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Great Uprising
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The 1936–1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine was an uprising in protest against mass Jewish Immigration, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, by Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine. It should not be confused with the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. The revolt was unsuccessful but its outcomes had influence on the 1948 Palestine war.
Origins
An early manifestation of the National revolt was the Palestinian general strike which lasted from April to October 1936.
The dissent was influenced by the Qassamite rebellion following the killing of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in 1935 as well as the declaration by Hajj Mohammad Amin al-Husayni of 16 May 1930 as 'Palestine Day' and calling for a General Strike on this day, following the 1929 Buraq (Western Wall) Uprising.
The strike began in Nablus and soon other committees in Haifa, Jenin, Tulkarm and Jerusalem were formed to join the protest.
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Encyclopedia
The 1936–1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine was an uprising in protest against mass Jewish Immigration, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, by Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine. It should not be confused with the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. The revolt was unsuccessful but its outcomes had influence on the 1948 Palestine war.
Origins
An early manifestation of the National revolt was the Palestinian general strike which lasted from April to October 1936.
The dissent was influenced by the Qassamite rebellion following the killing of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in 1935 as well as the declaration by Hajj Mohammad Amin al-Husayni of 16 May 1930 as 'Palestine Day' and calling for a General Strike on this day, following the 1929 Buraq (Western Wall) Uprising.
The strike began in Nablus and soon other committees in Haifa, Jenin, Tulkarm and Jerusalem were formed to join the protest. The demands of the strike were threefold: an end to Jewish immigration, a prohibition of land sales to Jews, and national independence.
While the strike was initially organised by workers and local committees, soon religious leaders and families were involved to help co-ordination although their motivation was not fuelled by religious reasons. This led to the formation on 25 April 1936 of the Arab Higher Committee or HAC.
Revolt
About one month after the general strike started, the leadership group declared a general non-payment of taxes in explicit opposition to Jewish immigration. In the countryside, armed insurrection started sporadically, becoming more organized with time. One particular target of the rebels was the spur line to Haifa of the Trans Arabian Pipeline (TAP) constructed only a few years earlier, this ran from Kirkuk to Sidon. This was repeatedly bombed at various points along its length. Other attacks were on railways (including trains), Jewish settlements, secluded Jewish neighborhoods in the mixed cities, and Jews, both individually and in groups.
The strike was called off in October 1936 and the violence abated for about a year while the Peel Commission deliberated and eventually recommended partition of Palestine. With the rejection of this proposal, the revolt resumed during the autumn of 1937, marked by the assassination of Commissioner Andrews in Nazareth. Violence continued throughout 1938 and eventually petered out in 1939. The decision of the French to crack down on Arab leaders in Damascus may have been a significant factor in stopping the conflict.
Response
The British responded to the violence by greatly expanding their military forces and clamping down on Palestinian dissent. "Administrative detention" (imprisonment without charges or trial), curfews, and house demolitions were among British practices during this period. However, on the first day of the revolt, the UK had no response or action to the attacks. More than 120 Palestinians were sentenced to death and about 40 hanged. The main Palestinian leaders were arrested or expelled. Amin al-Husayni fled from Palestine to escape arrest.
The Haganah (Hebrew for "defense"), a Jewish paramilitary organization, actively supported British efforts to quell the insurgency, which reached 10,000 Arab fighters at their peak during the summer and fall of 1938. Although the British administration didn't officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. In 1931, an underground splinter group broke off from Haganah, calling itself the Irgun organization (or Etzel) The Irgun adopted a policy of retaliation against Palestinians for attacks on Jews.
Outcome
Despite the assistance of 20,000 additional British troops and several thousand Haganah men, the uprising continued for nearly three years. Eighty Jews were killed by terrorist acts during the labour strike, and a total of 415 Jewish deaths were recorded during the whole 1936-1939 Arab Revolt period. By the time it concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Palestinians had been killed; at least 15,000 were wounded and 5,600 were imprisoned. .
The revolt did not achieve its goals, although it is "credited with signifying the birth of the Arab Palestinian identity." It is generally credited with forcing the issuance of the White Paper of 1939 which renounced Britain's intent of creating a Jewish National Home in Palestine, as proclaimed in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Another outcome of the hostilities was the disengagement of the Jewish and Arab economies in Palestine, which were more or less intertwined until that time. For example, whereas the Jewish city of Tel Aviv relied on the nearby Arab seaport of Jaffa, hostilities dictated the construction of a separate Jewish-run seaport for Tel-Aviv. Historians later pointed to the uprising as a pivotal point at which the Jewish population in Palestine became independent and self-sustaining.
During the revolt, British authorities attempted to confiscate all weapons from the Palestinian Arab population. This, and the destruction of the main Arab political leadership in the revolt, greatly hindered their military efforts in the 1948 Palestine war.
See also
External links
- A Zionist point of view
- A Palestinian point of view by Ghassan Kanafani.
- A view from British historian Charles Townshend.
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