The Bludan congress on Palestine, September 1937

Abstract

Almost from the very beginning of the Mandate, the leaders of the antiZionist struggle in Palestine sought to involve the Muslim and Arab worlds in their cause. Whether this has benefited the Palestine Arabs must remain to this day doubtful. But the Mufti who, by the end of the nineteen-twenties, was bidding fair to become their undisputed leader clearly thought that Muslim and Arab solidarity would prove to be a powerful, if not the most powerful weapon in his armoury. Following the 1929 disturbances which centred on the Wailing Wall and the alleged designs of the Jews to lay their hands on the Haram, Hajj Amin organized the Islamic Congress which met in Jerusalem in 1931. While this served to make the cause of Arab Palestine more widely known among Muslims, particularly in India, the immediate benefits of the Congress must have seemed disappointing. A few years later, in 1936, at the very start of the general strike which inaugurated the disturbances of 1936-9, the Arab Higher Committee (which was led by the Mufti) appealed for the intervention of the Arab rulers. The strategy seemed this time to succeed brilliantly since the British Government was induced to listen to the pleas of the Arab rulers on behalf of their fellow-Arabs. This not only saved the rebels from the rigours of martial law which the British Government was on the point of proclaiming and left their weapons and organization intact, but also gave an opening to the Arab states to claim a right to a say in the affairs of a Britishadministered territory. The Peel Commission (set up as a direct consequence of the disturbances) reported in the summer of 1937 and suggested partition as a way of dealing with the Arab-Zionist conflict. This the Mufti found completely unacceptable. He had, after all, managed to circumvent and outwit both Wauchope, the High Commissioner who proved to have little judgment, and the Colonial Office, the head of which, Ormsby Gore, showed an equal lack of judgment in trusting to his High Commissioner's advice. The insurgent bands were still there to make trouble in case of need. The political situation in Europe and the Mediterranean, again, seemed to offer scope for pressure on the British Government, forcing them to abandon the National Home Policy and set up an Arab government in the whole of Palestine. Last but not least, partition entailed that the Arab part of Palestine would be joined to Transjordan and come under Abdullah's rule. To this the Mufti, who himself aspired to rule over Palestine, was bitterly opposed. To persuade the Government to abandon the partition scheme which it had initially welcomed, the Mufti appealed once again to the Arab rulers. To increase the pressure both on the British and the Arab governments, the Mufti sought to mobilize Arab public opinion and organized a congress in Bludan, a Syrian summer resort. The Bludan Congress may be considered a landmark in the increasing involvement of the Arab world in the Palestine problem. Though it was not