The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (55 page)

The opposition behaved very shabbily when the St James Conference was convened. Fakhri al-Nashashibi was the most vocal in objecting to al-Hajj Amin’s participation in the talks. He informed the British that not only did he himself support their policy, he had actually created ‘peace bands’ that fought against the rebels. It seems that this posture
embarrassed the more nationalist elements in the Nashashibi camp, and for a moment it looked as if they would denounce Fakhri’s action. Raghib even suggested inviting al-Hajj Amin to London as head of the delegation. Al-Hajj Amin must have felt for a moment that he was about to return to the center of politics in Palestine. To his great surprise, he was allowed by the British to travel to Egypt, only to discover that he had been brought there to be pressured by Egyptian prime minister Muhammad Mahmud to refuse Raghib’s invitation and to give Jamal al-Husayni the position as a head of the Husayni representative in the delegation.
²⁴

Not everyone in the British government treated the
mufti
with such hostility. By March 1938, when the new High Commissioner MacMichael took up his post, voices were heard in the British government suggesting the
mufti
be allowed to return to Palestine. But MacMichael detested al-Hajj Amin and would not allow it. Throughout World War II, the decision-makers in London were divided on the question of the
mufti
. The Colonial Office led the opposition to his return, followed by the War Office, whereas the Foreign Office sought to keep an open channel to the person it regarded as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs.
²⁵

Thus in the days leading up to the conference in London, al-Hajj Amin could have felt that he had not lost his power to influence events. He closely followed his colleagues’ efforts to convince the British government to convene the conference in the first place, and regarded the British agreement to do so as a very significant Palestinian achievement.

He succeeded in persuading an exhausted delegation to visit him to discuss the conference before returning to Palestine from London. Two of the delegates, Musa Alami and Izzat Tannus, wrote accounts of the meeting with al-Hajj Amin. They were hoping to get some rest before going on to Beirut to report to al-Hajj Amin, but on disembarkation they encountered the
mufti
’s car waiting for them at the Port of Tripoli. The car took them straight to the al-Zarq Hotel, where the impatient al-Hajj Amin had gathered the Palestinian exiles in Syria and Lebanon, including most of the membership of the Higher Committee. As Alami described it, Tannus as usual dominated the report to the
mufti
, until Amin al-Tamimi, a member of the executive, asked Alami humorously, ‘But were you not in London too,
ya
Musa?’ Alami nodded and said, ‘What’s more, I have the form of the agreement with MacDonald’ (Colonial Secretary Ramsay MacDonald, who
gave his consent in writing to convene the conference). He pulled the document from his inside pocket. According to al-Hajj Amin, ‘Izzat Darwaza, another witness to that occasion, rose from his seat and with tears in his eyes embraced Alami, saying, “This is the declaration of Palestine’s independence!”’
²⁶

Al-Hajj Amin instructed Jamal to travel through the Arab world building support for what he now saw as an enhanced Palestinian position. Jamal met Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Maher (Mahmud’s successor), who complained that he still did not understand what the Palestinians really wanted. In reply, Jamal produced the agreement brought by Alami, adding in Egyptian argot, ‘Anyone who holds such a document should dance and rejoice till he drops and thanks God.’
²⁷
It is doubtful that the document clarified the Palestinians’ position to the Egyptian prime minister, or caused him to dance till he dropped. Like other Egyptian politicians, Ali Maher thought that the Palestinians had little cause for rejoicing, mainly because they had failed to unite around a single, well-defined goal. In Egypt, too, there were disagreements, but all parties were united by the goal of an independent Egypt freed from its British overlords. But the Palestinians did not define their aim, whether they wished to be part of some other Arab country or truly independent. Their distinctive plight was not clearly understood by most of the politicians in the Arab world at the time, either because of their basic disinclination to study the question or their dismay at the petty discords within the Palestinian camp. The Egyptian prime minister’s perplexity led to a pan-Arab initiative to help the Palestinians define their aims.

In the event, the Colonial Office and MacMichael succeeded in preventing al-Hajj Amin from taking part in the St James Conference but not from instructing the Palestinian delegation by telephone from Beirut. Exile weighed heavily on al-Hajj Amin, and witnesses reported that he waited impatiently for every scrap of information from London. He agreed to give Jamal a major role in the next moves. But he was too far from center stage to have an impact any more.

In fact, the Palestinian political elite as a whole ceased to play a significant role in Palestine’s destiny. At the conference in St James’s Palace, the Palestinian delegates were surprised to discover that Britain, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia had coordinated the search for a solution. The British government was eager to obtain the support of the Arab countries in case of a global war. After consultations with representatives of Egypt, Arabia and Iraq, but not with the Palestinians,
the British Foreign Office drafted a planned solution: until 1944 a total of 75,000 Jews would be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, land purchases would be as restricted as possible and every Zionist project would require Arab consent. However, Arab independence in the whole country would require Zionist consent. Until then, of course, Britain would continue to rule over Palestine.

The plan was adopted as the government’s official policy and incorporated in a 1939 White Paper. The Jewish community was united in rejecting it. The Palestinian leadership failed to take advantage of the opportunity and ultimately rejected the last chance offered by the British to save Palestine.

