The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (41 page)

ZIONIST BUILDUP AND PALESTINIAN DISTRESS: THE QUIET YEARS

The first seven years of Mandatory Palestine have been dubbed by many historians ‘the quiet years’. In fact, between the bloody outbreaks in 1920 and in 1929 there was some prosperity and growth. In the early days of this period, the British government made unavailing efforts to provide a legal and political foundation for a kind of mandatory state. But as the Jewish presence in the country increased, the Zionists became less willing to accept any arrangement that could have been acceptable to the Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership, though troubled by internal dissent, was willing to compromise; it wanted to enter into a genuine dialogue on the British proposal to create a state with a legislative council granting equal representation to Jews and Palestinians and with making joint resolutions on immigration and land purchases. But the Zionist leadership rejected it, and so did the British government.

The first fruitless British attempt to create such a quasi-state was made in the autumn of 1922, when the government announced the forthcoming elections to the legislative council. Wisely, it decided not to force the issue, and thus avoided an outright confrontation. Palestine was still very much the country of the Palestinians in 1922, and it was difficult to see why the local leadership should agree to partake in its Zionization. According to the British census taken in 1922 in preparation for the failed 1923 elections, there were 666,000 Arabs and 84,000 Jews in the country.

On the day of the elections, the Palestinian boycott succeeded beyond expectations. Whether correctly or not, the family members attributed some of its success to the tireless and eloquent preacher Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Muzafir.

By the time the sixth Palestinian Congress was convened in June 1923, all hope of persuading the British government to change its policy had evaporated. It was briefly thought that Sharif Hussein of Mecca would demand the abrogation of the Balfour Declaration in return for his endorsement of the peace accords concluding the Great War, but the aged
sharif
was under attack from his Saudi and Yemeni neighbors and could not alter the rules of the game dictated by the Great Powers.

In 1923 al-Hajj Amin sought to enlist the support of an active opponent of British rule, Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, leader of the Sanusi movement. He invited al-Sanusi as his first guest in his role as
mufti
.
Wearing a curved dagger in his sash, the visitor toured the Haram and noted its rundown state. This was the first of a series of visits designed to raise awareness of the Muslim and Arab situation in Jerusalem.

Amid widespread disillusion with the British, Jamal al-Husayni became publicly prominent. In 1922 Arif al-Dajani was dismissed from his chairmanship of the fifth congress’s executive. Jamal, the executive secretary, became acting chairman, with Ishaq Musa al-Husayni as his deputy.

As noted before, Ishaq Musa did not persevere in politics. In 1923 he moved to Cairo, where he took up an academic career, first at the American University and then at the Egyptian University. His contemporary Tahiri kinsman Muhammad Yunis also stayed out of politics. He studied economics and law, switched from the American University in Beirut to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and in the 1930s moved to London. In those years, three of Musa Kazim’s sons also took up various professions (except during the uprising). Fuad engaged in agriculture, Rafiq became an engineer and Sami taught at the Rawdat al-Ma’arif. Only Abd al-Qadir followed his father to the front rank of the Palestinian national movement.

But they were the exceptions. Most of their generation was deeply involved in local politics. Young Muhammad Yunis, for example, was deputized whenever Jamal was out of the country. (In 1923 Jamal spent a long time in India, where he formed close ties with the Muslim elite that would serve the Husaynis during the 1930s.)

