The "first significant reaction" was ginned up by Haj Amin al Husseini and a few hundred of his bully boys, who ran around spreading rumors that the British and the Jews were going to destroy the Dome of hte Rock. So great was the nationalistic feeling they had to work with. The British found that he had inicited the riots, during which Jews died at Arab hands and Arabs died at British hands; naturally, you think the total moral culpability lies with the only group that did no killing.
During the teens and twenties and thirties there were differing opinions among the Arabs whether to negotiate with the Zionists or try to kill them. al Husseini, esp. after he became the Mufti, was of the "no negotiation, kill them all" school, and he got his way, by killing off all his Arab opponents as well as the Jews he could manage, thus setting the tone for Palestinian politics.
Lots of land was sold and freely sold. Some of the owners lived on the land, some close by, some in Damascus. This pretence that it all was effendi who had stolen the land is as false as the pretence that "Palestinians" owned 93% of the land when in fact, over 80% of the land belonged to the government, that is, to the Turks and then the British. This was a heritage of the high rate of land abandonment in the area. It's still true, btw. |
