On This Day

20 November

BRITISH KILLING OF IZZ AD-DIN AL-QASSAM
On this day in 1935, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was killed by British police. According to a US historian, “Surrounded, he told his men to die as martyrs, and opened fire. His defiance and manner of his death (which stunned the traditional leadership) electrified the Palestinian people. Thousands forced their way past police lines at the funeral in Haifa, and the secular Arab nationalist parties invoked his memory as the symbol of resistance. It was the largest political gathering ever to assemble in mandatory Palestine.”

بريطانيا تقتل عز الدين القسام 

20 نوفمبر

في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1935 قُتل عز الدين القسام على يد الشرطة البريطانية. وبحسب مؤرخ أميركي ، "بالرغم من حصاره ، قال لرجاله أن يموتوا شهداء ، ثم فتح النار. تحديه هذا وطريقة موته(أذهلت القيادة التقليدية) واستثارت الشعب الفلسطيني. اذ شق الآلاف طريقهم عبر خطوط الشرطة في حيفا للمشاركة في جنازتة ، وتبنت الأحزاب القومية العربية العلمانية ذكراه كرمز للمقاومة. لقد كان أكبر تجمع سياسي على الإطلاق يجتمع في فلسطين الانتدابية

After the defeat of Syrian resistance to the French in 1920, al-Qassam traveled to Haifa, then under the British Mandate, where his wife and daughters later joined him.

According to Israeli historian Tom Segev, in One Palestine, Complete

"in Haifa he first taught school, but within a short time he was appointed imam of the Istiqlal Mosque. He radiated charisma, mysticism, and nationalist fervor. Taking an interest in the labourers from the villages, he sought them out on street corners and in their shanty neighborhoods, even in the hashish dens and the brothels. At the same time, al-Qassam organized a local youth movement. His fame spread, and he was admired by many. Close to the Istiqlal Party, al-Qassam was supported by several well-off businessmen, who financed his activities."

In 1929 al-Qassam was appointed the marriage registrar at the Sharia court in Haifa by the Waqf authorities in Jerusalem, a role that allowed him to tour the northern villages, whose inhabitants he encouraged to set up agricultural cooperatives. According to Abdullah Schleifer, Al-Qassam was:

an individual deeply imbued with the Islamic social gospel and who was struck by the plight of Palestinian peasants and migrants. Al-Qassam's pastoral concern was linked to his moral outrage as a Muslim at the ways in which the old implicit social compact was being violated in the circumstances of British mandatory Palestine. This anger fueled a political radicalism that drove him eventually to take up arms and marks him off from the Palestinian notable politicians'^.

He also took advantage of his travels to deliver fiery political and religious sermons in which he encouraged villagers to organise resistance units to attack the British and Jews

'Many of his followers were former tenant farmers recently driven off the land by the land purchases and Arab labour exclusion policies of the Jewish National Fund."⁽¹⁾ These landless ex-tenant farmers drifted into Haifa from the Upper Galilee where the Jewish National Fund had dispossessed many of their traditional livelihoods'. Al Qassam was also a prominent member of the Young Men's Muslim Association. Associated with the Istiqlal party (Independence Party), his activities were financed by several well-off businessmen due to his spreading reputation.

The pressure was building in Palestine, partly as a result of mass Jewish immigration. “Every day the ships bombard us with hundreds of Jewish immigrants,” Palestinian writer Khalil al-Sakakini noted. “If this immigration continues, Palestine’s future is very black…there is no choice but to rouse ourselves, there is no choice but to shake ourselves, there is no choice but to act."

Following the October 1935 discovery of a clandestine cache of arms in the port of Haifa apparently originating from Belgium and destined for the Haganah, Arab indignation broke out in two general strikes. On November 8, the body of a British constable, Moshe Rosenfeld, was discovered near Ain Harod. Al-Qassam and his followers were believed to have been responsible and search parties set out to capture him. In this context, al-Qassam and twelve of his men decided to go underground and, leaving Haifa, took to the hills between Jenin and Nablus.

There they spent ten days on the move, during which they were fed by local villagers. The British police manhunt eventually surrounded al-Qassam in a cave near Ya'bad, in the village of Sheikh Zeid. In the long ensuing firefight, al-Qassam and three of his followers were killed, and five captured. The manner of his last stand assumed legendary proportions in Palestinian circles at the time.

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, according to Rashid Khalidi, 'played a crucial role in winning the populace away from the elite-brokered politics of compromise with the British, and in showing them the "correct" path of popular armed struggle against the British and the Zionists.'

Although al-Qassam's revolt was unsuccessful in his lifetime, militant organizations gained inspiration from his example. His funeral drew thousands, which turned into a mass demonstration of national unity. He became a popular hero and an inspiration to militants, who in the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, called themselves Qassamiyun, followers of al-Qassam. His grave became a place of pilgrimage.

According to Segev, "Al-Qassam bequeathed a few exalted last words, a prayer to God to strengthen him in his struggle. They were written on a scrap of paper apparently found in the folds of his headdress."

The military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, bears his name. The Qassam rocket is named after the brigades who use them. Al-Qassam is buried at the Muslim cemetery at Balad ash-Sheikh, now Nesher, a suburb of Haifa.

Full length documentary: How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian homeland while carving up the post-WWI world

Note:
1. Abdullah Schleifer's essay, "Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War I" in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds.) Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Verso, London