Mohammed Amin al-Husseini

Early life

Amin al-Husseini was born around 1897 in Jerusalem, the son of the mufti of that city and prominent early opponent of Zionism, Tahir al-Husayni.

The al-Husseini clan consisted of wealthy landowners in southern Palestine, centered around the district of Jerusalem. Thirteen members of the clan had been Mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920. Another member of the clan and Amin's half-brother, Kamil al-Husayni, also served as Mufti of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini attended a Qur'an school (kuttub), and Ottoman government secondary school (rüshidiyye) where he learned Turkish, and a Catholic secondary school run by French missionaries, the Catholic Frères, where he learned French. He also studied at the Alliance Israélite Universelle with its Jewish director Albert Antébi. Antébi considered al-Husseini his pupil, and refers to him in a letter.

In 1912 he studied Islamic law briefly at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and at the Dar al-Da'wa wa-l-Irshad, under Rashid Rida, a salafi scholar, who was to remain Amin's mentor till his death in 1935. Rashid Rida's defense of traditional Islamic values and hostility to Westernization became a major component of Al-Husseini's religious persona. Like Rida, he believed that the West was waging a War against Islam and encouraged Islamic revolutions across the Muslim World to defeat European colonial powers and Zionism. However, Al-Husseini did not adopt his teacher's Islamic fundamentalism.

Though groomed to hold religious office from youth, his education was typical of the Ottoman effendi at the time, and he only donned a religious turban in 1921 after being appointed mufti. In 1913, approximately at the age of 16, al-Husseini accompanied his mother Zainab to Mecca and received the honorary title of Hajji. Prior to World War I, he studied at the School of Administration in Constantinople, the most secular of Ottoman institutions.

World War I

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husseini received a commission in the Ottoman Army as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the city of İzmir. In November 1916 he obtained a three-month disability leave from the army and returned to Jerusalem. He was recovering from an illness there when the city was captured by the British a year later. The British and Sherifian armies, for which some 500 Palestinian Arabs were estimated to have volunteered, completed their conquest of Ottoman-controlled Palestine and Syria in 1918.

As a Sherifian officer, al-Husseini recruited men to serve in Faisal bin Al Hussein bin Ali El-Hashemi's army during the Arab Revolt, a task he undertook while employed as a recruiter by the British military administration in Jerusalem and Damascus. The post-war Palin Report noted that the English recruiting officer, Captain C. D. Brunton, found al-Husseini, with whom he cooperated, very pro-British, and that, via the diffusion of War Office pamphlets dropped from the air promising them peace and prosperity under British rule, "the recruits (were) being given to understand that they were fighting in a national cause and to liberate their country from the Turks". Nothing in his early career to this point suggests he had ambitions to serve in a religious office: his interests were those of an Arab nationalist.

Early political activism

In 1919, al-Husseini attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year al-Husseini founded the pro-British Jerusalem branch of the Syrian-based "Arab Club" (Al-Nadi al-arabi), which then vied with the Nashashibi-sponsored "Literary Club" (al-Muntada al-Adabi) for influence over public opinion, and he soon became its president. At the same time, he wrote articles for the Suriyya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria). The paper was published in Jerusalem beginning in September 1919 by the lawyer Muhammad Hassan al-Budayri, and edited by Aref al-Aref, both prominent members of al-Nadi al-'Arabi.

Al-Husseini was a strong supporter of the short-living Arab Kingdom of Syria, established in March 1920. In addition to his support to pan-Arabist policies of King Faisal I, al-Husseini tried to destabilize the British rule in Palestine, which was declared to be part of the Arab Kingdom, even though no authority was exercised in reality.

During the annual Nabi Musa procession in Jerusalem in April 1920, violent rioting broke out in protest at the implementation of the Balfour Declaration which supported the establishment in Palestine of a homeland for the Jewish people. Much damage to Jewish life and property was caused. The Palin Report laid the blame for the explosion of tensions on both sides.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, organiser of Jewish paramilitary defences, received a 15-year sentence. Al-Husseini, then a teacher at the Rashidiya school, near Herod's Gate in East Jerusalem, was charged with inciting the Arab crowds with an inflammatory speech and sentenced in absentia to 10-years imprisonment by a military court, since by then he had fled to Syria. It was asserted soon after, by Chaim Weizmann and British army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, who worked in close concert, that al-Husseini had been put up to inciting the riot by British Field-marshal Allenby's Chief of Staff, Colonel Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor, to demonstrate to the world that Arabs would not tolerate a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The assertion was never proven, and Meinertzhagen was dismissed.

After the April riots an event took place that turned the traditional rivalry between the Husseini and Nashashibi clans into a serious rift, with long-term consequences for al-Husseini and Palestinian nationalism. According to Sir Louis Bols, great pressure was brought to bear on the military administration from Zionist leaders and officials such as David Yellin, to have the mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Kazim Pasha al-Husayni, dismissed, given his presence in the demonstration of the previous March. Colonel Storrs, the Military Governor of Jerusalem, removed him without further inquiry, replacing him with Raghib al-Nashashibi of the rival Nashashibi clan. This, according to the Palin report, "had a profound effect on his co-religionists, definitely confirming the conviction they had already formed from other evidence that the Civil Administration was the mere puppet of the Zionist Organization."

