Summary
The Mandate’s emergency regulations under which, in Kanafani’s presentation via al-Sifri, Palestinians were sentenced during the 1936 revolt for arms and related offences.
Details
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Kanafani, citing al-Sifri, lists sentences passed at the time to show how unjust the regulations were: six years imprisonment for possessing a revolver, 12 years for possessing a bomb, five years with hard labour for possessing 12 bullets, eight months on a charge of misdirecting a detachment of soldiers, nine years on a charge of possessing explosives, five years for trying to buy ammunition from soldiers, and two weeks imprisonment for possessing a stick (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22 / printed p.43).
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The regulations are presented as the first of the two ways by which the British struck at the revolt: at the organisational cadre and at the impoverished masses who had taken part (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22 / printed p.42-43).
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Martial law was decreed separately, on 30 September 1936, after an estimated 20,000 British troops had arrived (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.45).
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In Manna’s Chapter 4 (part 4), Arab towns and villages became closed areas ruled by the 1945 emergency regulations under military rule, and military government forces acting on those regulations arrested ‘Infiltrators’, whom military courts sentenced to exorbitant fines and harsh jail terms (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.153, 156).
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Manna’s Chapter 6 (part 6) gives the regulations’ case-level operation: Ahmad Abu-Laban was held as an administrative detainee under article 111, the Supreme Court ordering his release on 3 January 1949 because the legally required administrative procedures had not been followed; Subhi al-Ayyubi’s movement rested on article 125 closed-area permits and his expulsion order from Jaffa was issued under article 110, the Court finding no technical error and rejecting his case; and the al-Khisas expulsion was cured retroactively by individual orders under the 1949 defence (emergency) regulations (security regions — no. 2) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.203, 228, 233-234).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine