ahram
. Under the heading ‘Zionists in the Ottoman Parliament’, the paper discussed the influence of Jewish members of parliament on the government’s Palestine policies. Worst of all, the paper said, was Sheikh al-Islam Jawdat Pasha, a Jewish convert believed to be pro-Zionist, who was meeting European bankers and, like Herzl, offering Jewish money for support for the Zionist enterprise. The paper also expressed the suspicion that Talat Pasha, the minister of the interior, was likewise pro-Zionist. It stated that the minister had admitted in parliament that he had met with Jewish bankers from France, Austria and Germany, though he insisted these had nothing to do with Zionism.

As we have seen, the revolution of the Young Turks restored the constitution and recalled the Ottoman parliament, which functioned between 1908 and 1912. During the parliamentary sessions the representatives from the district of Jerusalem, Said al-Husayni and Ruhi al-Khalidi, were often interviewed in Ottoman and Egyptian newspapers (such as
Al-Aqdam
), where they expressed adamant opposition to the continuing Zionist immigration. In reality, Said had not yet formed a rigid attitude towards Zionism. It would be fair to say that as time went by he became more opposed to the Zionist project, especially in his public appearances. On the eve of the elections to the new parliament in 1913, the representatives from Jerusalem again voiced this position (this time Ghalib al-Khalidi replaced Ruhi).