1920 riots began on the second day of Passover (4 April 1920) and lasted approximately three days.

     The first in a series of riots which followed in 1921, 1929, and 1936-1939, the 1920 violence occurred in Jerusalem only. Palestinian Arab opposition to the Balfour Declaration, to Jewish immigration, and to the Jewish Legion led to the initial disturbances; support for the attempt of Feissal, son of Hussein Sharif of Mecca, to establish himself as ruler of Syria and disappointment over his expulsion from that country added fuel to the fire. At that time Arab spokesmen considered Palestine Southern Syria, and called their paper (Suria al-Janubiyeh) by that name. A vehicle for incitement, this paper called to the Arabs to spill Jewish blood. Opposition to Zionism, support of Feissal, and calls to slaughter the Jews reappeared in demonstrations held after 1920, in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Most Jews believed that violent attacks would not occur in Jerusalem. As the governmental center, the city abounded in army personnel; moreover, official British policy was to fulfill the promises of the Balfour Declaration. Even before the riots actually broke out, however, it became apparent that this was a mistaken assumption. General Louis Bols, head of the Palestine military regime, opposed the Balfour Declaration and said as much in an interview to an Arab newspaper. Despite protests of Jewish community representatives, the Arabs subsequently requested and received a permit to demonstrate for the realization of their claims. Sir Ronald Storrs, the military governor of Jerusalem, announced publicly that Britain was not obligated to guard Palestine with its bayonets for the sake of the Jews. Although this was a military administration, the British rarely censored inflammatory words, and allowed “Suria al-Jenubiyah". Government is with us "Suria al Jenubiyah”. He had fled to Syria and was sentenced in absentia to ten years imprisonment. After the pardon he joined the Mandatory government, where he held leading positions. Haj Amin al-Husseini, another chief inciter who had fled to Syria and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, was pardoned along with al-'Araf. When elections for a new mufti were held in Jerusalem a year later, Haj Amin received the fewest votes but became mufti thanks to the efforts of Herbert Samuel. Husseini also received the key position of head of the Moslem High Council and was responsible for the Wakf. With the end of the military regime the anti-Zionist General Bols left the country, but many other British opponents of Zionism, including Ronald Storrs, kept their positions during Samuel's administration. The riots resulted in Arab achievement of a political objective: the precedent of a cessation, at least temporary, of Jewish immigration. The belief that violence could bring political goals encouraged attempts, during subsequent years, to renew attacks on the Yishuv.
Bibliography: Private Papers Dr. Dov Yoseph, Prof. Moshe Sharon, Shlomo Sneh, Moshe Auman.

THE RIOTS OF MAY 1921 The wave of Arab attacks on Jews, which occurred chiefly between May 01-06, 1921 have come to be known as the 1921 riots. The violence spread over the coastal region from Hadera in the north to Ruhama in the south, and hit both urban and rural settlements. During the riots 47 Jews were killed and 146 wounded, and extensive destruction and looting of property took place. All this occurred during the first year of High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's administration. The Jews had believed that under a Jewish commissioner the riots of 1920 would not reoccur and relied on the army and POLICE force, [which, however, included many Arab mounted and foot patrol policemen who participated actively in the violence.] Incitement against the continuation of Jewish immigration, despite its having been limited to 16,500 a year after the 1920 riots, preceded the violence. Benches placed for Jewish worshippers next to the Western Wall were considered an affront to the Moslems and interference in the free passage of Arabs who lived next to the Wall. The immediate excuse for the onset of the riots was the passage, on May 01, of a few dozen Jewish Communist demonstrators all of whom were anti-Zionists and supported the Arab nationalist aspirations (now this proves that nothing has changed since) in the alleys of Jaffa. The claim that Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were importing Bolshevism into the country fell on attentive ears not only in the Arab community but among British conservatives as well. At the same time, the demonstration was immediately exploited as an excuse to spread rumors of Jewish acts of rape and murder among Arabs. A group of young ruffians of Jaffa (the "shabab"), together with porters and sailors, local villagers, and residents of Shechem, began to attack the Jews with rocks, sticks, and iron rods, and were soon joined by Arab policemen with firearms. On the first day of the riots, an immigrant house in the heart of Ajami, the Arab section of Jaffa, was broken into, and shooting and grenades killed thirteen Jews. The British governor, then absent from the city, returned during the day but was unable to restore order; the chief of police, who had left Jaffa without the governor's permission, returned only two days later. When the British army arrived in the afternoon it seized control of the main streets only, allowing the violence to continue-in the alleyways. Six Jews who lived in an isolated house in the Abu Kabir section in the southern part of the city were cruelly murdered on the second day of the riots. Among the victims were several writers, including Joseph Chaim Brenner, a noted author who was well known and admired throughout the Yishuv. Meanwhile, the British soldiers asked for the declaration of martial law, but their request was refused on the grounds that the High Commissioner had not ordered it. When martial law was finally declared on the third day of violence, the Arab policemen were immediately divested of their arms, but in accordance with the policy of even-handedness arms were also taken from the discharged soldiers of the Jewish Legion who had helped defend the Jews of Jaffa. Casualties of the first three days of the rioting totaled forty-three. On May 05 some 2,500 rioters, including 400 well-organized and well-equipped mounted men headed by Sheikh Abu Kishek, set out to attack Petah Tikvah. The Jews there fought desperately for their lives, but a unit of Indian soldiers assisted by a military plane played the chief role in their defense. By the time the attack was repelled, four Jews had been killed. The following day (May 06) the same British plane played an important part in repelling the attack on Hadera, which was defended by local residents, settlers from the surrounding area, and army and police forces. No lives were lost, but extensive property damage occurred. On the day Hadera was attacked, rioters from Ramla were repelled from Rehovot by veterans of the Jewish Legion, with no Jewish casualties. The British sent cavalry reinforcements equipped with pickaxes. The Arabs of Ramla, inflamed by that day's Nebi Sallah celebrations, tried to attack thirty-five Jews who lived in the city, but the Jews were transported in time to Tel Aviv. The wave of violence reached other settlements, including Kfar Saba and Ein Hai, both of which went up in flames, and Ekron, Gedera, and Ruhama, which were attacked by rifle fire. Here, too, the soldiers of the Jewish Legion who distributed themselves among the Jewish settlements (without official permission) played an important defensive role. There was no loss of Jewish life in these settlements. In the course of the riots a total of forty-eight Arabs and forty-seven Jews were killed. What lessons were learned from the 1921 riots? They accelerated Jewish self-reliance and decreased dependence on the British, providing an impetus to economic autonomy. The development of Tel Aviv was accelerated; many Jews moved there from Jaffa and within a short time the new city became an independent municipality with a specially uniformed Jewish police force. The riots also led to the strengthening of the British element in the police, with the mobilization of additional forces from Great Britain. A "Supernumerary Police Force" which was originally to include Arabs, Jews, and Circassians, but finally comprised Arabs and Circassians only, was formed. The riots brought the Arabs both short and long-term political objectives. Jewish immigration was cut off completely for a month, and afterwards limiting criteria, such as "absorption capability" and the interest of the population, were set. From then on immigrants had to prove that they had a trade, a place of work, or someone in the country that could support them. In the summer of 1921 a committee headed by Sir Thomas Haycraft was appointed to investigate the causes of the riots. The committee's findings referred to the suspicions that prevailed among both Jews and Arabs, the latter, according to the committee, due partly to misinterpretation of steps taken to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. In 1922 the British government published a "White Paper" in which it was hinted that Transjordan would be excised from the territory of the Jewish National Home. That document also emphasized the inflammatory role played by unauthorized declarations that the objective of the Mandate was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Bibliography: Private Papers Dr. Dov Yoseph, Prof. Moshe Sharon, Shlomo Sneh, Moshe Auman.

HEBRON Fri. Aug. 23, 1929-Wed. Aug. 28, 1929 City in Judea south of Jerusalem, one of the four major Jewish religious centers in Eretz Israel. In Ancient times it served as King David's first capital there has almost always been a Jewish presence in Hebron. It is the site of the Machpelah (burial cave) of the Patriarchs and their wives, purchased by Abraham. In 1775, an anti-Jewish blood libel was spread throughout the holy Jewish city of Hebron, inciting mob violence, as that vicious canard has wrought havoc for Jews in Arab and European communities alike. When the Egyptian Ruler Ibrahim Pasha levied conscription on the entire population in 1834, The Jews became the victims of the Egyptian soldiers as well as the multi-ethnic Arabs. That same year the Jews of Hebron were massacred by the Egyptian soldiers who came to put down a local Muslim rebellion. On Friday, August 23, 1929 the Arabs fell upon the Jewish quarters in Jerusalem and killed and wounded a number of persons; on the following day the defenseless Jewish population of Hebron was attacked by a wild mob which killed over fifty people in circumstances of unspeakable savagery, and seriously wounded over 100. The 1929 the massacre perpetrated by Arab rioters put an end to Jewish communal life in Hebron.
