When the Palestinian national movement emerged, in the aftermath of World War I
, it took the form of Muslim-Christian associations, linked to the pan-Arab national movement that made Damascus
its center, and embodied the aspirations of Arabs in the Arab Mashriq for liberation and unity within a single state. However, Arab nationalism in Palestine took a specific form because of the growing feeling of the dangers posed by Jewish immigration and colonization. This was especially the case with the “second wave” of Jewish immigration to Palestine that followed mounting anti-Semitism in Russia
. Unlike previous immigrants, these new comers organized campaigns to expel Arab workers and peasants from Jewish settlements and to boycott Arab products under the slogans “conquest of the land” and “Hebrew labor.”
This awareness of the Zionist threat deepened because of the fragmentation imposed on the Arab Mashriq and the distribution of the pan-Arab national movement into regional patriotic movements. At the San Remo Conference
in April 1920, the Allies had decided to place Syria
and Lebanon
under a French Mandate, Palestine and Iraq
under a British one. On 25 July, French forces entered Damascus after the defeat of the Arab army in the Battle of Maysalun
and the overthrow of King Faisal
's government.
The Attitude toward the Future of the Jewish Presence in Palestine
Throughout the British Mandate period, the Palestinian national movement firmly rejected the Balfour Declaration
and called for an end to Jewish immigration to Palestine and the transfer of Arab land to Jewish immigrants. At the same time its positions were unclear concerning the future of the Jews whom the Zionist Movement
had succeeded in bringing to Palestine as part of it in collusion with the Mandate authorities.
In early July 1919 the General Syrian Congress
, which was based in Damascus and included several Palestinian representatives, sent a letter to the King-Crane Commission
on the future of Syria, saying that it rejected Jewish immigration and the idea of Palestine becoming a Jewish Commonwealth. It also said it was prepared to guarantee shared rights and obligations with “our Jewish compatriots.” Regarding the colonial partition imposed on the Levant
, the 3rd Palestinian National Congress
, held in Haifa
in December 1920, called for a national government in Palestine that would be accountable to a representative assembly in which the inhabitants of Palestine would be represented proportionately, including the Jews who had been living in Palestine before World War I. The congress (which was a harbinger of the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement) expressed its dissatisfaction with the British administration for its recognition of The Zionist Commission
as an official body and its movement toward implementing Zionist plans.
On 25 November 1935, the leaders of the Arab parties submitted a memorandum to the British High Commissioner, in which they called for a democratic government, an immediate end to Jewish immigration, and “legislation to require all lawful residents to obtain and carry identity cards,” but they did not specify clearly what they meant by “lawful residents.” On 23 July 1937, when the Arab Higher Committee (Lajna)
(AHC), which had been formed at the beginning of the Great Palestinian Rebellion
, rejected the British Peel Commission
's proposal to partition Palestine, it demanded “an independent unitary Palestinian state” that would protect "all legitimate rights of the Jewish population or other minorities in Palestine" and safeguard "reasonable British interests.”
Ten years later, the AHC
position on the future of the Jews in Palestine was still somewhat ambiguous. In a statement it issued in April 1947, it called for a solution of the Palestinian question in line with the Arab National Charter
and “recognition of the Arabs' legitimate right to their homeland and to independence, as in all Arab countries, on the basis of democracy and protection of the rights of minorities, as recognized by democratic principles.” Henry Cattan
, the AHC representative to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, said in an address to the committee on 9 May 1947, that “the Arab opposition to immigration and to the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine is not based on any racial prejudice against Jews as Jews, but would be equally strong whatever the race or religion of any group which might attempt to wrest the country from its Arab inhabitants or to force immigrants into it against the wishes of the Arabs.” Cattan asserted that “Palestine's right to independence should be recognized, and that this tormented country should enjoy the blessing of a democratic government.”
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 on partitioning Palestine was passed on 29 November 1947. The AHC categorically rejected it without proposing an alternative solution that took account of the profound changes that had arisen from World War II
, which had turned the Jewish settlements in Palestine into a major demographic, political, and economic force and created an atmosphere of widespread international sympathy for them, especially after the massacres that the Nazis had committed against them. The AHC said that the partition resolution “gives foreign Jews a valuable part of Palestine and expels a large number of Arabs from their homeland. It also places in Palestine a foreign nation that threatens security in the East through aggression against Arab countries.”
Only the Arab communists, through the National Liberation League in Palestine
, addressed the Jewish question comprehensively. The communists' premise was that “the Zionists have succeeded in moving large numbers of European Jews from their original countries to Palestine, after the Nazis began to organize brutal campaigns of persecution against those Jews, in which millions of them were killed.” The league thought it was the duty of the Palestinian nationalist movement to “save the Jewish people in Palestine from the control of Zionism
” and persuade them to cooperate with the Arabs in the struggle for the independence of Palestine by recognizing the Jewish inhabitants meaningfully and by “declaring openly that the league would guarantee their democratic rights within a democratic republican system.” On the eve of the UN partition resolution, the National Liberation League proposed an integrated solution to the Palestinian question that included setting up in Palestine “one democratic government in which all citizens would have equal rights and duties, regardless of their various ethnicities, religions and languages” after British forces were withdrawn from their land, and that “a democratic constitution should be drawn up in line with the UN Charter
, with assurances that the Jews in Palestine would retain independence in cultural matters and in local administration,” and that after becoming independent and joining the UN system, "Palestine will help, in conjunction with all the world's other states, in discussing and solving the question of refugees, provided that immigration to Palestine ceases immediately, until the United Nations can finish discussing the question of refugees and taking decisions on it.”
After UN Resolution 181 was passed on 29 November 1947, bloody clashes broke out between Arabs and Jews. The National Liberation League warned that “these clashes could have negative repercussions on the struggle to preserve the unity of Palestine.” At the conference held in Nazareth
in February 1948, most members accepted the UN partition resolution, in line with the Soviet position in favor of the resolution. The league stated its position: it was convinced that the partition resolution did not offer the best solution to the Palestinian question, but it regarded partition as an important step toward securing the withdrawal of the British armies from Palestine and the abrogation of the Mandate.