Mufti of Jerusalem

Sir Herbert Samuel, recently appointed British High Commissioner, declared a general amnesty for those convicted of complicity in the riots of 1920, excluding only Amin al-Husseini and Al Aref. During a visit later that year to the Bedouin tribes of Transjordan who harboured the two political refugees, Samuel offered a pardon to both and Al Aref accepted with alacrity. Husseini initially rebuffed the offer, on the grounds that he was not a criminal. He accepted the pardon only in the wake of the death of his half-brother, the mufti Kamil al-Husayni, in March 1921. Elections were then held, and of the four candidates running for the office of Mufti, al-Husseini received the fewest votes, the first three being Nashashibi candidates. Nevertheless, Samuel was anxious to keep a balance between the al-Husseinis and their rival clan the Nashashibis. A year earlier the British had replaced Musa al-Husayni as Mayor of Jerusalem with Raghib al-Nashashibi. They then moved to secure for the Husseini clan a compensatory function of prestige by appointing one of them to the position of mufti, and, with the support of Raghib al-Nashashibi, prevailing upon the Nashashibi front-runner, Sheikh Hussam ad-Din Jarallah, to withdraw. This automatically promoted Amin al-Husseini to third position, which, under Ottoman law, allowed him to qualify, and Samuel then chose him as Mufti. His initial appointment was as Mufti, but when the Supreme Muslim Council was created in the following year, Husseini demanded and received the title Grand Mufti that had earlier been created, perhaps on the lines of Egyptian usage,

by the British for his half-brother Kamil. The position came with a life tenure.

In 1922, al-Husseini was elected president of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been created by Samuel in 1921.

Matthews argues that the British considered the combinations of his profile as an effective Arab nationalist and a scion of a noble Jerusalem family "made it advantageous to align his interests with those of the British administration and thereby keep him on a short tether.". The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds

and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget.

Haram ash-Sharif and the Western Wall

The Supreme Muslim Council and its head al-Husseini, who regarded himself as guardian of one of the three holy sites of Islam, launched an international campaign in Muslim countries to gather funds to restore and improve the Haram ash-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) or Temple Mount, and particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine (which houses also the holiest site in Judaism).

The whole area required extensive restoration, given the disrepair into which it had fallen from neglect in Ottoman times. Jerusalem was the original direction towards which Muslims prayed, until the Qibla was reorientated towards Mecca by Mohammed in the year 624. Al-Husseini commissioned the Turkish architect Mimar Kemalettin.

In restoring the site, al-Husseini was also assisted by the Mandatory power's Catholic Director of Antiquities, Ernest Richmond.

Under Richmond's supervision, the Turkish architect drew up a plan, and the execution of the works gave a notable stimulus to the revival of traditional artisan arts like mosaic tessellation, glassware production, woodcraft, wicker work and iron-mongering.

Al-Husseini's vigorous efforts to transform the Haram into a symbol of pan-Arabic and Palestinian nationalism were intended to rally Arab support against the postwar influx of Jewish immigrants. In his campaigning, al-Husseini often accused Jews of planning to take possession of the Western Wall of Jerusalem, which belonged to the waqf of Abu Madyan as an inalienable property, and rebuild the Temple over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He took certain statements, for example, by the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook regarding the eventual return in time of the Temple Mount back to Jewish hands, and turned them to a concrete political plot to seize control of the area.

Al-Husseini's intensive work to refurbish the shrine as a cynosure for the Muslim world, and Jewish endeavours to improve their access to, and establish a ritually appropriate ambiance on the plaza by the Western Wall, led to increased conflict between the two communities, each seeing the site only from their own traditional perspective and interests. Zionist narratives pinpointed al-Husseini's works on, and publicity about, the site and threats to it, as attempts to restore his own family's waning prestige. Arab narratives read the heightened agitation of certain Jewish groups over the Wall as an attempt to revive diaspora's interest in Zionism after some years of relative decline, depression and emigration.

1929 Palestine riots

On 10 August 1928, a constituent assembly convened by the French in Syria was rapidly adjourned when calls were made for a reunification with Palestine.

Al-Husseini and Awni Abd al-Hadi met with the Syrian nationalists

and they made a joint proclamation for a unified monarchical state under a son of Ibn Sa'ud. On the 26th,

the completion of the first stage of restoration work on the Haram's mosques was celebrated with great pomp, in the presence of representatives from the Muslim countries which had financed the project, the Mandatory authorities, and Abdullah, Emir of Transjordan. A month later, an article appeared in the Jewish press proposing the purchase and destruction of houses in the Moroccan quarter bordering on the wall to improve pilgrim access and thereby further the "Redemption of Israel."

Soon after, on 23 September,

Yom Kippur, a Jewish beadle introduced a screen to separate male and female worshippers at the Wall. Informed by residents in the neighbouring Mughrabi quarter, the waqf authority complained to Harry Luke, acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Palestine, that this virtually changed the lane into a synagogue, and violated the status quo, as had the collapsible seats in 1926. British constables, encountering a refusal, used force to remove the screen, and a jostling clash ensued between worshippers and police.

Zionist allegations that disproportionate force had been employed during what was a solemn occasion of prayer created an outcry throughout the diaspora. Worldwide Jewish protests remonstrated with Britain for the violence exercised at the Wall. The Jewish National Council Vaad Leumi "demanded that British administration expropriate the wall for the Jews". In reply, the Muslims organized a Defence Committee for the Protection of the Noble Buraq,

and huge crowd rallies took place on the Al-Aqsa plaza in protest. Work, often noisy, was immediately undertaken on a mosque above the Jewish prayer site. Disturbances such as opening a passage for donkeys to pass through the area, angered worshippers. After intense negotiations, the Zionist organisation denied any intent to take over the whole Haram Ash-Sharif, but demanded the government expropriate and raze the Moroccan quarter. A law of 1924 allowed the British authorities to expropriate property, and fear of this in turn greatly agitated the Muslim community, though the laws of donation of the waqf explicitly disallowed any such alienation. After lengthy deliberation, a White Paper was made public on 11 December 1928 in favour of the status quo.

