The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (42 page)

The family even tried to enlist the support of the Palestine Communist Party. Its usual attitude towards the PCP was suspicious and disapproving. It was perceived as a Jewish party, and its platform was inimical to the family’s interests. Jamal al-Husayni was probably the only one who understood the connection between the communist position and the struggle against Zionism. In 1924 he made contact with one of its leaders, Yosef Barzillai, who tried to get Jamal’s support for its anti-imperialist campaign against both Britain and France. Barzillai gave Jamal 100 Palestinian pounds to buy arms for the struggle, but this financial connection went no further. Jamal did not buy arms but donated the money to the Husaynis’ party. He continued to vacillate between sympathy and hostility towards the PCP, but being a pragmatist, he renewed contact before the elections. He actually obtained a PCP contribution to the Husayni campaign in the form of the hire of a motorcar – not a trivial matter in those days – which drove around the city with a loudspeaker on the roof, vociferously attacking the Husaynis’ opponents.
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In the end, most of the Jews in Jerusalem voted for Raghib al-Nashashibi. The Husaynis’ attempt to reach an understanding with the Jews confused most of the voters and certainly damaged the Husayni camp. Nashashibi won by a landslide. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi had the foresight to deplore the choice, arguing that the Zionist leadership had lost an important opportunity to build stronger ties with the dominant force in the Palestinian community.
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Moreover, the corrupt and nationalistic Nashashibi turned out to be a bad mayor for the Jewish inhabitants.

The bitterest loss was in Jaffa. Not only did the municipality fall to the opposition but the newspaper
Filastin
also transferred its allegiance to the Nashashibis. Mayor Isam al-Said, who had joined the Nashashibi camp, had already fallen out with the Husaynis in 1923 when he agreed to connect his city to Pinhas Rutenberg’s electrical grid. By doing so, he had linked Jaffa with an exclusively Zionist concession that was in the hands of a highly placed Zionist leader. Since they were dominated by neither camp and were more localized and autonomous, Haifa and Nablus remained relatively neutral. Tiberias and Safad, like other peripheral towns, remained loyal to the Husaynis.

But the outcome was unexpectedly favorable. Elated by its victories, the opposition wanted to present a unified front against Britain and Zionism at the seventh congress. The first sign of bridging the inter-clan divide was a tour taken by a broad Palestinian delegation through the Arab world during 1927, with al-Hajj Amin at its head. Their first destination was Syria, where al-Hajj Amin hoped to get help from the Syrian national movement, especially from its leader Shuqri al-Quwatli. Al-Hajj Amin had been in touch with him two years before when a revolt had broken out in Syria against the French Mandate and al-Hajj Amin had headed a Palestinian committee to raise funds for the uprising.
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From Syria the delegation turned southwards to Egypt. An Egyptian photographer took a picture of the
mufti
in the company of many opposition figures, sailing on the Nile on the occasion of the birthday of Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi.
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The group returned to Jerusalem to take part in the festivities celebrating the new golden dome on the shrine of the Dome of the Rock, which also attracted many visitors from abroad. Everything was set for the congress, which would turn out to be the first and last to host a unified national movement.

The congress met on 20 June 1928 at Rawdat al-Ma’arif, a Husayni stronghold in Jerusalem. It ended with a unified Palestinian call for a legislative body, and for the first time the final resolutions did not include explicit attacks on the mandate and the Balfour Declaration. The congress elected a new executive to represent all the constituent groups fairly, thereby meeting the British demand for a truly representative government. The family was gratified – though al-Hajj Amin may have been disappointed – that Musa Kazim was chosen president of the congress. It is not known to what extent al-Hajj Amin was still a man of the family. Perhaps he preferred Musa Kazim over any candidate from a different family, but he might have hoped that another
Husayni would be president instead of Musa Kazim, who now and then expressed his displeasure at al-Hajj Amin’s leadership.

