The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (54 page)

The involvement of Husayni women in politics, if belated, reflected the social transformation in the family as a whole. In the past, the women’s political contribution had been confined to arranging the marriage ties that underpinned the alliances with other families. In the twentieth century, women were far more literate and self-assertive than the previous generations; some of them, like so many teenage girls all over the Middle East, were sent to Europe and America to marry or to join relatives who did well there. One such family member was Amina, the granddaughter of Salim al-Husayni and sister of Musa Kazim, who was married at age fourteen to her cousin Muhammad al-Husayni. She traveled with him to Germany, where he studied medicine and she studied X-ray technology. When they returned to Palestine she became the first Muslim woman to learn to drive and was seen driving her car in the streets of Jerusalem. (She was preceded by Asya al-Halabi, the first Christian Palestinian woman to drive a car.) Amina helped her husband with the X-ray machine, especially after he developed heart trouble. When her children grew up she worked for charity organizations, often in cooperation with Zaliha al-Shabani, the president of the first charity club in Palestine, whom she later succeeded. Amina began to engage in political activity only after 1948, and during the 1960s was a highly respected member of the Palestinian National Council as the representative of the women’s organizations.

Amina was not the first woman in the family to break out of the confines of tradition. Fatma, the wife of Rafiq al-Husayni (son of Musa Kazim and brother of Abd al-Qadir), graduated from the English College in Jerusalem and went on to study at the American University
in Beirut, where she completed her master’s degree. From there she went to Iraq to teach. Tragically, one day while on home leave she stepped on a nail, developed blood poisoning and died at the age of twenty-seven.
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Since this is a political biography, we are constrained to focus on the men of the family and leave to other researchers the strenuous reconstruction of the history of Palestinian women.

This complex group of men and women of the Husayni family had lost two of its leaders. Since al-Hajj Amin and Jamal were in exile, their places at the head of the family were taken by two others. The principal and best known was Abd al-Qadir, and the other was Tawfiq Salih. During the uprising Abd al-Qadir commanded the Jerusalem front in the rebellion, was wounded twice and was honored and admired by the fighting men. The first time he was wounded was in a battle against British forces near the village of al-Khadir, the first battle against British tanks. The Palestinian fighters managed to put one tank out of action, and though Abd al-Qadir was not personally responsible, the achievement is credited to him. At the end of that battle, he was caught and arrested. The highest price seems to have been paid by Abd al-Qadir’s father, Musa Kazim, in 1933.

For Abd al-Qadir, 1938 marked a decisive shift in his view of the conflict and his attitude towards Britain. His trust in Britain was shaken beyond repair when he witnessed the outcome of the British punitive operations. The worst was the massacre in Atil, where British forces blew up and set fire to many houses with their occupants inside. Some women were reportedly raped and abused.
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He was especially horrified by the British practice of tying a suspected nationalist activist with a rope to the door of his house and other ruthless methods used by the British army at the time.

Like other commanders of the uprising, Abd al-Qadir adopted the national anti-imperial discourse, mixing religious terms with the modern ones of the anti-colonialist struggle.
Jihad
became a national concept, and Abd al-Qadir often exhorted his men on the eve of a battle to give their all for the sake of the national anti-imperial holy war. The goal of the Palestinian national movement was now clearer than ever: complete independence.

In 1938, the ugly practice of killing village headmen who refused to shoulder the burden of the uprising reached its peak. Though Abd al-Qadir himself was not directly involved in these assassinations, his subordinates certainly were, notably Said Shuqair, a man from the vicinity of Ramallah, who carried out these acts of vengeance in Abd al-Qadir’s
name. One of the reasons the uprising failed may have been this dissension, in which Abd al-Qadir actively participated, in a badly organized and unclear chain of command.

This two-front war – fighting against the occupying force and at the same time waging an internecine struggle against collaborators or potential rivals in the chain of command – was plainly in evidence at the battle of Bani Na’im in December 1938. This large village in the district of Hebron was a stronghold of the opposition to the uprising – namely, the Nashashibi camp. Abd al-Qadir’s men surrounded the village and tried to persuade the inhabitants to join the uprising, but the planned time of the attack was leaked and a large British force was waiting. The British air force launched a merciless assault on Abd al-Qadir’s forces, and he himself was wounded.

