The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (46 page)

On his way to the meeting, the
mufti
consulted with his relative Ishaq Darwish. As president of the Supreme Muslim Council, al-Hajj Amin was an official of the mandatory government, and if he wished to keep his post he had to respect certain limits. He believed that the proper response to Britain was a general strike throughout Palestine, but he feared that if he called for it he would lose his position. So it was agreed that Darwish would call for the strike. Perhaps, as some historians suggest, al-Hajj Amin also knew that the Nashashibis would not wish to go so far and that a resolution that worsened his relations with the British would fail. Finally, after prolonged debates, the council adopted Raghib al-Nashashibi’s moderate proposal to call on the Palestinians to boycott Jewish goods and buy Palestinian products.
¹¹
Consequently, in 1931 al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni seemed to be trying to avoid at all costs a head-on collision with the British or the Jews.

But as in 1928, the Palestinian camp was not so easily mollified. John Chancellor made hostile public statements, the British police continued to treat Palestinian suspects brutally long after the events of 1929 and, to add insult to injury, the pro-Zionist Jewish general prosecutor Norman Bentwich retained his post. The mood grew uglier still when three Palestinians who had been charged with inciting riots were hanged, while not a single Jew was sentenced to death. The sentence looked like a deliberate perversion of justice and part of a hostile policy.
¹²
Now whenever al-Hajj Amin addressed a large angry crowd, he had to revert to the role of the aggressive, demagogic
sheikh
pouring fire and brimstone on Zionism and British policies.

His public utterances were also fueled by the fact that the Haram al-Sharif, particularly the Western Wall, was still threatened by a Jewish takeover. High Commissioner Chancellor suggested to the
mufti
that the mandatory government, together with the Palestinian leadership, come up with a compromise. Otherwise the government would put the issue of the ownership of the Wall to an international forum, which would probably rule in favor of the Jews. The
mufti
replied that he would prefer an imposition by an international forum to voluntary surrender. Chancellor replied, ‘But this way you’ll show yourself a statesman.’ ‘But I’m not a statesman,’ replied the
mufti
. ‘I am a cleric.’
¹³
Disregarding the
mufti
, the British authorities appointed a special committee headed by a Swede named Lufgren to examine the question of the Western Wall. The committee tended to favor the Muslim side but nevertheless called for considerable changes in the status quo.

In the meantime, al-Hajj Amin went on rallying the Muslim world to help save Jerusalem. In October 1930, he spent a few days in Cairo to meet with a delegation of Muslims from India led by Shawqat Ali, one of the leaders of the Muslim minority in the subcontinent and the brother of its greatest religious scholar, Sayyid Muhammad Ali. In December of that year, al-Hajj Amin sent Jamal to follow the delegation to London and strengthen their association with this important ally.
¹⁴
When Muhammad Ali died early in 1931, he was buried in Jerusalem in accordance with his will. His funeral became a great Muslim demonstration.

It was a very cold day in January when Muhammad Ali’s coffin, draped in a green flag embroidered with verses from the Qur’an, was carried to his grave. Long consultations before and after the funeral prepared the
groundwork for the Pan Islamic Congress that took place in Jerusalem later that year. It was not the only important funeral that year. Sharif Hussein, a sincere friend of the Palestinian movement, though he lacked power or political influence, died that summer. A vast throng surrounded the Dome of the Rock to pay homage to the man who at the end of his life sought in vain to claim Palestine for the Arabs. Towards the end of the mandate and immediately after, his son King Abdullah of Jordan would use the tomb as a pretext for claiming Jerusalem.

Muhammad Ali and the
sharif
were buried in the same mausoleum in Dar al-Khatib, behind the eastern wall of the Haram.
¹⁵
This mausoleum had originally been a religious school – an Anatolian noble-woman had donated it to the religious authorities in the fourteenth century. Later both Musa Kazim and his son Abd al-Qadir would also be buried in its chambers. But the amicable coexistence of the deceased contrasted with the conflicting political aspirations of the Hashemites and Husaynis in Jerusalem. During the Jordanian rule, a visitor might have guessed that only Sharif Hussein was buried there, as the entrance bore his emblem flanked by Jordanian flags. Today it is once more the burial place of the Palestinian aristocracy.

