Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

As we have already seen above, Palestinian national consciousness did not emerge out of the blue in the early 20th century. It emerged gradually across decades and through momentous developments which affected Palestine and the wider region in the second half of the 19th century. However the overall goals of Palestinian nationalism in the post-First World War period shifted radically from autonomy and equal citizenship under the Ottomans to anti-colonial struggle, liberation and independence during the British Mandatory period.28

Crucially, active resistance to the existential threat posed by Zionist immigration to and settler-colonialism of Palestine during the Mandatory period became central to the Palestinian nationalist struggle. The context of post-First World War Palestine had changed radically. The British, who occupied Palestine in 1917‒1918, had committed themselves to Zionist settler goals as framed in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. In 1920 the San Remo Conference of the four Principal Allied Powers of the First World War decided to include the words of the Belfour Declaration in the text of the British Mandate over Palestine. In coming face to face with the existential threat of the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration’s commitments, the Palestinian nationalist movement, early on, had to grapple with what was to become a perennial dilemma: whether to emphasise the territorial Palestinian or pan-Arabist dimensions of Palestinian Arab identity.

This dilemma bedevilled Palestinian nationalist politics throughout the first half of the 20th century and was carried forward well into the post- Nakba period.

In the post-First World War period, Palestinian nationalist resistance organisations began to proliferate. The Palestinian Revival Society (al-Nahdah al-Filistiniyyah), a Palestinian nationalist organisation, was founded in Damascus in March 1919. Its first president was Salim al-Tibi, who went from Jerusalem to Damascus in the anticipation of the formation of Emir Faisal’s administration in the city. Al-Tibi had been a senior officer in the Arab Army of Emir Faisal and his father was the mufti of Tulkarem. He was later replaced as a president of the society by Salman ‘Abdel-Rahman, the son of the mayor of Tulkarem (Tauber 2007: 95). Other leaders of the society were Muhammad ʿIzzat Darwazah from Nablus, ‘Abd al-Qader al-Muzaffar and Rushdi al-Shawa from Gaza. Al-Shawa travelled frequently between Damascus, Jerusalem, Jaffa and Gaza, accompanying al-Muzaffar on his trips to Palestine, smuggling arms and encouraging an uprising against the British. In 1919 it was reported he took 100 pistols from Damascus to Jerusalem for the members of al-Fida’iyyah (Tauber 2007: 94).

Also in the early days of the Mandatory period the Palestinian Arab national leadership convened the Palestine Arab Congress (al-Mutamar al-‘Arabi al-Filastini), a series of national congresses organised by a nationwide network of committees and local Palestinian Muslim and Christian associations; between 1919 and 1928 seven congresses were held in Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa and Nablus (Porath 1974). From 1920 until 1934

the national Executive Committee of the Congress, which coordinated Palestinian opposition to the Balfour Declaration and British pro-Zionist policies in Palestine, was headed by Musa Kazim al-Husayni, Mayor of Jerusalem between 1918 and 1920. The Executive Committee and its local committees commanded widespread public support but they were never officially recognised by the British authorities. The resolutions of the Third Palestine Arab Congress held in Haifa on 4‒14 December 1920, which were subsequently presented to British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in early 1921, were summarised by Ilan Pappe as follows:

The slogan of the conference was ‘Equality with the Mandate of Iraq’.

The text of Iraq’s mandate stipulated that it would have a parliament elected on the democratic principle of one citizen, one vote. It acknowledged Iraq as a watani (national entity) that would eventually become independent. [Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faruqi] explained to those gathered that these were the most elementary demands, yet they had been denied to the Palestinians because of the Balfour Declaration. (Pappe 2010: 208)

This Third Palestine Arab Congress:

can be seen as the conceptive venue of the Palestine Arab national movement, meeting in Haifa in mid-December 1920, called on the new British rulers to establish a government ‘to be chosen by the Arabic-speaking people who had lived in Palestine before the beginning of the [world] war’. It completely, flatly rejected [Zionist] Jewish claims to Palestine. (Morris 2009: 88)

Continuities in modern Palestinian national thinking can be seen in some of the institutionalised aspects of the Palestinian national struggle in the pre-Nakba period which re-emerged in the post-Nakba era. For instance, in 1930, following the 1929 ‘al-Burraq Uprising’ (Habbat al-Buraq)

in Muslim-majority Palestine, the Palestinian leadership set up the Palestine Arab National Fund (PANF). Established by the Palestine Arab Executive and led by Fouad Saba, a Palestinian activist and accountant born in Acre, the PANF took some practical financial steps to discourage land sales to Zionist national institutions in Palestine. The PANF was the antecedent to the much larger and more multi-purpose Palestine National Fund (PNF)

set up by the PLO in 1964 (see below).

Understandably, during the Mandatory (colonial) period some leading Palestinian personalities continued to view Palestinian identity as part of wider Arab identity of the al-Sham region and/or pan-Arab identities. But pan-Arab or al-Sham identities as a whole cannot be understood in isolation from their constituent and particular (Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian) identities. Furthermore pan-Arab or al-Sham ideologies cannot negate the existence of historic Palestine or the deeply rooted, distinct and particular Palestinian identity.