Political party
Istiqlal circa 1932. Darwazah seated centre, al-Haj Ibrahim seated second left,
Ahmad Shuqeiri
standing first left.
Standing:
Ahmad Shukeiri
,
‘Ajaj Nuwayhid
,
Fahmi al-Abboushi
,
Subhi al-Khadra
, Majid al-Qutub
Sitting:
Salim Salamah
,
Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim
,
Muhammad Izzat Darwaza
,
Akram Zu'aytir
The
Independence Party of Palestine
(
Hizb al-Istiqlal
) was an
Arab nationalist
political party
established on 13 August 1932
[2]
in
Palestine
during the
British Mandate
. The party was founded by
Muhammad Izzat Darwaza
, and the other founders of the party were
Fahmi al-Abboushi
,
Mu'in al-Madi
,
Akram Zu'aytir
,
‘Ajaj Nuwayhid
,
Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim
,
Subhi al-Khadra
, and
Salim Salamah
.
[3]
[4]
The party did not achieve a large membership but
Awni Abd al-Hadi
, through his role as private secretary to
Amir Feisal
in Damascus between 1918-1920, had good relations with many senior leaders across the
Arab World
.
[5]
Its origins lay in the
Istiqlal movement
associated with the short-lived
Sharifian
government in
Damascus
.
[6]
The party's creation was spurred by the
al-Husayni
-
Nashashibi
rivalry, which had almost paralyzed the Palestinian national movement. Its founders, most of whom hailed from the Nablus area, called for the adoption of new methods of political action, including noncooperation with the British Mandate authorities and nonpayment of taxes. The party also called for total Arab independence, pan-Arab unity, the abrogation of the Mandate and the
Balfour Declaration
, and the establishment of Arab parliamentary rule in Palestine. The party called for mass resistance to the
Zionist
project and its British patron in Palestine.
[7]
During the
1936?39 Arab revolt
the party called for an
Indian Congress Party
-style boycott of the British.
[8]
The party reached its maximum influence, especially among the young and the educated, in the first half of 1933, and then declined very rapidly. Among the factors responsible for its decline were the active hostility of the Husayni camp, the lack of financial resources. A distinctive mark of the party was its espousal of the idea that British imperialism was the principal enemy of the Palestinians; thus the party urged them to focus their struggle not simply on Zionism, but on British colonialism as well.
[9]
Istiqlal was represented on the first
Arab Higher Committee
formed in April 1937, with its leader,
Awni Abd al-Hadi
,
[10]
being general secretary of the AHC.
[11]
Following the continuing disturbances, and the assassination on 26 September 1937 of the Acting British District Commissioner of
Galilee
, the AHC and other political parties, including Istiqlal, were outlawed by the British administration in October 1937. Al-Hadi, who was out of the country at the time, was not allowed to return. However, he was a member of the Palestinian Arab delegation that attended the 1939
London Conference
.
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Anderson, Charles (6 November 2017).
"The British Mandate and the crisis of Palestinian landlessness, 1929?1936"
.
Middle Eastern Studies
.
54
(2): 171?215.
doi
:
10.1080/00263206.2017.1372427
.
- ^
Choueiri, 2000, p. 93.
- ^
Kedourie, 1974, p. 52.
- ^
Hassassian, 1990, p. 129.
- ^
Survey
. p.949
- ^
Pappe, 1999, p. 147.
- ^
Bashir Abu-Manneh,
In Palestine, a Dream Deferred
Archived
2009-05-27 at the
Wayback Machine
,
The Nation
, December 18, 2006.
- ^
Khalidi, 2001, p. 25.
- ^
Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918 - 1929. London: Cass, 1974.
- ^
Khalidi, 1997, p. 220.
- ^
Text of decree in Haim Levenberg,
Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine 1945-1948
, Frank Cass London, 1993, p. 7.
References
[
edit
]
- Choueiri, Youssef M. (2000).
Arab Nationalism: Nation and State in the Arab World
. Oxford: Blackwell.
ISBN
0-631-21729-0
- Hassassian, Manuel Sarkis (1990).
Palestine: Factionalism in the National Movement, 1919-1939
.
Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
.
- Kedourie, Elie (1974).
Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
0-7146-3041-1
- Khalidi, Rashid (1997).
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
. Columbia University Press.
ISBN
0-231-10514-2
- Khalidi, Rashid (2001). The Palestinians and 1948: the underlying causes of failure. In Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (Eds.).
The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948
(pp. 12?36). Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
0-521-79476-5
- Pappe, Ilan (1999).
The Israel/Palestine Question
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
0-415-16947-X
- A Survey of Palestine - prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.
Reprinted 1991 by the Institute of Palestine Studies, Washington. Volume II.
ISBN
0-88728-214-8
.