Palestine & Iraq Between the Wars
PALESTINE & IRAQ BETWEEN THE WARS
1. Iraq and the Civil War in Palestine
The struggles in Palestine in the 1930s culminated in a civil war between 1936 and 1939. This had a major influence on developments in Iraq, where many Palestinian and Syrian activists found refuge throughout the 1930s. First, the crisis in Palestine heightened opposition to the "Iraq First" movement, represented by the Sulaiman-Sidqi regime (October 1935 to August 1937), which subordinated Arab Nationalist and Palestinian issues to domestic reform and regional stability. The Sulaiman-Sidqi regime began and ended in military coups, and was replaced by a succession of regimes dedicated to the pan-Arab struggle against British power, both in Iraq and in Palestine. Second, the Iraqi Arab Nationalists' involvement in Palestinian affairs brought Hajj Amin, the leader of the Palestinian movement, to Baghdad in 1939, where he found shelter from the British crackdown. Hajj Amin helped Iraq's pro-German military faction, led by Rashid Ali, to organize its coup in April 1941. The British were forced to invade and re-occupy Iraq in June, remaining for the war's duration. The British determination to maintain wartime stability in the Middle East also produced the 1939 White Paper on Palestine, which officially limited Jewish immigration and land purchases. Although this was intended as a compromise with Arab protest, both Arabs and Zionists opposed it.
2. The Impact of Land Reform in Palestine and Iraq
In Iraq, a significant casualty of the civil war in Palestine was the al Ahali movement for social reform, which was (at least initially) a component of the “Iraq First” faction that took over in 1935. The defeat of this regime was partly due to its reluctance to send military aid to the Palestinians after the civil war broke out, which alienated many of its supporters. The landed aristocracy took full advantage of this opportunity, quashing the al Ahali social reform movement in alliance with the Arab Nationalist faction of the military elite, which promoted active involvement in the Palestinian struggle.
Some historical background is necessary here. We must know something about the significant land reforms carried out by the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century, typified by the Land Law of 1858. Before this time the cultivation of land was carried out by the peasantry on a communal basis, village by village. The official who was assigned to the region's tax collection, called the multazim, would appear at harvest time, when he collected revenue and made sure the land had actually been used. This method of parceling out the land was known as the musha system (from the Arabic "to circulate"). If the land came under attack or became inhospitable, the villagers simply moved elsewhere. The system enabled agricultural regions to remain productive. The Land Law of 1858 changed all this by giving the multazim (and his family in perpetuity) permanent rights to local tax collection as well as a title deed to the land. The multazim thus became an absentee landlord, and the peasants became sharecroppers working for him. Nomadic Bedouin tribes were deprived of grazing rights and became subject to expulsion on the landlord's authority. In 1867, foreigners got the right to own land throughout the Empire, and this became a much-needed revenue source for the Ottoman administration. By the 1870s, the most influential families were becoming increasingly wealthy, often owning entire villages as well as vast land tracts. Throughout the entire region, where rural peasant and Bedouin populations had always been self-sufficient, with tribal and clan affiliations fostering collective solidarity, the sudden emergence of large landed estates created widening class divisions. In many clans, the poorer members ceased to share in the group’s resources. In the early 20th century, after landlords gained the right to sell land, land titles further displaced traditional rights, and large-scale cash crops replaced subsistence farming. In Palestine, capital-intensive agricultural programs led to the development of a major citrus industry, much of it on coastal plantations. Above all, as the Empire accumulated larger and larger debts, more of the economy was turned over to Western investment.
From the 1880s on, the Ottoman Porte actively encouraged European immigrants to buy land for cultivation and development. This was the context in which Jewish communities from Russia and Central Europe, fleeing from pogroms and systematic social oppression, were able to settle in Palestine. By 1900, 5,000 Jewish agricultural settlers had settled in 19 colonies. The general increase
in foreign trade and settlement throughout the Palestine region had led to rises in land prices and to waves of speculation that lasted until the end of the British mandate in 1948. Many Arab estates were sold to Jewish settlers between 1880 and 1920 by absentee landlords who lived in the cities and other regions. Palestinians from landed families also made large profits by selling off small plots or
becoming brokers for others. The upshot was the emergence of a wealthy landowning class whose political interests conflicted with those of sharecroppers, poor small farmers, and urban immigrants who had lost their rural labor and support systems.