Political activities, 1930–1935

By 1928–1929 a coalition of a new Palestinian nationalist group began to challenge the hegemony so far exercised by al-Husseini. The group, more pragmatic, hailed from the landed gentry and from business circles, and was intent on what they considered a policy of more realistic accommodation to the Mandatory government. From this period on, a rift emerged, that was to develop into a feud between the directive elite of Palestinian Arabs.

In 1931, al-Husseini founded the World Islamic Congress, on which he was to serve as president. Versions differ as to whether or not al-Husseini supported Izz ad-Din al-Qassam when he undertook clandestine activities against the British Mandate authorities. His appointment as imam of the al-Istiqlal mosque in Haifa had been approved by al-Husseini. Lachman argues that he secretly encouraged, and perhaps financed al-Qassam at this period. Whatever their relations, the latter's independent activism, and open challenge to the British authorities appears to have led to a rupture between the two. He vigorously opposed the Qassamites' exactions against the Christian and Druze communities.

In 1933, according to Alami, al-Husseini expressed interest in Ben Gurion's proposal of a Jewish-Palestine as part of a larger Arab federation.

By 1935 al-Husseini did take control of one clandestine organization, of whose nature he had not been informed until the preceding year,

which had been set up in 1931 by Musa Kazim al-Husayni's son, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and recruited from the Palestinian Arab Boy Scout movement, called the "Holy Struggle" (al-jihad al-muqaddas).

This and another paramilitary youth organization, al-Futuwwah, paralleled the clandestine Jewish Haganah. Rumours, and occasional discovery of caches and shipments of arms, strengthened military preparations on both sides.

1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

On 19 April 1936, a wave of protest strikes and attacks against both the British authorities and Jews was unleashed in Palestine. Initially, the riots were led by Farhan al-Sa'di, a militant sheik of the northern al-Qassam group, with links to the Nashashibis. After the arrest and execution of Farhan, al-Husseini seized the initiative by negotiating an alliance with the al-Qassam faction. Apart from some foreign subsidies, including a substantial amount from Fascist Italy,

he controlled waqf and orphan funds that generated annual income of about 115,000 Palestine pounds. After the start of the revolt, most of that money was used to finance the activities of his representatives throughout the country. To Italy's Consul-General in Jerusalem, Mariano de Angelis, he explained in July that his decision to get directly involved in the conflict arose from the trust he reposed in Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's backing and promises. Upon al-Husseini's initiative, the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans formed the Arab Higher Committee under his chairmanship. The Committee called for nonpayment of taxes after 15 May and for a general strike of Arab workers and businesses, demanding an end to the Jewish immigration. The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Arthur Wauchope, responded by engaging in negotiations with al-Husseini and the Committee. The talks, however, soon proved fruitless. Al-Husseini issued a series of warnings, threatening the "revenge of God Almighty" unless the Jewish immigration were to stop, and the general strike began, paralyzing the government, public transportation, Arab businesses and agriculture.

As the time passed, by autumn the Arab middle class had exhausted its resources. Under these circumstances, the Mandatory government was looking for an intermediary who might help persuade the Arab Higher Committee to end the rebellion. Al-Husseini and the Committee rejected King Abdullah of Transjordan as mediator because of his dependence on the British and friendship with the Zionists, but accepted the Iraqi Foreign Minister Nuri as-Said. As Wauchope warned of an impending military campaign and simultaneously offered to dispatch a Royal Commission of Inquiry to hear the Arab complaints, the Arab Higher Committee called off the strike on 11 October 1936. When the promised Royal Commission of Inquiry arrived in Palestine in November, al-Husseini testified before it as chief witness for the Arabs.

In July 1937, British police were sent to arrest al-Husseini for his part in the Arab rebellion, but, tipped off, he managed to escape to the sanctuary of asylum in the Haram. He stayed there for three months, directing the revolt from within. Four days after the assassination of the Acting District Commissioner for that area Lewis Yelland Andrews by Galilean members of the al-Qassam group on 26 September 1937, al-Husseini was deposed from the presidency of the Muslim Supreme Council, the Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal, and warrants for the arrest of its leaders were issued, as being at least "morally responsible", though no proofs existed for their complicity.

Ties with the Axis Powers during World War II

Since 1918, Arab nationalist movements lay under the constraints imposed by the French-English imperial duopoly in the Middle East, which in turn extended to the sphere of international politics. The Arabs perceived their interests as tied up with an eventual weakening of these two powers as a precondition for establishing their national independence. For this reason, as early as June 1933, even the most Europeanized of Palestinian notables were known to look forward to a renewed outbreak of war in Europe, something that would enable them to overthrow the colonial grip on their countries and expel ("throw into the sea") the Jews in Palestine, the French in Syria, and the English throughout the Arab world. al-Husayni was only one of many such notables who greeted with optimism the emergence of a new regime in Germany in that year.

