“Charles Tegart and the Arab Revolt in Palestine” House demolitions

“Charles Tegart and the Arab Revolt in Palestine”

Richard Cahill, Director of International Education and Associate Professor of History, Berea College

The British Mandate government was keen on promulgating laws and, in the years of the Mandate, created as many pages of legislations as did the Parliament in London.    In the early 1920s (following the Nabi Musa riots), a Collective Responsibility Ordinance was issued, and then quickly expanded and modified into the Collective Punishment Ordinance (1925), which remained in force through the rest of the Mandate Period, although amended several times. While this ordinance was allegedly meant to curb communal feuds in which one village would destroy trees or crops of another village, it
was employed in the 1930s to punish villages that the British suspected of harboring Arab rebels.

In the wake of the Western Wall Riots of 1929 and subsequent disturbances, the British Mandate government had proclaimed the Palestine Defence Orders in Council in 1931, and continued to expand it through amendment after amendment. In the early 1930s, collective punishment was used against Arab villages and clans, suspected by the British of carrying out attacks on government infrastructure or personnel, such as roads, railroads, police posts, telegraph lines, the oil pipe-line, police or military patrols, and British civil servants.  Collective punishments were also used against Arab villages or clans suspected of attacking Jews or Jewish settlements.

In one case, the British thrashed approximately 30 homes in a village, demolishing two of them, only to find out later that the alleged culprit of the crime was from a different village.  By the mid-1930s, Palestinian Arabs’ frustration with the British Government’s policies and practices in Palestine, in particular its commitment to the Zionist movement, reached a boiling point.  A general strike was followed by a rebellion, one of the longest and most widespread anti-colonial movements in the world to date.  The British struggled
to stamp out the “Great Arab Revolt” using a variety of methods, but seemed unprepared and unorganized in their responses.    After the District Commissioner for the Galilee, Lewis Andrews, and his escort were gunned down in broad daylight in Nazareth in September 1937, the British Colonial Office dispatched one of its top imperial “anti-terrorism” experts, Sir Charles Tegart, to make recommendations on how to restore order and put down the revolt.

Charles Tegart joined the Colonial Police in India at the turn of the century, and rose through the ranks to become the Inspector General of the Calcutta Police, a force of approximately 2500 men.    His tenure in Calcutta coincided with anti-British riots and violence, yet he managed to decrease crime in the city and fight, with measured success, against the “revolutionaries” who employed “terrorism” as a means to cast off the yoke of British rule.

Tegart was a hard-working pragmatist.  Upon arrival in Palestine, he toured the country, and reviewed and evaluated every aspect of the Palestine Police.    Within two months, he sent his recommendations to the Colonial Office in London.     Most of his recommendations were accepted and implemented, including the establishment of a northern border fence and a series of massively fortified police stations throughout the country.  
While I have written about Tegart and his reforms more exhaustively elsewhere, here I focus on Tegart’s understanding of collective punishments, particularly home demolitions and control of the villages.

The legal framework in Palestine was complex.  The Mandate For Palestine expressly instructed Britain to establish a “judicial system … in Palestine…[to] assure ….. natives, a complete guarantee of their rights” (Article 9).  Additionally, after WWI, the Report of the Commission on Responsibility expressly defined “collective penalties” as a war crime. 

However, as mentioned above, the British Mandate government churned out new laws and ordinances to help it justify its actions.  It issued two revisions of Palestine Defence Ordinances- one (entitled Emergency Regulations) in 1936 and another (entitled Defence (Amendment) Regulations) in 1937.    
In these legal documents we see the growing sense of desperation on behalf of the British, who seem more and more willing to encroach on the inhabitants’ civil, political and human rights in an effort to regain control, amending the 1936 document 17 times by November 1937.    
These Ordinances clearly spell out the right for a District Commissioner to demolish houses or buildings, if he is “satisfied” (no trial required) that the owner or someone associated with the house or building was guilty of a violation. 
By the time of Tegart’s arrival in Palestine, home demolitions were not uncommon and it was clear that the rebels could melt into the villages to avoid the British.

A careful reading of Tegart’s recommendation to the Colonial Office, reveals that Tegart held some sympathy for the villagers of Palestine, who he could see were stuck between a rock and hard place.  If rebel forces called upon a villager for food, money or shelter, the villager often had no other choice but to comply (since, Tegart reasoned, the rebels surely demanded such things with a gun pointed toward the villager).    
After gathering information and touring the country, Tegart felt confident that if the villagers felt (and were) properly protected by the government, they would not offer the rebels shelter.
Therefore Tegart recommended that the British, as they regain control of the countryside, form a list of “good villages” (those who follow the wishes of the British) and “bad villages” (those that assist the rebels).    As British control of the countryside increases, “good villages” should be quickly and generously rewarded.  These rewards should not go to individuals, but rather to the collective (so as to not cause any one villager to stand out, and become a target of the rebels).  Tegart recalled that in the Punjab, rewarding villages by relieving them of their tax duties worked extremely well.  Not only did it
benefit the entire village, it also led surrounding villages to envy and follow suite.

Tegart’s attitude toward home demolitions was founded in his pragmatism.  While he did not categorically reject the practice on ethical or legal grounds, he held that rewarding “good villages” was far more effective in turning the tide.