(Author's Note: Tell me what you think of these excerpt chapters. They are kind of laying the groundwork for future plotlines, but I feel like they also aren't part of the story… I think for now, while they are mostly sticking to real history, I'll just release them with a chapter every day.)
[Excerpt from: The Mandate and the Wall: Palestine, 1920–1939, Miriam A. Rosen (Cambridge Historical Press, 1987), pp. 114–121.]
By the beginning of 1929, Palestine was becoming increasingly difficult to govern.
The British Mandate had never been a simple proposition. London had inherited a country in which two national movements were developing simultaneously, each increasingly convinced that the future of Palestine depended upon the success of its own.
For the Zionist movement, Palestine was the national home of the Jewish people.
For the Arab population, it was their country.
Neither description was compatible with the other. Jewish immigration had increased substantially during the interwar years. New settlements were being established. Cities were expanding. Jewish political and economic institutions were becoming increasingly sophisticated.
To many Zionists, this was the fulfilment of a promise, but to many Palestinian Arabs, it looked like the gradual transformation of their country into one in which they might eventually become a minority.
The British attempted to maintain a balance, but that task was becoming impossible.
The Mandate government had promised to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home while also protecting the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish population.
Every decision therefore created two interpretations.
A concession to Zionists could appear to Arabs as a step towards dispossession.
A restriction imposed upon Zionist activity could appear to Jews as a betrayal of Britain's promises.
The government could satisfy neither side. And beneath the political arguments was a dispute over a place of extraordinary importance.
The Western Wall.
For centuries, Jews had prayed at the wall adjoining the Temple Mount.
Muslims, meanwhile, regarded the wider compound as one of the holiest sites in Islam, centred upon the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
The physical space was limited.
For years, arrangements had existed governing Jewish prayer at the Wall. But by 1928, questions over what Jews could bring to the site, how they could organise themselves and what constituted a permanent alteration had become increasingly contentious.
Then, in August 1929, the dispute escalated. Jewish activists associated with the Revisionist Zionist movement began organising demonstrations demanding greater Jewish rights at the Wall. The demonstrations were intended to make a political point.
They were interpreted by many Arabs as something more dangerous.
A change in the arrangements at the Wall could, they feared, be the beginning of an attempt to take control of the Temple Mount itself.
Rumours spread. Rumours that became increasingly more exaggerated but that did not make them less powerful.
Arab newspapers warned that the mosques were in danger.
Religious leaders mobilised supporters.
Zionist organisations, meanwhile, insisted that Jewish access to the Wall was being unjustly restricted.
The British attempted to calm the situation.
They were already behind it. On 15 August, hundreds of Jewish demonstrators gathered at the Wall in Jerusalem. The demonstration passed without the catastrophe that many had feared.
But it changed the political atmosphere. The following day, Arab leaders organised a counter-demonstration. And as thousands gathered for Friday prayers, the police watched carefully.
Everyone was watching everyone else.
For the moment, nothing happened on the scale that would follow.
But the argument had escaped the Wall.
It had become a question of sovereignty. The Arabs feared that Zionism was not merely seeking a national home but eventually a state.
The Zionists feared that Arab opposition was not merely opposition to political change but opposition to Jewish national existence.
Both fears contained elements of truth.
Both fears were also increasingly shaped by rumours rather than evidence.
The British government was caught between them.
Its forces were limited. Its intelligence was imperfect. Its political instructions were contradictory.
And, most dangerously, its authority depended upon both communities believing that the Mandate could protect them. By the final week of August, that confidence was beginning to disappear.
On 23 August, disturbances broke out in Jerusalem.
The violence spread rapidly. Arab crowds attacked Jewish residents. Jewish communities organised their own defence. The police attempted to separate the two sides, but in several places, they failed.
The fighting was no longer confined to Jerusalem. It spread into other parts of Palestine.
Primarily Hebron and Safed. But also several other smaller settlements and villages.
The pattern was becoming familiar.
A rumour produced a crowd.
A crowd produced violence.
Violence produced retaliation.
Retaliation produced another crowd.
The government attempted to restore order.
The government was increasingly unable to do so.
In Hebron, the consequences were particularly horrific. The Jewish community, which had existed in the city for generations, was attacked. Arab neighbours sheltered some Jewish families. Others were killed. Dozens of Jews died.
But the violence was not confined to one side. Jewish forces also attacked Arab communities in some areas, and Arabs were killed in the resulting violence. By the time order was restored, more than two hundred people had been killed across Palestine.
Hundreds more were wounded.
The British had succeeded in stopping the immediate violence, but they had not solved the problem that had caused it.
Indeed, the violence had created new problems of its own.
The Jewish community no longer trusted that the British could guarantee its security.
The Arab community increasingly feared that British policy would favour Zionist expansion.
The British government now faced demands from both sides.
The Zionists demanded protection.
The Arabs demanded restrictions on Jewish immigration and land acquisition.
Neither believed that the other could be trusted. The Mandate had been intended to create a political framework in which the two communities could develop alongside one another.
Instead, the events of 1929 had demonstrated how easily a dispute over a religious site could become a national crisis.
The Wall had been the immediate issue. It had not been the cause. The deeper conflict was over the future: Who would govern Palestine? Who would live there? How much immigration could continue? How much land could change hands?
Could a Jewish national home exist without eventually producing a Jewish state? And could such a state emerge without displacing or subordinating the Arab population that already formed the overwhelming majority?
There were no answers that satisfied everyone.
The British had hoped that time would make the contradictions manageable, but time had instead made them larger.
The events of 1929 therefore marked something more important than a week of communal violence.
They demonstrated that Palestine had entered a new phase.
The conflict was no longer merely political. It had become deeply communal. Jewish and Arab communities were increasingly building institutions not only to advance their political ambitions but also to protect themselves against one another.
The British remained the sovereign power.
The government could issue regulations.
It could deploy police.
It could arrest rioters.
It could impose curfews.
What it could not do was make two national movements agree on what Palestine was supposed to become.
By the end of 1929, Palestine had not yet become a war.
But the possibility of war had become impossible to ignore.
The violence had shown both communities what could happen when political disagreement became communal fear.
The British had restored order for the moment.
But they had not restored trust.
And without trust, every rumour became dangerous.
Every demonstration became a potential provocation.
Every religious procession could be interpreted as a political statement.
Every political statement in turn became a religious one.
The tragedy of 1929 was therefore not simply that Palestinians and Jews had killed one another. It was that, for the first time on such a scale, both communities had been given reason to believe that the other might eventually decide their future for them.