At that time Jamal gave an interview in the journal
Mirat al-Sharq
in which he stated that the main lesson to be learned from the British treatment of Sharif Hussein was that perfidious Albion could not be trusted. The fact that a considerable number of Arab leaders outside Palestine were willing to negotiate with the Zionist leadership deepened Palestinian frustration, and the sixth congress condemned all such attempts.
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In some ways, Jamal himself was ‘guilty’ of such contacts. Towards the end of 1924, Jamal met Kalvarisky and suggested that the Palestinians would give up their demand for an independent national state in Palestine in return for an Arab-Jewish agreement to create a two-tiered legislative assembly. The lower house would be based on proportional representation and the upper chamber was to be composed – as the British had suggested – on a communal basis, with the Jews having two out of ten representatives. Jamal also suggested a joint immigration commission and, to calm the Zionists’ fears, proposed that the
High Commissioner have the right to veto any resolution of the lower legislative assembly. Jamal’s proposal was rejected out of hand, not only by Zionist leaders but also by the pro-Zionist Sir Herbert.
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Contrary to a view commonly held in Israel, the history of the conflict is not made up simply of peaceful Jewish proposals met by Palestinian rejection; quite often it was the other way around. Jamal seems to have been unable to decide on the best way to deal with Zionism.

Perhaps it was this vacillation that made it difficult for Jamal and al-Hajj Amin to organize Palestinian resistance to the frustrating British stance. The opposition began to take shape in the winter of 1923. The Nashashibis rallied around Raghib, a member of parliament, Jerusalem’s chief engineer and a former candidate for the post of
mufti
. They enlisted the support of such figures as Taji Faruqi, Bullus Shehadeh (the editor of
Mirat al-Sharq
) and the Jaffaite Arif al-Dajani. Together they resigned from the Executive Committee and created the National Muslim Association, a move applauded by Kalvarisky. This body soon collapsed after the financial support from the Zionist Federation its members had hoped to receive did not materialize. In November 1923, they decided to create another organization, the National Palestinian Arab Association, which adopted a strident attitude but followed a moderate program for dealing with both the British and Zionism.
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The new association’s program dismayed al-Hajj Amin, Jamal and Jamil when they read it at Ismail’s house. Until that day, the call for an Arab Palestine (the first issue of the program) and the non-recognition of the Balfour Declaration (the second issue) had been associated with Husayni positions. The declaration that ‘the peasant is the nation’s body [
mada
]’ made no impression on them.
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Neither then nor in later years did al-Hajj Amin take any interest in the life of the
fellahin
, and he missed the opportunity to win mass support for his national movement. When the British Peel Commission described al-Hajj Amin as ‘the leader of the Palestinian peasantry’, it was a mistaken and misleading epithet. The rival party, by contrast, cultivated close contacts with the rural
sheikhs
and through them was more connected to the world of the farmers. In the early 1930s, the Nashashibis created an offshoot organization called the Farmers’ Party, and the Husaynis made no attempt to counter it in any way.
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Nor did the Husaynis respond by reactivating their own party, which was well-established but had ceased to function once al-Hajj Amin had become Grand Mufti. After all, they were the establishment, and
they dominated two bodies – the Supreme Muslim Council and the executive of the Palestinian Congresses. (There were eight such congresses between 1920 and 1928, with an Executive Committee elected to administer Palestinian affairs between one and the next.)

The Nashashibi opposition conducted its propaganda campaign mainly against the Supreme Muslim Council, attacking it with constitutional, administrative and ethical arguments. But it failed utterly, as the British government was not persuaded by such accusations. Still, the opposition damaged the Supreme Muslim Council’s ability to build up the social strength needed for the struggle. Al-Hajj Amin was especially incensed when the opposition persuaded the people of Nablus to stay out of the Nabi Musa celebrations in 1924. The Nablusites held their own procession, charging that the Husayni family was using the festival to its own political ends.
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People adjust to enforced changes with astonishing speed. Before the British legal system had taken root in Palestine, Amin was the first local leader to use a British concept in his battle with the Nashashibis. In 1924 the
mufti
sued the editor of
Mirat al-Sharq
for libel because of a long article that accused him of misusing the Muslim religious properties. However, the suit failed.
⁴²
The journal
Al-Karmil
also attacked the Husaynis and blamed Musa Kazim for the divisions in the Palestinian camp.
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In 1924 the weakness of the Palestinian national movement became obvious to everyone. In January, a Labour government was installed in Westminster and soon showed that no matter which party ruled Britain, the policies remained the same. Even the appointment of a new High Commissioner in 1925 would make no difference. In 1924 the seventh Palestinian Congress was supposed to convene, this time based on real elections, but the opposition refused to take part in the democratic exercise. The conference was postponed, to no one’s disappointment.

