Article 119 of the 1945 British Mandate Emergency Regulations, enacted by the High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate, as justification for demolitions

British were implementing the policy. Demolition was widely used during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine

British House Demolitions as Punishment in Palestine

Regulation 119

(1) A Military Commander may by order direct the forfeiture to the Government of Palestine of any house, structure, or land from which he has reason to suspect that any firearm has been illegally discharged, or any bomb, grenade or explosive or incendiary article illegally thrown, or of any house, structure or land situated in any area, town, village, quarter or street the inhabitants or some of the inhabitants of which he is satisfied have committed, or attempted to commit, or abetted the commission of, or been accessories after the fact to the commission of, any offence against these Regulations involving violence or intimidation or any Military Court offence; and when any house, structure or land is forfeited as aforesaid, the Military Commander may destroy the house or the structure or anything growing on the land.

(2) Members of His Majesty’s forces or the Police Force, acting under the authority of the Military Commander may seize and occupy, without compensation, any property in any such area, town, village, quarter or street as is referred to in subregulation (1), after eviction without compensation of the previous occupiers if any.

For those not familiar with Israeli law, it may be interesting to discover that the basis for this latter policy has been British Mandate law. More specifically, Israel cited Article 119 of the 1945 British Mandate Emergency Regulations, enacted by the High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate, as justification for demolitions. Article 119 states:

“(1) A Military Commander may by order direct the forfeiture to the Government of Palestine of any house, structure, or land from which he has reason to suspect that any firearm has been illegally discharged, or any bomb, grenade or explosive or incendiary article illegally thrown, or of any house, structure or land situated in any area, town, village, quarter or street the inhabitants or some of the inhabitants of which he is satisfied have committed, or attempted to commit, or abetted the commission of, or been accessories after the fact to the commission of, any offense against these Regulations involving violence or intimidation or any Military Court offense; and when any house, structure or land is forfeited as aforesaid, the Military Commander may destroy the house or the structure or anything growing on the land. (2) Members of His Majesty’s forces or of the Police Force, acting under the authority of the Military Commander may seize and occupy, without compensation, any property in any such area, town, village, quarter or street as is referred to in subregulation (1), after eviction without compensation, of the previous occupiers, if any.”*

Even earlier than 1945, however, the British were implementing the policy. Demolition was widely used during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, when it was carried out under the Palestine (Defence) Order in Council, 1937. This order authorised the High Commissioner to enact any regulations “as appear to him in his unfettered discretion to be necessary or expedient for securing public safety, the defence of Palestine, the maintenance of public order and the suppression of mutiny, rebellion, and riot and for maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community.” With the 1937 order and the 1945 Emergency Regulation, the British could take action against Arab and Jewish militants in Palestine.

The Mandate Palestine press from that period is replete with reports of demolition by British troops. For example, during the month of November, 1938 the Palestine Post reported that 29 houses and two “Arab-owned groves” were razed. The demolitions took place between 23rd October and 13th November, and were located in villages in today’s West Bank, in Gaza and also in Jaffa.

The Palestine Post, 1st November, 1938, 2.

The reasons given for destroying the buildings included the laying of land mines, houses having served as bases for sniper attacks, and the use of homes as a meeting place for gangs. One case of demolitions was carried out “following the shooting of two soldiers in Gaza.” Another described a raid on a village in which 600 men were detained for interrogation, the village was fined 200 Palestine Pounds, and British troops demolished houses because of “the harbouring of terrorists by the village.” The information was taken from official British reports.

The local press also reported discussions of the policy back in London. According to a small item on the front page of the Jaffa-based daily Filastin on 16th November, for example, a British member of parliament asked a question in the House of Commons about home demolitions. The newspaper asked: “Is demolition taking place by decree and agreement of ministers?”

Long before Prisoner X: A British Censor’s Order in Mandate Palestine

Posted on March 10, 2013by af

(From Palestine Post, 29th August, 1938, 1)

If you take a selection of newspapers from the Mandate Palestine press published after the tail-end of August in 1938, you will notice something that they all have in common.

 Aside from the things that we all already know that newspapers have in common – headlines, columns, ads, news (etc), is this: All reports related to British military or police maneuvers, or the activities of Arab rebels (this was two years into the 1936-39 Arab revolt) state that they are based on “official reports” or taken from an official “bulletin from the Public Information Officer.” See for example paragraph three in this article from the Palestine Post on 9th November, 1938:

 

So what was this bulletin? And did it exist from the beginning of the British Mandate in 1920?

The short answer to the second question is no. British diplomatic correspondence from 1938 reveals that on 26th August, 1938, the Mandate Authority issued a Censor’s Order requiring the local press to base itself on an official bulletin when reporting the issues mentioned above.**

In answer to the first question (what was this bulletin?), here is an extract from the High Commissioner for Palestine Harold MacMichael’s secret dispatch to London, dated 13th September. In it, he explains the Censor’s Order, and what was behind it:

“The reaction and tone of the Arab, Jewish and English (Palestine Post) press on public security in this country has been a matter of preoccupation to myself and the General Officer Commanding, particularly during the last three months.

The Arab press yielding partly to the pressure of terrorist threats and actuated partly by their own sympathies, persisted in giving gratuitous and exaggerated publicity to any success achieved by the bandits. Such publicity not only encouraged lawlessness and violence, but also tended seriously to undermine Arab morale in the Government service and thus render even more difficult the re-establishment of security in the country.

