Role of the Mandate Government and the British Army after Arab riots in 1936. "cleansing" Jerusalem of Arabs participating in the revolt, 1938 Military law allowed swift prison sentences to be passed. Thousands of Arabs were held in
administrative detention, without trial, and without proper
sanitation, in overcrowded prison camps. The British had already formalised the principle of collective punishment in Palestine in the 1924–1925 Collective Responsibility and Punishment Ordinances and updated these ordinances in 1936 with the Collective Fines Ordinance. These collective fines (amounting to £1,000,000 over the revolt) eventually became a heavy burden for poor Palestinian villagers, especially when the army also confiscated livestock, destroyed properties, imposed long curfews and established police posts, demolished houses and detained some or all of the Arab men in distant detention camps. Full
martial law was not introduced but in a series of
Orders in Council and
Emergency Regulations, 1936–37 'statutory' martial law, a stage between semi-military rule under civil powers and full martial law under military powers, and one in which the army and not the civil High Commissioner was pre-eminent was put in place. Following the Arab capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in October 1938, the army effectively took over Jerusalem and then all of Palestine. The main form of collective punishment employed by the British forces was destruction of property. Sometimes entire villages were reduced to rubble, as happened to
Mi'ar in October 1938; more often several prominent houses were blown up and others were trashed inside. The biggest single act of destruction occurred in
Jaffa on 16 June 1936, when large
gelignite charges were used to cut long pathways through the old city, destroying 220–240 buildings and rendering up to 6,000 Arabs homeless. Scathing criticism for this action from Palestine
Chief Justice Sir
Michael McDonnell was not well received by the administration and the judge was soon removed from the country. Villages were also frequently punished by fines and confiscation of livestock. The British even used sea mines from the battleship
HMS Malaya to destroy houses. In addition to actions against property, a large amount of brutality by the British forces occurred, including beatings, torture and extrajudicial killings. A surprisingly large number of prisoners were "shot while trying to escape". Several incidents involved serious atrocities, such as massacres at
al-Bassa and
Halhul. Desmond Woods, an officer of the
Royal Ulster Rifles, described the
massacre at al-Bassa: Now I will never forget this incident ... We were at al-Malikiyya, the other frontier base and word came through about 6 o'clock in the morning that one of our patrols had been blown up and Millie Law [the dead officer] had been killed. Now Gerald Whitfeld [Lieutenant-Colonel G. H. P. Whitfeld, the battalion commander] had told these mukhtars that if any of this sort of thing happened he would take punitive measures against the nearest village to the scene of the mine. Well the nearest village to the scene of the mine was a place called al-Bassa and our Company C were ordered to take part in punitive measures. And I will never forget arriving at al-Bassa and seeing the
Rolls-Royce armoured cars of the
11th Hussars peppering Bassa with machine gun fire and this went on for about 20 minutes and then we went in and I remembered we had lighted braziers and we set the houses on fire and we burnt the village to the ground ... Monty had him [the battalion commander] up and he asked him all about it and Gerald Whitfeld explained to him. He said "Sir, I have warned the
mukhtars in these villages that if this happened to any of my officers or men, I would take punitive measures against them and I did this and I would've lost control of the frontier if I hadn't."
