The Buraq Uprising

The wall the Jews call the Western Wall and Muslims call al-Buraq — after the steed the Prophet is said to have tethered there — stands at the western edge of the Haram al-Sharif, on ground belonging to an Islamic waqf. The arrangements governing Jewish prayer there were customary and closely policed by precedent: worshippers might come, but might not install fixtures. On the Day of Atonement in September 1928 a screen was set up to separate men from women, the British police removed it, and a dispute began that ran for a year, fed by committees on both sides, by the press, and by the wider fear among Palestinians that Zionist claims to the wall prefigured claims to the Haram itself.

The confrontation escalated through the summer of 1929: a Zionist demonstration at the wall on 15 August, a Muslim counter-demonstration on the 16th, and stabbings and reprisals in Jerusalem. On 23 August fighting broke out in the city and spread within days across the country. The worst killings were in Hebron, where sixty-seven Jews of an old non-Zionist community were murdered — some saved by Palestinian neighbours who hid them — and in Safed. British forces, badly outnumbered until reinforcements arrived from Egypt and Malta, opened fire repeatedly on Arab crowds.

When it ended, the Shaw Commission counted 133 Jews and 116 Arabs dead, with 339 Jews and more than 232 Arabs wounded — and recorded that “many of the Arab casualties and possibly some of the Jewish casualties were caused by rifle fire by the police or military forces.”

Two inquiries followed. The Shaw Commission, reporting in March 1930, found that the immediate cause lay in the Wall dispute but that the fundamental cause was Arab hostility arising from disappointed political aspirations and fear for their economic future — from Jewish immigration and land purchase, and from a landless class of evicted tenants. Its findings led to the Hope Simpson report and the Passfield White Paper, both of which recommended restricting immigration and land transfers, and both of which were effectively withdrawn by the British government under Zionist and parliamentary pressure. A separate international commission approved by the League of Nations ruled in 1930 that ownership of the wall and the pavement before it belonged to the Muslim waqf, while confirming a right of Jewish access for prayer. Neither report altered the trajectory: the revolt of 1936 followed within six years.

Sources

• 1929 Palestine riots — Wikipedia (carrying the Shaw Commission casualty tables, pp. 65–66)
• Report of the Shaw Commission on the al-Buraq / Western Wall Disturbances of August 1929 — PalQuest
• Report of the Commission to Determine the Rights and Claims of Moslems and Jews in Connection with the Western or Wailing Wall at Jerusalem — PalQuest