Arab leaders spent years trying to stop Arab landowners from selling property to Jews. They tried politics, public shame, religious rulings, ostracism and eventually British law. The sellers kept coming.
In January 1931 the Arabic newspaper al-Ikdam wrote:
“We are selling our lands to Jews without any remorse.”
The paper reported that land brokers were working day and night while Arab leaders sent protests. Four days later al-Hayat reported that Arabs around Tulkarm were busy selling land to Jews through brokers. Jewish organizations wanted land, Arab landowners were willing to sell it and Palestinian Arab leaders were trying to make them stop.
They understood what continued sales could mean. Jewish immigration was growing, agricultural settlements were expanding and land purchased by Jewish organizations could become another permanent piece of the Zionist project. By the early 1930s stopping those sales had become a major Palestinian Arab political cause.
Arab newspapers attacked brokers and warned landowners against selling. Political organizations urged Arabs to hold onto their property, and Arab leaders tried to raise money to purchase land before Jewish organizations could get it.
In January 1932 the Muslim Youth Conference in Jaffa declared that “all lands in Palestine are sacred Arab lands” and called selling land to Jews a “reprehensible crime” for which there could be “no forgiveness.”
That language was part of something larger happening during these years. Jerusalem and al-Aqsa had centuries of Islamic religious significance, but ordinary privately held land was another matter. Islamic law had generally permitted Muslims to sell private property to Jews and Christians. Waqf property, permanently dedicated as a religious endowment, was treated differently.
Turning an ordinary land sale into a religious offense meant changing the argument.
Historian Aaron Rock-Singer recently traced that change through Palestinian Arabic newspapers, pamphlets and fatwas between 1929 and 1935. Muslim thinkers increasingly extended the sacred geography associated with Jerusalem and al-Aqsa across Palestine as a whole.
Even the Qur’anic “holy land” didn’t provide the borders of British Mandate Palestine. Muslim commentators had interpreted its geography differently over the centuries, sometimes extending it into Syria or Jordan. The Mandate borders had been drawn after World War I.
An early attempt to use religion against the sellers appeared in 1925. A question published in the Haifa newspaper al-Yarmuk asked about Muslims and Christians selling land to Jewish buyers. The Mufti of Gaza, Muhammad Sa’id al-Husayni, ruled that Muslims who sold land to Jews had become apostates. They could be denied Muslim marriage, burial and prayers after death.
The ruling went well beyond restrictions on religious endowment property. It also raised an obvious legal problem because ordinary property could generally be sold to Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule. The religious case now depended on the identity and purpose of the Zionist buyer.
Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Palestinian religious establishment didn’t embrace the Gaza Mufti’s ruling at the time. The political climate changed after the 1929 violence surrounding the Western Wall.
The dispute over al-Buraq and al-Aqsa placed Muslim holy places at the center of Palestinian Arab mobilization. During the following years, the sanctity attached to Jerusalem became increasingly connected to Palestine as a whole. A privately owned field sold to a Zionist could now be treated as part of a religious struggle over Muslim territory.
By 1932 the Muslim Youth Conference was declaring all lands in Palestine sacred Arab lands.
The Arabic newspapers weren’t shy about describing what was happening. In May 1934 al-Jami’ah al-Arabiyyah complained that land brokers were appearing among “various classes of rich and poor people” who had been “dazzled by the Zionist gold.”
The sellers included more than the famous absentee landlords living in Beirut and Damascus. Palestinian landholders sold too. Some needed money. Some carried debts. Others were offered prices they were willing to accept. A professional class of brokers emerged to connect Arab sellers with Jewish purchasers.
The newspapers tried everything they could think of. Al-Difa’ warned in March 1935 that “land lasts forever and God created it, while money does not last and Satan created it.” Other newspapers attacked lawyers, doctors and prominent families involved in brokerage and sales.
By late 1934 calls were growing for Muslim religious authorities to step in.
In January 1935 Palestinian Muslim scholars moved against the sellers with far greater force. Haj Amin argued that
“selling land to the Zionists leads conclusively to the erasure of Muslims’ influence and the extinguishing of the light of Islam.”
Palestine was presented as a sacred trust placed in Muslim hands, tied to Jerusalem, al-Aqsa and generations of Muslim prophets, saints and martyrs. Selling part of it to Zionists could therefore become an offense against Islam.
Haj Amin convened Muslim scholars and religious officials at al-Aqsa Mosque. A ruling signed by 248 men called for sellers and middlemen to be ostracized in life and death. Muslims who knowingly participated could be declared unbelievers. Religious and social relations could be severed, and burial in Muslim cemeteries could be denied.
Several hundred village sheikhs gathered again that March and swore not to sell land to Jews. They pledged to act against Arabs who continued doing it. Haj Amin and other religious figures traveled through villages preaching against the sales.
Then something happened that makes the entire episode even more revealing.
During the first six months of 1935, land sales increased by 58 percent compared with the previous six months.
The threat of religious excommunication had arrived. So had more sales.
