The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (61 page)

But worse was already happening on the ground in February 1948. That month a small group of Zionist leaders and military commanders, under the guidance of David Ben-Gurion, finalized a master plan for the massive expulsion of the Palestinians from any part of Palestine that they deemed to be the Jewish state. In February they evicted by force five villages, and in March they had already produced ‘Plan Dalet’, a systematic blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine. Neither al-Hajj Amin nor Jamal was aware of this or paid attention to what happened on the ground. It seems also that even if the Palestinians had taken a different position or a different Palestinian leadership had been in place, they would not have weakened the Zionists’ determination or undermined their ability to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population.

The only way Jamal and al-Hajj Amin could counterbalance Hashemite ambitions was to stick to Egypt. Jamal relied wholly on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. As early as May 1946, when the movement launched a branch in Jerusalem, Jamal, as vice president of the Higher Arab Committee and al-Hajj Amin’s deputy, honored them with his presence. In a way, the effort reaped some success: the Brotherhood provided half of the fighting force sent by Egypt into
Palestine on 15 May 1948. However, this was not enough to avert the catastrophe.
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Jamal represented the Palestinians before the UN investigating committee that came to the country a few days after the ‘
Exodus
affair’ made international headlines. The
Exodus
was a ship that came from Europe with many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in a PR campaign meant to embarrass the British for their anti-immigration policy. As expected, the ship was refused entry and made its way back to Germany, a symbolic return that enraged and galvanized Western public opinion.

Jamal had to vindicate the Palestinians’ moral position at a time when world public opinion tied the fate of the Holocaust survivors
–
like the passengers caught between hope and despair on board the
Exodus –
to the solution of the problem of Palestine. The case of the
Exodus
persuaded many about the Zionist argument that the Holocaust proved the necessity for a Jewish state in Palestine. Jamal was not at his best, perhaps because of the charged atmosphere. He also made the mistake of allowing the committee to invite a separate Christian Palestinian representative
–
as though there were two Palestinian peoples in the country. At least Henry Qatan, a Jerusalem lawyer, made a better presentation than Jamal.
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As we have seen, it was the Arab League that waged the diplomatic campaign on the future of Palestine, and it systematically prevented al-Hajj Amin from taking part in it. Al-Hajj Amin represented an independent Palestinian position, and the League, particularly its general secretary Azzam Pasha, used the opposition and the Hashemite king of Transjordan to undermine the
mufti
’s efforts to obtain substantial support for the struggle in Palestine. As noted, Abdullah had his own agenda and was supported by Britain, Iraq and the Jewish Agency.

Britain’s diplomatic moves were all carefully coordinated with the Arab governments rather than the Palestinian leadership. Consequently, the Palestinian leadership objected on principle to the Anglo-American delegation and to the Grady–Morrison Report and Bevin’s plan, which was based on it. It regarded them as attempts to undermine al-Hajj Amin’s legitimate claim to represent the Palestinians. This was also the background for al-Hajj Amin’s refusal to accept the UN Partition Resolution.

The British effort to exclude the
mufti
went furthest in January 1947 when, in a last attempt to solve the conflict on the basis of Bevin’s plan to divide Palestine into cantons, it convened a meeting in London to
discuss the proposal and barred al-Hajj Amin and his representatives from attending. When this conference failed, the British government decided to quit Palestine for good.

When the League first became involved in the Palestinian issue following Britain’s decision to return the mandate to the UN, al-Hajj Amin was not worried. In September 1947, the league met in Sofar and gave al-Hajj Amin 180,000 pounds sterling to buy arms, but then it all turned into a prolonged nightmare as the League systematically undermined al-Hajj Amin’s standing. His diminished prestige in the eyes of the league members was demonstrated in the seventh session of the League’s council, which met in Aley, Lebanon, to shape their policy on the UNSCOP and Britain’s imminent departure from Palestine. Not only did they fail to invite al-Hajj Amin, he was the subject of a minor debate instigated by King Abdullah and the Iraqi delegates about his ‘subversive activity in Iraq and his part in the revolt of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani’. Feeling that things had gone too far, al-Hajj Amin went to Aley without invitation, stormed into the council session and was allowed to stay.
⁵⁶

This was one of the lowest points in al-Hajj Amin’s career. Like others, he heard the Arab intelligence experts’ reports about the strength of the Jewish community and warnings that the Arab world would be unable to present a serious military challenge to this power unless it mounted its maximum military force. He learned that the Arab statesmen preferred the extension of the mandate above all other political solutions. He was dismayed to find that his rival Abdullah had won, because he had been the only one to act on the diplomatic front. Al-Hajj Amin’s own ally, Egypt, was less than eager to send an army into the battlefield
–
and without Egypt he was lost.