Arab efforts to counter Zionist land acquisition in Palestine were thus undercut by a de facto alliance between the Arab landlord class and a British colonial administration interested in social and economic stability. In this context, ideology was often in conflict with economic self-interest, and land sales to Zionist organizations were usually conducted in secrecy, for fear of reprisals. In Iraq, the same history of Ottoman land reforms and privatization had led to the political dominance of wealthy landowner families in alliance with the military elite. It should not be forgotten that the Sharifian officers who began with Faisal (most of whom came from the middle class or lower) had become wealthy landowners themselves, with a more or less acknowledged stake in Iraq as an economically stable nation-state. Their shared background in European-oriented Turkish military academies also gave them a "top-down" attitude of shaping the entire society along the lines of a conservative secular nationalism, admixed with the traditional Ottoman disdain for Shiite grievances. Thus their ideological commitment to pan-Arabism, based on the legacy of Faisal's struggle for an independent "greater Syria," had gradually been transmuted into power-seeking strategies based on alliances and rivalries within their own military elite.
Ref.: Samira Haj, The Making of Iraq, 1900-1963: Capital, Power and Ideology (1997).
3. A Thumbnail Sketch of the Arab-Zionist Conflict in Palestine Between the Wars
In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration (made in a publicized letter sent by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild) promised "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine providing that nothing be done which prejudices "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." The British hoped that it would rally Jewish opinion in the U.S. to support the allied war effort while preventing the Germans from allying with the Zionist movement. It was also assumed that a British-backed Zionist "homeland" in Palestine would help to protect the Suez Canal and the land route to India. Strategic motives, then, quite apart from any Zionist sympathies, led to the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the British mandate over Palestine announced by the League of Nations in July 1922. In September 1922 the British announced that part of their mandate area would be excluded from the Balfour Declaration, and established as a separate state called Trans-Jordan. Winston Churchill, the new Colonial Secretary, invited Faisal's brother Abdullah to run it, largely to keep him from harassing the new French regime in Syria. However, the British were unable to negotiate a solution for Palestine that satisfied either the Arab or the Jewish leadership.
Since no constitutional Palestinian state could be established, the British continued their direct rule. (This arrangement subsequently led to claims, in anti-Arab polemic, that there were never a "people" called the Palestinians.) Churchill tried to calm Arab fears by promising that the Jewish home provided in the mandate would never "cause the disappearance or subordination of the Arab population, language or culture in Palestine." Churchill made this promise in June 1922, when there already was considerable Arab opposition. When a major protest broke out in April 1920 in Jerusalem, one of the organizers, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who was the younger brother of the mufti of Jerusalem, fled across the Jordan into Bedouin villages to avoid arrest. In 1922 the mufti died and the British decided to co-opt Hajj Amin's popularity by inviting him to return and occupy his brother's important post. Hajj Amin also became president of the new Supreme Muslim Sharia Council, placing him in a position of authority over Muslim affairs in Palestine. However, since he and others on the Council were paid by the British, their actual freedom was restricted.
In August 1929 a dispute over the Jewish use of the Wailing Wall (part of Herod's temple in Jerusalem, which also formed the outer wall of the Muslim Haram area) was followed by large-scale attacks upon Jews by Arabs. Riots spread to other cities, leading to deaths of both Jews and Arabs. The 1929 troubles led the British to establish a special commission under Sir Walter Shaw, which reported in March 1930 that the conflict had resulted from the disappointment of Arab hopes for independence and from the fact that Jewish expansion was creating a "landless and discontented Arab class in the country." The Shaw Commission urged that restrictions be imposed on immigration. This led to still another commission and new proposals under Lord Passfield in October 1930. The Passfield White Paper recommended that Jews be forbidden to acquire more land as long as Arabs were landless and that Jewish immigration be stopped as long as Arabs were unemployed. In April 1936 the Arab High Committee was formed to oversee the Palestinian Arabs' struggle, headed by Hajj Amin. Pressured by the emergence of a strong grass-roots movement, he called for a general strike against British rule, precipitating an armed conflict that lasted until 1939. With open war between Arabs and Jews developing, a new commission headed by Lord Peel was established to find a solution. Its report in Sept. 1937 acknowledged that cooperation between Arabs and Jews in a Palestinian state was impossible. To the Arabs' dismay, it recommended the partition of Palestine. Hajj Amin invited Arab leaders to a conference at Bluden, Syria, which rejected the Peel plan and vowed to fight as a unified pan-Arab community. The Arabs refused to compromise on their basic demands: independence for Palestine and an end to Jewish immigration and land sales. The British then outlawed the Arab High Committee and arrested activists, forcing Hajj Amin to flee to Lebanon. The next British proposal was by the Woodhead commission in Nov. 1938. Hoping to appease the Arabs, it demanded a reduction of Jewish land to 400 square miles around Tel Aviv. Both Zionists and Arabs rejected this. Finally, as noted above, the British government issued a wartime statement of unilaterally imposed terms, published as the White Paper in May 1939. German propaganda was gaining support in Arab circles, and the White Paper was an obvious concession to the Arab position. There would be no partition, and the British would not propose to define the state as Jewish or Arab. After ten years of British rule, an independent "Palestine state" was to be established. Jewish immigration would be limited to 75,000 during the next five years, after which no further immigration would be allowed. Moreover, land purchases by Jews from Arabs would be greatly restricted. The White Paper pleased no one, and the severe restrictions on immigration forced the Zionists into military resistance to save Jewish lives.
Ref.: Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1998).
1. Iraq and the Civil War in Palestine
The struggles in Palestine in the 1930s culminated in a civil war between 1936 and 1939. This had a major influence on developments in Iraq, where many Palestinian and Syrian activists found refuge throughout the 1930s. First, the crisis in Palestine heightened opposition to the "Iraq First" movement, represented by the Sulaiman-Sidqi regime (October 1935 to August 1937), which subordinated Arab Nationalist and Palestinian issues to domestic reform and regional stability. The Sulaiman-Sidqi regime began and ended in military coups, and was replaced by a succession of regimes dedicated to the pan-Arab struggle against British power, both in Iraq and in Palestine. Second, the Iraqi Arab Nationalists' involvement in Palestinian affairs brought Hajj Amin, the leader of the Palestinian movement, to Baghdad in 1939, where he found shelter from the British crackdown. Hajj Amin helped Iraq's pro-German military faction, led by Rashid Ali, to organize its coup in April 1941. The British were forced to invade and re-occupy Iraq in June, remaining for the war's duration. The British determination to maintain wartime stability in the Middle East also produced the 1939 White Paper on Palestine, which officially limited Jewish immigration and land purchases. Although this was intended as a compromise with Arab protest, both Arabs and Zionists opposed it.
2. The Impact of Land Reform in Palestine and Iraq
In Iraq, a significant casualty of the civil war in Palestine was the al Ahali movement for social reform, which was (at least initially) a component of the “Iraq First” faction that took over in 1935. The defeat of this regime was partly due to its reluctance to send military aid to the Palestinians after the civil war broke out, which alienated many of its supporters. The landed aristocracy took full advantage of this opportunity, quashing the al Ahali social reform movement in alliance with the Arab Nationalist faction of the military elite, which promoted active involvement in the Palestinian struggle.
