Palestinian Collaboration with the British: The Peace Bands and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–9
Key takeaways
Bibliography: Hughes, M., 2016. Palestinian Collaboration with the British: The Peace Bands and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–9. Journal of Contemporary History 51, 291–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009415572401
Authors:: Matthew Hughes
Collections:: Arab-Israeli Conflict
First-page:
This article examines an aspect of British counter-insurgency in Palestine in the 1930s during the Arab revolt there against British colonial rule and Jewish settlement: the proBritish, anti-rebel Palestinian militia ‘peace bands’, associated with the Palestinian Nashashibi family and raised with British and Jewish military and financial assistance, and with support from the British Consul in Damascus, Gilbert MacKereth. Using Hebrew, Arabic and untapped local British regimental sources, it details how the British helped to raise the peace bands and the bands’ subsequent activities in the field; it assesses the impact of the bands on the course of the Arab revolt; and it sets out the views of the British Army towards those willing to work with them. In doing this, it extends the recent thesis of Hillel Cohen on Palestinian collaboration with Zionists to include the British and it augments the useful but dated work of Yehoshua Porath and Yuval Arnon-Ohanna on the subject. Such a study is significant for our understanding of British methods of imperial pacification, especially the British Army’s manipulation during colonial unrest of ‘turned’ insurgents as a ‘loyalist’ force against rebels, an early form of ‘pseudo’ warfare. The collaboration by Palestinians resonates with broader histories of imperial and neo-imperial rule, it extends military histories on colonial pacification methods, and it provides rich, new texture on why colonial subjects resisted and collaborated with the emergency state, using the Palestinians as a case study.
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Reading notes
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the pro-British, anti-rebel Palestinian militia ‘peace bands’, associated with the Palestinian Nashashibi family and raised with British and Jewish military and financial assistance, and with support from the British Consul in Damascus, Gilbert MacKereth
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centred on the pro-Government Palestinian Nashashibi family and irregular, militia-style ‘peace bands’ (or, more pejoratively, ‘gangs’), fasa’il al-salam in Arabic.
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The Husayni-controlled Majlis (‘council’) in charge of the ‘Arab’ party opposed the Nashashibis, Majlis referring to the Supreme Muslim Council chaired by the Husayni family’s Hajj Amin al-Husayni, appointed by the British (and usually known) as the ‘Mufti’, the chief Muslim cleric in Jerusalem
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Palestinian urban elites across the board during the Mandate period Palestinian urban elites across the board during the Mandate period
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Family allegiances are a partial way of understanding the Palestinians during the Arab revolt.
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vast majority of the members of each side did not belong to either family
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There were members of each group in all major cities and towns, with the Majlisiyyun/Majlisi (‘people of the council’) more influential in the countryside because of Hajj Amin’s charisma and the control that he and his supporters had of the awqaf (the ‘endowments’ for mosques, schools etc.), and not because of any Husayni blood lineage.
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In the first phase of the revolt from April to October 1936, collective solidarity masked the differences between the two blocs, but by 1938 there were intra-communal outrages as gunmen from the two sides fought each other.
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British-sponsored peace bands opposed the violent anti-government direction of the Arab revolt led by Hajj Amin and they were active in the second phase of the Arab revolt after September 1937, especially in late 1938 and 1939.
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British soldiers avoided searching peace band-associated villages, a significant concession, as Army searches could be immensely destructive of villagers’ property.
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British military counter-rebel policy of triaging rural Palestine into ‘good’, ‘moderate’ and ‘bad’ villages, soldiers carrying out ‘punitive’ or ‘ordinary’ village searches depending on the type of village, and supporting ‘loyal minorities’
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s reducing parts of rural Palestine to abject poverty.
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Alongside military operations, collaboration tore the fabric of Palestinian society, pitting neighbours against one another, transforming established order into an official anarchy in which the fellahin were to choose the oppression of the colonial state over the disorder of rebellion
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never won the war for the British but they helped the authorities by exacerbating pre-existing disputes and banditry in rural Palestine, so dividing Britain’s enemies, encouraging collaboration, acting as a force multiplier of sorts and spreading confusion and distrust among Palestinians.
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Palestinians publicly supported both sides to survive, depending on which way the wind was blowing, while still being strongly opposed in private to the Mandate and Jewish settlement and supportive of Hajj Amin,
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Palestinian collaboration was less active and ideological – a clique surrounding the Nashashibi family – than it was reactive, personal and practical – the men of the peace bands and the peasants at the sharp end of the revolt facing rebel demands and British military pacification designed to make villagers more fearful of soldiers than rebels.
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The men of the peace bands and their peripatetic followers establish themselves as rebels and collaborators who would switch sides as suited them, violent, pragmatic, politically disengaged men living beyond the law. They were ‘bandits’