1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

Between April 1936 and August 1939, Palestinian Arabs in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine rose against the mandate administration, first through a long general strike and then through an armed rural insurgency. Known in Arabic as the Great Revolt, it demanded independence and a halt to British support for the Zionist project, above all to Jewish immigration and land purchases. British forces suppressed it, but it led Britain to retreat from plans to partition the country and shaped the balance of forces before the war of 1948.

The causes were both economic and political. Indebted Arab peasants were losing land, partly through sales to Jewish settlement agencies, and many drifted into the poor districts of Jaffa and Haifa. Jewish immigration, which Britain had undertaken to facilitate under the Balfour Declaration, peaked in the mid-1930s: more than 164,000 immigrants arrived between 1933 and 1936, and the Jewish share of the population rose from about 17 to 27 per cent between 1931 and 1936. Palestinian Arab nationalism had taken firmer shape under British rule, and Arabs and Jews had been caught in a cycle of attacks since 1920.

In October 1935 smuggled arms bound for the Jewish defence force, the Haganah, were found at Jaffa. The preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who had organised armed followers among the Haifa poor, was killed by police on 20 November 1935, causing widespread anger.

The immediate trigger came on 15 April 1936, when members of a Qassamite band killed two Jewish travellers near Anabta; Jewish gunmen then killed two Arab labourers, and rioting spread. On 19 April a general strike began in Nablus. The Arab Higher Committee, headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was formed on 25 April and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and land sales and a national government.

Armed bands attacked the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline, railways, Jewish settlements and Jewish civilians. Britain poured in troops, some 20,000 by late September, and used harsh measures including punitive village searches and detention. After Arab rulers of neighbouring states appealed for calm, the strike was called off on 11 October 1936.

A Royal Commission under Lord Peel concluded in 1937 that the mandate's obligations to Arabs and Jews could not be reconciled, and recommended partition into a small Jewish state, a larger Arab area joined to Transjordan, and a British-held zone. It also proposed the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs. The Arab Higher Committee rejected the plan; the main Zionist leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, persuaded the Zionist Congress to accept it, with reservations, as a basis for negotiation.

Fighting resumed after rebels assassinated the district commissioner of Galilee, Lewis Andrews, on 26 September 1937. Britain moved against the Arab leadership, and al-Husseini went into exile. By mid-1938 the government appeared to have lost control of much of the country, and the Old City of Jerusalem became a rebel stronghold until troops retook it in October. Reinforced, and working with Jewish auxiliaries, the army had largely crushed the insurgency by 1939. Violence also ran within Arab society: rebels loyal to al-Husseini killed Arab opponents, some of whom formed so-called peace bands and cooperated with British and Jewish forces. From November 1937 the Jewish group Irgun, rejecting the Haganah's policy of restraint, carried out indiscriminate attacks on Arab civilians.

More than 5,000 Arabs, over 300 Jews and 262 Britons are generally reported killed, with at least 15,000 Arabs wounded; 108 Arabs were hanged. In 1938 the Woodhead Commission rejected the Peel plan as unworkable without mass forced transfer, and the White Paper of May 1939 restricted Jewish immigration and land purchase and envisaged a binational state within ten years. Zionists strongly opposed the new policy.

Historians differ in their assessments. Some see the revolt as the moment when a Palestinian Arab national identity took shape; others, such as Benny Morris, argue that it was counterproductive because it left the Arab community disarmed and its leadership broken before the 1948 war.

Our 1938 map shows the British mandate at the height of the revolt; today the territory is divided between Israel and Palestine.