The Crime of Nationalism
The Crime of Nationalism
BRITAIN, PALESTINE, AND
NATION-BUILDING ON THE FRINGE OF EMPIRE
Matthew Kraig Kelly
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
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University of California Press
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© 2017 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kelly, Matthew Kraig, author.
Title: The crime of nationalism : Britain, Palestine, and nation-building on
the fringe of empire / Matthew Kraig Kelly.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016676 (print) | LCCN 2017019351 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780520965256 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520291485 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780520291492 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Palestine—History—Arab rebellion, 1936-1939. | Palestine—
History—1917-1948. | Great Britain—Foreign relations—Palestine. |
Palestine—Foreign relations—Great Britain. | Palestine—Politics and
government—1917-1948. | Violence—Palestine—History.
Classification: LCC DS126 (ebook) | LCC DS126 .K39 2017 (print) |
DDC 956.94/04—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016676
Manufactured in the United States of America
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For my parents, Kraig and Dolores Kelly In memory of David Batza
CONTENTS
1 • British Causal Primacy and the Origins of the Palestinian Great Revolt
2 • “A Wave of Crime”: The Criminalization of Palestinian Nationalism, April–June 1936
3 • “The Policy Is the Criminal”: War on the Discursive Frontier, July–August 1936
4 • The British Awakening to the Military Nature of the Rebellion, August–October 1936
PART TWO
1937–39
5 • The Peel Commission Reconsidered
6 • Towards a Rebel Parastate: The Arab Rejection of Partition and the Effort to Institutionalize the Revolt, 1937–38
7 • New Policy, New Crime: The Abortion of the Balfour Declaration
8 • The End of the Revolt, 1939
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I cannot put into words my gratitude for the many people who made this book possible, but I will try. Above all, I want to thank my family. My wife, Tammie, traveled with me to England and to Israel during the research phase of the book. To help support me, she waited tables in London, and taught dance workshops all over England, Israel, the Netherlands and France. And she did it all without complaint. My parents, Kraig and Dolores Kelly, were unfailing in their support, both moral and material, through my years in graduate school and during the research and writing phases of the book. My uncle and dear friend, the great Dr. Gary Lynch, carefully read and commented on various drafts of the manuscript. He also saved this project from the scrapheap of books-to-be by stepping in with financial support on more than one occasion. More generally, “UG” has been a source of intellectual and spiritual inspiration to me for many years. I have to thank a number of friends who happen also to be first-rate scholars and therefore readers. These include my lifelong friend Tommy Givens, and two of my most cherished confidantes, Fredrik Meiton and Adam Talib. Tom offered invaluable advice early in the writing process, and has been a source of personal strength for as long as I have known him. Fred and Adam went well beyond the call of duty in closely vetting the manuscript and offering me indispensable historical, linguistic, and stylistic advice. The book would never have seen the light of day without the support of James Gelvin. I am profoundly thankful for his years of institutional, intellectual, and moral support. It is fitting that he gave me the book title. In addition to Gelvin’s, I am fortunate to have received the learned input of the other three members of my dissertation committee, David N. Myers, Gabriel Piterberg, and Michael Mann. As important, my good friends Gaby Goldstein and Tony Peterson, as well as Nehad Khader, Nadia Naqib, Lexi Newman, Maia Tabet, and Natasha Wheatley were all kind enough to offer many thoughtful comments on early drafts of the manuscript. Other fine scholars who took the time to correspond with me include Hillel Cohen, Kate Halls (a tremendous help), Joshua Landis, Benny Morris, Sami Moubayed, Jacob Norris, Rafi Stern, Stephen Wagner, and Alex Winder. I also benefitted from the research support of Mansour al-Sheikh, Walter Lorenz and Alya al-Marakby, all of whom helped get this project over the hump by being professional, punctual, and just good. Colin Mackie gave generously of his time to help me nail down certain opaque institutional developments in the Foreign Office in 1938. Ami Ayalon and Mustafa Kabha, too, offered me valuable research advice. The great Jason Pickersgill once again brought a project of mine to visual fruition by imagining what I would, but only he could. At the institutional level, I am indebted to the staffs of UCLA’s History Department and Young Research Library, the National Archives and Imperial War Museum in London, the Middle East Centre at Oxford, the Central Zionist and Israel State Archives in Jerusalem, and the Haganah Archives in Tel Aviv. I am likewise indebted to the Library of Congress, Punch Ltd., and Getty Images. Finally, I would like to thank the University of California Press, and especially Niels Hooper and Bradley Depew, for believing in and supporting this project.
Introduction
ON 21 JUNE 1936, Muhammad