Growth of Palestinian Nationalism

The early 1920s there witnessed the growth of Palestinian nationalism, anger was growing against Great Britain because of the Balfour Declaration, Jewish immigration, and the fear of Zionist domination.

In August 1921 Perceval Landon wrote of “the phenomenal growth of a sense of nationality among the Arabs” in the face of growing Jewish immigration to Palestine after the Balfour declaration in 1917.

Landon says that the British “are chiefly responsible for this growth [of nationalism] and that “it needs to be remembered that the Arabs in this country - who outnumber the Jews by about six to one - are not only encouraged in opposing the scheme [Zionism] because they regard it as a denial of the right of self-determination to Palestine, but because they are one with the great mass of the Arabs of Trans-Jordania and Syria”.

He the predicts that if Syria were to gain independence from France “there is no question that the claim of the Palestine Arabs to self determination will be secured”

To the Arabs of Palestine Zionism “is nothing short of robbery - the cynical theft of the land which was Arab before the children of Israel entered it, and still is Arab to-day” 

In issuing the Balfour declaration the British government “lent is support to an attractive scheme without due consideration of the means by which it could be realised”

Supporters of Zionism he says “are guided by faith rather than by reason”

One year later The Catholic News repeated the claims of the (unnamed) editor of Palestine News that “Resentment is growing against Great Britain because of the repressive methods inaugurated by the High Commissioner [Sir Herbert Samuel], while the flouting of Arab aspirations has brought the country to the brink of revolt”

The report says that “repressive and coercive methods, inaugurated by Sir Herbert Samuel are the cause of much of the trouble in Palestine to-day…..the policy of repression against the Arabs will not work”

In February 1923 the Westminster Gazette writes that Great Britain has made “almost every conceivable mistake in the Middle East….We have in Mesopotamia and Arabia espoused the cause of the Arabs and yet in Palestine we have taken a line which has aroused the distrust and suspicion not only of the Palestinian Arabs but of all Arabs to some extent”