The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (52 page)

The disbanding of the Supreme Muslim Council had led to the closing of the school. It had been very dear to al-Hajj Amin’s heart – he had studied there, had managed it and renovated it and it was the last place he stayed in before leaving Palestine nearly for ever. (He would return once to East Jerusalem under rather strange circumstances, as we shall see.) The school was on the north side of the Dome of the Rock, an integral part of the northern wall of the shrine’s courtyard. It had been built in the time of the Mamluk governor of Gaza and Jerusalem, Alim al-Din al-Sanjar al-Jauli (1284–1344), and was named ‘
al-madrasa al-jauliya
’ after him. During the fifteenth century, it was the residence of the Mamluk governors of Jerusalem. The Ottomans, indifferent to its glory, housed a court and a jail in the building, and under Turkish rule it was called the ‘Ancient’. As mentioned earlier, Muhammad Salih al-Husayni had opened a primary school on the premises, and after the
Great War al-Hajj Amin bought it. When he was appointed head of the Supreme Muslim Council, al-Hajj Amin incorporated the school in the religious property of the Haram al-Sharif. In 1922 the Supreme Muslim Council appointed a directorship for the school, which had by then become a secondary school and taught up to eleventh grade, preparing students for matriculation. The school had a good library containing antique books in Arabic and English, as well as a mosque and a small stage for plays in Arabic – the directors insisted on Arabic being the school’s official language of tuition. The British authorities closed the school, because during the first years of the Great Revolt Muslim religious scholars met there to promote anti-government activities and because they regarded the school’s Scout movement as a potentially subversive organization. When the school was closed, its 100 students moved to the house of the late Musa Kazim in the Zahara Gate neighborhood, where they continued to study until 1948.
²

Al-Hajj Amin went inside the school for the last time. Perhaps he remembered that it stood on the site of the Roman
praetorium
where Jesus Christ was sentenced to be crucified and that it was the first station of the Via Dolorosa. He had identified with Jesus in the past: when asked by the Shaw Commission about his part in the violent outbreaks of 1920 and 1929, he declared that he was innocent and hinted that he was being falsely accused. ‘Why have you been charged?’ asked the Jewish lawyer. ‘For the same reason that 1,900 years ago, some 200 meters from where the honorable commission is sitting [the hearing took place at his house], Jesus was sentenced to be crucified. Then, too, the verdict was given to oblige the Jews.’
³
Perhaps al-Hajj Amin stood on the site of the stairs that had led to the rest of the stations – known as the Scala Sancta, they had been removed and taken to Rome in the first century ad. But even if he imagined himself in the role of Jesus Christ and the British governor as Pontius Pilate, al-Hajj Amin could not linger in the school to contemplate his destiny.
⁴

As evening fell on 12 October, the
mufti
, dressed in Bedouin robes and bearing the identity of Muhammad al-Ja’afar, slid down twenty meters from the window of his house in the Haram into an orchard outside the wall. The owner of the orchard, who had been watching the British patrols day and night, signaled to the
mufti
that the field was clear. The
mufti
’s close friend Rafiq al-Ajouni was waiting for him in a car and drove him to Jaffa. The car was stopped and examined several times en route. In Jaffa another friend, Yusuf Dhiya al-Dajani, met them and took them to his fine house on the shore. At midnight
al-Hajj Amin left the Port of Jaffa in a small boat and reached the Port of Abu Zabura, forty miles north of Jaffa, at dawn. The following night he proceeded to Haifa, and the next night he left Palestine, which he would not see again until 1967, when King Hussein of Jordan invited him to Jerusalem. He reached Tyre, where he was caught by the French Coast Guard, who brought him before the French police chief Pierre Colombani. But the latter turned out to be a friend, and the
mufti
promised him that he would not stay long in Lebanon but would move on to Damascus at the first opportunity. Jamal fled after al-Hajj Amin. Before leaving, he edited the last issue of
Al-Liwa
, the Husaynis’ second publication (after
Al-Jamaa’ al-Arabiyya
). When the British came to arrest him, they found his office empty.

