1917-1920 The Military Government of Palestine

The price of British rule in Palestine was more than thirteen thousand British and Commonwealth soldiers' lives, lost in the Palestine campaign of the First World War.
Palestine had been devastated by the war - countryside and town alike. Turkish forced conscription had deprived many of the villages of their men, who slowly filtered back home in the chaos of the post-war period. The Turks had confiscated the peasants' livestock either to feed their troops or as pack animals, and had cut down all trees within a ten-mile radius of the railway, including oak, eucalyptus and at least half the country's olive trees, to provide fuel for the Turkish locomotives. … A locust invasion had ravaged the crops in 1915. In the towns, many were starving and typhus had broken out among the thousands of refugees; Turkish prisoners-of-war were suffering from pellagra. The low-lying Jordan valley was largely wasteland, inhabited by malaria-ridden fellahin who lived in mud huts. 'Large areas of their lands were uncultivated and covered with weeds. There were no trees, no vegetables … there was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbours the Bedouin,' reported one of the first British surveys. - Shepherd

When the British occupied Palestine they considered it, like other colonies within the empire, a territory that had been subject to misrule and mismanagement. Unaware of the extensive social transformations of the late Ottoman era, officials in the Palestine administration and in London typically perceived the countryside as a social, cultural, and economic backwater, mired in timeless and stultifying "backwardness." Although this view stemmed from ignorance of the penetrating social and economic effects of the Tanzimat and the steady incorporation of Greater Syria into the world economy, it also derived from racial conceptions concerning the Arabs, and "Levantines" specifically. As noted in the Introduction, the British believed that the Bedouin were the "true" Arabs while the settled majority was seen as dissolute and corrupt and hence lacking the vigor, disposition and capacities necessary for autonomously-driven modern economic development. Emblematic of this view, British officials saw Arab agriculture - the bedrock of the Palestinian economy - as marked by slackness and technological underdevelopment. In turn, as Zeina Ghandour has observed, they further interpreted the state of local agriculture as symptomatic of the purported moral decay in Arab society.14 The supposed deficiencies of local culture and knowledge were abetted in this view by Ottoman law and the "antiquated" land tenure system, which taken together revealed local Arab society's "quasi-feudal" nature.15

Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine 1917-1948 - Naomi Shepherd
FROM CONQUEST TO COLONY

During the nineteenth century, Ottoman rulers had encouraged the traditional Muslim spring festival to be timed as a counterpoint to the Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem by Christian pilgrims, most of them from Tsarist Russia. This would have been a time of inter-ethnic tension even without the advent of Zionism. According to Meinertzhagen, who sent a furious protest to Curzon at the Foreign Office, Colonel Waters-Taylor had actually encouraged the instigators of the riots, who included Haj Amin el Husseini, and Aref el Aref (a scholar and, later, a Mandatory official), in order 'to show the unpopularity of Zionism'. Meinerzhagen resigned. Waters-Taylor was recalled, the organizers of the riots were exiled, and the first of many official enquiries on Palestine took place.

It was significant that a religious festival should have sparked conflict. That the festival was in memory of Moses - a forefather claimed by both Muslims and Jews - only increased the political significance of the pilgrimage. One of the chief elements in the still-embryonic Palestinian national movement was the centrality of Jerusalem and its Muslim shrines. The British image of the Holy Land in anodyne terms, 'sacred to three religions', meant in practice that Jews and Muslims shared many religious and historical sites; but this, rather than forming a bond, was a source of potential confrontation. The Western (Wailing) Wall is in fact the retaining wall of the platform on which stand the Dome of the Rock and the El Aksa mosque. The Jews identified this platform as the site of Solomon's Temple, the Arabs venerated it as the Muslim Noble Sanctuary. The area at the foot of the Western Wall was contested territory. The Jews had long worshipped there only on Muslim sufferance, in a narrow alley packed with Arab traffic and, at times of tension, to a background of deliberate noisy interference.

