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| British army's "urban renewal" in Jaffa, near the shore, 1936 |
The widespread Arab attacks in Palestine in 1936 threatened British rule. British and Jewish institutions were attacked, travelers on the roads were held up and killed, land mines derailed locomotives, and snipers killed Jewish civilians and British officers.
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| Families searching through rubble of a house destroyed in Lydda (Lod), 1936, after a derailment and an attack on the nearby airport |
A tally of the hostilities and political activities in Palestine in 1936 can be found in the British Mandate's annual report for 1936.
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| Arab houses blown up in Halhul |
Within days the British Mandate authorities imposed emergency regulations that permitted detention without charges for up to a year, censorship, the right of entry into homes, widespread confiscation of property and goods, and capital punishment.
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| "Cutting a new road" through Jaffa |
Army reinforcements were rushed to Palestine. Travel along the roads of Palestine was conducted in convoys with armed escorts. Roaming Arab gangs and militias were engaged by the British army, and the Royal Air Force took to the air to strafe and bomb the terrorists.
In Jaffa, the British demolition crews cut wide swaths through the Arab neighborhoods of Jaffa. More than 200 homes were destroyed in Jaffa.
Homes were destroyed in Halhul and Lydda (Lod) in response to terror attacks in the area.
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| Royal Air Force pilot and machine gunner |
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| Skies over Jaffa after dynamiting "slum sections" |
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| British buglers warn of another blast in Jaffa, 1936 |
How the British Fought Arab Terror in Jenin and Demolishing Homes
ReplyDelete"Demolishing the homes of Arab civilians…" "Shooting handcuffed prisoners…" "Forcing local Arabs to test areas where mines may have been planted…" These sound like the sort of accusations made by British and other European officials concerning Israel´s recent actions in Jenin. In fact, they are descriptions from official British documents concerning the methods used by the British authorities to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in Jenin and elsewhere in 1938.
The documents were declassified by London in 1989. They provide details of the British Mandatory government´s response to the assassination of a British district commissioner by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in Jenin in the summer of 1938. Even after the suspected assassin was captured (and then shot dead while allegedly trying to escape), the British authorities decided that "a large portion of the town should be blown up" as punishment. On August 25 of that year, a British convoy brought 4,200 kilos of explosives to Jenin for that purpose. In the Jenin operation and on other occasions, local Arabs were forced to drive "mine-sweeping taxis" ahead of British vehicles in areas where Palestinian Arab terrorists were believed to have planted mines, in order "to reduce [British] land mine casualties." The British authorities frequently used these and similar methods to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in the late 1930s. British forces responded to the presence of terrorists in the Arab village of Miar, north of Haifa, by blowing up house after house in October 1938. "When the troops left, there was little else remaining of the once busy village except a pile of mangled masonry," the New York Times reported.
The declassified documents refer to an incident in Jaffa in which a handcuffed prisoner was shot by the British police. Under Emergency Regulation 19b, the British Mandate government could demolish any house located in a village where terrorists resided, even if that particular house had no direct connection to terrorist activity. Mandate official Hugh Foot later recalled "When we thought that a village was harbouring rebels, we´d go there and mark one of the large houses. Then, if an incident was traced to that village, we´d blow up the house we´d marked." The High Commissioner for Palestine, Harold MacMichael, defended the practice "The provision is drastic, but the situation has demanded drastic powers."