Monty said "All right but just go a wee bit easier in the future." As well as destroying the village the RUR and men from the
Royal Engineers collected around fifty men from al-Bassa and blew some of them up with explosion under a bus. Harry Arrigonie, a policeman who was present said that about twenty men were put onto a bus; those who tried to escape were shot and then the driver of the bus was forced to drive over a powerful land mine buried by the soldiers which completely destroyed the bus, scattering the mutilated bodies of the prisoners everywhere. The other villagers were then forced to bury the bodies in a pit. Despite these measures Lieutenant-General Haining, the General Officer Commanding, reported secretly to the Cabinet on 1 December 1938 that "practically every village in the country harbours and supports the rebels and will assist in concealing their identity from the Government Forces." Haining reported the method for searching villages: A cordon round the area to be searched is first established either by troops or aircraft and the inhabitants are warned that anybody trying to break through the cordon is likely to be shot. As literally hundreds of villages have been searched, in some cases more than once, during the past six months this procedure is well-known and it can be safely assumed that cordon-breakers have good reasons for wishing to avoid the troops. A number of such cordon-breakers have been shot during searches and it is probable that such cases form the basis of the propaganda that Arab prisoners are shot in cold blood and reported as "killed while trying to escape". After the cordon is established the troops enter the village and all male inhabitants are collected for identification and interrogation. Accordingly, from 1938
Gilbert Mackereth, the British Consul in Damascus, corresponded with Syrian and Transjordan authorities regarding border control and security to counteract arms smuggling and "terrorist" infiltration and produced a report for Tegart on the activities of the Palestine Defence Committee in Damascus. Tegart recommended the construction of a frontier road with a barbed wire fence, which became known as Tegart's wall, along the borders with
Lebanon and
Syria to help prevent the flow of insurgents, goods and weapons. Tegart encouraged close co-operation with the Jewish Agency. It was built by the
Histadrut construction company
Solel Boneh. The total cost was £2 million. The Army forced the fellahin to work on the roads without pay. , still standing today near
Goren industrial zone, northern
Israel Tegart introduced
Arab Investigation Centres where prisoners were subjected to beatings,
foot whipping (bastinado), electric shocks,
denailing and what is now known as "
waterboarding". Tegart also imported
Doberman Pinschers from South Africa and set up a special centre in Jerusalem to train interrogators in torture.
Role of the Royal Air Force The
Royal Air Force developed
close air support into its then most refined form during the Arab Revolt. Air patrols had been found effective in keeping convoys and trains free from attack, but this did not help to expose insurgents to battle conditions likely to cause their defeat. From the middle of June 1936 wireless vehicles accompanied all convoys and patrols. During rebel attacks these vehicles could issue emergency "XX calls" (XX with a coded location), which were given priority over all other radio traffic, to summon aerial reinforcements. Bombers, which were usually airborne within five minutes, could then either attack insurgents directly or "fix" their position for infantry troops. Forty-seven such XX calls were issued during the revolt, causing heavy losses to the rebels. In the June 1936
Battle of Nur Shams British planes attacked Arab irregulars with machine gun fire. This use of air power was so successful that the British were able to reduce the regular garrison. In 1936 an Air Staff Officer in
Middle East Command based in the
Kingdom of Egypt,
Arthur Harris, known as an advocate of "air policing", commented on the revolt saying that "one 250 lb. or 500 lb. bomb in each village that speaks out of turn" would satisfactorily solve the problem. In 1937 Harris was promoted to
Air Commodore and in 1938 he was posted to
Palestine and
Trans-Jordan as
Air Officer Commanding the RAF contingent in the region until September 1939. "Limited" bombing attacks on Arab villages were carried out by the RAF, although at times this involved razing whole villages. Harris described the system by which recalcitrant villages were kept under control by
aerial bombardment as "Air-Pin". Aircraft of the RAF were also used to drop propaganda leaflets over Palestinian towns and villages telling the fellahin that they were the main sufferers of the rebellion and threatening an increase in taxes. Low flying RAF squadrons were able to produce detailed intelligence on the location of
road blocks, sabotaged bridges, railways and pipelines. RAF aerial photographs were also used to build up a detailed map of Arab population distribution. Although the British Army was responsible for setting up the Arab counter-insurgent forces (known as the peace bands) and supplying them with arms and money these were operated by
RAF Intelligence, commanded by
Patrick Domville. At the beginning of the revolt RAF assets in the region comprised a bomber flight at RAF Ramleh, an
RAF armoured car flight at Ramleh, fourteen bomber squadrons at RAF Amman, and a RAF armoured car company at
Ma'an.
