1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
A popular uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against the British administration of the Palestine Mandate, later known as The Great Revolt (Arabic: al-Thawra al- Kubra)[10] or The Great Palestinian Revolt (Thawrat Filastin al-Kubra),[11] or the Palestinian Revolution, lasted from 1936 until 1939, demanding Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases with the stated goal of establishing a "Jewish National Home".[12]
The uprising coincided with a peak in the influx of immigrant Jews,[13] and with the growing plight of the rural fellahin rendered landless, who as they moved to metropolitan centers to escape their abject poverty found themselves socially marginalized.[14][a] Since the Battle of Tel Hai in 1920, Jews and Arabs had been involved in a cycle of attacks and counter-attacks, and the immediate spark for the uprising was the murder of two Jews by a Qassamite band, and the retaliatory killing by Jewish gunmen of two Arab laborers, incidents which triggered a flare-up of violence across Palestine.[16] A month into the disturbances, Amin al-Husseini, president of the Arab Higher Committee and Mufti of Jerusalem, declared 16 May 1936 as 'Palestine Day' and called for a general strike. The revolt was branded by many in the Jewish Yishuv as "immoral and terroristic", often compared to fascism and Nazism.[17] Ben Gurion, however, described Arab causes as fear of growing Jewish economic power, opposition to mass Jewish immigration and fear of the English identification with Zionism.[17]
The general strike lasted from April to October 1936. The revolt is often analysed in terms of two distinct phases.[18][19] The first phase was one of spontaneous popular resistance which was only, in a second moment, seized on by the urban and elitist Arab Higher Committee, which gave the movement an organized shape and was focused mainly on strikes and other forms of political protest, in order to secure a political result.[20] By October 1936, this phase had been defeated by the British civil administration using a combination of political concessions, international diplomacy (involving the rulers of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen)[21] and the threat of martial law.[22] The second phase, which began late in 1937, was a peasant-led resistance movement provoked by British repression in 1936[23] in which increasingly British forces were targeted as the army itself increasingly targeted the villages it thought supportive of the revolt.[24] During this phase, the rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army and the Palestine Police Force using repressive measures that were intended to intimidate the whole population and undermine popular support for the revolt.[25] A more dominant role on the Arab side was taken by the Nashashibi clan, whose NDP party quickly withdrew from the rebel Arab Higher Committee, led by the radical faction of Amin al-Husseini, and instead sided with the British – dispatching "Fasail al-Salam" (the "Peace Bands") in coordination with the British Army against nationalist and Jihadist Arab "Fasail" units (literally "bands").
According to official British figures covering the whole revolt, the army and police killed more than 2,000 Arabs in combat, 108 were hanged,[8] and 961 died because of what they described as "gang and terrorist activities".[26] In an analysis of the British statistics, Walid Khalidi estimates 19,792 casualties for the Arabs, with 5,032 dead:[b] 3,832 killed by the British and 1,200 dead due to intracommunal terrorism, and 14,760 wounded.[26] By one estimate, ten percent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population between 20 and 60 was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled.[28] Estimates of the number of Palestinian Jews killed are up to several hundred.[29]
The Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine was unsuccessful, and its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 Palestine war.[30] It caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist militias like the Haganah, whereas on the Palestinian Arab side, the revolt forced the flight into exile of the main Palestinian Arab leader of the period, al-Husseini.
Inspiration from abroad
General strikes had been used in neighbouring Arab countries to place political pressures on Western colonial powers.[54] In Iraq a general strike in July 1931, accompanied by organised demonstrations in the streets, led to independence for the former British mandate territory under Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and full membership of the League of Nations in October 1932.[55]The Syrian national movement had used a general strike from 20 January to 6 March in 1936 which, despite harsh reprisals, brought about negotiations in Paris that led to a Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence.[56] This showed that determined economic and political pressure could challenge a fragile imperial administration.[57]
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