In Aley it became evident that it was mainly Hashemite Iraq and Transjordan that cooperated in limiting al-Hajj Amin’s role, sometimes with regional support. The first independent Syrian government after French colonial rule ended, being a fairly democratic republican regime, was more loyal to Palestine than were the Hashemites, and more loyal than it has been given credit for in the history books. But it was not loyal to al-Hajj Amin
–
it pinned its hopes on Fawzi al-Qawuqji. As we have seen, al-Qawuqji was a leader of the Syrian uprising against France who during the 1930s took part in pro-Palestinian activities and directed the pan-Arab volunteer recruitment for Palestine. He was obedient to Damascus and therefore was presented as the
mufti
’s rival. He was even appointed
commander of the Arab Salvation Army
–
a volunteer army created to fight for Palestine.

The first volunteers of al-Qawuqji’s Arab Salvation Army arrived early in 1948. Most of them came from the margins of society in their own countries or belonged to fringe groups
–
people whom the Arab governments were quite happy to dispatch to the battlefield.
⁵⁷
Al-Qawuqji found the Palestinian opposition easy to get on with, and thus inadvertently he helped to weaken the Palestinians further. policy of opposing the
mufti
was not due to personal hostility, as was the case in Amman and Baghdad, but mainly to Syria’s fear that al-Hajj Amin would embroil it in a hasty operation before the British actually departed and before the League exhausted attempts to prolong the mandate. Perhaps this was why the Syrian government held up permission for al-Hajj Amin to send young Palestinian recruits for military training in Syria in preparation for the imminent clash with the organized Jewish forces that had been training for the decisive battle since the end of World War II.

In vain, al-Hajj Amin begged the League in Aley to place him at the head of a government in exile and appoint him commander of a pan-Arab army. The League set up a military commission for the deliverance of Palestine, headed by an Iraqi general, Ismail Safwat, who was promised a budget of one million pounds sterling. However, only part of the money was provided, and when the general tried to coordinate the inter-Arab activity in preparation for the final British withdrawal from Palestine, he was hampered by a lack of genuine cooperation.
⁵⁸

Something similar occurred in Egypt. In December 1947, the League met in Cairo, and once again Iraq and Transjordan vetoed al-Hajj Amin’s participation. The leaders of the Arab countries resolved to intensify efforts to help the Palestinians and increase aid, but the resolution meant little, as the Arab armies held no training exercises for the forthcoming battle. They still had not coordinated their diplomatic or military strategy, or significantly increased their arsenals. While the Jewish Agency went into high gear, al-Hajj Amin’s proposals to prepare for the creation of a separate political framework for Palestine and for a civil takeover of the country were rejected. His plea for pan-Arab funding of the Higher Arab Committee was rejected because of the Arab League. The only outcome of the Cairo meeting was the division of Palestine into four command sectors; the Husaynis got one, the Jerusalem sector, headed by Abd al-Qadir, who made the best of the situation and recruited a relatively large force of thousands. This force
gave him a higher status in the military enterprise than the League had assigned him.
⁵⁹

But al-Hajj Amin did not give up easily. He fought back against the League’s intentions to neutralize him. Early in 1948, he proclaimed the establishment of a civil administration
–
in effect, the government-in-waiting that should have been formed in the 1920s. The League gave in a little and declared that every part of Palestine that was liberated would come under that administration. But this was al-Hajj Amin’s only success in attempting to wrest a central role in salvaging Palestine for himself. He was so preoccupied by the vital struggle with the League that he hardly prepared for the British evacuation; and worse, he was unaware of the beginning of mass expulsions of the rural areas by the invading Jewish forces.