Following this congress, in the summer of 1928, the Palestinians presented the government with a memorandum signed by Raghib al-Nashashibi and Musa Kazim al-Husayni. For the Palestinian camp this was a moment of elation, unity and firm determination. It also offered a solution to the conflict, one of many openings that would be available to the contending sides. (All of these openings were slammed shut either because the Palestinian unity was so short-lived or – in most cases, including this one – because of Zionism’s uncompromising attitude and British ineptness.) The leadership of the Jewish community was alarmed by the Palestinians’ moderation, and they launched a diplomatic campaign to counter it. The Zionist leaders wished to be seen as peace seekers and at the same time undermine the Palestinian willingness to reach an agreement, which struck them as a danger to Zionism.
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Behind every peak of hope lurked a trough of despair. In August 1929, many Palestinians, led by al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, fell into such a trough. Al-Hajj Amin had acquiesced to the moderation and unity of the Husaynis and Nashashibis, but he did not believe in them. The thwarted hope of reaching an understanding with the government not only drove al-Hajj Amin to adopt a more extreme position, it also aroused in him strong anti-Christian feelings that did not fit with the family’s traditional attitude throughout the past two centuries. Early in 1928, he initiated the creation of the Young Muslim Association, which undermined Palestinian Muslim-Christian solidarity. The new association was inspired by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, launched that year by Hassan al-Bana. Yet al-Hajj Amin’s renewed Muslim religiosity was not nearly as potent as the powerful blend of nationalism and Islam introduced into the Palestinian struggle by Izz al-Din al-Qassam that would ignite the fires of revolt in Palestine.

THE ‘AL-BURAQ REVOLUTION’ OF 1929

Even before the first spark that ignited Arab revolt throughout Palestine, a smaller uprising erupted in Jerusalem and other places in 1929. The ancient city had experienced all kinds of religious strife up to the late Ottoman period, most of which occurred between the diverse Christian sects and occasionally between Muslims and Christians. Very rarely were
Jews involved as a religious sect in such embroilments. As far as they were concerned, the Muslims ruled all aspects of life in the city, and all religious disputes – including those concerning the status of the Western Wall (as the Jews call it), or
Waqf Maidian
(its Muslim name) – were resolved by the Ottoman government. If the new Zionist arrivals shared a common ground with the Ottoman Jews, who generally disliked them, it was the sense that the Ottomans throughout the years had ruled unfairly on the question of Jewish prayers at the Western Wall.

The wall in question was the western outer wall of the Herodian Temple, which the Jews believed had been built on the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. Since the Middle Ages it had been a place of prayer and lamentation for the fallen glory of Ancient Israel (hence its popular name, the Wailing Wall).
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But the wall is also the western wall of the Haram al-Sharif, and the Muslims call it ‘
al-Buraq
’, after the Prophet’s famous horse. It abuts on what was known as the neighborhood of the Mughrabis (North Africans), and throughout the Ottoman period, until the Great War, it was part of a religious property named after Abu Maidian.

Throughout the Ottoman period, Jews had to obtain permission from the Muslim authorities to visit the site, which they were not allowed to treat as a place of pilgrimage and regular worship. Sometimes the Jews appealed to the Ottoman authorities, but these generally ruled in favour of the Muslims. The British authorities eased conditions for Jewish worshippers to some degree while agreeing with both sides to preserve the status quo with regard to all the holy places. But after the First World War, the Jewish community was the second largest in Jerusalem. Since the new government tended to be pro-Zionist, it was natural that the status of the Jewish holy places would be affected. Muslim anger about these changes contributed to the bloody events of 1929, especially in the Jerusalem area. (As we shall see towards the end of this chapter, the deteriorating socio-economic conditions in other parts of Palestine caused partly by the pro-Zionist British policy were far more important factors than the religious strife.)

