The importance of the Haganah became apparent in the early days of the British period. In February 1920, a small Jewish settlement, Tel-Hai, located in the northern area of the country, was attacked by Bedouin tribes as part of the rebellion against French rule in Syria led by Faisal I, who had declared himself king of Greater Syria, including Palestine. Tel-Hai was located in a no-man's-land between the British and French-controlled areas that had great political importance for both the British and the Zionists in determining the northern boundaries of Palestine. The isolated settlers, led by Joseph Trumpeldor, a former Jewish officer in the Russian military, asked permission to withdraw. The Zionist leadership refused and instead tried to send them reinforcements. The settlement fell, and most of the settlers, including Trumpeldor, were killed, becoming the first national heroes and martyrs in Zionist mythology (see chapter 3). The “Tel-Hai Affair” had almost nothing to do with Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine, but it served to emphasize the need for a strong Jewish military and to reinforce the view that the Arabs could be met only with force.
From time to time, the Palestinian Arabs reacted with violence to the perceived Jewish threat and in accordance with their own aspirations. The first major outbreak occurred in the wake of the enthusiasm surrounding King Faisal's temporary success in Syria and rumors that the British had agreed to support not only his regime there but also his rule over Palestine. After the festival of Nabi Musa (established as a national holiday on April 5, 1920) at the supposed tomb of Moses, Muslims attacked the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem. Before the British could intervene, five Jews and four Arabs had been killed, and about two hundred Jews and thirty Arabs had been wounded. On May Day, 1921, the declaration of a “Soviet Palestine” in Tel Aviv by Jewish socialists and communists attracted Arabs from Jaffa. In the riots that developed, forty-five Jews and fourteen Arabs were killed, and about two hundred were wounded. Shortly afterward, during the 1921 Nabi Musa celebrations, Arabs attacked several Jewish settlements, killing forty-eight Jews. In the resulting British intervention, forty-eight Arabs were also killed.
The most emotional issue for both sides has been and remains the status of the Western (Wailing) Wall. The Wall is considered by Jews to be the last remnant of the Temple, the most sanctified space of ancient Israel and, even for secular Jews, a symbol linking the modern Jewish nation with the land. For Muslims, the wall is the outer rim of Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in the Islamic world, where, according to Islamic legend, the Prophet Muhammad tethered his horse during his Night Journey. On Haram al-Sharif, the Jewish Temple Mount, Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the seventh century. Religious Jews, as well as several nationalist groups, believe that Jewish redemption will be accompanied by the rebuilding of the Temple on the site of the mosque. Fear of destruction of the holy mosque was, and remains, a major concern for local Muslim Arabs and the entire Muslim world. This anxiety adds an additional religious dimension to the Jewish-Arab conflict.
On Friday, August 23, 1929, rumors spread among the Muslims that the Jews were planning to attack Haram al-Sharif. Large crowds went out to defend the holy place and attacked the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, as well as Jewish quarters in the ancient cities of Tiberias, Safed, and Hebron. In Hebron, there was a massacre of Jews, and the ancient Jewish community had to be completely evacuated. Jews retaliated by killing seven Muslims in a Jaffa mosque. The irony was that most of those who suffered in the 1929 riots were Orthodox Jews who had preceded the Zionist immigrations and opposed them, rejecting the whole Zionist enterprise as Shabbateanism. After a week-long delay, British troops suppressed the riots, but not before 133 Jews and 116 Arabs had been killed. When a Jewish settler entered the Ibrahami Mosque (“The Tomb of the Patriarchs”) in Hebron on February 25, 1994, and in a desperate attempt to halt the Oslo Accords massacred about 30 Palestinian worshippers in the middle of the Ramadan fast, certain elements in the Jewish population considered it vengeance for the 1929 massacre. Such massacres (as well as those in Deir Yassin and Kafr Qassim) sharpened for each side the demonic character of the other in the interethnic conflict and were considered final “evidence” of their “real intentions.”10
THE ARAB REVOLTS
Restrictions on immigration to the United States in the mid 1920s and the rise of Nazism in Europe had an immediate impact on both Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine. Between 1932 and 1944, about 265,000 new Jewish immigrants arrived in the country. This was a new type of Jewish immigration. Most of the newcomers were from Poland and Germany, and they were mainly well-to-do families of the educated Jewish bourgeoisie. They had a major impact on the local economy, shifting the orientation of the Jewish community from rural to urban. New Jewish neighborhoods and towns appeared, and relatively large and technologically advanced industrial enterprises were established in a short period of time. By the mid 1930s, the Jewish population exceeded one quarter of the total population of Palestine and had taken on the look of a completely viable, self-sufficient, and self-confident society. The Jews spoke their own language, a revitalized and modernized ancient biblical Hebrew, and built up a new national social identity, which emphasized the differences between them and Diaspora Jewry.
The strengthening of the Zionist Jewish community and the emergence of a local Jewish nationalism had a twofold effect on Palestinian Arabs. First, their own collective identity became more salient and clear-cut: the “Palestinian” appeared as a counterclaim to Zionism, arguing for the unalienable right of the local Arab population to rule all the territory of the mandatory state. The second effect of the rapidly growing Jewish entity upon the Palestinians was a feeling of immediate threat and an urgent need to confront the Jews before they grew into a powerful community with allies among the imperialist powers, and before they came to represent world Judaism's claim to full control over the territory. By this time about 5 percent of the total land (but about 10 percent of cultivable land) had been bought by Jews (see table 1). These lands included Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee), the country's main reservoir, and the most fertile parts of the great valleys and coastal plain, constituting a continuum of “Jewish territory.”
In 1936, the Palestinian Arabs revolted with fury against British colonial rule, the Jewish settlers, strangers, and their own leadership, middle and upper classes, and townsmen. The first stage of the rebellion was a 175-day strike, during which the Arabs tried to paralyze the country's economy, transport, and transportation. Most Arab workers and merchandise disappeared from the markets. Bus, truck, and cab drivers turned off their engines, the railroad ground to a virtual halt, and the main port at Jaffa was shut down. What remained of traffic on the roads—that of the British and Jews—became the target of rebel attacks, forcing all vehicles to move in convoy. The British and the Jews were taken by surprise. The British arrested and exiled the Arab leadership, which until this very day has not been allowed to return to the country. Only after the Oslo Accords had been implemented, and autonomy for most of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories (first in Gaza and Jericho in 1995) was granted, were some of the Palestinian leadership repatriated.
By 1936, however, the Jewish economy was strong enough, not only to survive the Arab boycott and economic warfare, but even to prosper by using the opportunity to strengthen and diversify its production. Arab laborers were replaced by new Jewish immigrants, and a new Jewish port, a longtime demand of the Jewish community, was established by the