Poster: “In every flower” by Emily for Artists Against Apartheid: https://againstapartheid.art/

In November 1935, the anti-colonial revolutionary and religious leader Shaikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam was killed by British colonial forces in the hills of Ya’bad. With twenty five of his followers, al-Qassam had been mobilising support for an armed intifada.

Displaced, oppressed and impoverished by the dual nightmare of British Mandate rule and Zionist settler-colonialism, the martyrdom of al-Qassam ignited a mass uprising of the popular classes in Palestine. It was not until 1939 that the British, together with armed Zionist forces, were able to put the revolution down.

In his essay The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis – re-translated by Hazem Jamjoum and published in 2023 by 1804 Books – the revolutionary Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani provides a detailed, materialist analysis of this movement and the reasons for its defeat.

Background to the Revolution and character of Zionist settler colonialism 

The Revolution of 1936–1939 begins with an analysis of social classes in Palestine – in particular workers, peasants and intellectuals – on the eve of the revolution.

In these sections, Kanafani draws out the nature and consequences of the transition from, “an Arab agrarian economy to a Jewish industrial one” typified by the “accumulation and concentration of capital in the hands of the Zionist movement”.

For “small and middle farmers, workers and certain sectors of the petite and middle bourgeoisie” this transition was devastating.

In the countryside, one third of all arable land was expropriated by 1930 – often sold to Zionist settlers by Arab feudal landowners – resulting in the forced expulsion of 20,000 peasant families. At the same time, the number of Zionist settlers reached 443,000 by 1935.

There were also significant flows of capital into Palestine. Yet under the slogans of “exclusively Jewish labour” and “Jewish products only”, social and economic development was premised on the systematic marginalisation of Palestinians. The essence of this settler colonial dynamic is captured in a passage Kanafani quotes from the Histadrut – Israel’s national trade union centre:

“To allow Arabs access to the Jewish labour market would mean that Jewish capital would be directed toward Arab development, and against Zionist objectives. Moreover, employment of Arabs in Jewish industry will lead to class divisions in Palestine along racial lines: Jews as capitalists using Arabs as labourers”.

As well as the social conditions before the 1939-1939 Revolution, these opening sections provide detailed insight into the political consequences of Zionist settler colonialism and the historic roots of the role and character of the Israeli working class today.

Historically tied to the colonial project of Israel – embedded in the denial of a Palestinian nation and forced displacement of the population – the Israeli working class has continually failed to mobilise against the Zionist regime itself.

Contradictory leadership of the revolution and role of the masses in motion

Throughout the text, particular attention is paid to the leadership of the Revolution. Kanafani demonstrates that the mass movement was overwhelmingly “under the hegemonic control of semi-feudal/semi-religious leaders”.

Organised into political parties such as the Palestinian Arab Party and National Defence Party, the Palestinian national movement is described as:

“the feudalists, clerics, urban compradors, and certain sections of the intelligentsia…[that] were always subject to the leadership of the Mufti and his class – that class that represented clerical feudalism”.

In other colonial and semi-colonial contexts, this class could be expected to collaborate with imperialism. However, because the Zionist movement was a “more suitable collaborator” for British imperialism, it was “employed in place of the local ruling classes”.

As a result, the interests of the feudal religious leaders were undermined by British and Zionist colonisation. Pushed ever forward by the masses, they took up more radical slogans and political tactics, including armed struggle.

While the 1936-1939 Revolution was led by these feudal religious leaders, it was fought by the oppressed classes – particularly the peasantry – who resisted valiantly despite intense colonial violence, vacillating leadership and intervention by reactionary Arab regimes.

In fact, referring to late 1937 Kanafani asserts that, “never in the entire history of the Palestinian struggle was the armed popular revolution as close to victory as it was in those months”.

In this analysis of the role and character of social classes in the 1936-1939 Revolution, it is certain that Kanafani was working to identify the “friends and enemies” of the Palestinian liberation struggle in general. As a Marxist Leninist, he sought not to consider social classes in abstract, but how they react in struggle; when they are in motion.

A concise study of social classes from the same period is the founding program of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), translated to English as Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine which Kanafani played a central role in drafting.

Crushing of the revolution

The Revolution of 1936–1939 is not a work motivated by intellectual curiosity. Written in the wake of the devastating 1967 Six Day War, Kanafani set out to identify the reasons why the Palestinian national revolution had been dealt continual defeats from the 1930s until the 1960s.

In the immediate term, a determining factor in 1936-1939 was the extreme violent reaction employed by British colonial authorities and the reliance on reactionary Arab states such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia:

“first by striking at the impoverished peasant revolutionaries with unparalleled violence, and second by using their extensive influence with the Arab regimes that ultimately play a major role in pacifying the revolt”.

Another key factor was British support for armed Zionist forces to terrorise the local population and crush revolutionary organisations. For example, the number of Jewish colonists in the police force increased from 365 in 1935 to 2,863 in early 1937. The same year, the Haganah grew to 12,000 militants and the Irgun to 3,000. 

As well as an important tool in suppressing the 1936–1939 Revolution,the establishment of these armed Zionist forces were later crucial in the establishment of the state of Israel. According to one Israeli historian, “the conditions for victory in 1948 were created in the period of the Arab Revolution of 1936”.

More fundamental to understanding 1936-1939, Kanafani’s central argument is that the revolution was unsuccessful as a result of three factors: reactionary Palestinian leaders; Arab regimes surrounding Palestine; and the alliance of Zionism with imperialism.

He argues that these factors “and the dialectical relations that connected them” developed further and accounted for the subsequentdefeats of the Palestinian national liberation movement in particular the Nakba in 1948. In the final lines of the essay, Kanafani writes:

“By 1947, the conditions were ripe for the Zionists to harvest the fruit of the 1936 Revolution’s defeat, a harvest delayed by the Second World War. As such, the second chapter of the Revolution’s defeat – from late 1947 to mid-1948 – was remarkable for its brevity: it was only the epilogue to a long and bloody chapter endured from April 1936 to September 1939”.

The commando whose weapon was a ballpoint pen

In The Revolution of 1936–1939, Kanafanioffers a detailed insight into the stages and causes of the Great Palestinian Revolution, the social conditions of Zionist settler colonialism in the lead up to its eruption and the principal reasons for its defeat.

As well as the points outlined above, other aspects of Kanafani’s work that will be of interest to readers today include his analysis of the Palestine Communist Party as well as the role and character of the Palestinian intelligentsia and “general cultural climate in Palestine”.

At the same time, The Revolution of 1936–1939 is not a particularly straightforward text. For instance, the longest chapter titled The Revolution moves from various complex topics without thematic or chronological sub-headings to guide the reader.

On the one hand, this style reflects the complexities of the subject matter: various factors and forces at play in the Revolution set upon a “multi textured backdrop of interwoven and complex contradictions”.

On the other hand, it reflects the chaotic atmosphere and intense conditions in which Kanafani penned his study. As well as a leading figure and spokesperson for the PFLP, he was also editor of Al Hadaf (The Target) – the party’s weekly newspaper.

In July of 1972 – only six months after this text was published – Kanafani was assassinated at the age of 36 by Zionist agents in Beirut alongside his niece, Lamees. 

In its obituary to Kanafani, the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper wrote “he was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ballpoint pen and his arena the newspaper pages”. For those wanting to learn the history of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation, the works of this commando “whose weapon was a ballpoint pen” are a necessary place to start.

Readers will learn a lot from 1804 Book’s new edition of The Revolution of 1936–1939 – which includes an informative introduction by Layan Sima Fuleihan and an afterword from Maher Charif – as well as Kanafani’s excellent poetry and works of fiction.