Role of the Royal Navy used naval mines from
HMS Malaya to destroy Palestinian houses. At the beginning of the Revolt crew from the Haifa Naval Force's two
cruisers were used to carry out tasks ashore, manning two
howitzers and naval lorries equipped with
QF 2 pounder naval guns and searchlights used to disperse Arab snipers. From the end of June two
destroyers were used to patrol the coast of Palestine in a bid to prevent
gun running. These searched as many as 150 vessels per week and were an effective preventive measure. At the request of the Army additional naval platoons landed in July to help protect Haifa and Jewish settlements in the surrounding countryside. The Navy also relieved the Army of duties in Haifa by using nine naval platoons to form the
Haifa Town Force and in August three naval platoons were landed to support the police. Following publication of the Peel Commission's report in July 1937
HMS Repulse sailed to Haifa where landing parties were put ashore to maintain calm. Various other naval vessels continued with this role until the end of the revolt. Following the Irgun's detonation of a large bomb in a market in Haifa on 6 July 1938 the High Commissioner signalled the Commander-in-Chief of the
Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir
Dudley Pound, requesting the assistance of naval vessels capable of providing landing parties. Pound dispatched HMS
Repulse and diverted
HMS Emerald to Haifa, which arrived the same day and landed five platoons, one to each police district. HMS
Repulse relieved HMS
Emerald the following day and after another bomb was detonated on 10 July five platoons from the ship, made up of sailors and
Royal Marines, dispersed mobs and patrolled the city. On 11 July provision of three platoons from
Repulse released men of the
West Kent Regiment for a punitive mission against Arabs who had attacked a Jewish colony near Haifa. By 17 July the
Repulse established a Company Headquarters where seamen and Royal Marines manned a 3.7-inch howitzer. Sailors, Royal Marines, and men of the
Suffolk Regiment, who had embarked on the
Repulse, accompanied foot patrols of the
Palestine Police Force. The
Repulse, and
HMS Warspite provided howitzer crews which were sent ashore to combat gun running near the border with
Lebanon. Detained Arabs were used to build
emplacements and the howitzers were moved quickly between these positions by day and night to confuse bandits as to the likely direction of fire. Periodically, the guns were used to fire warning rounds close to the vicinity of villages believed to have rebel sympathies.
Strategic importance of Haifa Britain had completed the modern deep-sea port in Haifa in 1933 and finished laying a pipeline from the Iraqi
oilfields to Haifa in 1935, shortly before the outbreak of the revolt. A refinery for processing oil from the pipeline was completed by
Consolidated Refineries Ltd, a company jointly owned by
British Petroleum and
Royal Dutch Shell, in December 1939. These facilities enhanced the strategic importance of Palestine and of Haifa in particular in Britain's control of the eastern
Mediterranean. The threat to British control of the region posed by the
Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 and the deteriorating situation in Europe toward the end of the 1930s probably made British policy makers more willing to make concessions to Arab governments on the Palestine issue following the furore over the recommendations of the Peel Commission.
Role of the British intelligence services (Shiloah), later first director of
Mossad, worked closely with British intelligence during the Arab Revolt. The Arab Revolt was the last major test of Britain's security services in the Middle East before World War II. The development and deployment of intelligence-led counterinsurgency strategies was integral to the restoration of British
imperial control in Palestine as the revolt had demonstrated to the British authorities how a
popular rebellion could undermine intelligence gathering operations and thereby impair their ability to predict and respond to inter-communal disorder. The rebellion had brought together urban nationalism and peasant economic grievances arising from rural poverty and landlessness, which was blamed on British misrule. Accordingly, the Palestinian revolt targeted the political and economic apparatus of the British
colonial state, including the communications network, pipelines, police stations, army outposts and British personnel. It was this aspect of the revolt, rather than attacks on Jews or violence between rivals for leadership of the national movement, that most concerned the high commissioner. The mandate authorities were further disturbed by the unity of purpose displayed during the six-month
general strike and by the resurgence of
pan-Arab nationalism as evidenced by the rise of the
Istiqlal Party. In response to these challenges the British army command ("I" Branch) and battalion headquarters across Palestine issued a daily intelligence bulletin every afternoon detailing political developments. Special Service Officers (SSOs) assigned to intelligence gathering reported directly to their local command headquarters and their cars were equipped with wireless transmitters so that high grade intelligence could be reported directly to "I" Branch immediately. These sources of intelligence gradually became more important than those of the
C.I.D. in Palestine, which had been dependent on Arab informers, and which were no longer reliable. In September 1937, the Jewish Agency appointed
Reuven Zaslany liaison officer for intelligence and security affairs between the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and the intelligence arms of the Royal Air Force and the C.I.D. Zaslany sifted through intelligence collected by Jewish-controlled field operatives and forwarded it to the British military. He was a frequent visitor at the headquarters of British intelligence and the army, the police and C.I.D. and he also travelled to
Damascus to liaise with the Arab opposition's peace bands and with the
British Consul in Iraq. Colonel
Frederick Kisch, a British army officer and Zionist leader, was appointed chief liaison officer between the British army and the Jewish Agency Executive with Zaslany as his deputy. Zaslany also worked as interpreter for Patrick Domville, head of
RAF Intelligence in Palestine (who was described by Haganah leader Dov Hos as the "best Zionist informer on the English"), until the latter was posted to Iraq in 1938, and through him became acquainted with many of the British intelligence officers. In 1937 the Jewish Agency's intelligence groups were responsible for bugging the Peel Commission hearings in Palestine. Eventually, the Arab Revolt convinced the Agency that a central intelligence service was required and this led to the formation of a counter-intelligence agency known as the
Ran (headed by
Yehuda Arazi, who also helped to smuggle rifles, machine guns and ammunition from Poland to Palestine) and thereafter in 1940 to the creation of
SHAI, the forerunner of
Mossad.