The Nazis generally regarded Arabs with contempt. Hitler himself had in 1937 spoken of them as "half-apes". However, throughout the interwar period, Arab nationalists bore Germany no ill-will (despite its earlier support for the Ottoman Empire). Like many Arab countries, Germany was perceived as a victim of the post-World War I settlement. Hitler himself often spoke of the "infamy of Versailles". Unlike France and Great Britain it had not exercised imperial designs on the Middle East, and its past policy of non-intervention was interpreted as a token of good will. While the scholarly consensus is that Husseini's motives for supporting the Axis powers and his alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were deeply inflected by anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideology from the outset, some scholars, notably Renzo De Felice, deny that the relationship can be taken to reflect a putative affinity of Arab nationalism with Nazi/Fascist ideology, and that men like Husseini chose them as allies for purely strategic reasons,

on the grounds that, as Husseini later wrote in his memoirs, "the enemy of your enemy is your friend". British policy was to ease Husseini "into oblivion" by ignoring him, Nuri al-Said, mediating, endeavoured to get him to side with the Allies against the Germans. The overture was considered then rebuffed: according to Philip Mattar, Husseini was reluctant to lend his voice in support of Britain "because it had destroyed Palestinian villages, executed and imprisoned Palestinian fighters, and exiled their leaders".

When Husseini eventually met with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1941, he assured Hitler that "The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies... namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists". Hitler was pleased with him, considering him "the principal actor in the Middle East" and an Aryan because of al-Hussaini's fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

Pre-war

It has often been stated that the Nazis inspired and financed the Arab Revolt. According to Philip Mattar, there is no reliable evidence to support such a claim. In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the German Consul-General in Jerusalem for Palestine, Heinrich Wolff, an open supporter of Zionism, sent a telegram to Berlin reporting al-Husseini's belief that Palestinian Muslims were enthusiastic about the new regime and looked forward to the spread of fascism throughout the region. Wolff met al-Husseini and many sheikhs again, a month later, at Nabi Musa. They expressed their approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked Wolff not to send any Jews to Palestine. Wolff subsequently wrote in his annual report for that year that the Arabs' political naïvety led them to fail to recognize the link between German Jewish policy and their problems in Palestine, and that their enthusiasm for Nazi Germany was devoid of any real understanding of the phenomenon. The various proposals by Palestinian Arab notables like al-Husseini were rejected consistently over the years out of concern to avoid disrupting Anglo-German relations, in line with Germany's policy of not imperiling their economic and cultural interests in the region by a change in their policy of neutrality, and respect for British interests. Hitler's Englandpolitik essentially precluded significant assistance to Arab leaders. This care for treating with respect English colonial initiatives (like the promotion of Zionist immigration) was also linked to Nazi ambitions to drive Jews out of Europe.

Italy also made the nature of its assistance to the Palestinian contingent on the outcome of its own negotiations with Britain, and cut off aid when it appeared that the British were ready to admit the failure of their pro-Zionist policy in Palestine. Al-Husseini's adversary, Ze'ev Jabotinsky had at the same time cut off Irgun ties with Italy after the passage of antisemitic racial legislation.

Though Italy did offer substantial aid, some German assistance also trickled through. After asking the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle on 21 July 1937 for support, the Abwehr briefly made an exception to its policy and gave some limited aid. But this was aimed to exert pressure on Britain over Czechoslovakia. Promised arms shipments never eventuated. This was not the only diplomatic front on which al-Husseini was active. A month after his visit to Döhle, he wrote to the American Consul George Wadsworth (August 1937), to whom he professed his belief that America was remote from imperialist ambitions and therefore able to understand that Zionism "represented a hostile and imperialist aggression directed against an inhabited country". In a meeting with Wadsworth on 31 August, he expressed his fears that Jewish influence in the United States might persuade the country to side with Zionists. In the same period he courted the French government by expressing a willingness to assist them in the region.

Al-Husseini in Iraq

With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the Iraqi Government complied with a British request to break off diplomatic relations with Germany, interned all German nationals, and introduced emergency measures putting Iraq on a virtual war-footing. Al-Husseini in the meantime had quietly slipped out of Beirut with his family on 14 October 1939, reaching Baghdad two days later. There he was welcomed as the leading Arab nationalist of his day, and heir to King Faisal, modern Iraq's founder.

A circle of 7 officers who had opposed this government decision and the measures taken had invited him, with Nuri as-Said's agreement, to Iraq, and he was to play an influential role there in the following two years.

Nuri as-Said hoped to negotiate concessions on Palestine with the British in exchange for a declaration of support for Great Britain. A quadrumvirate of four younger generals among the seven, three of whom had served with al-Husseini in World War I, were hostile to the idea of subordinating Iraqi national interests to Britain's war strategy and requirements. They responded to high public expectations for achieving independence from Britain, and deep frustration at the treatment of Palestinians by the latter.

In March 1940, the nationalist Rashid Ali replaced Nuri as-Said. Ali made covert contacts with German representatives in the Middle East, though he was not yet an openly pro-Axis supporter, and al-Husseini's personal secretary Kemal Hadad acted as a liaison between the Axis powers and these officers.

