Summary
The Palestinian national body’s dissolution in August 1934 is the organisational starting point of Kanafani’s party survey: in its place six party groupings emerged, none of which, he argues, represented the peasant majority of the country on the eve of the revolt.
Details
- On the eve of the revolt, with the dissolution of the Arab Executive Committee in August 1934, six groups emerged: the Arab Palestine Party (May 1935, Jamal al-Hussaini), the National Defence Party (December 1934, Raghib al-Nashashibi), the Independence Party (1932, Auni Abd al-Hadi), the Reform Party (August 1935, Husain al-Khalidi), the National Bloc (Abd al-Latif Salah) and the Palestine Youth Party (Ya’qub al-Ghusain) (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.21 / printed p.40-41).
- Kanafani judges that multiplicity purely superficial: the parties were general frameworks controlled by groups of notables, dependent on loyalties rooted in their influence as religious or feudal leaders or prominent members of society, and the overwhelming majority of the masses, peasants who were 59% of Palestinian Arabs in 1931, were not represented by them (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.21 / printed p.40-41).
- The Arab Higher Committee, formed under Amin al-Hussaini on 25 April 1936, succeeded this party landscape as the revolt’s directing body (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.21-22 / printed p.40-43).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Arab Higher Committee, National Defence Party, Independence Party, Feudal-Clerical Leadership, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine