79. What did the British do to repress the Arab violence against them?

During July 1936, Arab volunteers from Syria and Trans-Jordan led by Fawzi al-Kawukji, helped the Palestinian Arab rebels to divide their troops in four fronts, each one directed by a District Commander with an armed troop of 150-200 fighters. In a declaration by the Colonial Office in London (Sep/7/1939), the British declared: “This is a direct challenge to the authority of the British government in Palestine”, and announced Lieutenant General John Dill as supreme military commander. By the end of September, 20,000 British soldiers were spread throughout Palestine to “defeat the Arab bands”. The main form of collective punishment used by the British to stop the Arab revolt of 1936-1939 was to destroy their goods. Some villages were reduced to rubble, such as Mi’ar in October 1938; many houses were blown and others destroyed inside. The largest act of destruction occurred in Jaffa on June/16/1936, when 220-240 buildings were destroyed leaving 6,000 Arabs without a home. Brutal acts were carried out by the British during the la last part of the revolt, such as beatings, tortures and extra-judicial executions. One of the forms of repression of the Arab revolt of 1936-1939 was the construction of the Taggart forts, planned by Sir Charles Taggart, who also installed border fences and interrogation centers for the Arabs where prisoners were beaten and whipped on their feet, suffered electric discharges and what is now called “the submarine”. The Palestine Arab elite fled and later returned once the conflict with the British had ended. In 1948 they did exactly the same but this time they couldn’t return, after the Israeli Independence War. The Arab revolt undermined the Palestinian combat spirit.