There is a basic assumption that the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine began when the British issued the Balfour Declaration. This notion ignores the reality that as early as June 24,1891, some Arab notables sent a petition via a telegram to the Ottoman capital in Istanbul, insisting that Jews be forbidden from immigrating and buying land. News reaching Jerusalem that a sizeable number of Jews from Russia were anticipated to arrive in Palestine precipitated this response—the first Arab protest critical of modern Jewish settlement
Historian Neville J. Mandel noted that the protest was sent less than a decade after Jews began to migrate to Palestine and more than a decade before the founding of the Zionist movement in 1908, which initiated a program of settlement development.
Jews and Arabs understood that acquiring territory was indispensable for fulfilling their national aspirations.
Jews thought the Arabs would be delighted at the offers to purchase land.
Those who owned land probably were pleased, but others were apparently troubled at the Jews’ willingness to purchase land at any cost. In the early 1890s the sales of land and speculation had increased significantly by Ottoman subjects and foreigners, notes Mandel.
“Opposition to land sales was one of the principal focal points around which the Arab national idea in Palestine coalesced,” notes Hillel Cohen, an expert on Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine/Israel. “It was the place where the national idea adopted by the urban elite intersected with the villagers’ fears that the Jews would buy up more land and dispossess them.”
The Balfour Declaration Issued November 2, 1917
After the British issued the Declaration, promising to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine, the Arabs resorted to violence to register their extreme disapproval.
In order to pressure the British to end Jewish immigration, anti-Zionist riots broke out in Palestine in 1920-1921, killing a number of Jews. In April 1920, during a religious festival (al-Nebi Musa) in Jerusalem, a large number of Arabs, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, attacked Jews in the Old City.
When Winston Churchill visited Jerusalem in March 1921, the Congress of Palestinian Arabs presented him with a petition dated March 14th which read: 1) We refuse the Jewish immigration to Palestine, 2) We energetically protest against the Balfour Declaration to the effect that our Country should be made the Jewish National Home.”
On March 28, Churchill’s response was unequivocal. “It is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews and good for the British Empire.”
Following Churchill’s visit, Arab protests persisted and “were severe.” On May 1, 1921, there was a riot in Jaffa, after which the Arabs attacked Jews in Petah Tikvah and Hadera, pillaging and destroying a significant amount of property. The disturbances, which shocked the Jews and the British, lasted several days and demonstrated the Arabs’ fierce opposition to continued Jewish immigration into the country, asserts historian Anita Shapira, and their insistence on remaining part of Syria, declared historian Basheer Nafi.
In view of the intensity of the attacks during which 88 people were killed and 238 injured, historian Bernard Wasserstein said Sir Herbert Samuel, the Jewish first High Commissioner in Palestine, brought in the army to quell the disturbances. Shapira said many were arrested and heavy fines were levied against Arab villages involved in the riots. However, he also sought to ease Arab hostility and insisted that the Zionists demonstrate no ill-will toward the Arabs. This had to be done through economic development and by making conciliatory declarations that would assuage Arab fears of Jewish immigration and Jewish political dominance. “Unless there [was] very careful steering, it [was] upon the Arab rock that the Zionist ship may be wrecked,” Samuel concluded.
Another response to the riot was a meeting at the Colonial Office in London on November 29, 1921, arranged between Chaim Weizmann and members of the Arab Delegation from Palestine. This meeting, and others, ended in failure as the two groups were unable to reconcile their differences about the proposed Mandate and the future structure of Palestine, Shapira said.
Wasserstein said Jews saw Samuel’s capitulation to violence as appeasement and proof that their criticism of the British administration in Palestine and their disillusionment with the British were justified. Samuel further alienated the Jews of Palestine on June 3, 1921, in his first major address after the riots. He tried to assure the Muslim and Christian inhabitants that he would implement whatever measures required to prove that their rights were “really safe.” The British Government, he said, which is the “trustee under the Mandate for the happiness of the people of Palestine, would never impose on them a policy that people had reason to think was contrary to their religious, their political and their economic interests.”
The Jewish press, however, Wasserstein said, reflected the community’s anger toward the British, and their profound concern that these riots were similar to the ones they had experienced in Russia. Berl Katznelson, a leading figure of the Zionist labor movement, declared, “The pogrom against Israel in Eretz Israel is still continuing.”
David Ben-Gurion concurred: “We who experienced the pogroms knew quite well that without the wish of the authorities and their open or clandestine backing, actively or passively, the task of the pogrom cannot succeed.”
When the riots occurred in 1921, Samuel held the Jews responsible and brought them to trial. The British claimed this was a clash between communist and anti-communist Jewish demonstrators on May Day, which the Jews dismissed as absurd.
The British also sought to obscure the fact that the Arabs had been the sole aggressors, Shapira said. Arab policemen involved in the riots were not punished, while Jews attempting to defend themselves were arrested when they harmed their assailants. Stolen property was not returned, and those who killed Jews were not tried. Jewish immigration was halted, and those caught trying to enter the country were sent back to their ports of origin. This was another example of where the British encouraged the oppressors, rewarded violence and penalized the victims.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lives in Jerusalem.
- This was first published in The Jewish Link, on March 21, 2025