As the European situation for the Allies deteriorated, Husseini advised Iraq to adhere to the letter to their treaty with Great Britain, and avoid being drawn into the war in order to conserve her energies for the liberation of Arab countries. Were Russia, Japan and Italy to side with Germany however, Iraqis should proclaim a revolt in Palestine. In July 1940 Colonel S. F. Newcombe managed to work out an agreement with Nuri al-Sa'id, who was then Foreign Minister, and the Palestinians Jamal al-Husayni and Musa al-'Alami to the effect that Palestinian Arabs would support Britain and assent to the White Paper of 1939. Iraq undertook to place half of its army under Allied command outside the country's borders. Amin al-Husseini, despite his previous rejection of the White Paper and his advice (to the Iraqis) not to use the White Paper as a starting point for negotiations, gave his support to the agreement. According to Nevo (1984) the Newcombe agreement said that Palestine would be granted independence immediately rather than after a 10-year period stipulated by the 1939 White Paper; Mattar (1984) does not mention any such provision in the Newcombe agreement. On 29 August 1940, the British however reneged on the agreement. The British backtracked out of fear over the hostile reaction the accord might stir up among the Jews of Palestine, and among American Jews, whose opinion was important were Britain to gain American support in the war. That summer, Britain dropped all attempts to deal with al-Husseini, and he threw in his lot with Germany. al-Husseini's dissatisfaction with Nuri's pro-British politics, in the meantime, was exacerbated by the latter's refusal to intervene with the British on behalf of the families, all of whom he knew, of 39 Palestinians who had been sentenced to death in secret trials for, in Husseini's view, the crime of defending their country.

In Nazi-occupied Europe

Al-Husseini arrived in Rome on 10 October 1941. He outlined his proposals before Ubaldo Alberto Mellini Ponce de León. On condition that the Axis powers "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty, of an Arab state, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan", he offered support in the war against Britain and stated his willingness to discuss the issues of "the Holy Places, Lebanon, the Suez Canal, and Aqaba". The Italian foreign ministry approved al-Husseini's proposal, recommended giving him a grant of one million lire, and referred him to Benito Mussolini, who met al-Husseini on 27 October. According to al-Husseini's account, it was an amicable meeting in which Mussolini expressed his hostility to the Jews and Zionism.

Back in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, al-Husseini submitted to the Nazi German Government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clauseGermany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

Encouraged by his meeting with the Italian leader, al-Husseini prepared a draft declaration, affirming the Axis support for the Arabs on 3 November 1941. In three days, the declaration, slightly amended by the Italian foreign ministry, received the formal approval of Mussolini and was forwarded to the German embassy in Rome. On 6 November, al-Husseini arrived in Berlin, where he discussed the text of his declaration with Ernst von Weizsäcker and other German officials. In the final draft, which differed only marginally from al-Husseini's original proposal, the Axis powers declared their readiness to approve the elimination (Beseitigung) of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

On 20 November, al-Husseini met the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on 28 November 1941. Hitler, recalling Husseini, remarked that he "has more than one Aryan among his ancestors and one who may be descended from the best Roman stock." He asked Adolf Hitler for a public declaration that "recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland". Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, saying that it would strengthen the Gaullists against the Vichy France,

The Holocaust

Al-Husseini has been described by the American Jewish Congress as "Hitler's henchman"

and some scholars, such as Schwanitz and Rubin, have argued that Husseini made the Final Solution inevitable by shutting out the possibility of Jews escaping to Palestine.

Gilbert Achcar refers to a meeting between al-Husseini and Heinrich Himmler, in the summer of 1943, and observes:

The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial... . His amour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews... .gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans... he cites... : "Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people ...". Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done ... constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ... told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had "already exterminated more than three million" Jews: "I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then." ... Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide... .

Al-Husseini's memoir then continues:-

Himmler asked me on the occasion: "How do you propose to settle the Jewish question in your country?" I replied: "All we want from them is that they return to their countries of origin." He (Himmler) replied: "We shall never authorize their return to Germany."

Wolfgang G. Schwanitz doubts the sincerity of his surprise since, he argues, Husseini had publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example Germans set for a "definitive solution to the Jewish problem".

Subsequently, al-Husseini declared in November 1943:

It is the duty of Muhammadans [Muslims] in general and Arabs in particular to ... drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries... . Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [endgültige Lösung] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.

Intervention in Palestine and Operation Atlas

Al-Husseini collaborated with the Germans in numerous sabotage and commando operations in Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine, and repeatedly urged the Germans to bomb Tel Aviv and Jerusalem "in order to injure Palestinian Jewry and for propaganda purposes in the Arab world", as his Nazi interlocutors put it. The proposals were rejected as unfeasible. The Italian Fascists envisaged a project to establish him as head of an intelligence centre in North Africa, and he agreed to act as commander of both regular and irregular forces in a future unit flanking Axis troops to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines.

Operation ATLAS was one such joint operation. A special commando unit of the Waffen SS was created, composed of three members of the Templer religious sect in Palestine, and two Palestinian Arabs recruited from al-Husseini's associates, Hasan Salama and Abdul Latif (who had edited the al-Husseini's Berlin radio addresses). It has been established that the mission, briefed by al-Husseini before departure, aimed at establishing an intelligence-gathering base in Palestine, radioing information back to Germany, and buying support among Arabs in Palestine, recruiting and arming them to foment tensions between Jews and Arabs, disrupting the Mandatory authorities and striking Jewish targets.

The plan ended in fiasco: they received a cold reception in Palestine, three of the five infiltrators were quickly rounded up, and the matériel seized. Their air-dropped cargo was found by the British, and consisted of submachine guns, dynamite, radio equipment, 5,000 Pound sterling, a duplicating machine, a German-Arabic dictionary, and a quantity of poison. Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber, have claimed that the mission included a plan to poison the Tel Aviv water supply, There is no trace of this poison plot in the standard biographies, Palestinian and Israeli, of Husseini.

