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Amin al-Hussaini

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aliasesHajj Amin al-Hussaini, Hajj al-Amin al-Hussaini, the Mufti, al-Mufti

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Summary

Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, the Mufti, head of the Arab Higher Committee from 25 April 1936 and, in Kanafani’s analysis, the leading figure of the Feudal-Clerical Leadership that headed the Palestinian national movement through the revolt and until 1948.

Details

  • Kanafani states the feudal-religious leadership remained at the head of the nationalist movement until 1948, and that the Palestinian parties were always subject to the leadership of the Mufti and his class (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.6 / printed p.10; PDF p.21 / printed p.41).

  • He refused Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s request, a few months before November 1935, to coordinate declarations of revolt throughout the country, on the ground that conditions were not yet ripe (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.20 / printed p.38).

  • The British High Commissioner credited the Mufti for the moderation of Friday sermons during the 1936 strike (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22 / printed p.43).

  • With Raghib al-Nashashibi and Auni Abd al-Hadi, he confirmed to the High Commissioner that the leadership was prepared to end the revolt if the Arab kings asked them to do so, while repeatedly denying this to the masses (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.45).

  • After the Peel Commission report of 7 July 1937 he took refuge in the Haram al-Sharif to avoid arrest, and later left for Damascus; the British kept him as the undisputed representative of the Palestinian Arabs because the alternative was the leaders of the revolt in the mountains (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.24-25 / printed p.47-49).

  • Kanafani notes that his group assassinated the trade unionist Michel Mitri in Jaffa in the early 1930s, that the Mufti’s men assassinated Sami Taha in Haifa on 12 September 1947, that the Palestine Communist Party nonetheless viewed him as belonging to the most anti-imperialist wing of the nationalist movement, and that he took refuge in Nazi Germany throughout the Second World War (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.9 / printed p.17; PDF p.27 / printed p.52; PDF p.30-31 / printed p.59-60).

  • In Pappe’s Chapter Five, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, exiled in 1937, followed events from Cairo with Shaykh Hasan Abu Su’ud and Ishaq Darwish, and never tried to return while the British were present; his relative Jamal al-Husayni, acting chairman of the Arab Higher Committee in his absence, left in January 1948 for the US to open a belated diplomatic campaign against the UN resolution (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.151-152).

  • Contacts with the Mufti were among the ‘crimes’ that condemned men selected from the village file at Tantura to execution (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.166).

The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Arab Higher Committee, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Feudal-Clerical Leadership

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