The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936-1939)

TED SWEDENBURG

Although the notables never entirely abandoned their affection for Britain since service in the mandate administration was still profitable, disaffection for British policies slowly undermined their confidence in diplomatic discussions between 'gentlemen' as the best means of resolving the national question.

Rapidly changing agrarian conditions during the 1920s were potentially more unsettling to a'yan hegemony. Land purchases by the Zionists continued apace, resulting in the dispossession of increasing numbers of peasants. The notables' appeals that the government halt the process were ineffectual. Moreover, by 1928, land sales to the Zionists by Palestinian landowners had eclipsed those by non-Palestinians." A section of the notable class was thus enriching itself through land sales to Zionists and contributing directly to peasant landlessness, especially in the northern and central plains. This portion of the a `yam, clustered around the leadership of the Nashashibi clan, which opposed the Husayni dominance in the national movement, generally comprised its wealthier and commercial elements, who used their profits for urban construction and expansion of citrus production.

Small but growing numbers of peasant holders also sold their lands to Zionist developers, usually not for profit but to pay of debts. Peasant indebtedness to usurers who charged high rates of interest was exacerbated by the mandate government's rationalization of rural property taxes, now set at a fixed percentage based on the net productivity of the soil (that is, minus the cost of production). This meant that the capital-intensive Jewish agricultural enterprises paid lower rates because of higher 'labor costs.' Regressive indirect taxes added to the peasants' financial burden. The weight of taxation therefore fell disproportionately on poor Palestinian fellahin, whose contributions helped to finance industrial and agricultural development in the Jewish sector and to pay Britain's expenses in defending the Jewish 'national home."' The British administration also ensured that taxes were more efficiently collected by enlisting the services of the village mukkars (headmen) to maintain rural security and to pass on taxes and information to the government"

As a consequence of such pressures, by 1930 some 30 per cent of all Palestinian villagers were totally landless, while as many as 75 to 80 per cent held insufficient land to meet their subsistence needs." Some peasants made up this imbalance by renting additional farmlands, but most now depended on outside sources of income for survival. During peak periods of economic activity in the mandate, about one-half of the male fellahin workforce (over 100,000 persons) engaged in seasonal wage employment outside the village (on road or construction projects, in citrus harvesting and packing, and so forth). Often the entire male population of a village was recruited to work as a team on short-term construction projects." Thus Palestinian rural villagers no longer filled a purely 'peasant' position in the economic structure; increasingly they assumed a dual economic role as peasants and as casual laborers.

The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936-1939) 481

So while notable landowners and moneylenders maintained economic dominance over the villages, particularly through client networks, the new experiences of peasants in the wider labor market altered their 'traditional' fellahin subjectivities and provided alternative sources of income.

Indebtedness and expropriation at the hands of Zionist colonies forced a significant sector of the peasantry to emigrate permanently to the rapidly growing metropolises of Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. There they worked mainly as casual laborers and as a 'scuffling petty bourgeoisie' in petty trading and services, a class situation typical of urban centers in underdeveloped colonial social formations." Permanent wage work was difficult to come by in the face of competition from Jewish workers who monopolized positions in the more advanced Jewish economic sector. The work that Arab workers did obtain was extremely low-paying, due to an abundant labor supply and the difficulties inherent in organizing casual workers. As a consequence, the costs of Arab labor were never fully met by wages but were subsidized by the workers' access to subsistence agriculture and support networks at home in the village."

These rural-to-urban migrants did not remain passive in the face of such conditions. On the contrary, they set up various associations based on village of origin which ignored the bamula distinctions that were so divisive at home." They also joined semi-political organizations headed by artisans, enlisted in trade unions whenever possible, and came in contact with militant religious reformers like Shaykh 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam. Their entry into the urban wage workforce helped to weaken clan, village, and regional divisions; these new experiences also had an impact on the home villages, with which migrants maintained close contact. Thus the old cleavages that buttressed patron-client networks were slowly breaking down under the impact of capitalist development The nationalist leadership tried to reverse the process by making frequent appeals to the British on behalf of the impoverished peasantry, but this had little effect on British policies or on economic conditions." Furthermore, the fellahin were increasingly skeptical of the cyan's sincerity. By 1927, according to a British official, the notables were apprehensive that the peasantry `show[ed] a growing tendency to distinguish between national and Effendi [notable] class interest.'62

The brewing crisis in agriculture, closely tied to steady Zionist progress in the 1920s (between 1919 and 1929 the Jewish population of Palestine had doubled, reaching 156,000 persons"), was a major factor in igniting the violence that erupted over expanded Zionist claims to the Wailing Wall at Jerusalem (known by Arabs as the Buraq, the western wall of the Haram alSharif, third holiest shrine in Islam). The Mufti as usual tried to settle the problem through the good offices of the British, at the same time attempting to allay the anger of the populace, who saw in Zionist 'religious' expansionism a condensed form of the general danger Zionism posed to Palestinian Arab

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sovereignty." A series of provocative demonstrations at the wall by Zionist extremists took place during 1929. Finally, on 23 August, peasant villagers, influenced by the propaganda work of nationalist militants, arrived in Jerusalem for Friday prayers armed with knives and clubs. Hajj Amin made every effort to calm the crowds, but radical religious shaykhs made speeches inciting them to action." Violence broke out against Jews in Jerusalem and quickly spread throughout the country; British forces restored order in brutal fashion.

