Neil Rogall on the British defeat of the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

But by the summer of 1939 the British had crushed the uprising.  The infamous Munich agreement, between Nazi Germany and Britain was signed on the 30th September 1938.  More Imperial troops were now available to send to Palestine to put down the rebels.  By 1939 the authorities had 30,000 trained soldiers fighting the insurgents.  The RAF bombed Palestinian villages.  A policy of collective punishment was implemented.  If one member of a village was involved in armed rebellion the whole community was punished.  The Israelis of course, continue this vicious policy. 

Throughout the rebellion the settler community, the Yishuv collaborated with the British.  The Mandate authorities formed the Jewish Settlement police.  By 1939, one in twenty of the settler community was a member, some 21,000 people in all.  Orde Wingate, a British officer, organised a counter-insurgency force of Jewish fighters, the Special Night Squads.  They terrorised villagers and guarded the oil pipeline.  Internally the Yishuv expanded the Haganah, secretly imported arms and set up factories to manufacture weapons. 

The revisionist militia, the Irgun, began a terrorist campaign in May 1938.  They threw bombs into crowded Palestinian market places or left them hidden in carts.  Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa were all targeted.  Some estimates suggested that up to 250 Palestinians were killed in these barbaric attacks.  When Zionists talk about Palestinian suicide bombers, it is worth remembering who began bombing civilians in Palestine. 

[...] 

There were up to 6,000 Palestinians killed in the uprising, and 6,000 more in detention.  2,000 homes had been destroyed.  The British hanged 100.  The Palestinians had suffered an enormous defeat, any leadership they had was dead, in exile or driven out of politics.  They could no longer play an independent role.  In future they became disastrously dependent on other Arab states for leadership.  They still had not recovered from the defeat when the crisis of 1948 hit.  It wasn’t until the 1960s that an independent Palestinian leadership was to re-emerge with Yasser Arafat and El Fatah.

~ Neil Rogall, "The birth of Palestinian Resistance and the 1936 uprising," rs21, September 12, 2014

British soldiers and Palestinian prisoners during the 1936 revolt