Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni
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Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (alternatively spelt 'Abd al Qadir al Husseini) (1907-1948) was a Palestinian nationalist and fighter who in late 1933 founded the secret military group known as the Organization for Holy Struggle, (Munazzamat al-Jihad al-Muqaddas),[1] [2] which he and Hasan Salama commanded as the Army of the Holy War or Holy War Army (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. 'Abd-al-Ra'uf al-Qidwa al-Husayni, better known as Yasser Arafat (a distant relative) is reputed to have fought with him[3] and to have been his personal secretary.[4]
Husayni was born to the influential al-Husseini family in Jerusalem, son of Musa Qassem al-Husseini; his relatives included 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 took to the Hebron Hills during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine to lead the Palestinian resistance. A member of the Palestine Arab Party he served as its Secretary and became editor-in-chief of the party's paper Al-Liwa’[5] and other newspapers, including Al-Jami’a Al-Islamiyya.
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 Qastel Hill on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, on 8 April 1948. His forces captured Qastal from the Haganah, which had occupied the town six days earlier with a force of about 100 men. They retreated to the Jewish settlement of Motza.[6]
He was the father of Musa, Gazi and Faisal Husseini.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Levenberg, Haim (1993). Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-3439-5
- 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