At first the British thought that al-Hajj Amin’s flight to Lebanon was a convenient solution. He was staying at the house of Dr Samah al-Fahuri, the head of the Supreme Muslim Council in Beirut, and the French authorities obliged the British by stationing a military force beside the house.
⁵
The
mufti
occupied the top floor of the three-storey house. One of his first visitors was Akram Zuaytar, who found al-Hajj Amin in good spirits, encouraged by the warm welcome he had received from the local Muslims. Al-Hajj Amin asked his visitor how people in Palestine reacted to his flight, and Zuaytar did not have the heart to tell him that opinions were divided. Some argued that he should have remained in the country even if it meant confinement in the Haram, and others said that ‘sacrifice is not made for its own sake’ and that the main thing was to evade the British clutches. But Abd al-Qadir supported the
mufti
’s flight, putting an end to the public debate. Zuaytar assured al-Hajj Amin that everyone was behind him.

Al-Hajj Amin did not stay long in al-Fahuri’s house, as the Lebanese wanted to hide him in a more secluded place. An old friend of his, the well-known Beirut socialite Maude Faragallah, approached the French High Commissioner and obtained a more convenient refuge for him. Though it was not easy to arrange a safe haven for a person the British considered to be a threat, she did eventually find him a house in Kassalik, a palatial residence that would one day serve as the presidential palace of Fuad Shihab.
⁶
It was not only convenient but also strategically located in a way that allowed him to be in touch with Palestine, where the revolt was not over yet. With the French authorities’ knowledge, he was allowed to receive advisers and messengers. During the uprising al-Hajj Amin instituted the
kaffiyah
and
aqal
(cloth headdress and cord) as the national Palestinian headgear in place of the
traditional tarbush.
⁷
He looked for ways to encourage the armed band of youths in Palestine that was trying to wage a guerrilla war against the British mandate in 1938. However, the band was crushed ruthlessly with the help of the Royal Air Force and a series of collective punishments that today would be considered war crimes.

With al-Hajj Amin ensconced in Lebanon and Jamal touring the Arab world, another Husayni briefly appeared on the stage of Palestinian history: Suleiman al-Husayni, also a scion of the Tahiri branch. He was working very closely with the better-known Ishaq Darwish, al-Hajj Amin’s relation by marriage and his close adviser. They both established the headquarters of the Palestinian uprising in Damascus, and in many ways the success of the armed campaign before it was crushed was due to their skill in orchestrating such operations from far away.

While it lasted it was an impressive war of liberation – the kind the Palestinians would venture to wage again in 1987 and then in 2000. From October 1937 until the winter of 1938, the uprising raged all over Palestine, with guerrillas attacking British and Zionist targets. As mentioned, the British government responded harshly, imposing collective punishments and death sentences. Thanks to the efforts of Suleiman and Ishaq, the Husaynis retained their political power throughout the uprising. Even without the important posts of
mufti
,
naqib al-ashraf
, mayor, members of parliament, head of the Supreme Muslim Council or the Higher Arab Committee, the family remained at the heart of the political map – an impressive achievement.

The family determined the politics of the military leadership, but it could not direct the armed struggle. Indeed, few Palestinians were capable of doing so, and the first priority of the high command was to find an Arab, not necessarily a Palestinian, who could head it. The natural choice was Fawzi al-Qawuqji. A native of Tripoli in Syria, he had made his reputation by leading the Syrian rebellion against France. He had projected himself as the embodiment of pan-Arab solidarity in Palestine. His military experience had won him the post of military adviser to the Saudi king, but for some reason he fell out with the Saudi court and went back to serving in the French army even though it had sentenced him to death. In 1932 he had been in Baghdad, where he began to work for the armed struggle in Palestine. But he had chosen the Nashashibis as his political patrons, and here British and Husayni interests overlapped.
⁸
In 1936, he headed an army of volunteers that took part in some daring operations against the British forces. But he
did not stay for long, and in October that year he left Palestine. He would return in 1948 and would become al-Hajj Amin’s archrival in local politics. But in 1938, even if he had contemplated another entry to Palestine, he would have been barred by the Iraqi government, which was under pressure from the British to prevent him from returning to the Palestinian battlefield. For a brief moment, the British position meshed with that of the Husaynis since they both opposed the Nashashibis. And so Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s candidacy fell at the first post.

