The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (58 page)

Politically speaking, al-Hajj Amin gained little during this visit. Hitler did promise to support the Arab struggle but wanted to postpone publicizing the fact until German forces had reached the Caucasus. He made a dramatic point of revealing to his visitor Germany’s secret plan to reach the southern Caucasus.

The Führer was interested in the military potential that al-Hajj Amin could rally. Al-Hajj Amin was embarrassed, as he could not hide his objection to the idea of sending Arab soldiers to fight against the Arab soldiers in the Allied armies. Did he feel that in Germany, as opposed to Italy, he was viewed as a representative of an inferior race, and therefore not a serious ally?
²⁶
Whatever the case, the people around him testified that at this time he was still exalted, feeling that suddenly everything was about to happen.

His enthusiasm infected Rashid al-Gaylani, who had also fled to Berlin. In February 1942, the two met the King of Italy, who gave them the longed-for public statement about Italy’s unreserved support for the Arab nation. In the summer of that year, the Axis forces won impressive victories in North Africa, seized Tobruk and moved towards Egypt’s western border. That summer the
mufti
met Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign minister, and suggested preparing the inhabitants of North Africa for the victory of the Axis powers. To that purpose, he published an open letter to the people of Egypt.
²⁷
He began to work fast, feeling that this gamble had gone well.

But during his stay, the Azma brothers accused al-Hajj Amin of not keeping them in the picture. They complained that instead of adhering to the policy they had agreed upon, al-Hajj Amin was selling Arab support to the Axis powers too cheaply.
²⁸
After some time, Qawuqji, too, began to feel that al-Hajj Amin was seeking glory at his expense, and began to avoid him in Berlin. Qawuqji’s main complaint was that al-Hajj Amin did not involve him in discussions on military matters, in which the
mufti
had neither experience nor expertise. Al-Hajj Amin
had several discussions with the Germans about the possibility of an anti-British revolt with Nazi help.

On one subject, Fawzi al-Qawuqji supported al-Hajj Amin. He and Rashid al-Gaylani helped the
mufti
to carry out an idea he proposed in 1943 – namely, the creation of a pan-Arab committee led by himself, with equal representation for members from Syria, Iraq and Palestine, and with Rashid al-Gaylani as its foreign minister in charge of contacts with the Axis powers on the future of the Arab Middle East.
²⁹
This placed al-Hajj Amin at the center of a new pan-Arab project designed to bring about unity and independence with Axis help.

Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, Fawzi al-Qawuqji and Rashid al-Gaylani adopted much of the Nazi vocabulary. They often took part in propaganda broadcasts from Berlin and Rome, spouting anti-Semitic vituperation, which may have been their composition or, more probably, translated from the Nazi Propaganda Ministry material. They made one minor contribution
–
they taught the Nazi ideologues, such as Alfred Rosenberg, the difference between the term ‘anti-Semitism’, which offended them, and ‘anti-Jewishness’, which they supported.

Palestinian historiography was long uncomfortable with discussing these statements and their moral implications. However, recently they have openly and sensibly revisited this chapter of ill-fated liaisons, describing the players as a few individuals who were detached from Palestine and its politics and no longer attuned to the genuine predicament of the people there. This was not a formative chapter in Palestine’s history, but it is one that cannot be ignored given how it has been manipulated by Israeli historiography to Nazify the Palestinian movement as a whole and to justify brutal oppression, ethnic cleansing and occupation. For the purposes of this narrative, these events are highly important as an indication of al-Hajj Amin’s transformation from a bright, sensible leader of a movement into a hallucinatory figure losing touch with reality and assuming roles and capabilities far beyond those he actually possessed.
³⁰

