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Home , Mandatory Palestine

LAW, ORDER AND RIOTS IN MANDATORY PALES~, 1928-35 Also by Martin Kolinsky

BRITISH SECURITY PROBLEMS IN THE DURING THE 1930s (co-editor with Michael J. Cohen) CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN EUROPEAN SOCIETY DIVIDED LOYALTlES: British Regional Assertion and European Integration (editor) SOCIAL CHANGE IN FRANCE (co-author with Michalina Vaughan and Peta Sheriff) SOCIAL AND POLmCAL MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN EUROPE (co-editor with William E. Paterson) Law, Order and Riots in Mandatory , 1928-35

Martin Kolinsky Senior Lecturer, Department 0/ Political Science and International Studies, University 0/ Birmingham

150th YEAR

M in association with St. Martin's Press Palgrave Macmillan CI Martin Kolinsky 1993 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1993 978-0-333-53995-8 A.II rights reserved. No reproduction. copy or transmission of this publication may Ix: malle without wrinen permission. No paragraph ofthis publication may Ix: reproduced, copied or tJansmitted save wi!h wri!ten permission or in accordance wi!h the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Ac! 1988, or under the tenns of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Ucensing Ageocy, 90 TOItenham Coun Road, London W I P 9HE. Any perwn who does any unauthorised ac! in relation to thls pub1i cation may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. Fm! pub1ished in Great Britain 1993 by lHE MACMJLLAN PRESS LID HoundmiIJs, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS Md wlldcm Companies and repn:seotatives Ihroughou! Ihc world 1bis book is publisbed in Macmi1lan's Sludits in Mililary arid Siraltgic Hislory series General Editor. Michael DQckrill A catalogue record fot !hIS book IS available from lhe Bnush Libfary.

ISBN 978-1-349-38996-4 ISBN 978-0-230-37565-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230375659

FDOI m! published in the Unitcd Statcs of America 1993 by Scholarly and Rcfen:nce Division. ST. MARllN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New Yon;, N,Y, 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-09164-4

Ubrary of Con~ss Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kolinsky. Martin. Law. order, anti riots in . 1928-35/ Manin Kolinsky. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-09164-4 I. Palestine-Politics and govemment- 1917- 1948. 2. Palcstine• -History-Arab riots, 1929. 3. Jews-Palestine-Politics and govemmenl. 4. Palestinian Arabs-Politics and govcmmenl. 5, Jewish-Arab n:lations-1917-1949. L Title. DS126.K65 1993 9S6.94'04----dc20 92- 34580 CIP ForEva N

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Contents

Prelace xiv Acknowledgements xvii List 01 Abbreviations xix ListolMaps xx Introduction 2 The Thin Line of Security 19 3 The Issue of the 31 4 Controversy over the Riots 71 5 Restoration of Order: Legal Process and Police Reorganization 84 6 The Search for Stability and Security 105 7 Change of Policy 123 8 The Prime Minister's Letter 141 9 Uneasy Order 159 10 Assassination and Ideological Conflict 189 11 The British Mandate and International Issues 209 12 Conclusion 220 Notes 228 Bibliography 273 Index 281

xiii Preface

British rule in Palestine began during the First World War with the conquest of the fonner province of the Turkish in 1917 -18. Tbe military occupation was transfonned into a civilian administration in the summer of 1920 after the Mandate had been granted to Britain at the . Tbe Mandate originally inc1uded the territories on both sides of the river , but in September 1922 when the Council of the gave its final approval of the Mandate an additional artic1e had been inc1uded at Britain's request which separated the territory of Trans-Jordan from Palestine. Jewish immigration and settlement were henceforth pro• hibited east of the river Jordan. Tbe embodied the Balfour Dec1aration of 1917, which committed Britain to facilitate the development of the Jewish National Horne. This represented the fulfilment of the first goal of the Zionist movement - the support and protection of a great power for the return of the Jewish people to its ancient homeland after 2000 years of exile. Its next goal was to achieve parity with the Arab majority of the country. By 1935 this was in sight, as the Jewish commuriity had grown through immigration to attain almost one-third the size of the Arab popu• lation. Moreover, the economic significance of the Jews in the life of the country far outstripped their minority status. But the Palestinian Arabs rejected the Mandate. Tbey opposed the concept of the Jewish National Horne, and saw coexistence with a large Jewish community as inimical to their own goal of achieving indepen• dence. The Arab leaders were wary of cooperation with the British author• ities because they did not accept the basic tenns of the political order and were not committed to political stability within it. A major tuming-point was the riots in August 1929, which caught the Government unprepared. The subject of this book is the nature of British rule, and Arab and Jewish reactions to it, during the middle years of the Mandate. That is, the years between 1928, when agitation over the Western (Wailing) Wall began, to 1935, the last year of peace in mandatory Palestine. Those years have been overshadowed in the literature by the Arab Rebellion of 1936-39 and by the events of 1947-48 at the end of the Mandate. But the middle years had a significance of their own for each community, as weil as for the British authorities. For the Jews it was aperiod of great trauma within Palestine and in