As soon as the mourning period was over, al-Hajj Amin was eager to hold the first Pan Islamic Congress in Palestine. Such congresses had already taken place, but never in Jerusalem. Al-Hajj Amin had tried to organize one in 1922 and failed, but in June 1931 he succeeded. First he had to secure the High Commissioner’s support, which he obtained by promising that the congress would not discuss any issues that might embarrass the British authorities.
¹⁶
Chancellor was about to be succeeded in October by Sir Arthur Wauchope and was therefore fairly sympathetic. The
mufti
did not, however, try to conciliate the opposition. Nor did he cooperate with the later attempts of the visitors from India and Egypt to unify the Palestinian camp.

Al-Hajj Amin wished to give the event an air of spontaneity. During Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque on 4 September 1931, Shawqat Ali announced, probably by agreement, that a Pan Islamic Congress would open in Jerusalem on 31 December that year. A letter of invitation that still survives today indicates that the
mufti
was indeed careful not to make any reference to the political struggle in Palestine. The honored addressee is invited to take part in a congress whose purpose is to prevent divisions in the Arab world. There could not have been a more appropriate place for such a gathering than the mosque of al-Aqsa.
¹⁷

Twenty-two Muslim countries, both Shi‘i and Sunni – all the
Muslim states at that time with the exception of secular Turkey – were represented at the congress.
¹⁸
Most delegates were not official representatives, since the governments of the states concerned were being very circumspect about Jerusalem and Palestine. The Turks did not come because Shawqat Ali, who considered himself a potential caliph, had sent an invitation to a member of the Ottoman family known as Abdul Majid III.

At the time, there were rumors all over the Middle East that the caliphate might be revived, an idea that Ataturk’s Turkey resisted with all its might. The gathering was pulled in two different directions: the Indian representatives wanted to use it to promote the idea of the caliphate, while al-Hajj Amin wanted it to strengthen Muslim support for the Palestinians. He received the blessing of his old mentor, Sheikh Rashid al-Rida, which carried much weight. Rida was one of the promoters of the caliphate, and his willingness to place the issue of Palestine at the top of the agenda testified to the strong link between him and his former disciple.

During the congress, al-Hajj Amin also had to struggle against hostility towards Christians, expressed in particular by al-Tabatabai, the former prime minister of Iran. Aware of the standing of Christian Palestinians in local politics, and perhaps loyal to the tradition of his branch of the family, which had coexisted peacefully with Jerusalem’s Christian elite, al-Hajj Amin fought against this sentiment.
¹⁹
When he had gone to Egypt in person to seek official support, he had run into an advance campaign by the Jewish Agency to dissuade the Egyptian government from sending representatives to the congress. The government was worried by the idea of the caliphate and sent no delegates, but the Wafd, the largest political party in Egypt, did.
²⁰
Another proposal on the congress’s agenda that worried the Egyptians was the establishment of a Muslim university in Jerusalem, which the scholars of al-Azhar feared would eclipse their own institution. Rashid al-Rida succeeded in dispelling their anxiety, as perhaps did al-Hajj Amin’s letter to King Fuad I and to Egypt’s prime minister, Sidqi Pasha, explaining the modest aspirations of the projected university. It was mainly intended to provide a Palestinian counterbalance to the Hebrew University.
²¹

Al-Hajj Amin did not fare much better in Damascus, where the leaders of the national camp declined his invitation. They were in the midst of delicate negotiations with the French and did not wish to be identified with an Arab anti-colonialist front. Some of the Syrian leaders also suspected that the congress was intended to attack the
Palestinian opposition, and so when al-Hajj Amin arrived in Damascus in June 1931 he found them unresponsive.
²²
Those who turned al-Hajj Amin down had been helped by him during the Syrian revolt in 1925, but they would help him in the 1930s when he found refuge there as a political exile.