The Higher Arab Committee met in Lebanon to discuss the White Paper once they realized that the Arab states would support it. Four members of the committee did support it, but the
mufti
hesitated. There was nothing in the document to promise an independent Arab Palestine, which al-Hajj Amin had come to regard as the quintessence of the Palestinian goal. It is important to note that had he examined the plan in minute detail, he would have found that it was less a document about Palestinian independence and far more a corrective to the Balfour Declaration through its severe limitations on immigration and land purchases. As such, it kept alive the option of independence in the future. But al-Hajj Amin convinced the members of the committee to focus on the issue of an independent state, and they decided to send Izzat Darwaza to London to find out if Britain would be willing to accelerate the implementation of the promise to establish one. When Darwaza returned empty-handed, al-Hajj Amin forced the rest of the committee to reject the White Paper.
²⁸

Why did al-Hajj Amin fail to discern the opportunity when it came his way? Why did he not connect the great sacrifices made by the Palestinians during the uprising with what was actually a substantial achievement? Some historians ascribe al-Hajj Amin’s rejection to personal vindictiveness, but there may be a better explanation.
²⁹
The longer he was in exile, and the more he hobnobbed with the foremost figures of the Arab world, the greater his aspirations for himself and for his people became. When he was in Lebanon, he would not accept anything less than an independent state. By the time he went to Rome and Berlin, he was demanding the independence and unification of the entire Arab world.

After the failure of the St James Conference, al-Hajj Amin had to curtail his activity even more, though he did have some minor
successes. He found himself in direct conflict not only with the British and the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine but also with the enterprises of the Baron de Rothschild, primarily the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), which conducted its own policies and sought independent contact with the
mufti
. Its directors tried to reach al-Hajj Amin through Ibrahim Said, the son of Said al-Husayni who, as noted above, had once worked for the company in Jerusalem. When these attempts failed, they tried to frustrate the
mufti
’s efforts to recruit Bedouin tribes in the Golan and Galilee to the Palestinian struggle. They persuaded Amir Faur, a Bedouin
sheikh
in Syria, to reject the
mufti
publicly. Al-Hajj Amin responded at once, denouncing Amir Faur as a traitor until the
sheikh
lost all his political power.
³⁰
But these were minor triumphs, and on the whole al-Hajj Amin’s activity was quite limited.

When World War II broke out and Britain and France declared war on Germany, al-Hajj Amin was placed under house arrest for not supporting the Allies.
³¹
He became increasingly gloomy, and his close advisers realized that he could not go on being inactive in Lebanon. In desperation he turned to the French chief of police in Damascus, Pierre Colombani, a dubious character who had been in the post after being accused of murdering a rival politician in France. In return for a bribe, Colombani arranged the
mufti
’s escape from Lebanon to Damascus. On his advice, al-Hajj Amin disguised himself as a Lebanese peasant woman in traditional dress and veil, thus hiding his identity from the French officers at the border crossing in Maysalun.

On 13 October 1939, exactly two years after leaving Jerusalem, al-Hajj Amin was on Syrian soil. He did not remain in Damascus for long. Aided by Izz al-Din al-Shawa, a Gazan known for his bold actions, al-Hajj Amin fled again. This time he went to Baghdad to meet with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, office chief of Abd al-Illah, Iraq’s heir to the throne and
de facto
ruler. The
mufti
appeared in al-Gaylani’s office on 16 October, signed his name in the visitors’ book, received the heir apparent’s blessing and went to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. From there he went to a house on al-Zahwi Street, where he resided during his exile in Baghdad, being feted and treated royally the whole time.
³²

After al-Hajj Amin’s arrival in the Iraqi capital, many other Palestinian exiles landed there, including Abd al-Qadir and his family. There, as in Damascus, they created various structures for independent action. It looked for a while to be a very pleasant chapter of al-Hajj Amin’s life,
compensating for the last harsh two years. He enjoyed prominence and prestige in Iraq’s internal politics for a short period, and he measured his situation against the problem of Palestine. Whether in Baghdad or in Lebanon, he was unable to restart the uprising or even to persuade the British government to allow him to return home.
³³
Baghdad was the preamble to the grandest stage of his life. But the grandeur was misleading: just when al-Hajj Amin imagined himself the leader of the entire Arab nation, his ability to act on behalf of his people would further diminish.

In the meantime, the national struggle in Palestine was carried on by less prominent members of the family, alongside the Khalidis and Alamis. Mainly it proceeded thanks to the perseverance of other social strata – farmers, merchants and professionals. But though these groups would later form political structures that better reflected their world and aspirations, this did not detract from the Husayni predominance in Palestine.

Al-Hajj Amin and Jamal preserved the family’s primacy from abroad, while Jamal’s older brother Tawfiq Salih did so at home. Munif, too, did his share. In 1939 he was released along with the other Palestinians from detention in the Seychelles and was royally welcomed by the Egyptian Wafd Party, led by Nahas Pasha. Munif became the family’s ambassador to Cairo.

While the Husaynis led the Palestinian uprising, they were not sure how to evaluate it. Though the family guided the revolt against the British and their policies of enlarging the Zionist presence in the country, the uprising was doomed to end with a military defeat. Britain did change its policy and was serious about limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases – not to enable a Palestinian state but to freeze the conditions that prevailed in 1939. These seemed best suited to British interests – a small Jewish community, a leaderless Arab majority and a mollified Arab world. Under such circumstances, Britain could confront the Nazi war machine in Europe and the Japanese in Asia.

CHAPTER 11

World War II and the Nakbah

In the Midst of the Revolution in Iraq

In October 1939, the
mufti
was in the Iraqi capital. Within less than a year he would become a major factor in Iraq’s internal politics and get involved in the senior officers’ attempted pro-Nazi coup against the monarchy and the British protectorate. But before al-Hajj Amin moved against Britain, Britain moved against him.

Iraq’s prime minister Nuri al-Said had tried and failed to get the
mufti
to issue a public statement supporting the Allies and was advised to place him in complete isolation. But Nuri al-Said did not dare to act against the man described in the Iraqi press as the most honest figure in the entire Arab world. The
mufti
had been enthusiastically welcomed in Baghdad, and the newspapers lauded him as ‘the hero of the Arab nation’, to his great satisfaction.
¹