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Arab Higher Committee

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Summary

The committee formed on 25 April 1936 with Amin al-Hussaini at its head, which in Kanafani’s account rode, directed and finally called off the 1936 strike and revolt under pressure from the Arab kings.

Details

  • The Committee was formed, with Hajj Amin al-Hussaini at its head, on 25 April 1936, after the general strike had been declared on 19 April 1936 (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22 / printed p.42).

  • Its statement of 11 October 1936, in obedience to the wishes of the Arab kings and amirs, called on the Arab people to end the strike and the disturbances (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.45).

  • The British High Commissioner is quoted on the weakness or non-existence of great qualities of leadership in the members of the Committee, set against the inflexibility of the villagers who resisted for six months (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.24 / printed p.47).

  • The Committee condemned the assassination of Andrews, District Commissioner of Galilee, on the same night it happened in September 1937, after which the situation passed out of its control (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.24 / printed p.47).

  • Its mouthpiece, the magazine Filastine, was still trying more than 20 years later to present the Qassamist movement as part of the movement led by the Mufti (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.20 / printed p.39).

  • In Pappe the Committee, which he calls the embryonic government of the Palestinians, decided with the Arab League to boycott the negotiations with UNSCOP prior to Resolution 181 and took no part in the deliberations on implementing it after November 1947, a decision Pappe defends against its use in Israeli propaganda by setting out the Palestinian objections to partition (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.58-59).

  • The Mufti’s party, which dominated local Palestinian politics after the Mandate was established in 1923, held the prominent positions in the Arab Higher Committee; affiliation with it was so common that, in the eyes of the Zionist experts compiling the Village Files’ 1947 ‘wanted’ lists, it constituted a crime (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.46).

  • In Pappe’s Chapter Five, the committee’s secretary Dr Husayn Khalidi, living in Shaykh Jarrah, sent desperate telegrams to the Mufti that were often intercepted by Israeli intelligence and are kept in the Israeli archives; they record the British disarming of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents on a promise of protection that was instantly reneged on, and hospitals overcrowded and running out of shrouds (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.128).

  • By early 1948 half the committee’s members had left, and those who remained and stood alongside their communities almost to the bitter end were Emil Ghori, Ahmad Hilmi, Rafiq Tamimi, Mu’in al-Madi and Husayn al-Khalidi (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.151-152).

The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Amin al-Hussaini, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Feudal-Clerical Leadership

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