Some historical background is necessary here. We must know something about the significant land reforms carried out by the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century, typified by the Land Law of 1858. Before this time the cultivation of land was carried out by the peasantry on a communal basis, village by village. The official who was assigned to the region's tax collection, called the multazim, would appear at harvest time, when he collected revenue and made sure the land had actually been used. This method of parceling out the land was known as the musha system (from the Arabic "to circulate"). If the land came under attack or became inhospitable, the villagers simply moved elsewhere. The system enabled agricultural regions to remain productive. The Land Law of 1858 changed all this by giving the multazim (and his family in perpetuity) permanent rights to local tax collection as well as a title deed to the land. The multazim thus became an absentee landlord, and the peasants became sharecroppers working for him. Nomadic Bedouin tribes were deprived of grazing rights and became subject to expulsion on the landlord's authority. In 1867, foreigners got the right to own land throughout the Empire, and this became a much-needed revenue source for the Ottoman administration. By the 1870s, the most influential families were becoming increasingly wealthy, often owning entire villages as well as vast land tracts. Throughout the entire region, where rural peasant and Bedouin populations had always been self-sufficient, with tribal and clan affiliations fostering collective solidarity, the sudden emergence of large landed estates created widening class divisions. In many clans, the poorer members ceased to share in the group’s resources. In the early 20th century, after landlords gained the right to sell land, land titles further displaced traditional rights, and large-scale cash crops replaced subsistence farming. In Palestine, capital-intensive agricultural programs led to the development of a major citrus industry, much of it on coastal plantations. Above all, as the Empire accumulated larger and larger debts, more of the economy was turned over to Western investment.
From the 1880s on, the Ottoman Porte actively encouraged European immigrants to buy land for cultivation and development. This was the context in which Jewish communities from Russia and Central Europe, fleeing from pogroms and systematic social oppression, were able to settle in Palestine. By 1900, 5,000 Jewish agricultural settlers had settled in 19 colonies. The general increase
in foreign trade and settlement throughout the Palestine region had led to rises in land prices and to waves of speculation that lasted until the end of the British mandate in 1948. Many Arab estates were sold to Jewish settlers between 1880 and 1920 by absentee landlords who lived in the cities and other regions. Palestinians from landed families also made large profits by selling off small plots or
becoming brokers for others. The upshot was the emergence of a wealthy landowning class whose political interests conflicted with those of sharecroppers, poor small farmers, and urban immigrants who had lost their rural labor and support systems.
Arab efforts to counter Zionist land acquisition in Palestine were thus undercut by a de facto alliance between the Arab landlord class and a British colonial administration interested in social and economic stability. In this context, ideology was often in conflict with economic self-interest, and land sales to Zionist organizations were usually conducted in secrecy, for fear of reprisals. In Iraq, the same history of Ottoman land reforms and privatization had led to the political dominance of wealthy landowner families in alliance with the military elite. It should not be forgotten that the Sharifian officers who began with Faisal (most of whom came from the middle class or lower) had become wealthy landowners themselves, with a more or less acknowledged stake in Iraq as an economically stable nation-state. Their shared background in European-oriented Turkish military academies also gave them a "top-down" attitude of shaping the entire society along the lines of a conservative secular nationalism, admixed with the traditional Ottoman disdain for Shiite grievances. Thus their ideological commitment to pan-Arabism, based on the legacy of Faisal's struggle for an independent "greater Syria," had gradually been transmuted into power-seeking strategies based on alliances and rivalries within their own military elite.
Ref.: Samira Haj, The Making of Iraq, 1900-1963: Capital, Power and Ideology (1997).