As mentioned earlier, the Zionist movement attempted to purchase the space in front of the Western Wall, which the Muslim authorities allowed Jews to use only in restricted ways. The British conquest of Jerusalem made the Jews feel more confident, and they broke some of the restrictions to which they had been subjected under the Ottomans. The mandatory government enabled the Zionist movement to increase their presence on the site by small increments. Chaim
Weizmann was actively engaged in the matter and immediately after Allenby’s conquest of Jerusalem proposed to Storrs to purchase the Wall. The Mughrabi community, which had lived in the area ever since they came to Jerusalem as pilgrims, was interested in Weizmann’s offer of some 70,000 Palestinian pounds if they evacuated the site, but the Palestinian leaders prevented the deal.
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While Kamil al-Husayni was
mufti
, the Muslim authorities reacted mildly to the Jewish breaches of the status quo at the Wall. But once the Supreme Muslim Council was launched, and the Jews’ confidence grew even more, clashes at the site intensified. Increasingly the Jews brought chairs and benches into the area, and the Palestinians connected this behavior to statements made by Jewish and Zionist leaders about the need to build the ‘Third Temple’. Testifying before the government commission that investigated the events of 1929, al-Hajj Amin referred to those statements as one the main causes for the violent wave that swamped Palestine in 1929.
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After the establishment of the Supreme Muslim Council, al-Hajj Amin kept calling the government’s attention to the fact that the Jews were bringing more objects and religious appurtenances into the area in front of the Wall. The council also presented the government with retouched photographs showing the Jewish Temple standing on the Haram al-Sharif – pictures that were sent out to potential Zionist donors overseas. Throughout the 1920s the Palestinian Executive and the Supreme Muslim Council dispatched delegates and appeals to all parts of the Muslim world, asking for assistance in fighting the threat of a Jewish takeover of the Haram.
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One of the
mufti
’s most effective ways of enhancing local and regional interest in Jerusalem was to restore the shrines of the Haram al-Sharif. They had already been in need of such work in Ottoman times, but now the main impetus for the enterprise was political. From 1923 to 1924, al-Hajj Amin managed to raise substantial contributions from all over the Muslim world and started the renovation, whose climax was the gold-plating of the Dome of the Rock.

The atmosphere was growing increasingly tense. In 1925 there was a flare-up near the Western Wall, in the wake of which the Jewish Agency demanded that the British government compel the Muslim religious authorities to sell the Wall. The following year the Agency proposed purchasing fifty meters of the Haram al-Sharif, including the Wall, and began to negotiate with the government, but the deal fell through. At the end of 1928, Weizmann wished to offer 61,000 Palestinian pounds
for the property, but he took the advice of High Commissioner John Chancellor to wait for a more opportune moment.
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The Husayni family could take pride in al-Hajj Amin, who guarded the Haram as though the Ottoman sultan at the end of the eighteenth century had foreseen the future when he entrusted the guardianship of the holy places in Jerusalem to Abd al-Latif al-Husayni and his progeny.

Early on 23 September 1928, the eve of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the janitor of the Sephardi congregation came to al-Hajj Amin’s office to report that he had just seen the janitor of the Ashkenazi congregation in front of the Western Wall setting up an arch, from which he suspended a large curtain, as well as pallets and oil lamps. The curtain was an unusually large screen, and it angered the
mufti
when he saw it for himself. It was a provocation not only for the Muslims but also for the Sephardi janitor, who would not receive the traditional fee for the job. The Muslim leadership immediately complained to Edward Keith-Roach, deputy governor of the Jerusalem district, who ordered the janitor to remove the architectural addition from the Wall’s forecourt. But the following day, the screen was still standing – the Orthodox Jews would not do any work on the holy day, nor would they allow anyone else to do it for them. The installation of this screen separating men and women on the eve of the Day of Atonement in 1928 set off the first clash. In response, the Supreme Muslim Council created a committee ‘For the Defense of
al-Buraq
’.
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How did this incident set off a violent clash, the bloodiest since the start of the British Mandate, between the Palestinians and the Jewish settlement? Palestinian historians have praised the
mufti
for turning a marginal event into a national one, thus establishing his leadership, while Israeli historians have accused the
mufti
of exploiting trivial discord to incite Muslims to ‘murder Jews’. However, the
mufti
was the not the first to drag the opponents onto a battlefield. It was the World Zionist Federation, shaken by the incident, that charged the British police with aggression against the Jewish worshippers who refused to dismantle the arch and the screen they had set up. Four days later a big Jewish demonstration took place in Jerusalem. The more extreme elements threatened to seize the policeman who had dismantled the screen and tear him limb from limb. Then a general strike was declared. The Hebrew papers poured fire and brimstone on the ‘Gentiles’ – specifically the Muslims – and the national poet H. N. Bialik bemoaned the desolate Western Wall. Subsequently, Harry Lock of the government secretariat stated that ‘Jewish public opinion
has turned what was essentially a religious matter into a political-racial one’.
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