Jerusalem: The Biography

On 8 March 1920, Faisal was proclaimed king of Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) and appointed Jerusalem’s Said al-Husseini as his foreign minister, while the mufti’s brother Amin had for a short time served in the royal court. The excitement generated by the creation of this new kingdom emboldened the Palestinian Arabs to stand up to the Zionist threat. Weizmann warned that there could be trouble. Jabotinsky and the former Russian revolutionary Pinkhas Rutenberg,^* created a Jewish self-defence force, 600 strong. But Storrs ignored the alarm bells.

STORRS: THE NABI MUSA RIOTS – FIRST SHOTS

On the morning of Sunday 20 April 1920, in a city tense with Jewish and Christian pilgrims, 60,000 Arabs gathered for the Nabi Musa festival, led by the Husseinis. The diarist Wasif Jawhariyyeh watched them singing songs in protest against the Balfour Declaration. The mufti’s younger brother, Haj Amin al-Husseini, incited the crowds, holding up a picture of Faisal: ‘This is your King!’ The mob shouted, ‘Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!’ and poured into the Old City. An old Jew was beaten with sticks.

Suddenly, recalled Khalil Sakakini, ‘the furore turned into madness’. Many drew daggers and clubs, crying, ‘The religion of Muhammad was founded by the sword!’ The city, observed Jawhariyyeh, ‘became a battlefield’. The crowd chanted ‘Slaughter the Jews!’ Both Sakakini and Wasif hated violence but were starting to loathe not just the Zionists but the British too.

Storrs came out of the morning service in the Anglican Church to find Jerusalem out of control. He rushed to his headquarters in the Austrian Hospice, feeling as though someone ‘had thrust a sword into my heart’. Storrs had only 188 policemen in Jerusalem. As the riot intensified in the course of the next day, the Jews feared they would be wiped out. Weizmann burst into Storrs’ office to demand help; Jabotinsky and Rutenberg grabbed their pistols and mustered 200 men at police headquarters in the Russian Compound. When Storrs banned this, Jabotinsky patrolled outside the Old City, exchanging shots with Arab gunmen – that was the day the shooting really started. In the Old City, some streets of the Jewish Quarter were under siege, and Arab intruders gang-raped some Jewish girls. Meanwhile the British were trying to police the Holy Fire ceremony but when a Syriac moved a Coptic chair ‘all hell broke loose’, and the doors of the Church caught fire in the brawl. As a British official left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a little Arab girl fell from a nearby window, hit by a stray bullet.

One of Jabotinsky’s recruits, Nehemia Rubitzov, and a colleague covered their pistols with medical white coats and entered the Old City in an ambulance to organize the defence. Rubitzov, Ukrainian-born, had been recruited by Ben-Gurion into the Jewish Legion, changing his name to Rabin. Now, as he calmed the terrified Jews, he encountered and rescued ‘Red Rosa’ Cohen, a spirited ex-Bolshevik newly arrived from Russia: they fell in love and married. ‘I was born in Jerusalem’ said their son, Yitzhak Rabin, who as Israeli chief of staff many years later would capture Jerusalem.¹⁵

HERBERT SAMUEL: ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE

By the time the riots ebbed, five Jews and four Arabs were dead, 216 Jews and 23 Arabs wounded. Thirty-nine Jews and 161 Arabs were tried for their part in what came to be known as the Nabi Musa riots. Storrs ordered raids on Weizmann’s and Jabotinsky’s homes: Jabotinsky was found guilty of possessing guns and sentenced to fifteen years. Young Amin Husseini – ‘the chief fomenter’ of the riots, in Storrs’ words – was sentenced to ten years, but escaped from Jerusalem. Storrs sacked Mayor Musa Kazem Husseini, though the British naively blamed Jewish Bolsheviks from Russia for the violence.

The liberal Weizmann and socialist Ben-Gurion continued to hope for a gradually evolving homeland and a modus vivendi with the Arabs. Ben-Gurion refused to recognize Arab nationalism: he wanted Arab and Jewish workers to share ‘a life of harmony and friendship’, but sometimes he exclaimed, ‘There’s no solution! We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want it to be theirs.’ The Zionists now started to reorganize their old Hashomer – the Watchmen – into a more efficient militia, Haganah – the Defence.