The influence of the Hebrew press, including the ‘Palestine Post’, was no less dangerous. Editors allowed their journalistic zeal to leave no incident unpublished regardless of the fact whether or not such publication was, from a Jewish standpoint, politically advisable or even warranted. Indeed it is said that the bandits, in their desire to obtain the fullest publicity for their exploits, ensured that all reporters of those exploits were, by pre-arranged scheme, conveyed hot-haste to the cafes of Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem where they were at once collected by enthusiastic Jewish reporters with the result that – paradoxical though it sounds – the Jewish press became the unwitting publicists of the enemy. 

For a time the Public Information Officer appealed to editors, and official warnings and suspensions ordered under the Press Ordinance,* on the one hand to induce a more circumspect attitude in the Arab press, and on the other to convince Hebrew editors of the folly of their ways; but eventually it was apparent that neither was prepared or sensible enough to curb their activities, and accordingly on the 26th August, after consultation with the General Officer Commanding, I caused a Censor’s Order to be issued under Defence Regulation 11(3) prohibiting to all the local press any comment on local military or police operations or on the activities of the rebels, and secondly, any reference to such operations and activities other than in the terms of such official communications as would be made to them by the Press Bureau. I enclose for your information a copy of the notice in question.

Simultaneously I instructed the Public Information Officer to organise an augmented news service from military and police sources which should be made officially available to the Press and Broadcasting service. This had been done; and although on the pretext that their journalistic independence and privilege had been threatened, the Hebrew editors in particular have expressed their strong disapproval of the system, the newspapers as they are now published are no longer the same menace to public security. This censor’s order will be maintained until further notice.“

(Another example: “Disturbances from recent days –  official notices from Tuesday afternoon,” from Davar, 2nd November, 1938, 1)

A look at Palestine Post and Davar from the date of the order shows that reports based on this official bulletin continued appearing through 1938, and into 1939. It is not clear, however, whether this was still under the Censor’s Order above, and I have not (yet!) been able to find the date that the order was lifted.

(Another example from Al-Difa’, 11th November, 1938, 4: “Gunshots on Jewish officer; announcement of curfew in Jaffa in the daytime for a period of seven hours; demolition of two houses in the city of Nablus after throwing of bombs on an army base; strike in Tulqarem; from the official report which the Public Security Department publishes.”)

Coming up in a separate post: Was the Censor’s Order immediately upheld by the local press? What did the British High Commissioner report to London in his next secret dispatch?

(and just in case you wanted some more information…)

*The British Mandate Press Ordinance was issued in 1933. British norms regulating licensing, closure of publications, and approval of journalist credentials are still maintained in Israel today.

**Of course, there there was censorship of the press before the 26th August order. Without going into too much detail, the British issued Censor’s Orders to deal with specific issues, as well as asking to see material before publication in the local press. Newspapers that did not comply with orders of the censor faced suspension for varying periods of time (for examples, see this British report to the League of Nations in 1937). In addition, exclusion orders were placed on publications from outside Mandate Palestine; telegrams of foreign correspondents were sometimes censored; and there were limits put on who could make international trunk phone calls, in order to control what news was leaving the country.

(Images from Palestine Post  and Davar taken from Historical Jewish Press archive. Image of Al-Difa’ photographed by me at National Library of Israel. Image of the British dispatch taken by me at Moshe Dayan Center library.)

A Mandate Palestine Censor’s Order (part two)

Posted on March 21, 2013by af

In my last post, I wrote about a British Censor’s Order, issued on 26th August, 1938 that required the Mandate Palestine press to base itself on an official bulletin when reporting on certain issues. These were British military or police maneuvers, and the activities of Arab rebels (this was two years into the 1936-39 Arab Revolt). I promised an update on whether the order was immediately upheld by the local press.

Here is an excerpt from the High Commissioner for Palestine’s secret dispatch to London, dated 24th October, 1938. It details how the Jewish and Arabic press responded:

“The Jewish papers have on the whole observed this instruction, both in the spirit and the letter. It has been a difficult restriction for them to obey because it renders largely superfluous the accounts of their reporters and correspondents. In that respect it is in some ways a severer measure than one prescribing a pre-publication censorship of all press matter. It has been arranged, however, that reporters may embellish the Public Information Office’s accounts of incidents, which are of necessity laconic, dry, rigorously objective, by giving some further innocuous details as, for example, the name, occupation and origin of wounded and murdered persons. In this way, the semblance of newspaper accounts has been preserved. 

The Arabic press has found difficulty in observing the order because, like the rest of the Arab population, the editors are subjected to inexorable rebel pressure, and the gangs dislike publicity being given to their reverses and casualty lists. On the issue of the order, the editor of Falastin attempted to circumvent it and yet to keep his presses working by suspending the publication of Falastin [sic] and issuing instead a paper called Sirat el Mustaqim, which is an evening news sheet of insignificant reputation. Sirat el Mustaqim made no attempt to comply with Government’s order. It was accordingly suspended for three months.

This device having failed, Falastin [sic] and Ad Difa’ [sic] found themselves once more in a dilemma. On the one hand they feared that rebel threats would be implemented if they published only the official news, and on the other hand, suspension, with its attendant economic loss, if they overstepped the bound. It was an impossible choice for them and they finally solved the problem by a voluntary suspension of all the Arabic papers for a fortnight between September 3rd and October 7th, when they reappeared in order to publish accounts of the proceedings of the Arab parliamentary congress in Cairo.”

1945The British Mandate enacts the Defense (Emergency) Regulations

Under Regulation 119, a house may be demolished based on the mere suspicion that an offence has been committed. Aside from the suspect's house, the draconian regulation allows to demolish the houses of his relatives, neighbors and others in his community.
The regulation's applicability in the OPT is questionable, given its cancelation by the British prior to aborting Palestine and before the end of their control of the Mandate, and regardless, it does not contradicts several provisions of international humanitarian law.

From Filastin, 16th November, 1938, 1.