1928 was a turning point in Palestine. The place was always a tinder-box with the least excuse a cause for exploding tempers. One such incident involved a simple bedroom modesty screen. On 23 September 1928, as Yom Kippur was approaching, a very sacred festival to the Jews, a screen was spotted against the Western Wall (other names used in Hebrew, HaKotel HaMa’aravi and commonly the Wailing Wall). The screen was part of the ceremony of the Jews to segregate the men and women worshippers. This was blown into a charge that it represented Zionism and the implementation of Balfour and that a synagogue would eventually be built there. Despite the assurances of the elderly Jewish beadle that it would be removed at the end of Yom Kippur, the British Constable, Duff, organised a violent heavy-handed attack and removed it. The following months saw hundreds of deaths. This was not the only issue that was fomenting violence as there was also the issue of names. Many local neighbourhoods had been given Arabic names; the Jews wanted them to be bi-lingual and the name Palestine itself became a controversy. This name, given by Romans, was offensive to many Jews and they wanted the name Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) to be restored and in classic British fudge, stamps were produced with Palestine E.I. This in turn provoked Arab anger. When a nation is established it has its own national anthem and flag and both these became an issue, with British representatives never knowing how to behave at public functions when they were played or raised. Even Encyclopaedia Britannia became involved, producing the Israel flag as the flag of Palestine.
Weizmann also had issues within the Zionist faction, with David Ben-Gurion on one side and Ze’ev Jabotinsky on the other. Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk, then part of Russia, and was one of the major figures in the establishment of a Jewish State; he would go on to declare its independence and be its first Prime Minister. He was an astute politician and saw working with Britain as a means to achieve the aims of the Zionists. Jabotinsky was born in Odessa and established the Betar, a Jewish young radical group in Latvia. He had separated from the main Zionist movement and formed Union of Zionists Revisionists (Hatzohar). He was in a hurry and demanded a Jewish State immediately. The Irgun Tzvai Leumi (I.Z.L), a military arm, would emerge under his leadership. Once more, the British Commissioner was replaced and Sir John Chancellor took the hot seat in November 1928. He was totally inexperienced in Palestinian affairs and even suggested that the Zionists should purchase the Wailing Wall, not appreciating the sensitivity of the place. The inevitable happened with the Arab population objecting and calling conferences to protest. The Wall became a place of constant conflict with Jews being pelted with stones as they prayed. The incident was pushing both Jews and Arabs to the extremes. A procession of Jews to change the Ark and scrolls at the wall was considered as a possible flashpoint and the British wanted it cancelled. The Jewish authorities agreed, with many seeing it as weakness and others as sensible in the difficult environment. On 14 August 1929, the Jews called for a fast to recognise the destruction of the Temple and thousands gathered at the wall, with flags and speeches without any trouble. The Arab community then responded a few days later with a counter-demonstration to commemorate Muhammed’s birthday. After Friday prayers that day, a number of Arab worshippers left the Mosque and entered the wall area to attack Jews and beat them, defacing sacred Torahs in the process. Young Jews gathered into groups to protect the people as many were stabbed in the attacks. Once more a small incident would create a bloodbath.
A young Jewish boy, Avraham Mizrahi, was playing with a football that rolled into an Arab family’s vegetable patch. The attempt to retrieve it led to a young girl from the family refusing to hand it over and a fracas led to Mizrahi being hit by an iron bar and dying. That evening an Arab pedestrian was attacked and injured. An aide to the high commissioner had said the best result was if both died and troubled flared as a result, causing casualties and deaths. The journey was going to get rougher. Hebron on 23 August 1929 saw Arab villagers streaming into Jerusalem to pray at the Temple Mount, but many were armed with sticks and knives and the City was under huge tension. Gunshots were heard on the Temple Mount which sent fear through the Jewish community. An Arab preacher gave a nationalistic sermon calling on ‘the Islamic faithful to fight against the Jews to the last drop of their blood’. Worshippers then ran through the streets attacking Jews and property. The police force, mainly Arabs, and the very small British police were helpless and refused to fire on the mob as long as only Jews were being attacked – it was feared any attempt to deal with the Arab rioters would result in worse trouble. The aide to the High Commissioner considered this a wise decision. Some Jews with weapons in one area defended the population and a request to the British for help was initially ignored. As well as multiple casualties there were eight Jews and five Arabs killed. This would not be the end of the violence.
In Hebron the next day, another brutal event occurred when an Arab mob attacked homes. Raymond Cafferata a British police officer who was in Hebron gave testimony to the horror as he reported:
‘an Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me but missed: he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him on the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood and a man I recognised as a police constable, named Issa Sherrif from Jaffa … He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into another room, shouting in Arabic, “your honour I am a policeman”. I got into the room and shot him.’