The reversals suffered by the Germans and Italians in North Africa did not faze the
mufti
. He proposed that the Germans declare the independence of the Maghreb and recruit a Maghrebi army to fight on their side. But the Germans had promised the region to Marshal Pétain, the leader of Vichy France, and could not guarantee its independence. Al-Hajj Amin worked diligently for the Germans through 1943. He persuaded Muslim leaders in India to support anti-British action, organized a Bosnian division in the Balkans and military
groups to help the Germans in the northern Caucasus and promoted the idea of creating a Muslim state in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Then the idea arose of creating an Arab army division that would fight alongside the Axis powers. One hundred and thirty men began to train on the sands of Cape Sunion, not far from Athens, but the project fizzled out. In the Balkans, al-Hajj Amin wrote a booklet called ‘Islam and Judaism’, which could hold its own with the racist fliers distributed by the SS to German soldiers. Albania’s Muslims honored al-Hajj Amin when he helped create a local SS unit that would later take part in murdering the Jews of the Balkans. In the Caucasus, too, al-Hajj Amin enlisted Muslims to the war effort, above all to the German SS units. The Nazi discourse suited his aims and helped his enterprise. Palestine and Jerusalem might be far away
–
even perhaps from his mind
–
but he was still convinced that he was riding on the wings of history and helping to free the Arab world and to unify it.

While al-Hajj Amin was rallying the Palestinians to the losing side, Winston Churchill acceded to the Jewish Agency’s request to form a Jewish brigade in the Allied forces. The brigade did not take an active part in the battles, but it became the basis for the Zionist military effort and highlighted the Zionist commitment to the Allied war. (The final accounting shows that the British armed forces included 12,000 Arabs from Palestine and 27,000 Jews, including the Jewish brigade.)

But still al-Hajj Amin believed that the goddess of fortune was smiling on him and the Palestinians. He spent most of the war in Bari in southern Italy, now and then visiting Berlin to broadcast anti-British propaganda in Arabic on German radio. Only towards the end of the war, when the Nazi defeat became certain, did he realize that he had made a mistake. He was then in Berlin, and the Germans offered to send him in a submarine to an Arab country. However, a Swiss government radio broadcast offering political asylum to refugees convinced him to buy a small car and set out in May to the Swiss border. But the border was snowed in, and al-Hajj Amin and his companions could not proceed. The Germans offered to take him across in a light aircraft, but the Swiss government, ignoring the pleas of diplomats from Arab countries, did not want him.

Back he went to Germany, this time to Konstanz, in the French occupation zone. From here it was a short route to France, where he was held first in prison, then under house arrest and finally in fairly comfortable conditions. The soft treatment was due to France’s annoyance with Britain at the end of the war. France, which had given al-Hajj
Amin refuge in Lebanon in 1938, seven years later gave him refuge at home. And just as in 1938, the British government dithered about his treatment and did nothing. It could have asked for his extradition
–
but then what? Should he be put on trial? Lord Gort, the new High Commissioner in Palestine, wanted nothing to do with him, imprisoned or free.

For a moment it looked as though al-Hajj Amin would be tried alongside the Nazi leaders as a war criminal, as the Zionist organizations in the United States demanded. In the atmosphere that reigned after the war, this was not unthinkable: al-Hajj Amin’s behavior during his stay in Europe showed that he warmly approved of every Nazi act against the Jews, including extermination. Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, claimed that al-Hajj Amin had acted in the countries adjoining the Nazi-controlled areas to bar the entry of Jews escaping from the concentration and death camps. But the context in which the
mufti
acted would have obliged the judges at Nuremberg to deal with the highly complex connections between the Holocaust and the Zionist movement, and between the latter and the future of Palestine. It is doubtful that anyone in the American Justice Department, let alone in Britain, cared to untangle them. The leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine also probably preferred these political and moral complexities not to be dragged into court. In any case, al-Hajj Amin’s identification with the Nazi death machine made it difficult for him to reintegrate into Palestinian politics and overshadowed everything else he had ever done. Many historians in the world, especially in Israel, have depicted him, unjustly and inaccurately, as a mini-Hitler.

Al-Hajj Amin decided not to take a chance and fled once more with the help of French friends. The dates were again symbolic
–
he had fled Iran on 29 May 1941, and on 29 May 1945 he took on the identity of a member of the Syrian embassy in Paris and left for Cairo via Italy and Greece. Rumors about his movements caused excitement not only among the Husaynis, who were unable to find out much about them, but among the Palestinian population. It was said that he was on his way to Palestine, and people prepared to celebrate his return.