The combination of so many different subject communities in one small dependency was puzzling to the colonial Civil Servant. The fellahin and the Bedouin reminded them of the settled and nomadic peasantry of Africa and India. The Arabs of the towns aroused their instinctive dislike of the mercantile 'Levantine', as compared with the desert Arab. The professional Arab class aroused their suspicions of the 'Europeanized' colonial, and the culture of the Ottoman notables and Muslim clergy, with whom they had very little informal contact, was foreign to most of them. But in general, Mandate officials felt that with the Arabs they were on sure ground: they had ruled Arabs before. The Zionist Jews, with their competitive skills and political organization, and an efficient lobby in London, were quite outside the colonial experience. The Jews in Palestine who were Europeans resembled not in the least the white settlers in the highlands of Africa and Ceylon or the planters in Malaya with whom colonial officials were familiar.

 

One Palestine Complete - Tom Segev
The Zionists blamed the riots on the British: "This regime has declared open war on the Jews of Palestine," wrote one labor movement leader.32 General Allenby had to defend his men against an even more serious accusation: his political officer, Richard Meinertzhagen, claimed that several of the military administration's officers had initiated the riots to prove there was no chance of carrying out the Jewish national home policy. Allenby's chief of staff, Colonel Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor, had given Haj Amin al-Husseini explicit instructions on how to "show the world" that Palestine's Arabs would not stand for Jewish rule, Meinertzhagen maintained. The officers involved were antisemites and anti-Zionists, under the sway of Arabic romanticism, he charged. Meinertzhagen also called the riot a pogrom. Ten years previously he had visited Odessa, where he had stumbled into an anti-Jewish pogrom, and he had never gotten over the shock of it. He registered his accusations directly with Foreign Secretary Curzon. Allenby threatened to resign; Meinertzhagen was ordered out of Palestine.33

Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 - Benny Morris
If in the Galilee Panhandle it appeared that the anti-Zionist hostilities were a sideshow in the wider Arab-French-British struggle, to the south Arab violence took on a clearly anti-Zionist direction, albeit prompted and aggravated by the winds of xenophobic nationalism sweeping through Syria. The Jewish defeat in the panhandle helped fan these winds; in Arab Jerusalem, for example, there was a rumor that sixteen hundred Jews had died in the skirmishes in the North.128 During February and March there were frequent depredations by Arab villagers and Bedouin bands along the Syrian-Palestinian border south of Lake Hula. Armed marauders regularly crossed the border from the Golan into the Jordan Valley, Jewish field hands were ambushed, farm animals killed or stolen, settlements-Rosh Pina and Yesod Hama'ala-fired upon. A serious attack took place on April 27 against Ayelet HaShahar. About a hundred Arabs, of the neighboring 'Arab al-Heib and 'Arab al-Kirad tribes and from the Golan, surrounded the settlement, which had some thirty arms-bearing adults, and opened fire. The Arabs withdrew three hours later, leaving one dead behind; none of the settlers was hit. Almost two months later, on June 10, marauders murdered a farmer from Yesod Hama'ala, despite the presence in the moshava of a British army platoon.129 But the focus of Arab violence against the Jews in 1920 was to be Jerusalem. On February 27, under Zionist pressure, chief OETA administrator Major-General Louis Bols stated in an interview in the Arabic-language daily Marat alSharq that Britain intended to implement the Balfour Declaration. The announcement coincided with the convening in Damascus of the Second Syrian Arab Congress, where Palestinian delegates called for a renewal of the struggle against Jewish immigration. At home the announcement prompted coordinated demonstrations, shop closures, petitions, and placards reading "Down with Zionism" and "Death to the Jews." A second wave of protests in most of Palestine's towns, in which a number of Jews were assaulted, took place on March 8. The demonstrators were enthused by news of the evacuation of the panhandle and chanted: "Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs" and "Kill the Jews" (Itbah al-Yahud).130 The resolution by the Syrian Congress on March 7, declaring Faisal king of Syria and Palestine, and Arab hopes that Palestine would indeed be incorporated into his kingdom, fueled the demonstrations and helped trigger the climactic outbursts the following month. Though it ran counter to Whitehall policy, Faisal's coronation as king of Palestine as well as Syria had been promoted by OETA officials such as Col. Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor, chief of staff, who on January 20 had encouraged Faisal to insist on an "undivided" Syria, in which Britain would recognize him as "overlord." And on March 8, immediately after Faisal's coronation, chief administrator Bols cabled Whitehall urging it to recognize Faisal. Bols was supported by Allenby, but London demurred: "How would recognition of Faisal as King be reconciled with Zionist claims?" responded Curzon.131
The views of these officers were known to the Palestinian Arab leadership (and to Faisal's circle in Damascus); former Ottoman officer and Jerusalem notable Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, returning from Damascus to Palestine on April 1, told his colleagues that the British administration supported Faisal's kingship over both Syria and Palestine.132 Such thinking, which could only fire Palestinian Arab anti-Zionism, was complemented by rumors of an impending Arab rising in Palestine. What was about to happen appears to have been clear to everyone but the British. On March 12 Jabotinsky wrote from Jerusalem to Weizmann: "The pogrom is liable to break out here any day."133
In the first days of April, Arabs from the surrounding countryside poured into Jerusalem's Old City for the week-long Nabi Musa and Esther celebrations, which fell at the same time as Passover. On the morning of April 4 a procession of nearly six hundred pilgrims from Hebron, a town known for its Muslim orthodoxy, entered the city. There were cheers for "King" Faisal and Arab independence; Jerusalem mayor Musa Kazim al-Husseini swore the gathered crowd to spill their blood for Palestine. 'Arif al-'Arif, the editor of Suriyya alJanubiyya, declared: "If we don't use force against the Zionists and against the Jews, we will never be rid of them." And the crowd chanted "Nashrab dam alYahud"-we will drink the blood of the Jews.134 The rally had a joint Muslim-Christian tone and composition. One placard read: "Shall we give back the country to a people who crucified our Lord Jesus?" As the demonstration drew to a close, the head of the Hebronite pilgrims shouted, "Itbah al-Yahud"-and violence erupted. The crowd went on a rampage, moving toward West Jerusalem; Jews on Jaffa Street were stoned and Jewish shops looted. Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian Arab educator and diarist, described what he saw:
[A] riot broke out, the people began to run about and stones were thrown at the Jews. The shops were closed and there were screams. … I saw a Zionist [that is, Jewish British] soldier covered in dust and blood. … Afterwards, I saw one Hebronite approach a Jewish shoeshine boy, who hid behind a sack in one of the [Old City] wall's corners next to Jaffa Gate, and take his box and beat him [the shoeshine boy] over the head. He screamed and began to run, his head bleeding and the Hebronite left him and returned to the procession. … The riot reached its zenith. All shouted, "Muhammad's religion was born with the sword" … I immediately walked to the municipal garden … my soul is nauseated and depressed by the madness of humankind.135
