Jerusalem: The Biography

While Churchill’s conference was proceeding in Cairo, Abdullah, led thirty officers and 200 Bedouin into today’s Jordan – technically part of the British Mandate – to seize his own meagre fiefdom – even though Lord Curzon thought he was ‘much too big a cock for so small a dunghill’. The news of this escapade presented Churchill with a fait accompli. Lawrence advised Churchill to back Abdullah. Churchill despatched Lawrence to invite the prince to meet him in Jerusalem.

At midnight on 23 March, Churchill and his wife Clementine set off for Jerusalem by train, and were greeted at Gaza by enthusiastic crowds crying ‘Cheers for the minister’ and ‘Down with Jews! Cut their throats!’ Churchill, understanding nothing, waved back with oblivious bonhomie.

In Jerusalem he stayed with Samuel at the Augusta Victoria Fortress where he met four times with ‘the moderate and friendly’ Abdullah, hopeful occupier of Transjordan, escorted by Lawrence. Abdullah, who hoped for a Hashemite empire, thought the best way for Jews and Arabs to live together would be in one kingdom under him with Syria added later. Churchill offered him Transjordan provided he recognized French Syria and British Palestine. Abdullah reluctantly agreed, whereupon Churchill created a new country: ‘Amir Abdullah is in Transjordania,’ he remembered, ‘where I put him one Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem.’ The mission of Lawrence, who had finally shepherded Faisal and Abdullah to two thrones, was complete.^*

The Palestinian Arabs petitioned Churchill, alleging, in the tradition of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that ‘the Jew is a Jew the world over’, that ‘Jews have been among the most active advocates of destruction in many lands’ and the Zionists wanted to ‘control the world’. Churchill received the Jerusalemites under the ex-mayor, Musa Kazim al-Husseini, but insisted ‘it’s manifestly right that Jews should have a National Home, a great event in the world’s destiny’.

Churchill’s father^† had imbued him with an admiration for Jews and he saw Zionism as just outcome after two millennia of suffering. During the Red scare after Lenin created Soviet Russia, he believed that the Zionist Jew was ‘the antidote’ to ‘the foul baboonery of Bolshevism’ which was ‘a Jewish movement’ led by a diabolical bogeyman called the ‘International Jew’.

Churchill loved Jerusalem, where, he declared, opening the British Military Cemetery on Mount Scopus, ‘lies the dust of the Caliphs and Crusaders and Maccabees!’ He was drawn to the Temple Mount, which he visited whenever possible, begrudging every moment away from it. Before he returned to England, he was still holding court on the Mount of Olives when the mufti of Jerusalem died unexpectedly. Storrs had already sacked the Husseini mayor so it seemed rash to upset the family further by also taking away the post of mufti. Besides, the British were attracted to the ascendancy of the Families who resembled their own gentry. Samuel and Storrs therefore arranged that the mayor and the mufti should each be chosen from the two pre-eminent Families: their feud would make them the Montagues and Capulets of Jerusalem.¹⁷

THE BRITISH MANDATE

1920–36

THE MUFTI VERSUS THE MAYOR: AMIN HUSSEINI VERSUS RAGHEB NASHASHIBI

The man they chose as mayor was the very personification of the Arab boulevardier: Ragheb Nashashibi smoked cigarettes in a holder, carried a cane and was the first Jerusalemite to own an American limousine, a green Packard, always driven by his Armenian chauffeur. The debonair Nashashibi, the heir to the orange-groves and mansions of the most recent but richest of the Families,^* fluent in French and English, had represented Jerusalem in the Ottoman Parliament, and had hired Wasif to arrange his parties and give oud lessons to him and his mistress. Now that he was mayor, he gave two parties a year, one for his friends, and one for the high commissioner. As a veteran campaigner against Zionism, he took his role seriously as Jerusalemite seigneur and Palestinian leader.

The man they chose as grand mufti was Nashashibi’s wealthy cousin, Haj Amin Husseini. Storrs introduced the young rabble-rouser of the Nabi Musa riots to the high commissioner who was impressed. Husseini was ‘soft, intelligent, well-educated, well-dressed with a shiny smile, fair hair, blue eyes, red beard and a wry sense of humour,’ recalled the mayor’s nephew Nassereddin Nashashibi. ‘Yet he told his jokes with cold eyes.’ Husseini asked Samuel, ‘Which do you prefer – an avowed opponent or an unsound friend?’ Samuel replied, ‘An avowed opponent.’ Weizmann commented drily that, ‘in spite of the proverb, poachers-turned-gamekeepers are not always a success.’ Husseini turned out be, in the words of the Lebanese historian Gilbert Achcar ‘a megalomaniac who presented himself as the leader of the whole Islamic world’.