Palestinian collective memory records every such battle as a clash with British forces, and together they are described as the first military campaign in the history of the Palestinian national movement. Abd al-Qadir’s willingness to lay down his life for the homeland stands out. He had been mentally prepared for the revolt since 1931, when he organized the young men of Jerusalem to act against the British. Two years later he and Emile al-Ghuri, a friend of the family, created the first-ever Palestinian military organization,
Al-Jihad al-Muqaddas
. There were only seventeen members in that ineffectual and short-lived organization, but it signaled Abd al-Qadir’s distinctive contribution to the Palestinian military inheritance. Nafiz, the son of Muhi al-Din, was just as active as his famous kinsman, but did not make it into the national history books. Khalid, a cousin of Abd al-Qadir’s, was one of his seconds-in-command, thanks to his experience in the ranks of the British police force; he had reached the rank of inspector in the Jaffa police.
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So Abd al-Qadir was the first of two family members to fill the void that al-Hajj Amin and Jamal left behind during their exile. The other one is less known: Jamal’s eldest brother, Tawfiq Salih, the director of the Muslim orphanage in Jerusalem who was greatly admired for his social work. He served in the British Immigration Department and tried his best to bar the entry of Zionists to the country. Al-Hajj Amin sometimes appointed him deputy head of the committee, but he had no official title.

Quite a different contribution was made by Ishaq Musa al-Husayni. The literary-minded Ishaq Musa persuaded his journalistic cousins to publish his early essays. The first discussed the weaknesses of Palestinian
Arab society. It displeased the heads of the family, who ignored his warning of how unfit and ill-prepared the Palestinian leadership was to meet the dangers Zionism posed to them and to Palestinian society as a whole. Ishaq Musa was probably the most scholarly member of the family. He studied and then taught at the American University in Cairo, and in 1934 completed his doctoral studies at the University of London under the supervision of the renowned Orientalist Hamilton Gibb. After he returned to Jerusalem, he taught Arabic literature at the Arab College. During the revolt, he became the supervisor of Arabic language tuition in Palestine, a post that acquired special significance amid the uprising and the struggle against Zionism.

But not all the Husaynis enrolled in the fight. The most notable dissenter was Arif Yunis al-Husayni, a scion of the branch that had filled the post of
sheikh al-haram
for long periods. This post was restored to the Husaynis in the early twentieth century, but since it had lost its importance, the branch that held it was also minor. Whether for that reason or because he held strong views of his own, Arif Yunis opposed al-Hajj Amin’s leadership, and did so publicly. The chief of police in Jerusalem became concerned for his safety and placed a permanent guard near his house, which foiled an attempt on Arif Yunis’s life. Another member of the family who tended to the opposition was Abd al-Salam Shaker, the editor of the weekly
Al-Wahada
, which maintained a position similar to that of Musa al-Alami’s camp.

However, most of the Husaynis supported the uprising and engaged in its daily undertaking. Out of all of them, al-Hajj Amin was the one most occupied with his personal fate: since he had been expelled from Palestine, his future was unclear. The uprising in Palestine broke out when he was looking for a refuge for himself. Political drama overshadows all other existential activity. Only when the historian examines the years of the revolt from the viewpoint of the average inhabitant does it become evident that the uprising did not affect the whole population all of the time. Even some of the Husaynis were engaged in other activities that, on the face of it, seemed less heroic at the time. But in retrospect these would become the kinds of struggles that Palestinians were engaged in as ordinary citizens of an occupied land throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.