In Palestine, all these maneuvers gave rise to the feeling that the Arab world was sitting on its hands. The social and economic elite in Palestine was already preparing for a hasty collective departure. Some 70,000 Palestinians left, believing that no one could stand up to the Zionist movement; all of them meant to return, but did not want to find themselves in the battle zone. The rest of the population swung between hope and despair, unaware of the catastrophe awaiting them in the next few months.

In less than three months, between February and May 1948, large chunks of Palestine fell to a Jewish occupying force
–
mixed cities, major junctions and isolated villages. It began as a civil war, but around March that year it turned into
de facto
ethnic cleansing
–
the expulsion of the Palestinian population from the territory of the Jewish state. In the first stages of the war, the Arab volunteers did not distinguish themselves in battle against the Jewish forces. They would do better in later stages, but it would be too late. Before the Arab armies entered Palestine, more than 200,000 Palestinians, among them many Husaynis, found themselves in refugee camps. A few had fled out of fear of the war, but most were driven out by the Jewish forces. When the war broke out, they were joined by about half a million other Palestinians, most of whom had been expelled from the territory designated by the UN as the future Jewish state.

The ethnic cleansing was accompanied by some forty massacres. The Nakbah
–
the Palestinian catastrophe
–
happened while the Husayni family was leading the national movement. The dreadful stories about the expulsion and massacres reached the Husayni leaders, and their failure to raise an outcry about it would cost them and the other
notables a heavy political price. They would no longer have the trust and support of their society.

The Husayni family’s collective memory of the Nakbah is dominated by the heroism of Abd al-Qadir, above all on the date of his death, 8 April 1948, in what became known as the Battle of Qastel (a village west of Jerusalem on the road to the coast). He was eulogized by his second-in-command Kamal Iraqat, known as Abu Da’aya. Khalil al-Sakakini wrote in his diary that, ‘The eulogy was one of the finest heard in that funeral.’

The masses that followed the cortege showed that the family was still popular among all strata of the population.
⁶⁰
Abd al-Qadir was buried in a chamber on the Haram beside his father, Musa Kazim, and Sharif Hussein, the leader of the Arab Revolt during the Great War. They are enshrined in the pantheon of the Palestinians’ collective memory, and in 1950 the respected periodical
Majalat al-Azhar
compared Abd al-Qadir to Salah al-Din al-Ayubi (Saladin). No other member of the family has been so lauded.
⁶¹

Abd al-Qadir’s son Faysal was only eight when his father was killed. ‘I didn’t know my father because he was always on the move and came home rarely, but I read and heard a lot about him,’ said Faysal, who in the 1980s would become a leading political figure in the occupied West Bank. Though he barely knew his father, towards the end of the twentieth century Faysal continued Abd al-Qadir’s legacy by adapting himself to the national mythology and committing his own family to the service of the national movement. The movement’s organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), made no such demand of any other Husayni, because no member of the family, not even Jamal and al-Hajj Amin, has retained a place to equal Abd al-Qadir’s in the nation’s pantheon.
⁶²

The day before Abd al-Qadir’s death, Jamal al-Husayni, as representative of the Higher Arab Committee, and Moshe Sharett, the representative of the Jewish Agency, negotiated indirectly in New York. Jamal refused to meet Sharett directly, and messages between the two were passed by the president of the UN Security Council. Their purpose was to try to achieve a truce in the fighting in Jerusalem. Sharett and others in the Jewish Agency
–
with typical Zionist Orientalist prejudice
–
feared that the Jewish community in the city, being largely of Middle Eastern origin, might not be able to withstand the pressure. They therefore wanted a break in the fighting and even agreed to a temporary halt in immigration. Jamal’s position
was uncompromising: he demanded they stop the implementation of the Partition Resolution. The UN refused
–
once implementation had begun, no one in the international organization dared to propose reconsidering the resolution. It should have, however, as it was a resolution accepted by only one side and forced on the other (who were the majority and natives of the land). Reconsideration would have meant reopening the negotiations over Palestine on the basis of a settlement acceptable to both sides.
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