British and Jewish co-operation 's
Special Night Squads, December 1938 The
Haganah (
Hebrew for "defence"), a Jewish paramilitary organisation, actively supported British efforts to suppress the uprising, which reached 10,000 Arab fighters at their peak during the summer and fall of 1938. Although the British administration did not officially recognise the
Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the
Jewish Settlement Police,
Jewish Supernumerary Police, and
Special Night Squads. The Special Night Squads engaged in activities described by colonial administrator
Sir Hugh Foot, as 'extreme and cruel' involving torture, whipping, abuse and execution of Arabs. The British authorities maintained, financed and armed the Jewish police from this point onward until the end of the Mandate, and by the end of September 1939 around 20,000 Jewish policeman, supernumeraries and settlement guards had been authorised to carry arms by the government, which also distributed weapons to outlying Jewish settlements,and allowed the Haganah to acquire arms. Independently of the British, ''
Ta'as'', the Haganah's clandestine munitions industry, developed an 81-mm mortar and manufactured mines and grenades, 17,500 of the latter being produced for use during the revolt. In June 1937, the British imposed the death penalty for unauthorised possession of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, but since many Jews had permission to carry weapons and store ammunition for defence this order was directed primarily against Palestinian Arabs and most of the 108 executed in
Acre Prison were hanged for illegal possession of arms. In principle all of the joint units functioned as part of the British administration, but in practice they were under the command of the Jewish Agency and "intended to form the backbone of a Jewish military force set up under British sponsorship in preparation for the inevitable clash with the Arabs." The Agency and the Mandate authorities shared the costs of the new units equally. The administration also provided security services to Jewish commercial concerns at cost. Jewish and British officials worked together to co-ordinate manhunts and collective actions against villages and also discussed the imposition of penalties and sentences. Overall, the Jewish Agency was successful in making "the point that the Zionist movement and the
British Empire were standing shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy, in a war in which they had common goals." The rebellion also inspired the Jewish Agency to expand the intelligence-gathering of its Political Department and especially of its Arab Division, with the focus changing from political to military intelligence. The Arab Division set up a network of Jewish controllers and Arab agents around the country. Some of the intelligence gathered was shared with the British administration, the exchange of information sometimes being conducted by
Moshe Shertok, then head of the Jewish Agency, directly with the high commissioner himself. Shertok also advised the administration on political affairs, on one occasion convincing the high commissioner not to arrest Professor
Joseph Klausner, a
Revisionist Maximalist activist who had played a key role in the
riots of 1929, because of the likely negative consequences.
Forces of the Jewish settlement † Ta'as and Rekhesh were developed and expanded during the Arab Revolt but already existed before 1936 and the Haganah had been in operation from the earliest days of the Mandate.
Haganah intelligence services There was no single body within the Jewish settlement capable of co-ordinating intelligence gathering before 1939. Until then there were four separate organisations without any regular or formal liaison. The organisation took its orders from Revisionist leader
Ze'ev Jabotinsky who was at odds with the dominant
Labour Zionist movement led by David Ben-Gurion. The rift between the two Zionist movements further deteriorated in 1933 when two Revisionists were blamed for the murder of
Haim Arlosoroff, who had negotiated the
Haavara Agreement between the Jewish Agency and
Nazi Germany. The agreement brought 52,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939, and generated $30,000,000 for the then almost bankrupt Jewish Agency, but in addition to the difficulties with the Revisionists, who advocated a boycott of Germany, it caused the Yishuv to be isolated from the rest of world Jewry. Ultimately, however, the events of the Arab Revolt blurred the differences between the gradualist approach of Ben-Gurion and the Maximalist
Iron Wall approach of Jabotinsky and turned militarist patriotism into a bipartisan philosophy. Indeed, Ben-Gurion's own
Special Operations Squads conducted a punitive operation in the Arab village of
Lubya firing weapons into a room through a window killing two men and one woman and injuring three people, including two children. From October 1937 the Irgun instituted a wave of bombings against Arab crowds and buses. For the first time in the conflict massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab public places, killing and maiming dozens. These attacks substantially increased Arab casualties and sowed terror among the population. The first attack was on 11 November 1937, killing two Arabs at the bus depot near
Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and then on 14 November, a day later commemorated as the "Day of the Breaking of the
Havlagah (restraint)," Arabs were killed in simultaneous attacks around Palestine. More deadly attacks followed: on 6 July 1938 21 Arabs were killed and 52 wounded by a bomb in a Haifa market; on 25 July a second market bomb in Haifa killed at least 39 Arabs and injured 70; a bomb in Jaffa's vegetable market on 26 August killed 24 Arabs and wounded 39. The attacks were condemned by the Jewish Agency.
Role of the "peace bands" The "peace bands" (''fasa'il al-salam'') or "
Nashashibi units" were made up of disaffected Arab peasants recruited by the British administration and the Nashashibis in late 1938 to battle against Arab rebels during the revolt. Despite their peasant origins the bands were representative mainly of the interests of landlords and rural notables. Some peace bands also sprang up in the Nablus area, on
Mount Carmel (a stronghold of the
Druze who largely opposed the rebellion after 1937), and around
Nazareth without connection to the Nashashibi-
Husayni power struggle. From December 1937 the main opposition figures among the Arabs approached the Jewish Agency for funding and assistance, motivated by the assassination campaign pursued by the rebels at the behest of the Husseini leadership. In October 1937, shortly after
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the leader of the Arab Higher Committee, had fled from Palestine to escape British retribution,
Raghib al-Nashashibi had written to Moshe Shertok stating his full willingness to co-operate with the Jewish Agency and to agree with whatever policy it proposed. From early in 1938 the Nashashibis received funding specifically to conduct anti-rebel operations, with Raghib al-Nashashibi himself receiving £5,000. The British also supplied funding to the peace bands and sometimes directed their operations. Fakhri Nashashibi was particularly successful in recruiting peace bands in the
Hebron hills, on one occasion in December 1938 gathering 3,000 villagers for a rally in
Yatta, also attended by the British military commander of the Jerusalem District General
Richard O'Connor. Just two months earlier, on 15 October 1938, rebels had seized the
Old City and barricaded the gates. O'Connor had planned the operation by which men of the
Coldstream Guards,
Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and
Black Watch recaptured the Old City, killing 19 rebels. Towards the end of the revolt in May 1939 the authorities dissolved the peace bands and confiscated their arms. However, because members of the bands had become tainted in the eyes of the Palestinian Arabs, and some were under sentence of death, they had little choice but to continue the battle against the national movement's leadership, which they did with the continuing help of the Zionist movement.
