Mark Sanagan - Lightning through the Clouds

Lightning through the Clouds

Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Mark Sanagan

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright 2020 by the University of Texas Press

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First edition, 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sanagan, Mark, author.

Title: Lightning through the clouds : Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the making of the modern Middle East/ Mark Sanagan.

Other titles: Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the making of the modern Middle East

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019034301 | ISBN 978-1-4773-2056-3 (cloth) | ISBN 978-1-4773-2058-7 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-4773-2057-0 (library ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Qassm, Izz al-Dn. | arakat al-Muqwamah al-Islmyah. | Katib Izz al-Dn al-Qassm. | RevolutionariesPalestineBiography. | Jewish-Arab relationsHistory19171948Biography. | Palestinian ArabsBiography. | PalestineHistory19171948. | SyriaHistoryFrench occupation, 19181946Biography.

Classification: LCC DS125.3.Q36 S26 2020 | DDC 956.9404092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034301

doi:10.7560/320563

CONTENTS

FIGURES

ABBREVIATIONS

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATIONS

I have attempted to maintain a balance between readability and fidelity to Arabic, Hebrew, and Ottoman spelling. With that in mind, I have generally followed the transliteration guidelines set out in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. This will sometimes make for less than perfect reading, as in a sentence such as imam and khab, but I have included a glossary at the end of the book for reference, should a term appear that is unfamiliar to the reader.

In some circumstances, such as al-Qassamiyyun, I have adopted an Anglicized rendition (Qassamites) for purely stylistic reasons. This is also true of a few names with accepted English spellings that differ from the IJMES system, such as Yasser Arafat and Gamal Abd al-Nasser.

Map 1. The Ottoman Empire: Administrative Divisions in 1893.

Map 2. Coastal Syria at the End of World War I.

Map 3. Northern Palestine during the British Mandate.

PROLOGUE

The end began with the theft of some grapefruit. On the morning of November 7, 1935, twenty-eight-year-old Sergeant Moshe Rosenfeldthe best Jewish horseman in all of Palestinewas called to investigate. He left his police station in Shatta, an outpost in the southern perimeter of the Galilee, accompanied by two Arab constables whose names have been lost to history. North of the village, at the foot of Jabal Faqqua (Mount Gilboa), Rosenfeld dismounted, moved into the citrus grove, and sent his companions back down the wadi with the horses.

The forested southern slope of Jabal Faqqua is a verdant landscape of Aleppo pines and, that fall, anemones yet to bloom. While not steep, the rise up from the valley required exertion, and the winding path that Rosenfeld took would have been soft, if not muddy. It was a slow walk toward the higher ground. Above him, among the caves and large outcrops of limestone, two men crouched, guarding an encampment of rebels under the command of a Muslim cleric named Izz al-Din al-Qassam.

They watched as Rosenfeld slowly approached, until one of the guards, Mahmud Salim al-Makhzumi, fired his rifle, hitting the officer once in the head and once in the side. Hearing the shots, the two Arab constables retreated quickly to their police station to report the contact.

Rosenfelds body was found at eleven oclock that morning, and shortly thereafter, the Palestine Police discovered the caves in which the rebel unit had been living. There they found discarded raincoats, English and German ammunition, blankets, food stores that would have lasted days, and a mans Scouting uniform. The rebels were long gone. What followed was one of the largest manhunts in British colonial history.

Introduction

Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his band of men on the mountainside had been in those forests for only a few days when Sergeant Rosenfeld was shot dead. It was on November 2, 1935, that al-Qassam, a prominent preacher, teacher, and community organizer in the northern Palestinian city of Haifa, made his last public appearance, at a ceremony denouncing the Balfour Declaration on the eighteenth anniversary of its publication. Sometime shortly after he shared the stage with Jamal al-Husayni, the head of the Palestine Arab Party, he left his wife and four children and joined his men.

After Rosenfeld was killed, the British Mandate government in Palestine labeled al-Qassam a bandit. For the Jewish community, known as the Yishuv, the bearded shaykh was a dangerous and worrisome terrorist, finally exposed as the mastermind of numerous murders over the previous few years. And, to most of Palestines Arabs, he wasand remainsan avatar for the struggle for self-determination.

In fact, claims on al-Qassam have shifted with the vicissitudes of Palestinian political vogues since his death. According to Ajaj Nuwayhid, a prominent nationalist politician and editor during the British Mandate, al-Qassam was buried draped in the flag of the newly independent Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, placed there by the head of the Arab Bank in Haifa and longtime friend of al-Qassams, Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim. The flags of Saudi Arabia and Yemen were laid on the corpses of al-Qassams comrades; it is not clear if the flags were chosen for the purpose of assimilating al-Qassam and his compatriots into the historical trajectory of a Palestinian nationalism or a pan-Arab one. But there was little in common between the sociopolitical makeup of the Mashriq (the Arab eastern Mediterranean) and the tribal isolationists in the Arabian Peninsula. Nor is it likely that al-Qassam idealized the