The Banality of Brutality: British Armed Forces and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• The rejection of the Peel report in 1937 that Palestine should be partitioned led to the second phase of the revolt from September 1937 to late 1939

• De facto though not de jure martial law in Palestine since late 1937

• Trapped between the hammer of rebel operations and the anvil of the British army, Arab peasants demanded army protection from the depredations of the rebels while also complaining about servicemen's behaviour

• In June I936, Muslim religious leaders wrote to the High Commissioner detailing how police officers on operations 'stamped' on things, destroyed everything,

• Britain's heavy-handed military methods combined with rebel demands to weaken, perhaps to shatter, Palestinian rural village society, creating in the process lawlessness, hunger and social dislocation.

• we accept an overall figure of 5-6,ooo Arabs killed during the revolt

• Yuval Arnon-Ohanna produced figures of between 3,000 and 4,500 Arabs killed due to intra-Arab fighting, often against suspected collaborators or because of fighting between the Nashashibi and Husayni families

• The British government was keen to resolve the Palestine revolt before war broke out with Germany and so allowed these forces to increase the tempo of their operations.

• As for the Palestinian villagers, they were so desperate to escape the rebels who came by night for sustenance and the troops who came by day to punish them that many fled their homes, creating an internal refugee crisis requiring official relief and soup kitchens, the latter organised by the Muslim waqf

• the end of the revolt, Palestinian villagers were referring to the guerrillas not as mujahidin in a holy war but as rebels (thuwwar