Bibliography:- NORMAN BENTWICH Prof., of Int. Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

THE RIOTS OF 1936-1939 a.k.a. "THE ARAB REVOLT" The " 1936-1939 Riots" (in Jewish terms) or the "Great Revolt" (in Arab terms) were, except for a partial lull between October 1936 and June 1937, years of continual bloodbath. The violence began with the murder of two Jews travelling near Tul-Karem (April 15, 1936) and nine Jews in Jaffa (April 19, 1936), and continued almost until the outbreak of the Second World War. Although directed mainly at the Jews, some Arab attacks were turned against British persons and objectives as well. The Arabs' chief aim was to block Jewish Aliyah, settlement, and land acquisition, and to cancel the progress in these areas represented by the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. Several factors led to the riots:
a) the strengthening of the Yishuv through the increased Aliyah which followed Hitler's 1933 rise to power in Germany [in 1933 alone over 62,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine].
b) the British parliament's defeat of a proposal to establish a Palestinian legislative body which would advance self-rule there.
c) the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 and the concomitant drop in British prestige.
d) Arab hopes for support from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, and the British Mandatory authorities. By the beginning of the riots the Arab leadership had set up national committees throughout the country and on April 25, 1936 established the "Arab Higher Committee" under the Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. The committee announced a general strike in all economic branches of the Arab sector. The strike, which was to have continued until Arab political goals were achieved, lasted for six straight months, but ultimately failed because its chief victim was the Arab community itself: the fellahin="peasants" could not sell their produce or merchants their goods, laborers were unemployed. The Jews, relying on their independent economy, continued to work, sometimes replacing the striking Arabs. In a face-saving tactic, the rulers of the neighboring Arab countries were asked to intervene. They accordingly called on the local  Arabs to end both the strike and the violence (October 1936). The authorities then disarmed the murderous bands, allowing their leaders to leave the country with their arms. This outside intervention marked the beginning of a process which was to continue for decades, in which control of the problems of the local Arabs gradually slipped from their hands to those of the neighboring Arab countries, with the result that the Jewish Arab struggle for the Land was waged essentially between the Yishuv and these Arab states. The local Arab leaders were exiled to the Seychelles Islands and some of them, including the Mufti himself who left for Lebanon and then Syria, fled the country. The Wakf ceased to be an autonomous body and became a governmental department. Despite the tightening British control, however, the riots continued, reaching a peak between August and November 1938. On October 15, 1938 armed bands seized control of the entire Old City of Jerusalem, except the Jewish Quarter. An Arab flag was raised opposite the offices of the British regional governor next to Damascus Gate. At that time rail and postal services throughout the country were paralyzed and British rule in the entire Arab sector had virtually stopped. This peak of ferment, however, also marked the beginning of its end. From then on hostile acts were carried out without a unified political leadership. Local strongmen who terrorized a village, an urban neighborhood, or a larger area became the leaders. All attempts to establish a central command or authority failed. The bands began to fight against one another, and murders of leading Arab community figures considered "moderate" increased. The "rebellion" gradually became, instead of an attack on Jewish and British life and property (which included sabotage of the oil pipeline from Iraq to the Haifa port), a cruelly fought civil war among the local Arabs. Begun in the cities, the war became a conflict between the rural sector, for years oppressed by the Arab establishment (the villages of Judea and Samaria provided the armed bands with manpower, resources and shelter) and the urban sector. This confrontation was symbolized by the order forbidding the wearing of the urban tarbush="Red" Fez, and obligating the rural Arabs to don in its place the kafiyeh and 'akal [Arab headdress]. Anyone who dared to violate this decree paid with his life. Several causes led to the gradual abatement of hostilities: the civil war, the internal rivalry between the two chief parties (Husseini and Nashashibi), a firmer British suppression of the bands, and the strengthening of the Jewish defense forces. In the second half of October 1938 the armed bands lost their hold on Jerusalem's Old City and began to disintegrate, members either returned to their villages or left the country (interesting isn't it... proves only that they were aliens from the surrounding Arab Countries).