Role of rebel leaders was designated the "General Commander of the Revolt" by the
Central Committee of National Jihad in Palestine following his arrest by
British Mandatory police, 1937. He was later executed. Al-Sa'di was a key actor in setting off the revolt with his April 1936 attack on a bus, which left two Jewish passengers dead. At least 282 rebel leaders took part in the Arab Revolt, including four Christians. Rebel forces consisted of loosely organized bands known as ''fasa'il
(sing: fasil
). The leader of a fasil
was known as a qa'id al-fasil
(pl. quwwa'id al-fasa'il
), which means "band commander". The Jewish press often referred to them as "brigands", while the British authorities and media called them "bandits", "terrorists", "rebels" or "insurgents", but never "nationalists". Ursabat'' (meaning "gangs") was another Arabic term used for the rebels, and it spawned the British soldiers' nickname for all rebels, which was
Oozlebart. According to historian Simon Anglim, the rebel groups were divided into general categories:
mujahadeen and
fedayeen. The former were guerrillas who engaged in armed confrontations, while the latter committed acts of sabotage. According to later accounts of some surviving rebel leaders from the Galilee, the
mujahideen maintained little coordination with the nominal hierarchy of the revolt. Most ambushes were the result of a local initiative undertaken by a ''qa'id
or a group of quwwa'id'' from the same area.
Galilee Abdul Khallik was an effective peasant leader appointed by
Fawzi al-Qawuqji who caused great damage and loss of life in the
Nazareth District and was thus a significant adversary of the Mandate and Jewish settlement authorities. He was trapped by British troops in a major engagement on 2 October 1938 and was killed whilst trying to lead his men to safety.
Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir was the main Qassamite rebel leader in the
Upper Galilee and was the only active rebel leader on the ground who was a member of the Damascus-based Central Committee of National Jihad.
Abdallah al-Asbah was a prominent commander active in the
Safad region of northeastern Galilee. He was killed by British forces who besieged him and his comrades near the border with
Lebanon in early 1937.
Jabal Nablus area Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad from the
Tulkarm area was a deeply religious, intellectual man and as a fervent anti-Zionist, he was deeply committed to the revolt. He was regarded second to Qawukji in terms of leadership ability and maintained his independence from the exiled rebel leadership in Damascus. He personally led his ''fasa'il'' and carried out nighttime attacks against British targets in the revolt's early stage in 1936. When the revolt was renewed in April 1937, he established a more organised command hierarchy consisting of four main brigades who operated in the north-central highlands (Tulkarm-Nablus-Jenin area). He competed for the position of General Commander of the Revolt with Aref Abdul Razzik, and the two served the post in rotation from September 1938 to February 1939, when al-Hajj Muhammad was confirmed as the sole General Commander. Al-Hajj Muhammad refused to carry out political assassinations at the behest of political factions, including al-Husayni, once stating "I don't work for Husayniya ('Husanyni-ism'), but for wataniya ('nationalism')." He is still known by Palestinians as a hero and martyr and is regarded as a
metonym "for a national movement that was popular, honourable, religious, and lofty in its aims and actions." He was shot dead in a firefight with British forces outside the village of
Sanur on 27 March 1939, after Farid Irsheid's peace band informed the authorities of his location.
Yusuf Abu Durra, a Qassamite leader in the
Jenin area, was born in
Silat al-Harithiya and before becoming a rebel worked as a Gazoz vendor. He was said to be a narrow-minded man who thrived on extortion and cruelty and thus became greatly feared.
Yusuf Hamdan was Durra's more respected lieutenant and later a leader of his own unit; he was killed by an army patrol in 1939 and buried in
al-Lajjun. Durra himself was apprehended by the
Arab Legion in
Transjordan on 25 July 1939 and subsequently hanged.
Fakhri Abdul Hadi of
Arrabah worked closely with Fawzi al-Qawukji in 1936, but later defected to the British authorities. He bargained for a pardon by offering to collaborate with the British on countering rebel propaganda. Once on the payroll of the British consul in Damascus,
Gilbert Mackereth, he carried out many attacks against the rebels in 1938–1939 as leader of his own "peace band". Aref Abdul Razzik of
Tayibe was responsible for the area south of Tulkarm and was known for evading capture whilst being pursued by the security forces. He signed his bulletins as 'The Ghost of Sheikh Qassam'. Razzik assumed a place in British army folklore and the troops sang a song about him. Razzik was capable and daring and gained a reputation as one of the army's problem heroes.
Jerusalem area Issa Battat was a peasant leader in the southern hills below Jerusalem who caused enormous damage to security patrols in his area. He was killed by a patrol of armed police in a battle near Hebron in 1937.
