What caused the Arab Revolt in Palestine ?
Depends on which one you are talking about. You are probably talking about 1 of these 2:
1834: The Palestinian Arab revolt was precipitated by popular resistance against heavy demands for conscripts, as poor Palestinian peasants were well aware that conscription was little more than a death sentence. Starting in May 1834 the rebels took many cities, among them Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus. In response, Ibrahim Pasha sent in an army, finally defeating the last rebels on 4 August in Hebron.
1936–1939: In short, it was long term commitment of British support to the Zionist movement through:
- The Balfour declaration in 1917.
- 7 of the 28 articles of the Mandate (in 1922) were committed to the privileges and facilities to be extended to the Zionist movement in order to carry out national home policy, while denying the Palestinian natives these rights.
- A great Increase in the influx of Jewish immigration, and subsequent destruction of the Palestinian economy.
- The final nail in the coffin was an intervention’s disappointing outcome that came in July 1937, when a Royal Commission appointed by Lord Peel to investigate the unrest in Palestine proposed partitioning the country, creating a small Jewish state on approximately 17% of the territory from which over 200 thousand Arabs would be expelled (expulsion was euphemistically referred to as “transfer”). The remainder of the country was to remain under British control or be handed over to Britain’s client, Amir ‘Abdullah of Transjordan, which amounted to much the same thing from a Palestinian perspective. Once again, Palestinians were treated as though they lacked a national identity and collective rights.
The Peel Commission’s achievement of fundamental Zionist goals of statehood and expulsion of Palestinians, albeit not in all of Palestine, combined with its denial of the Palestinians’ fervently desired goal of self-determination, finally pushed the Palestinians into a much more militant stage of their uprising.
The October 1937 armed revolt swept the country. It was only two years later that it was brought under control through a massive use of force, just in time for British military units (there were a hundred thousand troops in Palestine at the time, one for every four adult Palestinian men) to be redeployed to fight World War II. While the revolt achieved remarkable temporary victories, it ultimately had a debilitating effect on Palestinians. (Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, pp. 43-44.)
It should be noted that in August 1937, the 20th Zionist Congress rejected the Peel Commission proposed partition plan because the area allotted to the “Jewish state” was “smaller” than expected by Zionists. On the other hand, the concept of partitioning Palestine into two states was accepted as a launching pad for future Zionist expansions, and to secure unlimited Jewish immigrations.
As the first Intifada erupted/Palestinian Arab revolt in 1936, many Zionists complained that the British Mandate was not doing enough to stop Palestinian resistance (which often was referred to by “terror”). In that regard, Ben-Gurion argued:
“No government in the world can prevent individual terror. . . when a people is fighting for its land, it is not easy to prevent such acts.”
Nor did he criticize the so-called British display of leniency:
“I see why the government feels the need to show leniency towards the [Palestinian] Arabs . . . it is not easy to suppress a popular movement strictly by the use of force.” (BEN-GURION and the Palestinian Arabs, Shabtai Teveth, p. 166).
The leniency of the British colonialism Ben-Gurion talked about, paved the way for the rise and dominion of Zionist colonialism.
Of all the services provided by Britain to the Zionist movement prior to 1939, the armed suppression of Palestinian resistance in the form of the revolt was probably the most valuable. The bloody war waged against the country’s majority, which resulted in the death, imprisonment, or exile of 10% of the adult male Arab population,(Walid Khalidi, From haven to conquest appendix 4, 846–49.) was the best illustration of Jabotinsky’s unvarnished truths about the necessity of using force to achieve the Zionist project’s success. To put an end to the uprising, the British Empire deployed two additional divisions of troops, bomber squadrons, and all the repressive apparatus it had honed over decades of colonial wars.
The level of callousness and cruelty displayed extended well beyond summary executions. Shaykh Farhan al-Sadi, an 81 year old rebel leader, was executed in 1937 for possessing a single bullet. That single bullet was sufficient to justify capital punishment under the martial law in effect at the time, even more so for an accomplished guerrilla fighter like al-Sadi.
Numerous such sentences of execution have been handed down following summary trials before military tribunals, with many more Palestinians being executed on the spot by British troops.
Infuriated by rebels ambushing their convoys and blowing up their trains, the British resorted to tying Palestinian prisoners to the front of armored cars and locomotives to ward off rebel attack, a tactic they pioneered in an unsuccessful attempt to crush Irish resistance during their war of independence from 1919 to 1921 by using them as human shields.
British soldiers on an armoured train car with two Palestinian Arab hostages used as human shields.
Collective punishment and home demolitions of imprisoned or executed rebels, or presumed rebels or their relatives, were commonplace, another tactic borrowed from the British playbook developed in Ireland. Two additional imperial practices that were widely used to repress the Palestinians were the detention of thousands without charge or trial and the exile of dissident leaders. Some were imprisoned, generally without trial, in over a dozen of what the British dubbed “concentration camps,” the most infamous of which was in Sarafand.(Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, p. 45.).
Following British refusal to meet Palestinian demands, exile of prominent figures, and mass arrests of others, the revolt entered its most violent phase. To put an end to the Palestinian uprising, it took the full might of the British Empire, which could not be unleashed until additional troops became available following the Munich Agreement in September 1938, and nearly another year of fierce fighting.
Despite the sacrifices made, as evidenced by the vast number of Palestinians killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled, and the revolt’s brief success, the Palestinians faced almost entirely negative consequences. By the time the revolt was crushed in the summer of 1939, the brutal British repression, the death and exile of so many leaders, and internal conflict within their ranks had left the Palestinians divided, without direction, and with a crippled economy. This left the Palestinians in an extremely vulnerable position to confront the newly resurgent Zionist movement, which had grown in strength throughout the revolt, obtaining an exorbitant amount of arms and training from the British to assist them in suppressing the uprising .