On the evening of December 22nd 1932, a farmhouse in the Jewish colony of Nahalal, six miles to the west of Nazareth in northern Palestine, was firebombed. Two of the home’s inhabitants – Joseph Yacoubi and his nine-year-old son David were killed. Over the next few weeks and months five suspects were arrested for the crime and charged with murder. One of the suspects, Mustapha Ali Ahmed, was questioned intensely by police that spring and gave a bizarre, five-page confession that he signed on March 29th in Haifa’s Central Police Station. In this confession, in a peculiar non-sequitor, he admitted to being a part of an organization that received instruction from some individuals who would, years later, form the nucleus of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam band, including al-Qassam himself. Notwithstanding being fingered by his supposed co-conspirator in a signed confession al-Qassam was never charged in connection with the murders or membership in the secret gang. Instead, he assumed higher profile positions in Haifa before launching his ill-fated armed rebellion in 1935. The connection between al-Qassam, the supposed confession, and the murders has never been explored. The investigation of the murders, which included forensic examination of explosives and Holmesian detective work, was followed by a sensational trial that included allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct. This paper will detail the events surrounding the murders at Nahalal, which in the historiography of the period is typically referenced only in passing as the first act of organized violence by a secret group associated with the Young Men’s Muslim Association, and lead by Sheikhs in and around Haifa, most notably al-Qassam. This event deserves a great deal more scrutiny. The narratives given by witnesses during the trial call into question a number of the assumptions historians have made not only about the incident itself, but the very existence and composition of the “secret organizations” themselves. This paper draws on British archival accounts of the crime as well as the activities of the gang that is alleged to have carried it out. It will also examine the trial itself drawing largely on contemporary newspaper accounts in the English, Hebrew and Arabic press.

This paper is based on research conducted in London, Oxford, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in 2011–12, and addresses the British and Zionist effort to criminalize Arab political agitation in Palestine during the revolt of 1936, as well as Arab resistance to this effort. It argues that the proclaimed democratic commitments of 1930s British imperial discourse––especially as they pertained to "A" mandates such as Palestine/Transjordan––compelled the British to adopt the Zionist framing of the revolt; namely, that the rebellion was less a nationalist uprising than it was a crime wave. For to the extent that regional and international observers recognized the nationalist dimensions of the uprising, the British claim to be guiding the peoples of their mandates across the threshold of nationhood was discredited. And conversely, to the extent that the British were repressing crime––rather than suppressing a national movement––in Palestine, they could maintain the democratic pretense of the mandates system. The British and Zionist portrayal of the 1936 revolt as a crime wave involved two basic discursive strategies. The first was the overstatement of the Arab Higher Committee’s coordination with various armed rebel groups (what the British and Zionists referred to, significantly, as "gangs"). The second was the simultaneous understatement of both groups' connections to the broader popular movement constituting the rank and file of the uprising. These two discursive strategies culminated in a depiction of the rebellion as the work of a minority of criminal elements, which either terrorized or hoodwinked the broader Arab population of Palestine into following their lead. The popular mass of Palestinian Arabs were thereby rendered two-dimensional figures, devoid of political insight or agency, and by extension of genuine national consciousness. While the British and Zionists attempted mightily to impose this narrative on the unfolding of events in 1936 Palestine, they faced formidable Arab resistance. Arab newspapers took up the criminological gauntlet thrown down by their critics, explicitly casting both Zionists and their British backers as the true criminals. At the same time, in both their attire and their tactics, Arab rebels came increasingly to resemble a modern army, rather than the “gangs” to which British and Zionist officials and pundits constantly made reference. The paper argues, finally––and perhaps most significantly––that much of the modern scholarship on the revolt reproduces the above-mentioned Zionist and British framing, often at the expense of historical accuracy.

This paper addresses the role of Bertha Spafford Vester (1878-1968) of the American Colony in Jerusalem in opposing the establishment of a Zionist state. It is part of a broader study of the American Colony which, for more than a century, has been central to Jerusalem life. The Spaffords' post millennialist theology was not messianic and the Colony befriended and engaged in considerable philanthropic works for Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. For this reason as well as its geographic location on the 1948 armistice line the hotel is known for its diplomatic neutrality. However, this research into the activities and thoughts of Vester brings new light to the Colony's political profile in demonstrating her vocal opposition as a prominent member of Jerusalem society to the Zionist cause. The evidence for this is provided in the newly accessible archives of the American Colony Hotel whch contain materials from 1857 onwards including correspondence and diaries, scrap books and photographs of the Spafford family and other American Colony members. Vester's international correspondence, newspaper clippings and personal notes demonstrate her strong opposition to a Zionist state. In June 1948 she went to the US to visit American politicians on behalf of the Arab case. She obtained letters from the commandant of the Arab Legion in Jerusalem, Major Abdullah Tell, and from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian patriarchs. Ahamd Hilmi Pasha, a member of Amin Husseini's Arab Higher Committee also wrote a letter to King Abdullah supporting her mission. In the U.S. Vester tried, but was unsuccessful at meeting with President Harry Truman to give him a personal letter from King Abdullah. In spite of her determination to fight Zionism, Vester strived to maintain the neutrality of the Colony, offering the Red Cross its dining room in April 1948 for use as a hospital for treating those wounded in battle from either side and attempting, although failing to stop a Palestinian attack from the grounds of the Colony April 13, 1948 in which 75 Jews were killed. Yet for Vester, the creation of Israel was a huge disappointment as she had dreamt of a democratic Palestine. When in 1951 she transformed the Colony into a grand hotel she made it clear that due to the enmity between Arabs and Jews she would accept no Jewish investors.

About 450 thousand Palestinian Arabs lived in cities in 1947. These urban communities accounted for a third of the Palestinian Arabs as a whole. 65,000 people, about a seventh of the total urban population, were living in Jerusalem, or al-Quds. Nevertheless, the political, religious, social, cultural, and even economic importance of Jerusalem for the Palestinian Arabs was far more important than its ratio in their population. The Palestinian Arab viewpoint regarding the events of 1948 Nakba cannot be comprehended without studying Jerusalem. By the end of the civil war, in mid-May 1948, some 30,000 Palestinian Arabs had left western Jerusalem. Previous research has regarded it as an ignominious defeat, foretold by the balance of power with the Jewish Zionist community in Palestine. In contrast, this paper claims that the Arab military forces and local institutions in Jerusalem proved able to defend the Old City and some of the northern Palestinian Arab neighborhoods. Following the British evacuation on 14 May they averted collapse, thus forestalling the exodus of the entire population prior to the arrival of the Transjordan Arab Legion on 19 May. In consequence, East Jerusalem remained under Arab rule until 1967, and has in fact remained Palestinian Arab to this day. To prove the main hypothesis, the paper will use sources such as Arabic and other archival documents, press of the time, memoirs and diaries.