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 the entire country was quiet. During the course of the riots the Arab bands changed their ways: Open, mass attacks on Jewish population centers were replaced by "hit and run" actions, such as clandestine throwing of explosives and attacks on transportation lines, but the traditional killing of civilians and destruction of property remained constant. Even in the first stage of the disturbances, from April to October 1936, nine infant homes and orphanages were attacked, three old-age homes, and nineteen schools. 380 attacks were waged on busses and trains, and large areas of agricultural crops were destroyed. During that period 80 Jews were killed and 360 wounded. A particularly shocking incident, which led to Jewish retaliation, was the killing of two Jewish nurses who cared for Arab patients in the government hospital in Jaffa (August 15, 1936). Also infamous was the attack in Tiberias (Kiryat Shmuel) in which nineteen defenseless Jews were slaughtered (October 02, 1938). This was but one in a series of dozens of cruel acts of slaughter which were perpetrated wherever possible. While the Jewish armed groups, the Haganah and the Irgun, concentrated on defense of life and property, they sometimes carried out retaliatory acts against either the bands they located or the population, which backed these groups. The Irgun underground was particularly active in retaliation against hostile centers of population, but the Haganah, especially during the last period of the riots, also sent members to exact retribution. Although all these operations were strictly retaliatory and carried out in reaction to acts of murder, the exceptions to the policy of "havlagah" (self-restraint) which the Yishuv had adopted were accompanied by ethical doubts among the two armed organizations and the political camps behind them a phenomenon unknown on the Arab side at any stage of the disturbances. A Jewish special police force ("ghafirs") which British army and police officers commanded and trained in a cooperative effort of the common front of those years, played an important role in the defense of life and property. Particularly notable were the "Special Night Squads" under the British officer Orde Charles Wingate, called "the friend" by the Haganah because of his devotion to the Zionist cause a phenomenon unusual among British officers even during the period of cooperation. While the Yishuv suffered painful losses of life and property during the riots, it also gained strength in a number of areas during this period. The guard units afforded the Haganah, and to a lesser degree the Irgun, opportunities for training in passive and active defense, partial use of legal arms, and establishment of new units. Fifty-two "wall and watchtower" settlements (established between 1936 and 1939 despite British bans and limitations on Jewish settlement even during the time of cooperation in security matters) expanded the map of Jewish settlement, strengthened the Yishuv economically and militarily, and provided it with bases which were to play important roles in the War of Independence. Jewish reliance on an independent economy, symbolized by the opening of the Tel Aviv Port (May 19, 1936), which freed a large area from dependence on Jaffa, was increased. Despite the numerous attacks, not a single Jewish settlement was abandoned during the three years of disturbances and during this period some 48,000 Jews immigrated legally and 15,000 illegally. When the riots ended the Yishuv numbered 460,000, as against 385,000 when they began. The Arab side, however, found itself weakened, lacking leadership, and divided against itself by internal factions and disputes, which continued in the form of bloody feuds for several years. The local Arabs suffered from the results of the riots for years afterward; this was particularly evident during the War of Independence. Casualties of the riots totaled 60 British, 520 Jews, and an estimated 6,000 Arabs. Nevertheless, Britain's anti-Zionist policies continued and even increased in severity, representing a considerable political achievement for the Arabs. A month after the outbreak of the riots, the British government appointed a commission, headed by Lord Peel, to investigate the causes of the disturbances and propose solutions. The commission began its deliberations on November 02, 1936, and after hearing much testimony from all sides, published on July 07, 1937 a detailed and concise report. Its investigative portion confirmed most of the Zionist claims, as opposed to Arab and British, but proposed, as a way out of the existing political entanglement, the partition of the country into a Jewish state, and Arab state, and an enclave where the British mandate would continue. The Jewish State was allotted the Galilee, the Jezreel Valley, and the coastal plain from the Lebanese border to south of Be'er Tuvia, except for the cities of Haifa, Safed, Tiberias, and Nazareth, which would continue temporarily to be mandatory territory. Despite internal debate in the Zionist camp on this proposed dissection, expressed at the twentieth Zionist Congress (Zurich, August 1937), the Congress empowered the Executive to negotiate with the British government on "precise terms" for the establishment of "a Jewish State", subject for approval to a newly elected Congress. The Arab leadership rejected the proposal immediately and it was ultimately shelved. On February 08, 1939, the British government initiated a round-table conference to which were invited Arab representatives from within the country and from neighboring Arab countries, Jewish representatives from the Jewish Agency, and also non-Zionist representatives. On March 15, 1939 the British proposed to the two parties, as a basis for an agreement, the cancellation of the Mandate, the establishment of a "Palestinian state" tied strategically and economically to Britain, and the promise of special rights to the Jewish minority that would live there. This proposal, too, was rejected by the Arabs as far from what they considered their just claims, and by the Jews as well. The British government decided, nevertheless, to enact its plan, which was published in the "White Paper" of May 17, 1939. This document placed an almost total ban on the sale of land to Jews, allowed a total immigration of 75,000 Jews during the following five years, and stated that "the objective of His Majesty's government is the establishment within ten years of an independent Palestine State in such treaty relations with the United Kingdom as will provide satisfactorily for the commercial and strategic requirements of both countries in the future." The British scrupulously observed these three principles of the White paper even during the Second World War, while Jews and British cooperated in the war effort against Germany and her allies. Bibliography: Private Papers Dr. Dov Yoseph, Prof. Moshe Sharon, Shlomo Sneh, Moshe Auman. Compilation: Shuny