In this incidence sixty-seven Jews and nine Arabs were killed and many other massacres were carried out in other places. The whole series of killings all stemmed from the fear and hatred the Arabs had about the Jewish religion, politics and in some cases envy over Jewish possessions. The good, in the midst of bloody hatred, was that many Arab families protected Jews, hiding them in their homes; otherwise the carnage would have been even greater. Before this current event of disturbances ended, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs had been killed.
The High Commissioner, now Sir John Chancellor, expressed his opinion that the Balfour Declaration was a blunder and by 1930 the Jewish Homeland was no closer as the British became more perplexed as to a solution. Ben-Gurion continued his progress towards a State enthusiastically, founding Mapai on 5 January 1930, a merger of the Hapoel Hatzair and Ahdut HaAvoda which came from the moderate, wing of the Marxist Zionist socialist Poale Zion he led. This party would play a major role in Israel’s future. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, declared 16 May 1930 as ‘Palestine Day’ and called for a General Strike which lasted until October. This led to British intervention and the British issued yet another White Paper1 on Palestine which in its opening stated the obvious:
‘In a country such as Palestine, where the interests and aims of two sections of the community are at present diverse and in some respects conflicting, it is too much to expect that any declaration of policy will fully satisfy the aspirations of either party.’
Following the disturbances, the Paper gave a glimpse at frustration in government that, ‘they have received little assistance from either side in healing the breach’. Ramsay MacDonald is quoted as confirming the mandate was ‘an international obligation from which there can be no question of receding’. It has to be borne in mind that this included the Balfour Declaration. The government were under pressure from Zionists on one hand for a move to a Jewish State and the Arabs wanted a constitution that would give them control of Palestine. The Paper declares:
‘It becomes, therefore, essential that at the outset His Majesty’s Government should make it clear that they will not be moved, by any pressure or threats, from the path laid down in the Mandate, and from the pursuit of a policy which aims at promoting the interests of the inhabitants of Palestine, both Arabs and Jews, in a manner which shall be consistent with the obligations which the Mandate imposes.’
The White Paper pointed to 1922, when a full statement had been made on the situation and the Arabs would not cooperate with the government, but the Zionist organisation had written to confirm their acceptance of the British position and the paper confirmed the 1922 definition of a ‘Jewish Homeland’. The thorny issue of immigration was addressed, confirming the right of Jews to immigrate but reminding everyone that immigration had to be at levels which the country could accomodate. The document criticises the Arab leaders who had rejected all the initiatives to involve them in positions to advise government and effect decisions in Palestine. The Jewish organisations were also criticised for only offering employment to Jews. The document did not appear to offer any real hope for advancement. Weizmann put pressure on the government and the Paper quietly disappeared and immigration was unaffected. One concession that he had gained was a written memo from Ramsay MacDonald that the way must be found to give the Zionists preference. Despite all Weizmann’s work, he resigned from the presidency of the Zionist organisation and was replaced by Sokolow but the more aggressive Jabotinsky was determined to force change in policy. At the Zionist Congress in July 1931, he would seek to redirect the thrust of Zionism in Palestine. During the Congress, there were a great number of delegates who protested at Weizmann’s policy towards the British, objecting to his full cooperation with them. Jabotinsky and the Revisionists were most strident and called on the organization to adopt a resolution with goals for the establishment of a Jewish majority and Jewish State in Palestine to include Transjordan. The Congress rejected this which led to Jabotinsky destroying his delegate’s card and crying, ‘This is not a Zionist congress!’
The High Commissioner was again changed in November 1931 with Arthur Wauchope taking the role. From a military background, he was very favourable to the Zionist cause and in his time immigration trebled and it would be said of him that ‘the first four years of his term were the heyday of Zionist history in Palestine’. By 1933, the situation was on the surface peaceful with few incidents, but this belied an undercurrent that was growing towards violence on a great scale. In April, Allenby was in Jerusalem at a YMCA ceremony where a stone was engraved with words from his speech with his hope for the future:
‘Here is a place whose atmosphere is peace, where political and religious jealousies can be forgotten and international unity can be fostered and developed’
Laudable as these thoughts were, the reality was different as Meinertzhagen wrote in his diary in March of that year, that he, ‘would not live to see the actual establishment of the Jewish State’.2 As a military man, he knew the reality that was Palestine and indeed he was right. The General Strike of 1930 sowed seeds that would grow into violence over the years and in October 1933, a demonstration by Arabs across the country brought clashes with police which flared up and by the end of the protests official figures gave 30 people dead and 200 injured, with one Arab account reading:
‘Today Palestine became a battlefield … Demonstrations everywhere, attacks on police and railway stations, hundreds of dead and wounded. The hospitals are overflowing and tempers are hot with anger’.
