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Feudal-Clerical Leadership

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aliaseslocal reactionary leadership, traditional leadership, feudal-religious leadership

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Summary

Kanafani’s name for the semi-feudal, semi-religious leadership, headed by Amin al-Hussaini, that controlled the Palestinian national movement’s upper structure until 1948 and is the first of the three enemies in his account of the revolt’s defeat.

Details

  • The leadership stayed at the movement’s head because the Zionist challenge gave the national contradiction predominance over social contradictions, and because its own conflict of interest with British imperialism made it promote a degree of revolutionary struggle, raise progressive slogans, and give positive leadership in a critical phase, despite its reactionary nature (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.6 / printed p.10).
  • Dismissed by British imperialism from the post of chief agent in favour of the Zionist movement, its fundamental role became a struggle for a better position in the colonialist regime, waged by rallying the anti-colonial classes behind a progressive programme it was neither willing nor able to push to its logical conclusions (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.13 / printed p.24-25).
  • It imposed itself at the head of the mass movement by exploiting the weakness of the Arab urban bourgeoisie, the small size of the Arab proletariat, the weakness of the Palestine Communist Party, and its own religious attributes (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.17-18 / printed p.33-34).
  • It could not tolerate an independent Arab labour movement: the Mufti’s group assassinated Michel Mitri in Jaffa in the early 1930s, and leftist elements who tried to penetrate labour circles were liquidated (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.9 / printed p.17; PDF p.27 / printed p.52).
  • In the revolt narrative it treats the mass revolt as pressure to improve its own position, confirms it would end the revolt if the Arab kings asked, and calls off the strike on 11 October 1936 (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22-23 / printed p.43-45).

The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Amin al-Hussaini, Arab Higher Committee, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Peasant Revolt

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