The congress took place some time later, after the Palestinians were encouraged by the sharp decline in Jewish immigration following an economic crisis and recession in 1925–6. The Palestinians associated the appearance of Brit Shalom – a Jewish group with a very different Zionist outlook than that of the mainstream leadership – as a sign of the weakness of mainstream Zionist convictions. This sense was strengthened by unexpected moderation from the principal Zionist leaders and a new round of negotiations. The Palestinians both in the sixth congress’s executive and in the opposition began to view the
idea of a legislative council in a more favorable light. Had the British authorities made an effort at that time to push the two sides together, there might have been a breakthrough. But the British authorities hesitated and demanded a democratic mandate for this move, especially from the Palestinians. It was against this background that another attempt was made to convene the seventh congress.

Once again the Husaynis were the aristocracy of the land and its foremost family. The poet Fadwa Tuqan recalled how, as a little girl sitting next to her uncle Hafiz Tuqan, she was impressed by the respect he received simply because he was associated through family connections and politics with al-Hajj Amin. Hafiz headed the Nablus branch of the Husaynis’ National Party and organized support in Nablus for the annual elections of the Supreme Muslim Council. Sitting in the family’s drawing room, he would receive the city’s leading figures, who came in to greet him or to ask his advice.
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Further clashes with the opposition before the seventh congress upset the family. In January 1926, there were new elections for the chairmanship of the Supreme Muslim Council, and the opposition looked set to win them. But the British authorities suspended the elections on suspicion of corruption. The government moved in and created a new, more genuinely representative Supreme Muslim Council whose composition in some ways restricted al-Hajj Amin’s freedom.

In 1926 the factions fought it out in the Supreme Muslim Council, and the following year in the Jerusalem municipality. Municipal elections were held in the spring and summer of 1927. In cities with mixed populations, it looked as if the bloody 1920 conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians had been forgotten, as Palestinians appealed to the Jewish voters to support them. Perhaps this meant that the majority of the inhabitants, both Palestinians and Jews, were not still caught up in the conflict like the political elites.

In Jerusalem the Jews were asked to support the Husaynis’ candidate, Arif al-Dajani, and certain members of the family, notably Jamal, who were running for the city council. Perhaps the fact that Zionism was in crisis and looked less threatening made this possible. Jamal and Jamil al-Husayni asked Colonel Kisch to try to persuade the Jewish voters in Jerusalem not to support Raghib al-Nashashibi. In return they promised not to vote for the anti-Zionist Jewish Orthodox party Agudat Israel. Many Zionist leaders in the city believed that Musa Kazim was Jerusalem’s strongman and should be cultivated since he desired better relations with the Jews.
⁴⁵
Al-Hajj Amin himself took
part in these moves and even invited Colonel Kisch to his house. But Kisch declined and later met Jamil and Jamal at the house of Dr Ticho, Jerusalem’s well-known ophthalmologist.

The meeting at the doctor’s handsome residence surrounded by cypresses was also attended by the family’s friend Gad Frumkin, the only Jewish judge in the Mandatory Supreme Court. They talked until the small hours of the night, and the Husaynis, speaking on the
mufti
’s behalf, proposed a fair division of posts, expenses and budgets between Jerusalem’s Jews and Arabs. The Husaynis’ proposal was leaked to both the Arabic and Hebrew press and damaged their standing in Palestinian society. Indirectly, it led to their failure in the municipal elections in Jerusalem: ‘Palestine is being auctioned off; the Zionist Federation is buying. The auctioneer is the Arab Executive!’
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