3. A Thumbnail Sketch of the Arab-Zionist Conflict in Palestine Between the Wars
In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration (made in a publicized letter sent by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild) promised "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine providing that nothing be done which prejudices "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." The British hoped that it would rally Jewish opinion in the U.S. to support the allied war effort while preventing the Germans from allying with the Zionist movement. It was also assumed that a British-backed Zionist "homeland" in Palestine would help to protect the Suez Canal and the land route to India. Strategic motives, then, quite apart from any Zionist sympathies, led to the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the British mandate over Palestine announced by the League of Nations in July 1922. In September 1922 the British announced that part of their mandate area would be excluded from the Balfour Declaration, and established as a separate state called Trans-Jordan. Winston Churchill, the new Colonial Secretary, invited Faisal's brother Abdullah to run it, largely to keep him from harassing the new French regime in Syria. However, the British were unable to negotiate a solution for Palestine that satisfied either the Arab or the Jewish leadership.
Since no constitutional Palestinian state could be established, the British continued their direct rule. (This arrangement subsequently led to claims, in anti-Arab polemic, that there were never a "people" called the Palestinians.) Churchill tried to calm Arab fears by promising that the Jewish home provided in the mandate would never "cause the disappearance or subordination of the Arab population, language or culture in Palestine." Churchill made this promise in June 1922, when there already was considerable Arab opposition. When a major protest broke out in April 1920 in Jerusalem, one of the organizers, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who was the younger brother of the mufti of Jerusalem, fled across the Jordan into Bedouin villages to avoid arrest. In 1922 the mufti died and the British decided to co-opt Hajj Amin's popularity by inviting him to return and occupy his brother's important post. Hajj Amin also became president of the new Supreme Muslim Sharia Council, placing him in a position of authority over Muslim affairs in Palestine. However, since he and others on the Council were paid by the British, their actual freedom was restricted.
In August 1929 a dispute over the Jewish use of the Wailing Wall (part of Herod's temple in Jerusalem, which also formed the outer wall of the Muslim Haram area) was followed by large-scale attacks upon Jews by Arabs. Riots spread to other cities, leading to deaths of both Jews and Arabs. The 1929 troubles led the British to establish a special commission under Sir Walter Shaw, which reported in March 1930 that the conflict had resulted from the disappointment of Arab hopes for independence and from the fact that Jewish expansion was creating a "landless and discontented Arab class in the country." The Shaw Commission urged that restrictions be imposed on immigration. This led to still another commission and new proposals under Lord Passfield in October 1930. The Passfield White Paper recommended that Jews be forbidden to acquire more land as long as Arabs were landless and that Jewish immigration be stopped as long as Arabs were unemployed. In April 1936 the Arab High Committee was formed to oversee the Palestinian Arabs' struggle, headed by Hajj Amin. Pressured by the emergence of a strong grass-roots movement, he called for a general strike against British rule, precipitating an armed conflict that lasted until 1939. With open war between Arabs and Jews developing, a new commission headed by Lord Peel was established to find a solution. Its report in Sept. 1937 acknowledged that cooperation between Arabs and Jews in a Palestinian state was impossible. To the Arabs' dismay, it recommended the partition of Palestine. Hajj Amin invited Arab leaders to a conference at Bluden, Syria, which rejected the Peel plan and vowed to fight as a unified pan-Arab community. The Arabs refused to compromise on their basic demands: independence for Palestine and an end to Jewish immigration and land sales. The British then outlawed the Arab High Committee and arrested activists, forcing Hajj Amin to flee to Lebanon. The next British proposal was by the Woodhead commission in Nov. 1938. Hoping to appease the Arabs, it demanded a reduction of Jewish land to 400 square miles around Tel Aviv. Both Zionists and Arabs rejected this. Finally, as noted above, the British government issued a wartime statement of unilaterally imposed terms, published as the White Paper in May 1939. German propaganda was gaining support in Arab circles, and the White Paper was an obvious concession to the Arab position. There would be no partition, and the British would not propose to define the state as Jewish or Arab. After ten years of British rule, an independent "Palestine state" was to be established. Jewish immigration would be limited to 75,000 during the next five years, after which no further immigration would be allowed. Moreover, land purchases by Jews from Arabs would be greatly restricted. The White Paper pleased no one, and the severe restrictions on immigration forced the Zionists into military resistance to save Jewish lives.
Ref.: Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1998).