Such was the struggle of Arif Yunis al-Husayni. He confronted the Zionist municipality of Jerusalem head-on. Mayor Daniel Auster mixed municipal issues with wider ideological concerns. Under his leadership, the municipality wanted to widen various roads, gates and
pavements. One of the spaces that fell within the widening project was Arif Yunis’s garden, which contained some of the family tombs. Unlike the great national struggle, this one was concluded successfully. The non-nationalist Arif Yunis won, while the exiled al-Hajj Amin lost his inheritance not to the city but to the Zionists. Al-Hajj Amin’s property in the Nahlat Ahim area was expropriated and given to the Jewish National Fund. Only the school that stood on that property was spared, and the municipality had it moved it elsewhere.
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Together with other Palestinian landowners, the Husaynis fought a rearguard battle against the rapid urban development driven by British officials and the Zionists. The population of Jerusalem in the 1930s was 150,000, and some of the neighborhoods were more crowded than the slums of London. Accelerated construction came at the expense of the green spaces and public parks. However, during the uprising the municipality took some steps to preserve the city’s ‘green lungs’.

But al-Hajj Amin lost more than his property; his political standing was no more secure. In the winter of 1938, the British government changed its tactics. Instead of trying to crush the uprising, it looked for ways to calm the country. Al-Hajj Amin was not part of their plans. A new commission of inquiry led by Sir John Woodhead recommended ditching the idea of partition (which Britain would again support in 1943) and severely criticized the conduct of the High Commissioner during the uprising. Chancellor was unceremoniously dismissed and replaced by the Orientalist Sir Harold MacMichael. Though an expert ‘Arabist’, MacMichael aggravated relations between Britain and the Palestinians and was largely responsible for the perception, etched in the Palestinians’ collective memory, that Britain betrayed them even in the last years of the mandate. Al-Hajj Amin certainly regarded the British as the enemy, perhaps even more than the Zionists.
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An examination of Britain’s wider politics at this time, however, reveals that this judgment is excessively severe. In 1938 Britain abandoned the idea of partition and attempted to freeze the demographic balance in the country, despite the increasingly desperate plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. But this British U-turn came too late. When tensions mounted in Europe, the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia and British troops began to withdraw from Palestine, the leadership of the Palestinian uprising was more impressed by the reduction of Britain’s military presence than by its change of policy. When the Woodhead Commission left, the uprising flared again. In response, the British government sent back some of the withdrawn
forces and launched a frontal attack on the rebels – while continuing to tilt its policy in favor of the Palestinians. At this time, there was a wave of pan-Arab support for Palestine, prompting the British government to renew the diplomatic maneuvering. In February 1939, after nineteen years of rule over Palestine, the government brought the two sides to a roundtable conference at St James’s Palace in London.

The government in Jerusalem wanted to determine the composition of the delegation. It suggested that Jamal be the
de facto
representative of the Palestinians, but Raghib al-Nashashibi would be its official head. (Jamal was still suspect due to his involvement in the revolt.) The
mufti
was
persona non grata
in London, not only because he had led the uprising but because he was tainted by his growing friendship with Germany and Italy. The connection between the
mufti
and the Damascus consulates of Germany and Italy – especially the latter – had begun during the uprising. The Germans tried now and then to send in weapons, but they were captured by the British. Most of the help came from the Italians. By and large, the Nazi regime did not meddle in the affairs of Palestine before the war, did not officially object to the Peel recommendations and until the outbreak of war did not prevent Jews from fleeing Germany to Palestine.

Syrian politician Adil Arslan urged al-Hajj Amin to form closer ties with the Italians. He not only talked to al-Hajj Amin about it, he published an exchange of letters between them in the newspapers
Al-Jamaa’ al-Islamiyya
and
Filastin
.
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The purpose of the correspondence was to show that Italy, unlike Britain, supported the Arab claims unreservedly. Arslan wrote the
mufti
that the Arab nation needed a European friend, and only Italy would fit the bill. Munif al-Husayni, the editor of
Al-Jamaa’ al-Arabiyya
, was such an enthusiastic supporter of an alliance with Italy that the British suspected him of being its agent and some of his staff resigned on that account. The journalists did not regard Italy as a possible ally but as a colonialist power crushing the Tripolitanians’ struggle for independence. The Nashashibi opposition used al-Hajj Amin’s courtship of colonialist Italy to accuse him of betraying the pan-Arab cause, though no one in the opposition criticized his later friendship with Germany.
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