The widespread nature of the violence demonstrated that the mass of the population was ready to take direct action against the Zionist threat, independently of the cautious notable leadership. Unfortunately they could also be incited to ugly sectarian violence, which assumed the dimensions of a pogrom at Hebron and Safad. One of the most important forms of organization to emerge from this outbreak was the guerrilla band known as the Green Hand Gang established by Ahmad Tafish in the Galilee hills in October 1929. Composed of men associated with radical circles who had taken part in the August uprising, the band launched several attacks on Zionist colonies and British forces in the north.66 The band's organization probably resembled that of the gangs of peasant bandits who traditionally operated in the Palestine hills and who were a growing security problem in the 1920s.67 But unlike them, Ahmad Tafish's band had an overt political purpose. Although quickly subdued, the Green Hand Gang aroused considerable sympathy among the peasantry who, the Shaw Commission concluded in 1930, were 'probably more politically minded than many of the people of Europe.'68 This atmosphere of popular agitation provided new opportunities for alternative political forces within the national movement to challenge notable hegemony.

HARBINGERS OF REVOLT, 1930-35

The early 1930s were characterized by extremely unstable conditions, which the Palestinian zu'ama were incapable of controlling. Contradictions piled one on top of another, ushering in a series of crises that, by fits and starts, led to the explosion of 1936.

One major destabilizing factor was the global depression. Due chiefly to forces released by the worldwide economic downturn, Jewish immigration to Palestine jumped sharply in the early 1930s. Between 1931 and 1935 the Jewish community grew from 175,000 to 400,000 persons, or from 17 to 31 per cent of the total population of Palestine. The advance of anti-Semitism in Poland, the tightening of the US quota system in 1929, and the triumph of Nazism in Germany all contributed to the floodtide of immigration to Palestine.69

The effects of Jewish immigration upon Palestinian Arab society were uneven. Between the late 1920s and 1932, the country suffered a recession and a steep rise in Arab unemployment. But with the refugee influx, the economy expanded in the 1933-36 period, while the rest of the world (except the Soviet Union) languished in deep depression. As a result of an agreement, known as the Ha'avara, between the World Zionist Organization and the Nazis, Jews leaving Germany were able to import large amounts of capital into Palestine. Nearly 60 per cent of all capital invested in Palestine between August 1933 and September 1939 entered by means of the Ha'avara." This capital inflow permitted wealthy Jews greatly to increase their investments in industry, building, and citriculture. In addition, rapid British development of Haifa as a strategic eastern Mediterranean port meant the construction of a new harbor, an oil pipeline (which began pumping oil from Iraq in 1935), refineries, and a railroad during the same period." As a consequence, job opportunities for Arab workers expanded. The greatest share of jobs, however, went to Jewish workers, as Zionist leaders and especially the Histadrut (the Zionist labor federation) made sure that the burgeoning Jewish economic sector provided for the new Jewish immigrants. This caused resentment among Arab workers and led to clashes with Jews over access to jobs." The economy suffered another recession from 1936 to 1939, which affected semi-proletarianized Arab workers much more deeply than largely unionized Jewish labor.

The capital influx accompanying Jewish immigration increased the pace of land purchases as well. Zionist acquisitions from large Palestinian owners and small peasants now assumed greater importance than in the 1920s." An increasingly desperate economic situation constrained peasants to sell their lands, for by 1936 the average debt of a peasant family-25 to 35 pounds per year-equaled or surpassed their average annual income of 27 pounds!' The money peasants earned from land sales usually did little more than release them from debt and propel them toward the urban slums. Due to inflated real-estate prices, large Palestinian landowners, on the other hand, could make huge profits by selling their estates to the Zionists. Some owners arbitrarily raised rents to force their tenants off the land prior to concluding such a sale, in order to avoid paying compensation to the peasants!' A law, decreed in 1933, extending greater rights to tenants contributed to a noticeable increase in disputes between landlords and peasants over tenancy rights. Militant nationalists were involved in encouraging such conflicts.76 By the mid-1930s the government was routinely forced to call out large numbers of police in order to evict sharecroppers from sold properties as, more and more frequently, peasants resisted dispossession through violent means."

The bankruptcy of the notables' policies was therefore increasingly apparent they had made no progress toward achieving national independence and were incapable of stemming the Zionist tide of increasing population,

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land settlement, and economic development. The ayan's inability to achieve successes threatened their hold over the national movement and made it difficult for them to claim the discourses of nationalism or even Islam as their exclusive property. Moreover, the notable front had splintered over disagreements on national strategy. Opposition to Husayni leadership crystallized around the Nashashibi clan, which represented the richest landowners, citrus growers, and entrepreneurs. More heavily involved than other notables in land sales to the Zionists, and the greateit beneficiaries of citrus exports to England, the Nashashibi-led groups of the notable-mercantile class opposed pan-Arab unity and was ready to accept less than total independence from Britain." This group, which established the National Defense Party in 1934, had a certain base of support through its patron-client networks."

NOTES

62. Nels Johnson, Islam and the Politics of Meaning in Palestinian Nationalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 37.
63. David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch (New York: D. Appleton, 1977), vol.2, p. 63.
64. Philip Mattar, The Role of the Mufti of Jerusalem in the Political Struggle over the Western Wall, 1928-29,' Middle Eastern Studies 19 (1983): 104-18.
65. Ibid., p. 114; Lesch, Arab Politics, pp. 210-11.
66. Kayyali, Palestine, p. 156; Shai Lachman, 'Arab Rebellion and Terrorism in Palestine 19291939: The Case of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and His Movement,' in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, eds, Zionism and Anzbirm in Palestine and brad (London: Frank Cass, 1982), p. 56.
67. Ivar Spector, The Soviet Union and the Muslim World, 1917-1956 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956), p.100.
68. Ibid., p. 156. The Shaw Commission's statement reflects an ethnocentric and classist bias that assumes that the non-Western peasantry was inherently apolitical. In fact, movements of peasants have posed the greatest threat to imperialist rule in the underdeveloped world.
69. Porath, Palestinian Arab, p. 40.