But al-Hajj Amin did not reach Palestine, and he would later feel obliged to explain why. He said Britain had banned his entrance and he did not want to risk it. Two years later he did make an effort to enter Palestine. At this time, he was living in Cairo, which had become his home thanks to King Faruq. The rotund king was anxious to show his people that he was an Egyptian and pan-Arab patriot, while
showing the British government, particularly its local ambassador, that he was still an independent and crucial actor on the Middle Eastern scene.
³¹
Cairo was also home for al-Hajj Amin because other Husayni exiles were living there, notably Munif, who prepared an apartment in Heliopolis for al-Hajj Amin. Twenty days after his arrival, al-Hajj Amin had an audience at Abadin Palace, where the king urged him to move into another royal palace in Inshas and live there as long as he liked. The following day, the Egyptian government issued a statement welcoming the hero of the Arab nation.

At this time, there were still substantial British forces in Egypt, and the British ambassador conducted himself more like a colonial governor than a foreign diplomat. But the British were no longer omnipotent in Egypt, being constrained by a national government and a king who worked, albeit slowly and inefficiently, to bring an end to their dominance in their country. Consequently, al-Hajj Amin could count on the Egyptian government’s protection as well as its hospitality. ‘The King of Palestine’ enjoyed a comfortable exile in the Inshas Palace, and when that venue seemed insecure, he was moved to Faruq’s summer palace, Muntaza.

From this place of exile, al-Hajj Amin began to rebuild his position as head of the family and the Palestinian people. In the autumn of 1947, he discussed with local British officials the possibility of returning to Palestine, but to no avail.
³²
Being out of Palestine, he lost some of his power. Jamal was playing a greater role in preparing the Palestinians for the most important battle of their history. Nevertheless, al-Hajj Amin remained the symbolic leader and would be blamed for the tragedy of 1948, though he was not the only leader of the national movement.

Jamal was well served by his brother Tawfiq Salih. Throughout the war, while al-Hajj Amin and Jamal occupied themselves with inter-Arab and pan-Arab politics, Tawfiq deputized as the president of the Palestinian national party, maintaining the family’s primacy in local politics. In this he was helped by a family friend, Emile al-Ghuri, the suspended secretary of the Arab Higher Committee. Together they made the Husaynis’ Party of the Arab Nation into a sound and efficient body that functioned throughout the country. They also acquired influence in the important newspaper
Al-Difaa
in Jaffa, which began to show support for the family and its party. The newspaper had been founded by Ibrahim al-Shanti in 1933 as a counterweight to
Filastin
, which often reflected the opposition. During the post-war years, the opposition showed signs of weariness and decline. The representatives
of the former al-Istiqlal and the Defense Party attempted to create a counterforce but failed, though they remained strong enough to prevent unity.
³³

In December 1941, the British authorities brought back from exile three Husaynis of the uprising leadership
–
though not Jamal
–
in the hope of starting a new, more fruitful dialogue with the leading party. But this was insufficient. The opposition was disgruntled because the government had failed to use the opportunity to crush the Husaynis’ political power.
³⁴
The Husaynis grew stronger, or maintained their position, but the Palestinians as a political force began to lose important positions, such as the municipality of Jerusalem. In the 1940s, Daniel Auster was elected head of the municipality, and thus Mustafa al-Khalidi, Hussein’s successor, became Jerusalem’s last Palestinian mayor.

On the other hand, the family’s position as a religious icon was waning. During the war, the Nabi Musa celebrations were neglected. Even when they did take place, for example in 1942, the ceremony was no longer a family affair. The governor of Jerusalem, Keith-Roach, became the custodian of the Prophet’s flags and banners, which had formerly been kept by the Husaynis and were now stored in the Shari‘a court. The family’s stamp faded from the important festival, and the wings of the Husayni phoenix were clipped.
³⁵
The festival was celebrated for the last time in 1947, and the custom of visiting Nabi Musa would only be revived forty years later, on 17 April 1987. The last Husayni to hold a religious position in the city was Sheikh al-Haram Arif Yunis al-Husayni. Though in his black robe and white tarbush he resembled the
mufti
, he actually kept away from politics and was on good terms with the opposition and the authorities.