Despite these setbacks the list of participants was quite impressive, and al-Hajj Amin managed to steer the congress through conflicting agendas and interests. One of the foremost thinkers of Shi‘i Islam, Sheikh al-Ghaita, making his first appearance in such a gathering, was persuaded to become a spokesman for the Palestinian cause. He delivered the important message that Palestine was greater than the factions of Islam and united its two main currents.
²³

The congress opened on 7 December, the morning after an evening ceremony at al-Aqsa mosque described by the British as al-Hajj Amin’s ‘one man show’ and recorded on film by an Egyptian production company. (This was the movement’s first political film, to be followed by many more. It is a vivid document of the congress opening.) Photographs were taken outdoors, then the delegates went into the mosque, sat down on its rush mats and listened to al-Hajj Amin exhorting them to help save Jerusalem.
²⁴

Al-Hajj Amin’s friends had not seen him so active and dynamic for a long time. He pushed resolutions in the plenary sessions and fought to neutralize opponents in the subcommittees. The success of the congress was clearly due to him, and he was chosen to head a pan-Islamic body, giving him one more title to add to Grand Mufti and President of the Supreme Muslim Council.

The opposition ran interference through its newspaper
Mirat al-Sharq
and with a parallel gathering at the King David Hotel titled ‘The Conference of the Islamic Nation’, which drew representatives from all over Palestine.
²⁵
But as the High Commissioner reported, ‘The congress strengthened the standing of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni.’
²⁶
Al-Hajj Amin was convinced that Fakhri al-Nashashibi, who led the opposition to the congress, was in the service of Zionism. This was not so far-fetched, given Fakhri’s strong ties to the Jewish Agency. At least one Israeli scholar has found a hint to that effect in a letter from Chaim Arlosoroff to the Jewish Agency in London.
²⁷

Yet al-Hajj Amin’s inability to compromise with the opposition did harm the congress and its goals. His close associate Shawqat Ali wrote to a friend, ‘The
mufti
and his party are unwilling to let others take part in preparing and directing the conference. The opposition behaved
chivalrously, announcing that it supported the idea of a Muslim university and the congress, but could not accept a situation wherein the
mufti
alone makes all the decisions … Had the
mufti
taken my advice, the results would have been much better,’ he concluded sadly. (He had advised al-Hajj Amin to advance the idea of a new Islamic caliphate.) Indeed, he was so disappointed that the issue of the caliphate was left out of the agenda that he resigned. His resignation did not hurt al-Hajj Amin – on the contrary, it reassured the Arab delegates, who were unenthusiastic, to say the least, about the idea of the caliphate. Though al-Hajj Amin’s inability to unify the ranks was ominous and militated against his success, on the whole the congress left him stronger than before.
²⁸

In 1932 the festival of Nabi Musa also became a battlefield between the rival camps, each of which tried to organize a bigger delegation to the festivities.
²⁹
Though for hundreds of years the Husayni, or Prophet’s, banner had led the procession, the Nashashibis announced that their procession would raise a different banner. Al-Hajj Amin did not scruple to get the British authorities to make sure that the Husayni procession, rather than the Nashashibi one, would take place – and so it did.

In the final analysis, the achievement of the Pan Islamic Congress was personal rather than national. The pro-Palestinian tendency which the Hope Simpson Report seemed to indicate was eroding. The new High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, was friendly to al-Hajj Amin but not necessarily to the Palestinian cause. Wauchope maintained strong personal ties with al-Hajj Amin and helped him to thwart attempts at reforming the Supreme Muslim Council that might have damaged his standing.
³⁰
But Wauchope represented the British government, whose policies in 1932 provoked increasing anti-British feelings among the local population.