Most of the violence took place west of the Old City walls, along Jaffa Road. Arab policemen joined the mob, which, according to Sakakini, tried to stab a British policeman. A British military pilot, on the scene by chance, tried to stop the violence and was clubbed to death. The riotous procession then abruptly turned back from Jaffa Street into the Old City, and the excited pilgrims turned on Jewish shops and pedestrians, brandishing clubs, knives, and stones. The Arab police contingent responsible for the Old City either looked on passively or joined in the mayhem.
Jerusalem's newly formed Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, had sent groups, some of them armed, to areas outside the walls but had failed to station a contingent inside the Old City's Jewish Quarter. After the eruption two groups, armed with sticks and metal rods, were dispatched toward the Old City but barred from entering by British troops. The British belatedly sent contingents of Indian troops to protect the Jewish Quarter and disperse the rioters. Inexplicably, that night Governor Storrs ordered the Indian troops to leave the Old City. The following morning (April 5) the rioting resumed. Again British troops at the gates prevented Jewish relief from entering, though a few armed men in medical garb managed to infiltrate in ambulances. The British declared martial law, and troops reentered the Old City and disarmed both sides. The violence continued, but on a low level, the following day as well. The Haganah managed to remove from the Old City approximately three hundred Jews who lived in isolated houses outside the Jewish quarter. Only on April 7 was order fully restored.
Palestinian political associations and branches of the Damascus-based nationalist groups, such as al-Nadi al-Arabi, appear to have had a hand in organizing the episode.136 The three days of rioting resembled nothing more than a pogrom; nothing like it had been seen in Palestine during the centuries of Ottoman rule. The Arab mobs, sensing the atmosphere in Government House, had shouted, "Al-Dawla ma'ana" (the Government is with us). In a number of cases Arabs protected their Jewish neighbors, but six Jews were killed, a number raped, more than two hundred injured, and much property, including several synagogues, was destroyed.137 Several Arabs were also killed and dozens injured by British troops and police and by Jewish defenders.138 The British investigation of the outbreak, embodied in the Palin Report, found that "all the evidence goes to show that these attacks were of a cowardly and treacherous description, mostly against old men, women, and children-frequently in the back."139
But in a memorandum presented to Bols by Muslim and Christian notables on April 6, the blame for the outbreak was laid squarely on the Jews. "Jewish youngsters," organized by "the Zionist Organization," had "cursed and blasphemed" the Muslim religious leaders, "and the matter ended with the slaughter of Muslims and Christians, including women and children," said the notables. Two of the Arabs' main demands were the disbanding of the Jewish Legion, some of whose members had helped stave off the rioters, and of the Haganah, and the expulsion of the Zionist Commission.140 No Jews were killed in Jewish West Jerusalem, which was patrolled by the Haganah. Jabotinsky played a leading role in organizing this new group. In the summer and autumn of 1919, a number of activists, headed by two veterans of HaShomer, Rachel Yana'it and Zvi Nadav, had come together and begun training and acquiring arms. During the winter of 1919-20, they were joined by demobilized soldiers of the American battalion of the Jewish Legion, who brought with them their guns and some ammunition. In September, Jabotinsky was discharged from the Legion for political agitation and joined the self-defense activists, bringing with him members of the Maccabee sports association. In March 1920 the group had crystallized against the backdrop of growing Arab agitation. In Jerusalem a "City Defense Council" was set up, headed by Jabotinsky. Its activities, including training (mostly without weapons), were completely open. Jabotinsky believed and hoped that the British would sanction them. By early April the Haganah (Defense), as it was now called, fielded some two hundred "troops," with about fifty rifles and a handful of pistols and grenades.141
On April 7, in an act of appeasement toward the Arabs, the British arrested Jabotinsky and sentenced him to fifteen years' hard labor. More than a dozen other Haganah members were each given three years' hard labor. On the other hand, most of the Arab rioters arrested were given light sentences. Jewish commentators compared the British behavior toward the rioters and the defenders with that of the Russians during the pogroms.
OETA's appeasement of the Arabs was not to end with this. As soon as the rioting started, the military administration halted Jewish immigration and mounted raids on Jewish offices (including Weizmann's) and homes to search for arms. The secretary of the Zionist Commission was arrested, as were dozens of Haganah members. Tight censorship was imposed on all news coming out of Palestine. Only on April 13 was the "Jewish version" of events published in England and the United States. Months later the report of the Palin commission of inquiry upheld the Jewish complaints of Arab responsibility and (implicitly) the charge of British-Arab collusion. OETA's decision to withdraw the British contingents from Jerusalem on April 5 was roundly condemned as a bad mistake. But the report was never published. One of the more persuasive witnesses before the commission had been Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, Clayton's replacement (since September 1919) as OETA's chief political officer. He told the board that British officialdom during the riots had taken the side of the Arabs. He also reported to the Foreign Office directly, on April 14, 1920, that Allenby was not carrying out official British policy. Indeed, he accused Bols and his fellow officers of causing the riots. Later Meinertzhagen jotted down in his diary: "I find myself alone out here, among gentiles, in upholding Zionism. … And that is the irony of the whole situation, for I am also imbued with anti-Semitic feelings."142 Meinertzhagen was fired soon after sending his dispatch to the Foreign Office.143