Arab volunteers In the first phase of the revolt, around 300 volunteers, mostly veterans of the
Ottoman Army and/or rebels from the
Great Syrian Revolt (1925–27), deployed in northern Palestine. Their overall commander was Fawzi al-Qawuqji and his deputies were
Said al-As and
Muhammad al-Ashmar. Qawuqji also led the volunteer force's Iraqi and Transjordanian battalions, and al-Ashmar was commander of the Syrian battalion, which largely consisted of volunteers from Damascus's
al-Midan Quarter,
Hama and
Homs. The Druze ex-Ottoman officer,
Hamad Sa'ab, commanded the
Lebanese battalion.
Funding In the contest of wills between the British Empire and Palestinian aspirants for statehood, the respective efforts to secure the financial means to sustain the hostilities also played out as a battle for funding. The Mandatory Authority's repression of the revolt was bankrolled directly from London and through the revenue stream supplied to the administration by land and property taxes, stamp duties, excises on manufactured goods and customs duties on imports and exports. Draconian
collective punishment fines on the peasantry –many heavily burdened already by debt and unable to pay them – were such that revenue extracted from punitive fines exceeded, and more than compensated for, the revenue lost during the revolt. The majority of funds raised to finance the uprising came from Arab/Muslim sources. In the broader Arab/Muslim world a measure of financial aid, never vast, filtered in from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Muslim India for some time. In Palestine, the peasantry, often debt-ridden, could offer little towards subsidising the resistance. A variety of measures were adopted. Women donated jewelry and ran fund-raising committees, a
jihad tax was placed on citrus groves, the industry being the backbone of Palestine's export trade; Palestinians on the government payroll contributed sums anywhere up to half of their salaries; levies were imposed on wealthier Arabs (many of whom went abroad to avoid paying them, or because they could not meet demands to provide financial aid to strikers). The AHC's functions in this capacity were truncated when it was abolished by the British authorities in October 1937. Displaced in Damascus, its leaders were cut off from contact with field units and donations gradually dried up. al-Husayni, by then in exile, proved unable to raise money, and in Syria militant contacts were informed by July 1938 that they would have to make do on their own. By 1938 the drop in revenues caused militant gangs to resort to extortion and robbery, often draining villages of ready cash reserves set aside to pay government fines, which then had to be met by the sale of crops and livestock. Some contributions were obtained from American sources. A great deal of speculation later arose around the purported role of Germany and Italy in backing the revolt financially, based on early claims by Jewish operatives that both countries were fomenting the uprising by funneling cash and weapons to the insurgents. German plans to ship arms to the rebels were never implemented due to distrust of the Saudi middlemen. Italian attempts to furnish arms by the same venue were thwarted by British intelligence. The British never found arms or munitions of German or Italian provenance. RAF intelligence dismissed these claims as either referring to 'comparatively small' sums or as purveyed to bring discredit on the Palestinians. al-Husayni and his associates received limited funding from
Fascist Italy during the revolt as the Italians were in dispute with the United Kingdom over
Abyssinia and wished not only to disrupt the British rear but also to extend Italian influence in the region. The rebels utilized the Italian funding to smuggle weapons into Palestine via Syria. Total Italian funding amounted to approximately £150.000. It stopped in late 1938 and played no decisive role since the uprising peaked after that date. In the first years after 1933 Germany was approached by a variety of Arab nationalist groups from Palestine and abroad asking for aid, but Germany categorically refused. Maintaining good relations with the British was still considered to be of the uppermost priority, hence it limited itself to expressing its sympathy and moral support. Soon after the outbreak of the revolt, in December 1936, Germany was approached by the rebel commander Fawzi al-Qawuqji and in January 1937 by representatives of the Arab Higher Committee, both requesting arms and money, but again in vain. In July al-Husayni himself approached
Walter Döhle, new German general consul in Jerusalem, to request support for the "battle against the Jews". Döhle found that Germany's hesitation in supporting the rebels had caused pro-German sentiment among Palestinian Arabs to waver. Some limited German funding for the revolt can be dated to around the summer of 1938 and was perhaps related to a goal of distracting the British from the on-going
occupation of Czechoslovakia. The
Abwehr gave money to al-Husayni and other sums were funneled via
Saudi Arabia. ==Outcome==