[1895–1974]
A portrait taken in
1938 of the mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council of
Palestine (1921–1936), Al-Haji Amin al-Husayni (1893–1974). Husayni opposed
British rule and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
On the Palestinian
side, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, tried to establish contacts with
the Italians and the Germans in the mid-1930s, viewing them as potential allies
for his goal of removing British and Zionist influence from Palestine.
Cooperation on several issues lasted until the downfall of Nazi Germany. The
peak was on 28 November 1941, when the mufti met with Adolf Hitler; Hitler
alluded to the Nazi Final Solution, while al- Husayni emphasized common
German-Arab interests. There is no evidence to support claims that it was the
mufti who inspired Hitler to initiate the Final Solution.
By PHILIP MATTAR
Born in Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni (later often referred to
as Hajj Amin) was the scion of a prominent Palestinian Muslim family, which
included landed notables and religious officeholders such as the mufti (Islamic
legal expert).[1]
Over the next few years, several events radicalized
al-Husayni. When the British proposed, in the 1937 Peel Commission Report, to
partition Palestine, he rejected the proposal because the Jews, who owned 5.6
percent of the land, would receive many times that area and in the most fertile
region, from which most Palestinians would be expelled; the British would
remain in control of the third holiest city of Islam, Jerusalem; and the rest
would be attached to Amir Abdullah’s Transjordan. Faced with the mufti’s
refusal to cooperate, the British stripped him of his offices and sought to
arrest him.
He escaped to Lebanon in 1937, continued to lead the revolt,
and most likely acquiesced in the assassination of his Palestinian opponents.
The revolt was finally suppressed in 1939, after more than three thousand
Palestinians had been killed, their leaders exiled, and the Palestinian economy
shattered. Al-Husayni became bitter and uncompromising, rejecting the 1939
White Paper even though its terms were favorable to the Palestinians: It
proposed a limitation on Jewish immigration and land purchases and a Palestine
state with a representative government based on ratio of two Arabs to one Jew.
He again escaped, this time from Lebanon to Iraq, where he encouraged a
pan-Arab revolt against British rule in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill approved his assassination, but a British and Zionist mission to
assassinate him in Baghdad failed.
Al-Husayni fled to the Axis countries, where he conferred
with Mussolini and Hitler. He cooperated with the Nazis in exchange for German
promises that the Arab nations would be liberated and given their independence
after the war, and he assisted in anti- British and anti-Semitic propaganda
campaigns and in recruiting Muslims for the war effort. The mufti, fearing that
Jewish immigration to Palestine would lead to the domination or dispossession
of his people, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Nazi officials not to allow
Jews to leave Axis countries for Palestine. By doing so, he endangered the
lives of thousands of Jews, mostly children, who probably would have been sent
to concentration camps. Israeli writers and their supporters were so eager to
indict him as a war criminal who participated in the Holocaust that they
exaggerated his activities, whereas Arab writers, especially Palestinians, were
so intent on justifying his actions in Axis countries that they ignored his
cooperation with a barbaric regime. What is certain is that his association
with the Nazis tainted his career and his cause and limited his effectiveness
during the critical period from 1946 to 1948.
In 1946, al-Husayni returned to the Arab world with the aim
of continuing his struggle against the Zionists and establishing an Arab
Palestine. But he misjudged the balance of forces. He rejected the UN General
Assembly’s partition resolution (181) of November 1947 largely because it gave
the Jews 55 percent of Palestine when they owned only 7 percent of the land. In
the civil strife and war that followed, about 725,000 Palestinians fled or were
expelled by Israel forces. After the Arab–Israel War of 1948, al-Husayni
gradually lost political influence and became a religious leader, settling
first in Cairo and then in Beirut.
Assessment
Although astute, incorruptible, and dedicated to the welfare
of his people, al-Husayni’s policies during both phases of his career were a
failure. From 1917 to 1936, despite his rhetoric about the ominous threat of
Zionism to Palestinian national existence, he cooperated with the British and
rejected an overt struggle, preferring petitions, delegations, and personal appeals.
In the meantime, the Zionists’ numbers increased from 50,000 in 1917 to 384,000
in 1936. It was only after 1936 that al-Husayni participated in active measures
to stop Jewish immigration, which if unchecked, the Palestinians felt, would
result in their expulsion or domination. But by then it was too late: The
Zionists had become too powerful, and the British had lost their discretionary
authority in the country. Conversely, the Palestinians, especially after the
suppression of the Arab Revolt, were too weak.
Al-Husayni did not adjust his demands to the realities and
made little effort to reach an accommodation with the British and the Zionists.
His rejection of the 1947 UN resolution was a missed opportunity that
contributed to Palestinian dispossession. However, even had he accepted the
resolution, it is uncertain that a Palestinian state would have been
established because of a 1946 and 1947 agreement, supported by the British,
between Amir Abdullah ibn Hussein and the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine
between them.
The overriding factors that frustrated Palestinian
nationalists have as much to do with al-Husayni’s intransigence as with the
balance of forces. The 1897 Basel Zionist program and the 1917 Balfour
Declaration policy, backed by the British military and by Western support, gave
Palestine’s Jewish community time to grow through immigration and land
purchases and to establish modern quasigovernmental and military institutions.
The Palestinians were a weak, divided, and traditional society and never a
match for the British and the Zionists.
Bibliography
Elpeleg, Zvi. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj Amin al-Husayni, Founder of the
Palestinian National Movement. London: Frank Cass, 1993. Khadduri, Majid. “The
Traditional (Idealist) School— the Extremist: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni.” In Arab
Contemporaries: The Role of Personalities in Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1973. Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj
Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, revised edition. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Porath, Yehoshua. “Al-Hajj Amin
al-Husayni, Mufti of Jerusalem: His Rise to Power and Consolidation of His
Position.” Asian and African Studies 7 (1971): 212–256. Schechtman, Joseph B.
The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Rise and Fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini. New York:
Thomas Yoseloff, 1965.
[1] Mufti: Type of Islamic cleric. A mufti is an expert in
Islamic law empowered to given religious opinions on various matters. Such an
opinion is called a fatwa.