In 1935, the situation deteriorated when Muhammed Iz-al-Qassam arrived from Syria. He was an Imam and Islamic teacher who had called for a jihad against the Catholic Italians when they invaded Libya in 1911 and had joined the Turkish army in the First World War. He returned to Syria and fought as a guerrilla against the French and when he came to Palestine he was appointed as an Imam in Haifa and came into service under the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem travelling around the villages. There, he encouraged the Arab villagers to form terrorist groups to attack the British and the Jews which led to eruptions of violence with deaths and destruction of Jewish farms, and his sermons gave vent to the simmering hatred of both the British and Jews that had had been developing over the years. Al-Qassam took to the hills and conducted a guerrilla war from there.
He was eventually hunted down and killed in a gun battle with British forces, but the fire was lit and the Arab revolt spread. The guerrillas attacked the British forces and attempted assassinations of British officials and Jews and their leaders became the target as the drive for Arab national recognition took hold. Initially, it was mainly the British who were the object of the revolt. It spread and more and more, involving Jews, bringing pressure for Jews to retaliate with their own armed force. Ben-Gurion himself was pressed by the Haganah to allow them to act against the revolt. The Haganah had grown out of groups who had the role of protecting Jewish settlements since 1911. They were a defence force and had unofficially been helping the British in their dealing with the revolt; now they wanted to be allowed to take a more aggressive stance. Ben-Gurion demanded they refrain and told them he would resign if they refused as he was pursuing talks with Arab leaders and was looking for solutions, even the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab area, believing that half a loaf was better than none. His restraint was not welcomed by another Jewish para-military group, the Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi (National Military Organization), also known as ‘Irgun’ by the British and its Hebrew acronym, ‘Etzel’. They had split from Haganah in 1931, seeking to give a more military response to Arab aggression. They saw no need for restraint and began a campaign of terrorism against Arabs with killings and bombings of Arab coffee-houses and market-places. The situation had become a bloody reign of terror from elements within both sides of the Palestinian divide. The British responded and on capturing Etzel terrorists, they too were subjected to the same brutal treatment as Arab terrorists. Tensions grew within the Jewish community and violent encounters took place between Etzel and Haganah members. Eventually, Ben-Gurion could no longer resist the pressure to restrain the Haganah and Special Operations Units were formed to find Arabs who had killed Jews and eliminate them but they also would target British soldiers and anyone collaborating with them. Blood was now on the hands of British, Arabs and Jews and many in all three communities were disgusted at the descent into this bloody morass.
In June 1936, a commission came to Palestine to carry out an inquiry under the chairmanship of William Robert Wellesley Peel, 1st Earl Peel, a former Secretary of State to India. Its terms of reference were:
‘To ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances along with enquiring into the manner in which the Mandate for Palestine is being implemented in relation to the obligations of the Mandatory towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively … and to ascertain whether, upon a proper construction of the terms of the Mandate, either the Arabs or the Jews have any legitimate grievances on account of the way in which the Mandate has been or is being implemented.’3
It unremarkably stated that the reasons for the disturbances were, ‘the desire of the Arabs for national independence and their hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish National Home’. This was not news to anyone familiar with Palestine. With a nod to the developments in Europe and Germany, Peel noted, ‘The National Home is bent on forcing the pace of its development, not only because of the desire of the Jews to escape from Europe, but because of anxiety as to the future in Palestine’. The Commission gave a hint of the government’s real intention for it. ‘The gulf between the races is thus already wide and will continue to widen if the present Mandate is maintained’. The British now wanted a way out of the mandate. Peel knew the problem was not resolvable under present policies, only palliatives: ‘They cannot cure the trouble. The disease is so deep-rooted that in the Commissioners’ firm conviction the only hope of a cure lies in a surgical operation’. Once more the partition of Palestine was the solution for Peel. The Arab community rejected the findings and the Zionists were in a quandary. The Arabs would not cede any land to Jews and the Jews in turn thought the idea of a Jewish State of some sort was a foothold into the Jewish Homeland that had been promised whilst others rejected the idea. Indeed, the whole project would have involved what today would be called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and would have repeated the despicable scenes of India’s partitioning. Ultimately the Supreme Muslim Council rejected the plan as did the Zionists, over the area of land they would have been given. A new development was now being added to the Palestinian brew – one that would be terrifying in its consequences.