Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni

Infobox Military Person
name=Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni
عبد القادر الحسيني

caption=Portrait
born=1907
died=1948
placeofbirth=

Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni ( _ar. عبد القادر الحسيني, also spelled Abd al-Qader al-Husseini) (1907-1948) was a Palestinian nationalist and fighter who in late 1933 founded the secret militant group known as the Organization for Holy Struggle, (Munazzamat al-Jihad al-Muqaddas), [Swedenburg, 1999, p. 150] [Sayigh, 2000, p. 35] which he and Hasan Salama commanded as the Army of the Holy War (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) in the 1948 Palestine War. Husayni had four children - Haifa, Musa, Gazi, and Faisal.

Family and early nationalist career

Husayni was born to the influential al-Husayni family of Jerusalem, son of Musa al-Husayni; he was also the nephew of Amin al-Husayni. He graduated in chemistry at the American University in Cairo, and organized the Congress of Educated Muslims. Initially, he took a post in the settlement department of the British Mandate government, but eventually moved to the Hebron area during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine to lead the struggle against the British. A member of the Palestine Arab Party he served as its Secretary-General and became editor-in-chief of the party's paper "Al-Liwa’" [Levenberg, 1993, p. 6.] and other newspapers, including "Al-Jami’a Al-Islamiyya".

Battle of Qastal

In 1938, Husayni was exiled and in 1939 fled to Iraq where he took part in the Rashid Ali al-Gaylani coup. He moved to Egypt in 1946, but secretly returned to Palestine to lead the Army of the Holy War in January 1948, and was killed during hand-to-hand fighting for control of Qastal Hill on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, on 8 April 1948. His forces captured Qastal from the Haganah, which had occupied the village at the start of Operation Nachshon six days earlier with a force of about 100 men. [Morris, 2003, p. 234.] They retreated to the Jewish settlement of Motza. [Dana Adams Schmidt, 'Arabs Win Kastel But Chief is Slain', "New York Times", 9 April, 1948, p. 8 (A brief biography and account of the battle).] Palmach troops recaptured the village on the night of 8-9 April; most of the houses were blown up and the hill became a command post. [Benveniśtî, 2002, p.111.] [Morris, 2003, p. 235.] Huseyni's death was a factor in the loss of morale among his forces.

ee also

* War of the Roads
* Ben Yehuda Street Bombing

Footnotes

References

*Benveniśtî, Mêrôn (2002). "Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948". University of California Press. ISBN 0520234227
*Levenberg, Haim (1993). "Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948". London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-3439-5
*Morris, Benny (2003). "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited". Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521009677
*Robinson, Glenn E. (1997) "Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution". Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21082-8
*Sayigh, Yezid (2000). "Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993". Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829643-6
*Swedenburg, Ted (1999). The role of the Palestinian peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936-9). In Ilan Pappé (Ed.). "The Israel/Palestine Question" (pp. 129-168). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16947-X

External links

* [http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/al-Qastal/Picture2105.html Handwritten letter by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni]
* [http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/personalities/alpha_h.htm PASSIA]
* Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni's Koran http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3406966,00.html
* [http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13700 Biography by Hasan Afif El-Hasan]