Propaganda

Throughout World War II, al-Husseini worked for the Axis Powers as a broadcaster in propaganda targeting Arab public opinion. He was thereby joined by other Arabs such as Fawzi al-Qawuqji and Hasan Salama. The Mufti was paid "an absolute fortune" of 50,000 marks a month (when a German field marshal was making 25,000 marks a year), the equivalent today of $12,000,000 a year. Walter Winchell called him "the Arabian Lord Haw-Haw". Only about 6,300 Arab soldiers ended up being trained by German military organisations, no more than 1,300 from Palestine, Syria and Iraq combined. In contrast, Britain managed to recruit 9,000 from Palestine alone and a quarter of a million North African troops served in the French Army of Liberation where they made up the majority of its dead and wounded.

The Mufti also wrote a pamphlet for the 13th SS Handschar division, translated as Islam i Židovstvo (Islam and Judaism) which closed with a quotation from Bukhari-Muslim by Abu Khurreira that states: "The Day of Judgement will come, when the Muslims will crush the Jews completely: And when every tree behind which a Jew hides will say: 'There is a Jew behind me, Kill him!". Some accounts have alleged that the Handschar was responsible for killing 90% of Bosnian Jews. However, Handschar units were deployed only after most of the Jews in Croatia had been deported or exterminated by the Ustaše regime. One report, however, of a Handschar patrol murdering some Jewish civilians in Zvornik in April 1944 after their real identity was revealed, is plausible.

On 1 March 1944, while speaking on Radio Berlin, al-Husseini said: "Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you." This statement has been described as incitement to genocide.

Recruitment

The idea of creating Muslim units under German command was shown interest by Heinrich Himmler, who Hoare argues viewed the Islamic world as a potential ally against the British Empire and regarded the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia as a "ridiculous state". Himmler had a romantic vision of Islam as a faith "fostering fearless soldiers", and this probably played a significant role in his decision to raise three Muslim divisions under German leadership in the Balkans from Bosnian Muslims and Albanians: the 13th Handschar,

the 21st Skanderbeg, and the 23rd Kama (Shepherd's dagger). Riven by interethnic conflict, the region's Jewish, Croat, Roma, Serb and Muslim communities suffered huge losses of life,

Bosnian Muslims losing around 85,000 from a genocidal Chetnik ethnic cleansing operations alone.

The Muslims had three options: to join the Croatian Ustaše, or the Yugoslav partisans, or to create local defense units. Following a tradition of service in the old Bosnian regiments of the former Austro-Hungarian army, a number of Bosnians chose an alliance with Germany, which promised them autonomy. Husseini, having been petitioned by the Bosnian Muslim leaders, was well informed of their plight.

Dissatisfied with low enlistment, Himmler asked the mufti to intervene. Husseini negotiated, made several requests, mostly ignored by the SS, and conducted several visits to the area. His speeches and charismatic authority proved instrumental in improving enlistment notably. In one speech he declared that

Those lands suffering under the British and Bolshevist yoke impatiently await the moment when the Axis (powers) will emerge victorious. We must dedicate ourselves to unceasing struggle against Britain – that dungeon of peoples – and to the complete destruction of the British Empire. We must dedicate ourselves to unceasing struggle against Bolshevist Russia because communism is incompatible with Islam.One SS officer reporting on impressions from the mufti's Sarajevo speech said Husseini was reserved about fighting Bolshevism, his main enemies being Jewish settlers in Palestine and the English. During a visit in July 1943 the Mufti said: "The active cooperation of the world's 400 million Muslims with their loyal friends, the German, can be of decisive influence upon the outcome of the war. You, my Bosnian Muslims, are the first Islamic division [and] serve as an example of the active collaboration....My enemy's enemy is my friend." Himmler in addressing the unit on another occasion declared "Germany [and] the Reich have been friends of Islam for the past two centuries, owing not to expediency but to friendly conviction. We have the same goals."

Activities after World War II

Arrest and flight

After the end of the Second World War, al-Husseini attempted to obtain asylum in Switzerland but his request was refused. He was taken into custody at Konstanz by the French occupying troops on 5 May 1945, and on 19 May, he was transferred to the Paris region and put under house arrest.

At around this time, the British head of Palestine's Criminal Investigation Division told an American military attaché that the Mufti might be the only person who could unite the Palestinian Arabs and "cool off the Zionists".

Henri Ponsot, a former ambassador of France in Syria, led the discussions with him and had a decisive influence on the events. The French authorities expected an improvement in France's status in the Arab world through his intermediaries and accorded him "special detention conditions, benefits and ever more important privileges and constantly worried about his well-being and that of his entourage". In October 1945, he was even given permission to buy a car in the name of one of his secretaries and enjoyed some freedom of movement and could also meet whoever he wanted. Al-Husseini proposed to the French two possibilities of cooperation: "either an action in Egypt, Iraq and even Transjordan to calm the anti-French excitement after the events in Syria and because of its domination in North Africa; or that he would take the initiative of provocations in [Palestine], in Egypt and in Iraq against Great Britain", so that the Arabs countries will pay more attention to British policy than to that of France. Al-Husseini was very satisfied with his situation in France and stayed there for a full year.

As early as 24 May 1945, Great Britain requested al-Husseini's extradition, arguing that he was a British citizen who had collaborated with the Nazis. Despite the fact that he was on the list of war criminals, France decided to consider him as a political prisoner and refused to comply with the British request. France refused to extradite him to Yugoslavia where the government wanted to prosecute him for the massacres of Serbs. Poussot believed al-Husseini's claims that the massacre of Serbs had been performed by General Mihailovic and not by him. Al-Husseini also explained that 200,000 Muslims and 40,000 Christians had been assassinated by the Serbs and that he had established a division of soldiers only after Bosnian Muslims had asked for his help, and that Germans and Italians had refused to provide any support to them. In the meantime, Zionist representatives—fearing that al-Husseini would escape—backed Yugoslavia's request for extradition. They claimed that al-Husseini was also responsible for massacres in Greece and pointed out his action against the Allies in Iraq in 1941; additionally they requested the support of the United States in the matter.

