Summary
Iraqi statesman who appears in Kanafani’s account twice as an agent of the Surrounding Arab Regimes: mediating with Amir Abdullah to end the 1936 strike, and speaking for Iraq at the 1939 London Round Table Conference as a declared friend of Britain.
Details
- In the summer of 1936 Nuri Said and Amir Abdullah of Transjordan started to take action to mediate with the Arab Higher Committee; their mediation was unsuccessful at that stage, although the contacts had a negative effect on the revolt and the initiative was to succeed completely in October of the same year (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.44-45).
- At the February 1939 London Round Table Conference, the speeches of Jamal al-Hussaini, Amir Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Amir Hussein of the Yemen, Al Mahir of Egypt and Nuri al-Sa’id of Iraq are listed together; Kanafani notes that Nuri al-Sa’id declared he was speaking as a close friend of Britain and did not want to say a single word that might hurt the feelings of any Briton, because he was their friend from the bottom of his heart (footnote 36: Bouyissir, p.258) (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.26 / printed p.50-51).
- Kanafani judges that the attitudes of Iraq and Saudi Arabia at that time were not much better than that of the Jordanian regime, and records their readiness at the London Conference in that context (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.28 / printed p.54-55).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Amir Abdullah, Surrounding Arab Regimes, 1939 London Round Table Conference, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine