The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 (RLE Israel and Palestine) by Yehoshua Porath

Author:Yehoshua Porath [Porath, Yehoshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Foreign Language Study, Arabic, French, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Nationalism & Patriotism, Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781000156089
Google: fHP2DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-08-18T03:51:38+00:00

* This chapter is based on my article “Al-Ḥājj Amīn al-Ḥusayni, Mufti of Jerusalem—His Rise to Power and the Consolidation of His Position”, Asian and African Studies, Vol. 7 (1971), pp. 121–56.

Chapter Five

THE ORIGIN OF THE OPPOSITION AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

The internal political division which marked the Palestinian national movement from the start was above all a product of the structure of Palestinian society. The growth of the power of the urban élite in the course of the nineteenth century stimulated internal competition among the families for positions of influence in the political and social centres of power: municipalities, provincial councils, the administrative and legal apparatus etc. The rise of this élite occurred, as we have seen, at the expense of the rural élite, which was extremely bitter over its loss of power and influence.

The joining of the districts of Jerusalem, Nāblus and Acre into one political unit led to the extension of the hegemony of the Jerusalem élite beyond the limits of its own district until it included all of Palestine—much to the frequent bitterness of the other urban élites. The internal political division in the Palestinian camp was a political expression of this social division.

The varied sources of this split—competition among families, the rivalries existing between city and village, and the various districts—led to a complexity which made the division hard to define. The camp supporting the AE and the SMC (the Ḥusayni group) was, it is true, more or less united in loyalty to the accepted leadership and to a certain political structure. But the opposing camp (the Nashāshībi faction—”the Opposition”) was far more variegated; its leadership was largely local, and the political conceptions current within it were far from being homogeneous. What nevertheless characterizes this camp and allows it to be seen as a phenomenon having more shared elements than differentiating ones, is its opposition to the leadership of the al-Ḥusayni family and to the policy of non-cooperation in self-governing institutions (the legislative council and similar bodies).

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