Britain’s pacification of Palestine: the British army, the colonial state, and the Arab revolt, 1936-39

This paper explores British methods of counterinsurgency (‘imperial policing’ in the language of the time) in Mandate Palestine, alongside forms of Palestinian resistance and insurgency against colonial rule and Jewish immigration. The argument here is that maximal brutal, military violence by the British was less important for defeating rebellion than quotidian, legal pacification measures that had created a powerful emergency state before the Arab revolt started in April 1936 and which secured the country for Britain. The paper touches on Britain’s use of loyalist collaborators - from within the Palestinian community and from the Jews in Palestine - as a force multiplier. The paper concludes that the variable of Palestinian resistance was not strong enough to overcome the constant factor of well-established British methods of colonial repression.