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Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini (1908-1948), called “the leader of the Mujahideen and the son of the Sheikh of the Mujahideen,” a Palestinian Jerusalemite politician and military commander who fought for the Palestinian cause in his early youth during his university days. He was considered the first to start the Great Palestinian Revolt in 1936 by mobilizing resistance men in all lands to resist the occupation. He was martyred on April 8, 1948, while fighting the battle to liberate the city of Qastal.

Birth and upbringing

Abdul Qadir Al-Husseini was born in Istanbul in 1908 to a wealthy family close to the Ottoman court. His mother was called Zakia Al-Husseini, and his father, Musa Kazem Pasha Al-Husseini, was a delegate for the Ottoman Empire and its envoy in Anatolia, Najd and Asir. He assumed the position of mayor of Jerusalem in 1918 and led the struggle against the British. After signing the Balfour Declaration, he was martyred in 1934.

Abdul Qader Al-Husseini married Wajiha Al-Husseini and they had 3 sons (Musa, Faisal, and Ghazi) and a daughter they named Haifa.

A scene of British forces targeting areas near Haifa during the Great Arab Revolt (Getty)

Study and training

Abdul Qader Al-Husseini began his education by studying the Qur’an in a corner in Jerusalem, then he moved to Rawdat Al-Maaref Primary School in Jerusalem, and from there to Bishop Gobat (Zion School) Protestant School in Jerusalem, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1927.

He traveled to Lebanon and joined the American University of Beirut, but his involvement in political activity and his demand for the independence of Palestine prompted the university to expel him, so he headed to Cairo, where he joined the Department of Chemistry and Mathematics at the American University.

During his years of study in Cairo, he founded the Student Association at the American University, and hid his political positions and opinions in order to complete his studies, but he could not control himself, as he announced during the university’s graduation ceremony that this American university was a curse because of the toxins it spreads into the minds of students in the service of colonialism.

As a result of his statement, the administration stripped him of his certificate and then retracted its decision after a student demonstration in support of him and his position, but the then Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi decided to deport him from the country in 1932.

From left to bottom of the picture, Qasim Al-Rimawi, Abdul Qader Al-Husseini, Kamel Erekat, and Malek Al-Husseini in 1948 (Al-Jazeera)

Political experience

On May 7, 1936, Abdul Qadir al-Husseini announced the first statement of the “Holy Jihad Organization,” in which he called for the start of the revolution. He joined the battalion of the famous Syrian mujahid Saeed al-Aas, and fought several battles alongside him.

In early October 1936, while fighting the Battle of Al-Khader in the Bethlehem district, he was seriously injured, which led to his capture by the British Army and the martyrdom of his comrade Saeed Al-Aas. He was taken to the military hospital in Jerusalem, but he was able to escape to Damascus, where he completed his treatment. .

In 1938, Al-Husseini returned to Palestine as an infiltrator, after the events of the armed revolution escalated, and he was able to participate in many of the Mujahideen’s battles against the British forces, but in October of the same year he was seriously injured in the Bani Na’im area located between Bethlehem and Hebron. Transferred Then he went secretly to Hebron Hospital, where he underwent treatment.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Al-Husseini moved to Lebanon and from there to Iraq to pursue a military training course, in which he obtained the rank of officer and participated in the revolution of Iraqi national officers against the British forces in April 1941. However, after the failure of this revolution, he was arrested in July 1941 and exiled. To the town of Zakho on the Turkish border.

After the assassination of the Palestinian politician Fakhri al-Nashashibi in Baghdad in 1941, the Iraqi authorities summoned al-Husseini for investigation and then placed him in the “Amara” prison, where he spent two years and was released by the Iraqi government in late 1943.

After his release from Iraqi prisons, he went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he was hosted by King Abdulaziz bin Saud, who had a friendly relationship with his father, Musa Kazem Al-Husseini. He spent two years, after which he secretly traveled to a military institute in Germany and spent 6 weeks there, during which he trained to make... And the use of explosives and mines.

After the end of World War II and at the beginning of 1946, Al-Husseini and his family moved to Cairo, from where he organized deals to purchase weapons left in the Western Desert during World War II. He also planned to smuggle them to the southern Palestinian regions through Al-Arish, then through the Lebanese port of Sidon, during this stage. It ended in December 1947 after Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini sneaked back from the Egyptian border to Palestine.

In the wake of the partition decision in November 1947, the “Arab Higher Committee” declared jihad, and Al-Husseini undertook the task of restructuring the forces of the Holy Jihad Army after he was chosen as its commander-in-chief. He was able to achieve important victories against the Zionist forces in Jerusalem, the most important of which was blowing up the headquarters of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.

A scene from Abdul Qader Al-Husseini's funeral (Israeli press)

Jobs and responsibilities

  • At the beginning of the year 1933, Abdul Qadir Al-Husseini returned to Jerusalem and was appointed as a commissioner in the Land Settlement Department in Palestine.

  • He worked in the field of journalism and wrote many articles that were published in the newspaper "The Islamic University" in Jaffa.

  • He joined the "Palestinian Arab Party" and participated in editing "Al-Liwaa" newspaper, published by the party whose office he took over in Jerusalem in 1935.

  • After he resigned from his job, he devoted himself to national work and preparing for the armed revolution, along with a group of young people who supported his announcement of a general strike in April 1936.

  • He also founded a radio station in Ramallah whose goal was to mobilize people to join the armed resistance and support it with money and equipment.

  • In 1938, he taught mathematics at the Military College in the Iraqi Al-Rashid Camp, as well as at Al-Faydad Middle School in Baghdad.

His martyrdom

At the end of March 1948, Abdul Qadir Al-Husseini went to Damascus to request a supply of weapons and ammunition from the Military Committee of the Arab League supervising the fighting in Palestine, but the negotiations faltered until the Israelis attacked Jerusalem and succeeded in occupying the village of Al-Qastal, which has a strategic location overlooking the main road between Jerusalem. And Jaffa.

The attack prompted him to return and lead a counterattack to liberate the village of Al-Qastal, but he was martyred on April 8, 1948 while fighting the battle after he and his men succeeded in liberating Al-Qastal with their primitive weapons, and they killed more than 150 Israelis. He was buried next to the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem next to his father, Musa Kazem Al-Husseini.

Source: websites