Predictive History

The 1936 Arab Revolt

4 min read

The 1936 Arab Revolt

Core idea: The 1936-1939 Arab Revolt was the Palestinians’ last organized resistance before the Nakba — a peasant-led uprising against Zionist colonization and British rule whose brutal suppression destroyed Palestinian military capacity, killed or exiled their leadership, and disarmed the population, ensuring that by 1948 they were unable to defend themselves against ethnic cleansing.

The Causes

By the mid-1930s, the effects of zionist-economic-colonization had become unbearable for ordinary Palestinians. Peasants were being evicted from lands purchased by the JNF. Under the “Jewish labor only” policy, Palestinians were losing access to the industrial labor market — by 1935, Zionist capitalists controlled the vast majority of industrial companies, Jewish workers outnumbered Arab workers three to one, and earned 145% more on average. High British taxes and capitalist development dominated by the Zionist bourgeoisie financially ruined the Palestinian peasantry.

The immediate spark was the death of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian exile preacher killed by British/Zionist forces in late 1935. His funeral drew thousands of poor peasants and workers, crystallizing their anger into a mass national uprising. Al-Qassam’s grave was located in the village of Balad ash-Sheikh in the north — the same village that would be among the first targets of the Consultancy’s ethnic cleansing operations in December 1947. The military wing of Hamas was later named the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in his honor.

The Revolt

Known to Palestinians as Al-Thawra Al-Kubra (the Great Revolt) — sometimes called the first intifada — the revolt was primarily a popular, rural peasant uprising. Poor peasant volunteers made up 90% of the revolutionaries. It began with a six-month general strike declared in mid-1936 and evolved into a full guerrilla war against the British and the Zionist settler economy. The official Palestinian leadership, the Arab Higher Committee led by the Mufti al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, only joined because they realized that if they did not follow the “tsunami of resistance,” it would engulf them. Foreign volunteers, including Syrian officer Fawzi al-Qawqji, brought fighters from Iraq.

The keffiyeh emerged for the first time as a symbol of Palestinian resistance during this revolt.

The Suppression

Britain deployed 100,000 soldiers to Palestine — approximately one colonial soldier for every eight Palestinians, far surpassing colonial military presence in most other countries — and spent three years conducting brutal attacks on the Palestinian countryside. The Hagana actively participated, teaming up with British companies for “punitive missions.” A British officer named Orde Wingate taught Hagana fighters aggressive combat tactics, including violent raids on defenseless villages and the use of bayonets on civilians. The zionist-paramilitary-organizations also armed rival Palestinian factions (“peace gangs”) to fight against the national formations — a divide-and-rule tactic.

The Consequences for 1948

The suppression was catastrophic for Palestinian society:

  1. 10% of the adult male Arab population was killed, imprisoned, or exiled
  2. The Palestinian political leadership was exiled (the Mufti expelled in 1937)
  3. Paramilitary units were disbanded and weapons confiscated
  4. Political infrastructure was shattered

Meanwhile, the Zionist forces emerged from the period strengthened: trained by British officers, experienced in joint military operations, and organizationally coherent. The Hagana had gained invaluable battlefield experience and its intelligence units had used the revolt to expand the village-files — recording who participated in the revolt, who had killed Jews, who had ties to nationalist movements. These lists became death sentences in 1948.

The Pattern

The 1936 revolt follows a pattern recognizable across colonial history: an indigenous uprising against dispossession is crushed by imperial power, the suppression destroys the capacity for future resistance, and the colonizers exploit the resulting power vacuum. What makes Palestine distinctive is the precision with which the Zionist movement used the revolt’s suppression to prepare for the final takeover — turning British counterinsurgency data into their own operational intelligence for ethnic cleansing.

Key Insight

The 1936 revolt reveals the fatal asymmetry of 1948: Britain spent three years destroying Palestinian military capacity while simultaneously allowing the Zionist movement to build its own army — by 1948, one side had a trained military force and the other had been systematically disarmed a decade earlier. As Ghassan Kanafani wrote, the Palestinian defeat of 1948 was “amazingly short because it was only the conclusion of a long and bloody chapter which had lasted from April 36 to September 39.”

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