Jerusalem. The Biography

restricting immigration to 15,000 people annually for five years, after which Arabs would have a veto, Palestinian independence within ten years and no Jewish state. This was the best offer the Palestinians were to receive from the British or anyone else during the entire twentieth century, but the mufti, displaying spectacular political incompetence and megalomaniacal intransigence, rejected it from his Lebanese exile.
    Ben-Gurion prepared his Haganah militia for war against the British. Jews rioted in Jerusalem. On 2 June, the Irgun bombed the market outside the Jaffa Gate, killing nine Arabs. On the 8th, the last night of his stay in Jerusalem on an Eastern tour, a young American visitor, John F. Kennedy, son of the US ambassador to London, heard fourteen explosions ignited by the Irgun, knocking out electricity across the Holy City. Many now shared General Montgomery’s view that ‘The Jew murders the Arab and the Arabs murder the Jews and it will go on for the next 50 years in all probability’. 22
    THE MUFTI AND HITLER: WORLD WAR IN JERUSALEM
     
    As Adolf Hitler seemed to carry all before him, the mufti of Jerusalem saw an opportunity to strike at their common enemies, the British and the Jews. France had collapsed, the Wehrmacht was advancing towards Moscow, and Hitler had started the killing of 6 million Jews in his Final Solution. * The mufti had moved to Iraq to direct anti-British intriguesbut, after organizing yet more defeats, had to flee to Iran and then, pursued by British agents, he embarked on an adventurous voyage that finally brought him to Italy. On 27 October 1941, Benito Mussolini received him at the Palazzo Venetia in Rome, backing the creation of a Palestinian state: if the Jews wanted their own country, ‘they should establish Tel Aviv in America’, said Il Duce. ‘We have here in Italy 45,000 Jews and there will be no place for them in Europe.’ The mufti – ‘very satisfied by the meeting’ – flew to Berlin.
    At 4.30 p.m. on 28 November, the mufti was received by a tense Adolf Hitler: the Soviets had halted the Germans on the outskirts of Moscow. The mufti’s interpreter suggested to the Führer that, by Arab tradition, coffee should be served. Hitler jumpily replied that he did not drink coffee. The mufti inquired if there was a problem. The interpreter soothed the mufti, but explained to the Führer that the guest still expected coffee. Hitler replied that even the High Command was not allowed to drink coffee in his presence: he then left the room, returning with an SS guard bearing lemonade.
    Husseini asked Hitler to support the ‘independence and unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq’ and the creation of an Arab Legion to fight with the Wehrmacht. The mufti, speaking to the apparent master of the world, was bidding not just for Palestine but for an Arab empire under his own rule.
    Hitler was happy that he and the mufti shared the same enemies: ‘Germany was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with two citadels of Jewish power – Britain and the Soviet Union’ – and naturally there would be no Jewish state in Palestine. Indeed the Führer hinted at his Final Solution to the Jewish problem: ‘Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after another to solve its Jewish problem.’ As soon as ‘German armies reached the southern exit of Caucasia’, Hitler said, ‘Germany’s objective would then solely be the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.’
    However, until Russia and Britain were defeated, the mufti’s ambitious bid for the entire Middle East would have to wait. Hitler said he ‘had to think and speak coolly and deliberately as a rational man’, careful not to offend his Vichy French ally. ‘We were troubled about you,’ Hitlertold Husseini. ‘I know your life story. I followed with interest your long and dangerous journey. I’m happy that you’re with us now.’ Afterwards, Hitler admired Husseini’s blue eyes and reddish hair, deciding he definitely had Aryan blood.
    Yet the mufti shared with Hitler not just a strategic hostility to Britain but racial anti-Semitism at its most lethal – and even in memoirs written long afterwards, he remembered that Reichführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, whom he liked greatly, confided to him in the summer of 1943 that the Nazis had ‘already exterminated more than three million Jews.’ The mufti chillingly boasted that he supported the Nazis ‘because I was persuaded