Other candidates who were approached refused. Then Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj, one of the early leaders of the uprising who was still fighting in Palestine, accepted the position. But he was killed at the end of February 1939 in a battle against British forces. He was succeeded by two local commanders until the end of the uprising.

Even the local commander in the Jerusalem area was not directly connected to the Husaynis. Arif Abd al-Raziq was the district commander who directed operations starting in September 1938, when the rebels decided to launch an attack on the British forces in Jerusalem. For one day, 17 October 1938, the city was in the hands of the Palestinians, as the British district commander, Honig, reported to his superiors – a small triumph for a failure-haunted movement.
⁹

The Husaynis were the uprising’s foreign ministers, especially Jamal and al-Hajj Amin. Helped by Suleiman and Ishaq Darwish, the two diverted the headquarters of the revolt to the house of their friend Amir Said al-Jazairi, scion of the famous family that had led the Algerian uprising against the French. The family had been exiled to Damascus at the end of the nineteenth century, where it became allied with Faysal’s regime and later with the Syrian National Bloc, which spearheaded Syria’s struggle for independence. The amir recruited the veterans of the 1925 Syrian revolt against the French to help the Palestinians. In a rare moment of pan-Arab solidarity, these veterans formed a committee to aid the Palestinian uprising of 1936. It was the first significant step in the recruitment of Syrian volunteers for Palestine, which would continue until 1948.

Suleiman al-Husayni was the liaison between the committee in Damascus and the rebels in Palestine, while Ishaq Darwish was the liaison with the
mufti
in Lebanon. The two purchased a house for their exiled relatives in the Salihiyya Quarter on Muhajarin Street (another historical irony, placing the Palestinian exiles in ‘the street of the migrants’). The house was used not only for gatherings but also as a refuge for exiles who could not afford to buy houses for themselves.
No one could enter the place without giving the password. Meetings were held either in the early hours of the morning or late at night, in part because Suleiman and Ishaq were busy during the day. They met government officials or sat in the al-Qamahin Café (owned by Ibrahim al-Asal and Abu Abdu Qador, veterans of the 1925 revolt) recruiting volunteers and arms for the uprising. The arms they obtained were cached in the central Maydan Quarter, beside the great garbage dump that dated back to Ottoman times. The local gendarmerie cooperated, and arms smuggling into Palestine followed a predetermined route through sympathetic villages. The attempt to build a similar network inside Lebanon failed because the Lebanese police did not cooperate.

Most of the arms were collected in the Kurdish mountain region, where it was always possible to find weapons for sale. As in every complex political situation in the Middle East, the Palestinians were aided by diverse and conflicting interests. The Kurds helped because they hoped that the Palestinians would support their own struggle against Turkey in the future, and the Turkish consul in Damascus was happy to support any operation that would reduce the number of weapons in Kurdish hands.

Though nowhere near the battleground, al-Hajj Amin sought to depict himself as the supreme commander. He adopted the
nom de guerre
‘
Sumuh
’ (‘The Generous’), which was used by all his correspondents throughout his exile in Damascus to fool British intelligence.
¹⁰
The farther he was from his native land, the more al-Hajj Amin’s delusions of grandeur intensified – in 1941 he presented himself in Germany as the leader of the entire Arab nation.

Al-Hajj Amin had an extensive network of connections in the Syrian administration. The Husaynis in Damascus were on close terms with Adil al-Azma, the general director of the Syrian Ministry of the Interior. This was a revived connection – in 1925 the Azma brothers had been involved in the Syrian revolt against the French and were periodically exiled to various places, among them Jerusalem. Upon their return home that year from their first exile, they received a letter from the
mufti
expressing his hope that they would continue their vital struggle. This letter must have won al-Hajj Amin a special place in the heart of this family.
¹¹