The Arab Revolt against the British That Created the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Feb. 22 2023

For three years before World War II, Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews and fought against British rule—leaving roughly 500 Jews and 250 British dead. Oren Kessler, the author of a new book on the episode, explains how it laid the groundwork for much of what has transpired since then:

The Great Revolt of 1936 to 1939 was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced. It united rival families, urban and rural, rich and poor, in a single struggle against a common foe: the Jewish national enterprise—Zionism—and its midwife the British empire. A six-month general strike, one of the longest anywhere in modern history, roused Arabs and Muslims worldwide to the Palestine cause.

Yet the revolt would ultimately turn on itself. A convulsion of infighting and score-settling shred the Arab social fabric, sidelined pragmatists for extremists, and propelled tens of thousands of refugees out of the country. British forces did the rest, seizing arms, occupying cities, and waging a counterinsurgency. . . . When the dust cleared, at least 5,000—perhaps more than 8,000—Arabs were dead, of whom at least 1,500 likely fell at Arab hands. More than 20,000 were seriously wounded. Arab Palestine’s fighting capacity was debilitated, its economy gutted, its leaders—above all, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini—banished.

The revolt to end Zionism had instead crushed the Arabs themselves, leaving them crippled in facing the Jews’ own drive for statehood a decade on. . . . To the Jews the insurgency would leave a very different inheritance. It was then Zionist leaders began to abandon illusions over Arab acquiescence, to confront the unnerving prospect that fulfilling their dreams of sovereignty might mean forever clinging to the sword.

Read more at History News Network

More about: Amin Haj al-Husseini, British Mandate, Israeli history, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023