During the Arab Revolt in Palestine, the British government sent Sir Charles Tegart to Palestine to assess the security situations, make recommendations for reforming the Palestine Police, and restore law and order. Tegart had over two decades of colonial police experience in India, rising through the ranks to become the Inspector General of a massive police force in Calcutta. During his two extended visits to Palestine during the Revolt, Tegart made a series of recommendations for reforming the police according to imperial policing practices, many of which were put into place. He also suggested building a “wall” along the frontier with Syria and Lebanon. Additionally, he energetically proposed building 77 fortified police stations or fortresses throughout the country. The “wall” (actually a fence), was erected in the summer of 1938. Curiously, in the early 1940s, after the Revolt was put down and when Britain was in a desperate financial situation, needing all its resources to fight the Germans in World War II, 55 of Tegart’s suggested police fortresses were constructed. These “Tegart Forts” cost the British over two million Pounds Sterling. This paper seeks to address three questions: 1. Why was Tegart so keen on building a wall on the frontier that he got personally involved in its implementation? 2. Why did Tegart push for, and the British approve of and pay for, 55 new police fortresses in Palestine in the early 1940s, given that the Revolt was over? 3. How did the location of the new fortresses influence subsequent conflicts? The paper concludes that: 1. Tegart’s experience, personality, and outlook (all profoundly imperial) contributed to his enthusiasm for the border “wall.” 2. Tegart was clearly influenced by his close relationships with Zionist leaders, who endorsed and benefited (financially and strategically) from the construction of the fortresses. 3. The location and strength of the fortresses benefited the Zionists in the War of Independence (1948). This paper’s methodology employs a qualitative analysis approach, and its findings are based on archival research in Oxford (St. Anthony’s College, Middle East Centre Archive; Rhodes House Archive; Bodleian Library), London (National Archive, Imperial War Museum and British Museum), Cambridge (Centre for South Asian Studies Archive), and Jerusalem (Central Zionist Archive).

‘The Palestine Revolt and the Peel Commission Intertwined’ Histories of Palestine have tended to treat the political sphere (histories of Palestinian political organizations, histories of Palestinian participation in conciliatory negotiations, etc.) as discrete from the sphere of armed resistance (histories of the Palestine Revolt of 1936-1939, the subsequent Palestinian Revolution of the 1950s - 1970s, and the Intifadas of the late 20th-century). This paper will bring the sphere of political participation and the sphere of armed resistance together by looking at how Palestinian participation in the Peel Commission of 1936/37 was structured by the events of the Palestine Revolt in 1936. The Peel Commission visited Palestine and issued its report in the lull between the first phase of the Revolt (April to October 1936) and the second phase (September 1937 to 1939). Drawing on the memoirs/diaries of some of those members of the Arab Higher Committee who gave testimony to the Peel Commission in January 1937, in addition to documents related to the procedures of the Commission in the National Archives in London, the paper will show how the Revolt loomed large over both AHC deliberations about how to engage with the Peel Commission, and the attitude of British commissioners towards their Palestinian interlocutors. For example, contemporaneous accounts of AHC internal debates about boycotting the commission are closely tied to AHC concerns that the human cost of the revolt be honored. In addition, some AHC members were in close consultation with the popular committees that directed the revolt in cities like Nablus and Jenin. Documents from the National Archive also show that British officials were obsessed with which particular Palestinian leaders had links to what they described as the ‘criminal violence’ of the revolt. This meant that British officials on the commission engaged procedurally with Palestinian interlocutors in a hyper-formal manner, which precluded any chance that the Peel Commission could serve as a space of political possibility for the Palestinians. Understanding the details of Palestinian and British attitudes towards the Peel Commission, and how the Palestine Revolt structured those attitudes, is important, because it helps us understand the result of the commission, namely the first official British endorsement of a Jewish State in Palestine.

The 1936 coup d’etat in Iraq is usually considered the first coup in modern Arab history. The narrative of events is familiar, but historians have rarely looked outside Iraq for historical traces of the coup and its circumstances. Acting Chief-of Staff of the Iraqi army Bakr Sidqi overthrew the government of Yasin al-Hashimi in October 1936 during a time of regional and international tumult and crisis. While Iraq was no longer a British mandate, and had received quasi independence a few years earlier, both Transjordan and Palestine were still under mandate control. Palestine was in a state of armed revolt. Transjordan, the link between Iraq and Palestine, was destabilized by disorder in both. Syria had only recently ended a prolonged general strike leading to treaty negotiations, and presumably the end of the French mandate. Iraq’s popular Prime Minister was widely considered the most formidable Arab leader and was known publicly and covertly to be a supporter of the Palestinian cause. British intelligence documents hinted darkly at covert shipments of weapons and money from Iraq to Palestinian rebels. French officials believed the Iraqi government had promised support for and armed uprising in Syria if treaty negotiations failed. Both British and French diplomatic officials were in a state of rising panic over the crisis in central Europe with the rise of Hitler. A series of consular studies from major Arab cities predicted the likely end to the British and French presence in the Middle East without drastic changes. A mood of impending doom took hold in summer 1936. By contrast, the mood in the Arab press was upbeat, as France agreed to discuss independence of Syria, Yasin al-Hashimi asserted Iraqi independence, and Palestine rose in revolt. This paper will re-evoke the atmosphere of hope and crisis and ask what do these events, often separated in the recreations of historians, have to do with one another? The paper is based on extensive research in British and French mandate archives, the League of Nations at Geneva, memoirs of leading Arab political figures, and the Arabic and international press.