Post-war Palestinian political leadership

In November 1945, at the initiative of the Arab League, the "Arab Higher Committee" (AHC) was reestablished as the supreme executive body that represented the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. This 12-member AHC included Husseini supporters and some members of political parties that opposed the Grand Mufti and his allies. The dispute between Husseini supporters and their opposition was inflamed by the return of Jamal al Husseini to the Middle East and his resumption of political activity. In March 1946 the AHC was disbanded, and then Jamal reconstituted it as an organization exclusively staffed by Husseini political allies and family members. The Arab League foreign ministers intervened in May 1946 by replacing both the AHC and the opposing "Arab Higher Front" with the "Arab Higher Executive" (AHE) to represent Palestinian Arabs. Haj Amin al Husseini was the chairman of the AHE, even though he was absent, and Jamal acted as Vice-Chairman. The Husseini faction dominated the nine-member AHE. Subsequently, al-Husseini returned to Egypt and began his practical leadership of the Palestinian Arabs while residing in Cairo. The name of the AHE was changed back to AHC in January 1947.

1948 Palestine war

When the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine delivered its recommendations for the partition of Palestine, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Alan Cunningham sent emissaries to Cairo to sound out al-Husseini, though transferring any power of state to him was unthinkable.

Musa Alami surmised that the Mufti would agree to partition if he were promised that he would rule the future Arab state.

According to Issa Khalaf there are no indications to substantiate this claim.

The wartime reputation of al-Husseini was employed as an argument for the establishment of a Jewish State during the deliberations at UN in 1947. The Nation Associates under Freda Kirchwey prepared a nine-page pamphlet with annexes for the United Nations entitled The Arab Higher Committee, Its Origins, Personnel and Purposes. This booklet included copies of communications between Haj Amin al-Husseini and high ranking Nazis (e.g. Heinrich Himmler, Franz von Papen, Joseph Goebbels), al-Husseini's diary account of meeting Hitler, several letters to German officials in several countries where he requested that Jews never be permitted to emigrate from Europe to a Jewish Home in Palestine, and many photographs of al-Husseini, Rashid Ali, and other Arab politicians in the company of Nazis and their Italian and Japanese allies. It claimed to demonstrate that German Nazis and Palestinian politicians (some of whom were requesting recognition at the UN in 1947 as representatives of the Palestinian Arab population) had made common cause during World War II in their opposition to the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. In May 1948, the Israeli government thanked Kirchwey for "having a good and honorable share of our success", at least partly as a consequence of distributing information on al-Husseini to the UN representatives.

On the eve of the United Nations' partition of Mandatory Palestine, King Abdullah, who shared with Zionists a hostility to Palestinian nationalism, reached a secret entente with Golda Meir to thwart al-Husseini and annex the part of Palestine in exchange for Jordan's dropping its opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state. The meeting, in Shlaim's words, "laid the foundations for a partition of Palestine along lines radically different from the ones eventually envisaged by the United Nations". Husseini's popularity in the Arab world had risen during his time with the Nazis, and Arab leaders rushed to greet him on his return, and the masses accorded him an enthusiastic reception, an attitude which was to change rapidly after the defeat of 1948. Elpeleg writes that "to a certain extent" Husseini was chosen as the "scapegoat" for this defeat.

Exile from Palestine

Although al-Husseini had been removed from the Supreme Muslim Council and other administrative roles by the British government in 1937, they did not remove him from the post of mufti of Jerusalem. They later explained this as due to the lack of legal procedure or precedent.

However, on 20 December 1948, King Abdullah announced his replacement as mufti by his long-term rival Husam Al-din Jarallah.

The king was assassinated on 20 July 1951, on the eve of projected secret talks with Israel, by a militant, Mustafa Ashu, of the jihad al-muqaddas, while entering the Haram ash-Sharif to pray. There is no evidence al-Husseini was involved, though Musa al-Husayni was among the six indicted and executed after a disputed verdict. Abdullah was succeeded by King Talal—who refused to allow al-Husseini entry into Jerusalem. Abdullah's grandson, Hussein, who had been present at the murder, eventually lifted the ban in 1967, receiving al-Husseini as an honoured guest in his Jerusalem royal residence after uprooting the PLO from Jordan.

The Palestinian Government was entirely relocated to Cairo in late October 1948 and became a government-in-exile, gradually losing any importance. Having a part in the All-Palestine Government, al-Husseini also remained in exile at Heliopolis in Egypt throughout much of the 1950s. As before 1948, when the Yishuv believed the ex-Mufti's hand could be detected "behind every anti-Jewish pogrom, murder, and act of sabotage", Israel persisted in asserting that al-Husseini was behind many border raids from Jordanian and Egyptian-held territory, and Egypt expressed a readiness to deport him if evidence were forthcoming to substantiate the charges.

The All-Palestine Government was eventually dissolved in 1959 by Nasser himself, who envisaged a United Arab Republic embracing Syria, Egypt and Palestine. That year he moved to Lebanon. He refused requests to lend his support to the emergent PLO after the Six-Day War of 1967, was opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank after 1967, and his closest collaborator, Emil Ghuri, continued to work for the Jordanian monarchy even after the Jordanian Civil War there in 1970.