xiv Preface xv

Europe. Tbe 1929 riots shattered nearly a decade of relative tranquillity, and led to announced changes of policy by the British Government which threatened to limit drastically the growth of the Jewish National Horne. Disagreement over policy towards Britain and towards the Arabs accentu• ated ideological divisions within the Zionist movement, and led to a split, with the minority Revisionist movement forming aseparate organization. Tbe rift was aggravated by disagreements over policy towards Nazi Germany. But the steep rise in immigration during those years resulted in a significant growth of the Jewish community in Palestine. Its resources and defensive capacities expanded. When order collapsed in 1936 under the force of the Arab rebellion the Jewish community was a much more viable entity than on the eve of the 1929 riots. It suffered in blood and material damage, but had a sufficiently strong basis to meet the challenge to its survival and to continue its development. The rniddle years of the Mandate were significant for the Palestinian Arabs as weIl. Tbe Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, having spearheaded the campaign for the defence of the Muslim Holy Places, emerged from the 1929 riots as the predominant leader. He sought to con• solidate his status, against his political rivals, by creating support for his cause throughout the Islamic world. As a result, the Palestine issue became an important element in the growth of . The Mufti was careful to avoid direct confrontation with the British authorities at this stage, but a new radicalism developed within the nationalist move• ment. Tbe old leadersbip embodied in the Palestine Arab Executive declined in the early 1930s, and militant youth groups gained ground. Tbe Arab Executive tried to reassert itself by vigorous campaigning against Jewish immigration which led to anti-government disturbances in the autumn of 1933. But it was deeply divided, and after tbe death of its elderly president Musa Kazim al Husseini in March 1934, the internal fac• tions became separate political parties. The parties were based on the leading families, notably the Husseinis and tbe Nashashibis, and tbe tradi• tional rivalry amongst them continued. Nevertheless, confronted by the rapid growth of the Jewish population, the parties were able to agree on a joint set of demands in 1935. It represented a new level of political coop• eration among the Arab leaders, and prepared the ground for the rebellion of the following year. The political and legal order which Britain had established during the 1920s was severely shaken by tbe rioting in 1929, and was challenged again in the autumn of 1933. The process of restoring order was complex, involvingchanges in the legal framework, police reorganization, and the creation of a defence scheme. In policy matters it proved difficult to find a xvi Preface balance between the demands of the two communities, and fluctuations in attitudes and approaches to policy did little to enhance stability. Moreover, the confliet in Palestine posed wider diplomatie problems affecting Britain's position throughout the Middle East. This emerged with some force in the autumn of 1935 when Britain and Italy came to the brink of war during the Abyssinian crisis. Acknow ledgements

Tbe preparation of this book was facilitated by the advice and encourage• ment of a number of people, to whom I am most grateful: the late Professor Elie Kedourie, CBE, and Professors Yosef Gorny, Emanuel Gutmann, Michael J. Cohen, Han Troen, and Charles Townshend. A special word of thanks is due to the series editor, Dr Michael Dockrill, for his critical acumen and helpfulness. I wish to thank the directors and staffs of the libraries and archives I visited for their friendly assistance: the University of Birmingham Library; the Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford; Rhodes House, Oxford; the Bodleian Law Library, Oxford; Churchill College Archive, Cambridge; Department of Palaeography and Diplomatic, University of Durham; the Public Record Office; the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the London School of Economics and Political Science; the library of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies; the State Archives, Jerusalem; the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem; the Weizmann Archives, Rehovot; the Ben-Gurion Archives, Sede Boqer; and the Archives, . In the course of the research I interviewed the following people, who were generous with their time and hospitality: Edward Horne, chairman of the Palestine Police Old Comrades Benevolent Association; Haganah his• tori ans Gershon Rivlin and Meir Pa'il; and retired Israeli judges Haim Cohen, , Israel Giladi, Yavniel Matalon and Henry Baker. I should also like to thank Dr Ruth Montague for her help on the legal side, as well as Ruth, Yoel and Yossi Berg. Mr R. D. Chancellor kindly gave me permission to read the papers of his father, Sir John Chancellor, and to quote from them. Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office [PRO] appears with the permission of the Controller of H. M. Stationery Office. Unless otherwise indicated, ref• erences are to documents in the PRO. Chapters 4 and 5 were first pub• lished as articles in Middle Eastern Studies [London, Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., Vol. 26, no. I, January 1990] and Studies in [Tel Aviv University, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 10, no. 2, 1989] respectively. The publishers of the journals have granted permission to reprint the material. The research was made possible by the generous financial support of the British Academy, the Graduate School of International Studies, and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

XVll xviii Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Helen Lewis and Linda Wall for cheerful and reliable secretarial services. Tbe book is dedicated with my love to Eva. Martin Kolinsky List of Abbreviations

AE Arab Executive (Committee), see also PAE AOC Air Officer Commanding CID (a) Committee of Imperial Defence (b) Criminal Investigation Department CZA Central Zionist Archives GOC General Officer Commanding HC HMG His 's Govemment JNH Jewish National Horne ISA Israel State Archives OAG Officer Administering Govemment ODC Oversea Defence Committee [CID] PAE Palestine Arab Executive PMC Permanent Mandates Commission [League of Nations] PRO Public Record Office, London PZE Palestine Zionist Executive SMC TJFF Trans-Jordan Frontier Force WA Weizmann Archive, Rehovot, Israel YMMA Young Men's Muslim Association ZO Zionist Organization

xix List ofMaps

The maps are on pp. vi-xi. 1. Palestine and neighbouring states. 1937 2. Palestine administrative boundaries. 1937 3. Palestine: Jewish-owned land, 1929 and 1936

xx