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  • Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine
  • Neil Caplan (bio)
Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine, by Weldon C. Matthews. London, UK and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006. viii + 263 pages. Appends. to p. 273. Notes and index to p. 342. $95.

Many PhDs of an earlier generation were locked by archives-based research into analyzing the traces and clues left behind by those whom we considered the real makers of political history — members of the elite, articulate classes. Whatever their qualities, the monographs resulting from such an approach were necessarily narrow and uni-dimensional.

By happy contrast, Weldon Matthews enriches our knowledge and understanding of the Mandate period with a very informative and impressive piece of work. His study carefully and coherently integrates primary materials from a variety of sources, such as biographies, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and archival files (including British and Zionist intelligence reports). As a result, readers get a rare feeling for the vibrancy and texture of the social, economic, and political life of Palestinian Arabs in the late 1920s and early 1930s as they faced the challenges of Zionist immigration and land-purchase — all the while living under a benevolent but firm colonial regime mandated [End Page 159] to support the Jewish national home policy.

The shift away from the “politics of notables” to a form of populist nationalism is convincingly illustrated through the book’s focus on the Istiqlal (Independence) Party. Despite its brief life as an organized political force, the Istiqlal had an enduring impact on the evolution of Palestinian politics during the 1930s. The Istiqlalists’ framing of the Palestinian struggle as being more than a local confrontation with Zionism drew inspiration from the stillborn hopes of pan-Arab confederation or unity under Iraq’s King Faysal, as well as from Gandhi’s successes in mobilizing the population against British colonialism in India. The Istiqlalists also can be credited with causing a clear tactical shift in the Palestinians’ primary target from the Zionists (now seen as the “branch”) to British colonial rule (the “tree”) — a shift that did not go unnoticed by British or Zionists in 1933–34.

Istiqlalists, along with members of the Young Men’s Muslim Association, the Arab Workers’ Society, scouts, and other youth groups, channeled the efforts of a new cohort of activists who were determined to overcome the paralysis and ineffectiveness of their traditional leadership in the Arab Executive. Matthews provides detailed coverage of the populist activities (rallies, meetings, demonstrations, etc.) of the early 1930s that posed a generational challenge to the established, old-guard politicians. In their quest for independence for Arab Palestine, Istiqlal leaders Awni Abd al-Hadi, Izzat Darwaza, Akram Zuaytir, and others sought to transcend and overcome factional jealousies and to goad careerist leaders into defiant acts of non-cooperation and civil disobedience.

Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni emerges from these pages as the epitome of the compliant local notable: a charismatic leader and cunning politician, to be sure, but nothing like the simplistic notion current in some circles of an evil and thoroughly radical extremist. Rather, adding to the nuanced portrait offered by Philip Mattar (The Mufti of Jerusalem, Columbia University Press, 1992), Matthews portrays the Mufti as an extension of colonial control in the maintenance of law and order, assisting the High Commissioner in his desire to protect above all his own position, stipend, and power base (the Supreme Muslim Council). For as long as he could (i.e., until the Rebellion in mid-1937), al-Hajj Amin walked a tightrope between pleasing the British by defusing popular grievances, on the one hand, and responding, on the other, to the increasing crescendo of nationalist calls from his people to defy the British and prevent the Zionists from advancing towards what many then feared would be a takeover of their country.

Despite the rich array of sources cited by Matthews, several items are surprisingly absent. The author makes no reference to Ann Lesch’s pioneering work, Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Cornell University Press, 1979), from which he could have extrapolated a number of his...

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