Al-Husseini died in Beirut on 4 July 1974. He had wished to be buried on the Haram ash-Sharif in Jerusalem. However, Israel had captured East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War. The Supreme Muslim Council asked the Israeli government permission to bury him there but permission was refused. Three days later, al-Husseini was buried in Beirut. Within two years, the Christian Lebanese Phalange sacked his villa, and stole his files and archives. His granddaughter married Ali Hassan Salameh, the founder of PLO's Black September, who was later killed by Mossad for his involvement in the Munich massacre. According to Zvi Elpeleg, almost all trace of his memory thereafter vanished from Palestinian awareness, and Palestinians have raised no monument to his memory, or written books commemorating his deeds.

Amin al-Husseini and antisemitism

The earlier biographical works on Husseini were characterized by extreme partisanship, with supporters among his Arab contemporaries showcasing his role as the central figure in an Arab revolt that was thwarted by British and Zionist conspiracies, and Zionist histories vilified him as a Muslim fanatic chiefly responsible for the disasters that befell Palestinians in 1948. Al-Husseini's first biographer, Moshe Pearlman, described him as virulently antisemitic, as did, a decade and a half later, Joseph Schechtman. Both have been accused by Philip Mattar of relying on press reports and lacking sufficient background understanding.

There is no doubt Husseini became robustly antisemitic and convinced himself, using arguments based on Biblical, Talmudic, and Quranic passages, that Jews were enemies of God, engaged in a global conspiracy, and practicing the ritual use of Christian blood. More recent biographers such as Philip Mattar and Elpeleg, writing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began to emphasize his nationalism. Peter Wien judges that his behaviour in World War II deserved the image among Zionists of him as an "arch villain", but adds that Israeli and Zionist leaders have long since used this to denigrate the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation as inspired by Nazism from the beginning and thus fundamentally antisemitic.

Scholarly opinion is divided on the issue, with many scholars viewing him as a staunch antisemite while some deny the appropriateness of the term, or argue that he became antisemitic.

Robert Kiely sees Husseini as moving "incrementally toward anti-Semitism as he opposed Jewish ambitions in the region." Historian Zvi Elpeleg, who formerly governed both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while rehabilitating him from other charges, concludes his chapter concerning al-Husseini's involvement in the extermination of the Jews as follows

[i]n any case, there is no doubt that Haj Amin's hatred was not limited to Zionism, but extended to Jews as such. His frequent, close contacts with leaders of the Nazi regime cannot have left Haj Amin any doubt as to the fate which awaited Jews whose emigration was prevented by his efforts. His many comments show that he was not only delighted that Jews were prevented from emigrating to Palestine, but was very pleased by the Nazis' Final Solution.

Evaluations of Husseini's historical significance

Edward Said has described al-Husseini as "Palestine's national leader", who, as part of the Arab Higher Committee, "represented the Palestinian Arab national consensus, had the backing of the Palestinian political parties that functioned in Palestine, and was recognized in some form by Arab governments as the voice of the Palestinian people".

Philip Mattar states the overriding cause behind the dispossession of Palestinians lay in the Balfour Declaration, British policies and the combined military superiority of Yishuv forces and the Mandatory army. Husseini's initial moderation and then failure to compromise was a contributory factor, but not decisive. Zvi Elpeleg on the other hand compares him to Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, and even to Theodor Herzl.

Robert Fisk, discussing the difficulties of describing al-Husseini's life and its motivations, summarized the problem in the following way:

(M)erely to discuss his life is to be caught up in the Arab–Israeli propaganda war. To make an impartial assessment of the man's career—or, for that matter, an unbiased history of the Arab–Israeli dispute—is like trying to ride two bicycles at the same time.

Peter Novick has argued that the post-war historiographical depiction of al-Husseini reflected complex geopolitical interests that distorted the record.

The claims of Palestinian complicity in the murder of the European Jews were to some extent a defensive strategy, a preemptive response to the Palestinian complaint that if Israel was recompensed for the Holocaust, it was unjust that Palestinian Muslims should pick up the bill for the crimes of European Christians. The assertion that Palestinians were complicit in the Holocaust was mostly based on the case of the Mufti of Jerusalem, a pre-World War II Palestinian nationalist leader who, to escape imprisonment by the British, sought refuge during the war in Germany. The Mufti was in many ways a disreputable character, but post-war claims that he played any significant part in the Holocaust have never been sustained. This did not prevent the editors of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from giving him a starring role. The article on the Mufti is more than twice as long as the articles on Goebbels and Göring, longer than the articles on Himmler and Heydrich combined, longer than the article on Eichmann—of all the biographical articles, it is exceeded in length, but only slightly, by the entry for Hitler.

Works

The Causes of the Palestine Catastrophe (1948 in Arabic). Asbab Karithat Filastin أسباب كارثة فلسطين

The Lie of the Palestinians' Sale of their Land (1954 in Arabic, a letter of response published from Egypt). Kidhbat Bay‘ al-Filastiniyin li-'Ardihim (كذبة بيع الفلسطينيين لأرضهم)

Facts about the Palestinian Matter (1954 in Arabic, Cairo). Haqaiq 'an Qadiyat Filastin (حقائق عن قضية فلسطين)

The Memoirs of Amin al-Husseini, covering the period 1937 to 1948. (First published in 1975 in Arabic, republished in Syria as a whole book in 1999. Originally Published progressively as monthly articles in the Palestine Magazine between 1967 and 1975 over 75 episodes)