1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
Nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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]
1936–1939 Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine | |||||||
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Part of the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, decolonisation of Asia, and the precursor to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict | |||||||
British soldiers on an armoured train car with two Palestinian Arab hostages used as human shields. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United Kingdom Jewish National Council Yishuv
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Arab Higher Committee (1936 – October 1937)
Central Committee of National Jihad in Palestine (October 1937 – 1939)
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope
Raghib al-Nashashibi (from 1937) |
Political leadership: Local rebel commanders: Arab volunteer commanders: Sa'id al-'As † Muhammad al-Ashmar | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
25,000[1]–50,000[2] British soldiers 20,000 Jewish policemen, supernumeraries and settlement guards[3] 15,000 Haganah fighters[4] 2,883 Palestine Police Force, all ranks (1936)[5] 2,000 Irgun militants[6] |
1,000–3,000 (1936–37) 2,500–7,500 (plus an additional 6,000–15,000 part-timers) (1938)[7] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
British Security Forces: 262 killed c. 550 wounded[8] Jews: c. 500 killed[9] 2 executed |
Arabs: c. 5,000 killed[1] c. 15,000 wounded[1] 108 executed [8] 12,622 detained [8] 5 exiled [8] |
The uprising coincided with a peak in the influx of European Jewish immigrants,[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][lower-alpha 1] 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, leader of the Yishuv, however, described Arab causes as fear of growing Jewish economic power, opposition to mass Jewish immigration and fear of the British 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,[clarification needed] 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:[lower-alpha 2] 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.