A House Divided

What the Easter 1920 riots in Jerusalem revealed about British rule in Palestine.

Shortly after 10 am on Sunday four April 1920, a cinematographer set up his digicam close to the entrance to the Christian suq interior of Jerusalem’s walled old town to film Muslim pilgrims collecting close to the Jaffa Gate at the start of the pageant of Nebi Musa. According to local legend, the twelfth-century Muslim leader Saladin invented Nebi Musa to thwart any try by way of Christian pilgrims pouring into Jerusalem at Easter to reclaim it for Christendom. Elsewhere inside the Holy City, Christians were celebrating Easter and Jews have been making ready for Passover. The temper of the gang on the Jaffa Gate became pleased before everything but, because the movie was shot with the aid of an unknown cameraman shows, violence suddenly broke out and the group scattered. It's far not possible to tell exactly who became attacking whom, however, the film captures the very moment whilst Jerusalem becomes plunged into a frenzy of anti-Jewish rioting that lasted four days.

The underlying motive of this first principal disaster for Palestine’s new British rulers turned into the anger which Palestinian Arabs, Christian as well as Muslim, felt over the British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour’s pledge, in November 1917, of British assistance for the established order of a Jewish hometown in Palestine. They noticed that what Balfour genuinely intended entailed the introduction of a Jewish state and, ultimately, their very own dispossession. Coupled with their opposition to Zionism changed into their enthusiasm for Emir Feisal, the field commander of the Hashemite military which the British had financed, skilled, and ready from 1916 to 1918 to combat the Ottoman Turks and who, for this reason, give up of the primary international struggle, have been the de facto ruler of Damascus. To his followers, Feisal represented each a rallying point towards British and French plans to carve up the Middle East and their high-quality desire for an independent kingdom comprising the defunct Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces, inclusive of Palestine. It was no mere accident that, simply before the rioting in Jerusalem started, speakers addressing the Nebi Musa pilgrims prominently displayed Feisal’s portrait.

Remaining responsibility for keeping public security in Palestine lay with the British military, however, the day-to-day enterprise of government was dealt with by means of the Occupied Enemy Territories administration (South), or OETA, which widespread Sir Edmund Allenby created six months after his British imperial military captured Jerusalem in December 1917. The OETA committed itself to keep the status quo in Palestine in step with the legal guidelines and Usages of conflict, as set down within the 1907 Hague conference, until such time brilliant Britain signed a peace treaty with Turkey that would pave the manner for implementation of the Balfour statement. To this stop, it did now not allow itself to put up the full textual content of the assertion. Zionists got here to regard this and other decisions by way of the OETA as proof of ingrained antisemitism. The ones among them with first-hand experience of the way that Tsarist chinovniki used to orchestrate pogroms in pre-revolutionary Russia satisfied themselves that the OETA itself was in the back of the rising tide of Arab anti-Zionist agitation. In turn, Zionists were accused of making a parallel administration in Palestine and, even worse, of uploading Bolshevism from the newly based Soviet Union. Those spats cost numerous OETA officers their jobs. By using Easter 1920, relations between the British authorities in Palestine and nearby Zionist leaders have been traumatic.

The political situation in Palestine was worsening. There had been two massive anti-Zionist demonstrations in Jerusalem, but these exceeded with little trouble. In Palestine’s far-flung northern fringes, however, Syrian Druze tribesmen attacked a Jewish colony, killing six of its contributors. In Jerusalem, Jewish veterans who had fought in Palestine below Allenby at some stage in the outstanding war and neighborhood contributors of the Maccabi Zionist sports affiliation combined to form self-defense squads to meet the threat of anti-Jewish violence. Certainly one of their organizers changed into Vladimir Jabotinsky, ex-British military lieutenant, proud holder of the army move, and a specifically pugnacious and forthright Zionist. Nonetheless, Jerusalem’s army governor, Colonel Ronald Storrs, turned into not unduly alarmed by way of those troubling portents. On paper, he had at his disposal 3 infantry battalions, one British, Indian, in case the Nebi Musa festivities erupted into violence, however, he did now not ask the army to location them on standby. As a substitute, Storrs left Jerusalem’s police force of 8 officials and 188 constables, in the main locals, in the sole price of public security. It turned into reported that the primary he knew that whatever untoward was taking place passed off at the ideal moment any person burst into St George’s Anglican Cathedral outside the vintage metropolis, in which he and the relaxation of Jerusalem’s British network had been celebrating Easter, and yelled: ‘They’re killing each other available!’

Despite the rapid imposition of martial regulation, 5 Jews and four Arabs have been killed, 242 humans were injured and dozens of Jewish properties were looted and vandalized before British troops had been able to restore order. Storrs compounded his in advance misjudgment over the extent of policing required for the Nebi Musa competition by way of ordering the arrest of Jabotinsky and 19 of his comrades for owning weapons and ammunition. News of the Jerusalem ‘disturbances’ and the 15-yr jail sentence exceeded to Jabotinsky by using a navy tribunal have been met with fury by way of Zionists and their allies inside the British Parliament and press. The OETA now stood accused of setting up a pogrom. The British government in Jerusalem acted fast to quell the uproar by reducing Jabotinsky’s jail sentence to twelve months, however, to move off a prime breach with the Zionist motion, top Minster David Lloyd George ordered OETA’s alternative with civilian management headed via an excessive commissioner who could uphold the Balfour statement. The regime change passed off properly in advance of outstanding Britain signing a peace treaty with Turkey and being awarded a mandate to control Palestine by means of the League of Countries. On such shaky political and felony foundations did British rule on this three times-promised land cross forward.