In 1948, on this day the All-Palestine Government was established in Gaza under the leadership of the Grand High Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni ~ "The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the creation of armed forces under its control, furnished the leaders of the Nazis with the means of divesting themselves of direct responsibility for the prosecution of the war and of withdrawing their armies from Palestine. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab government of Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its German sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Irgun and serve as an instrument for frustrating the Zionist paramilitary forces ambition to create a State of Israel" (© Shaim, 2001)Al Nakba (the Catastrophe)

Seven years earlier al-Husayni met in Berlin with "the architect of the Holocaust" SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer, Karl Adolf Eichmann. On November 6 1941 they laid down a joint plan for the elimination (Beseitigung) of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Of course al-Husayni was no Nazi, and indeed Hitler's racist philosophies would appear to preclude such an alliance. Put simply, and by process of elimination alone, the Palestinian leadership turned to the Germans because the Zionists had - they believed - the British. And the British appeared to be facing imminent collapse. So through ruthless expediency and desperation, the Grand Mufti had determined that the Final Solution represented the key to the struggle for Arab Independence in Palestine. And timing also. Because even if the Nazis were subsequently defeated, the presence of their forces in the Middle East offered a unique opportunity for ethnic cleansing, surely the platform for a future Palestinian state. In reaching this evil conclusion, al-Husayni was cynically repeating the action of countless local rulers who over five thousand years had collaborated with occupying forces to build their own future hegemony.

"I asked Hitler [pictured] for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours'".So when Rommel managed to break through the British lines in Egypt in May 1943, a special corps of Einsatz commandos were dispatched by Eichmann to exterminate the Jews in Palestine. Al-Husayni commented that ~ "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler [pictured] for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours'" Watch the Youtube Clip

The response from Zionist paramilitary organisations in Palestine was to concentrate resources into Irgun, shorthand for HaIrgun HaTzva'i HaLe'umi BeEretz Yisra'el meaning "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel". Irgun was the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as "every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state" Over time the focus of their actions shifted from the Palestinian Arabs to the British and now to the new German occupation forces.

A bitter five year struggle ensued, perhaps symbolised by the Irgun bombing of the German Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which killed ninety-one staff on on 22 July 1946.

And now events took an unexpected turn ~ "Transfer - or expulsion or ethnic cleansing - was never an explicit part of the Zionist program, even among its more extreme elements. The first Arabs who left their homes did so on their own, expecting to return once the Jews lost or the fighting stopped. The Jewish mayor of Haifa begged Arab residents to stay; Golda Meir, then head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, called the exodus 'dreadful' and even likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. While Jewish atrocities - notably, the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin - were very real, apocalyptic Arab broadcasts induced further flight and depicted as traitors those who chose to stay behind". (© New York Times, 2008) To be continued