A struggle between different approaches as response to the Arab Revolt in 1936

• Autor(a) principal: Kerkkanen, Ari
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/36070
• topic: Arab Revolt; Palestine Mandate; Civil-military cooperation; Revolta Árabe; Mandato na Palestina; Cooperação civil-militar; Arthur Wauchope; Edward Azar

The objective of this paper, based on archival research in London and Jerusalem, is to analyse the point of view of the civilian authority in the debate between conciliatory vs. coercive approaches during the Arab revolt in 1936. The research question, therefore, is why the civilian authority’s assessment of the situation was so different from the military’s to the extent that it polarized views of the most appropriate response to the revolt between the civilian and military authorities. The paper argues that the civilian authority had greater understanding of the situation in Palestine than the military, which led to advocating a conciliatory approach instead of a coercive one as favoured by the military. The deteriorating situation in Palestine is not to be interpreted as a failure of the civilian authority’s policy per se, but as the outcome of the situation with complex political and human factors aggravated by the fear of the Palestinian Arab population about their destiny. In the end, a reference to contemporary Middle East is made highlighting the relevance of Edward Azar’s protracted social conflict theory as it explains, in part, the root causes of the Revolt as well as contemporary upheavals in the Arab world.