Democratic Palestine : 19 (ص 31)
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- Democratic Palestine : 19 (ص 31)
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In Remembrance of
Emile Tuma
On August 27, 1985, Emil Tuma, Palestinian historian and writer,
died at the age of 66. Tuma was born in Haifa, Palestine, in 1919, and
remained in his homeland after the establishment of the Zionist state.
In addition to his writings, he is best known for his prominent role in
the Committees to Defend the Land, and his membership in the polit-
bureau of Rakah - the Israeli Communist Party.
It has been a year since Emile Tuma
passed away. Tuma was a prominent
intellectual and militant who deserves
to be remembered. We can review his
life in his works, for he spent his life
working for the national cause; the
overwhelming majority of his works
focus on the history of the Palestinian
national movement and the develop-
ment of the Arab national movement.
ARAB UNITY
Tuma’s most interesting work was a
study entitled Arab Unity in the Histo-
rical Development, which was a
summary of his PH.D. thesis in
Moscow. The study was published as a
book in 1971, by the Lebanese publish-
ing house, Dar Al Haqiqa. The study
was a controversial one at the time, due
to the topics it discussed and the debate
among Arab progressive circles about
the importance of Arab unity and the
responsibility of the progressive forces
for its success or failure. Tuma’s study
reviewed the attempts to establish a
single Arab state, from the time of
Mohammed Ali Pasha, until the union
of Syria and Egypt in 1958. Tuma made
a great contribution to crystallizing a
position on unity, although many of his
conclusions raised a lot of controversy.
THE ROOTS OF THE
PALESTINIAN QUESTION
One of Tuma’s many other impor-
tant works was his book, The Roots of
the Palestinian Question. Despite its
brevity, this book gives the reader a
great deal of information about the
Palestinian cause in the period from the
start of Europe’s ambitions vis-a-vis the
Arab countries, until the UN’s adop-
tion of the partition plan for Palestine
on November 29, 1947.
Many books, in many languages,
have dealt with this period, but The
Roots of the Palestinian Question is
one of the few that dealt with the issues
in a class and socialist perspective. It
described the struggle as being more
than a local one. In the first half, the
book points out that before Zionism
was formed in the minds of the Jewish
bourgeoisie, its general outlines were
formed in the minds of the British
colonialists. Britain wanted to control
the Far East, and thought of exploiting
the Jews as a foothold in the area, in
the face of French claims to protect the
Catholics, and Czarist Russia’s claims
to protect the Orthodox. This was the
British Zionism that thought to create a
state for the Jews. On the other hand,
there was the French Zionism that also
aimed to tempt the Jews. We all
remember the famous promises of
Napoleon when he arrived in Egypt,
and again when he was besieging Acca.
He promised the Jews to restore their
«ancient glory» and rebuild their «old
Jerusalem Kingdom,» if they would
help him.
In another chapter of his book,
Tumia accurately analysed the history
of the Jews before Zionism. He wrote
about the birth of Zionism, and the
conditions and ideologies that made it a
reactionary movement, doomed to
flourish on hatred, myths and the
sympathy of the imperialist forces. Dr.
Tuma said that Zionism could not at all
have «any common language with the
Arab masses,» which made the con-
frontation «not only inevitable, but
also planned by Zionism from the
beginning.»
The book then moves on to the
national movement in Palestine, sho-
wing that, until the Balfour declara-
tion, it was part of the Arab national
movement. The Palestinian national
movement contributed to confronting
the degenerate Ottoman Empire, and
struggled to establish an Arab state, but
World War I dealt a blow to the Pales-
tinian and Arab national movement as
a whole. First, there were the repressive
measures of the butcher, Jamal
Pasha, against the Arabs. Then, more
crucial, there was the disaster of «the
success of the Hashemite dynasty in
controlling the developing Arab
national movement,» which later
resulted in King Abdullah’s conspiring
against the future of Palestine.
The book moves on to a subject
which has always been controversial,
namely, the role of the Arab national
movement in Palestine, and in leading
the Palestinian struggle. Dr. Tuma
believes that the movement was essen-
tially formed by land owners and pro-
minent feudalist families, such as the
Husseini, Nashashibi, Hadi, Tamimi
and Madhi families. It was not a
reflection- of the social forces most
harmed by the British imperialist and
Zionist policies. In fact, according to
Dr. Tuma the mandate authorities
«played a major role in reinforcing the
positions of the land owners in the lea-
dership of the Arab national move-
ment.» The mandate authorities also
engineered the feud between the Hus-
seini and Nashashibi families. The
struggle between the two families
greatly harmed the Palestinian struggle,
as was confirmed by the Palestinian
historian, Mohammed Azzah_ Dar-
wazeh, in his book on the contempo-
rary Arab movement. Dr. Tuma
believed that the feud was only a
struggle involving the degree of conci-
liation with the British, the Husseinis
being less conciliatory and the Nashas-
hibis more so. Yet this did not prevent
the Palestinian national movement
from playing a prominent role in lea-
ding the struggle and putting forward
the demands of the Palestinian people,
confronting the British rule.
The book also includes a detailed
discussion of the 1929 revolt, known as
Al Buraq uprising, and the 1933 upri-
sing, sparked by the eviction of Pales-
tinilan farmers (the Hawarneh and
Zubeidat clans) from their lands, and
the accelerating Zionist immigration to
Palestine.
In another chapter, the book dis-
cusses the rise of the Palestinian parties
between 1931 and 1935. This began
when veteran activists of the Arab
national movement, who worked with
the Fatat (New) Arab Association,
established the Independence Party (Al
Istiqlal) in August of 1932.
The book also contains detailed
research into the 1936-1939 revolt and
the Qassam movement that motivated >
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