Monday, November 05, 2012

Who Kicked the British Out of Mandate Palestine?

Nabil Sha'ath:

It was not the Palestinians who blew up the King David Hotel, who blew up the British Embassy in Rome, who tried to assassinate Ernest Bevin, Britain’s foreign secretary, and who succeeded in assassinating Lord Moyne, British minister of state in the Middle East. That was the Irgun, an ideological Right-wing group – and the predecessor to Israel’s ruling Likud Party...When Britain decided to relinquish Palestine to the UN in 1947, she was well aware that the Zionist movement was well established and equipped,

That settles it, yes?

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UPDATE

After a night's sleep, I realized how naughty Al-Sha'ath was for he avoided the anti-British terror, not only against the Jewish civilian population from 1920 on, but the attacks on British administration officials, including assassinations, and on troops and police by simply writing

Britain repressed Palestinian nationalism, which was exemplified by its crushing of the Arab revolt of 1936-1939

A taste from a report to the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations:

M. RAPPARD commended the painstaking chronological account given in the report of the disturbed situation during 1938. But he was more interested still in what was not expounded in the report. He would be grateful to be informed on such more general topics as the strategy, technical equipment, state of mind, organisation and composition of the Arab rebel bands. Could the accredited representative not give the Commission a fuller explanation of the position in those respects?

Mr. KIRKBRIDE explained that, according to the information in the possession of the authorities, the country was divided up into areas under commanders who, in turn, had under
their orders sub-commanders with gangs of twelve to twenty-five men. The co-ordination of activities in an area was usually good, from the rebel point of view, but the co-ordination
between one area commander and another was much less perfect. There had been several commanders-in-chief who claimed to be in charge of rebel activities all over Palestine, but
each area commander had decided for himself which chief he would obey. Over and above the field organisation in Palestine itself thus outlined, there was a higher organisation, the Committee for the Defence of Palestine, which had its headquarters in Damascus and from which the various leaders derived their authority.

In 1937, the majority of the members of the armed bands were Arabs from neighbouring countries who had been recruited and despatched to Palestine. In 1938, however, 99% of the rebels were Palestine villagers recruited by the sub-commanders from villages in the area under their command. There might be a few individuals who, as Mlle. Dannevig had suggested, were reluctant recruits, but, as the resistance offered to Government troops showed, most of the members of the bands were believers in their cause.

The position as regards equipment and arms was that large quantities of these must have been accumulated secretly before the troubles began. Since that date, there had also been a traffic in contraband arms over the frontier against which all possible measures had and were being taken. At the Commission's last session 2/ he had said that most of the arms and ammunition used by the rebels were of war-time date and pattern. That statement was still true, though small quantities of more modern types of ammunition had been found recently.

As they enjoyed such widespread public support, the armed bands could dispense with large financial resources; funds were, however, received from Damascus and contributions were levied locally, mainly from the inhabitants of towns who took a less active part in the fighting.


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