73 years of Abdul Qader Al Husseini martyrdom
April 8th marks the 73rd anniversary of the martyrdom of the fighter Abdul Qadir al-Husseini, commander-in-chief of the "Holy Jihad" forces.
Jerusalem24 – April 8th marks the 73rd anniversary of the martyrdom of the fighter Abdul Qadir al-Husseini, commander-in-chief of the “Holy Jihad” forces.
The al-Husseini began his struggle in 1935, influenced by the history of his father, Musa Kazem Al-Husseini, who held some important positions in the Ottoman Empire, moving during his work around the Ottoman Empire, working in Yemen, Iraq, Najd and Istanbul, in addition to Palestine.
In view of Musa al-Husseini’s great services to the Ottoman state, the government called him a ‘pasha’, and when the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War, and Palestine fell into the grip of the British Mandate, Musa held the position of Mayor of Jerusalem, and he was also elected president of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian National Congress.
Musa was the first to raise his voice in the face of the British Mandate, and the first to call on the people of Palestine to protest and demonstrate and declare discontent and anger against the Balfour Declaration, so he led the first popular demonstration in the history of Palestine in 1920, and because of that, the British mandate authorities isolated him from the Jerusalem municipality. He continued his tireless struggle, and participated in many demonstrations, the last of which was the large demonstration in Jaffa on October 27, 1933, in which he was hit with severe batons by British soldiers, after which he remained bedridden for many days, until he passed away in 1934.
Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini was raised from an early age in a house of knowledge and resistance, this house was the first to embrace him, and Arab men who came to Jerusalem to support its people.
Since 1935, Abdul Qadir has been busy training Palestinian youths in the armed groups in which he participated and was one of his leaders. The resistance against the British reached its strongest in the Battle of Al-Khader, and he was seriously wounded in it, so he moved to Iraq.
In 1941, he participated with the Iraqis in their resistance against the British and fell in captivity for three years, then he moved to Egypt for treatment, where he trained the Palestinian resistance groups against the Israeli occupation, and established a secret camp in cooperation with Egyptian national forces near the Egyptian-Libyan borders.
Meanwhile, the situation in Palestine developed rapidly at the local and international levels, and among the most prominent events that provoked Al-Husseini was allowing the entry of one hundred thousand Jewish immigrants into Palestine, lifting restrictions to facilitate the ownership of Palestinian lands to Jews, and the arrival of international fact-finding committees in Palestine, which is nothing more than a warning to the Arabs, and an opportunity to install the Jews in Palestine.
In light of these conditions, the Arab League Council met in “Bloudan”, Syria in June 1946, and decided to establish the Higher Arab Commission for Palestine headed by the Mufti of Palestine Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Four months after its establishment, they met in Alexandria, and decided to confront the Zionist colonial plans with armed force.
When the United Nations issued its decision to divide Palestine, the commission decided to form the “Armed Holy Jihad Organization”, and Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, head of the Higher Arab Commission, was appointed as the Supreme Commander of the Holy Jihad, while Abdul Qadir al-Husseini took the position of Commander-in-Chief of this organization, and moved to Palestine on the twenty-second of December 1947.
Abdul Qadir al-Husseini was able to cost the Zionist gangs at the time many human and material losses, and the fighters under his command were able to control Jerusalem for some time after a long siege, and the Holy Jihad forces set up several successful ambushes for the Zionist gangs, and blew up some important Zionist institutions such as the agency headquarters Judaism in Jerusalem, and the Jewish press house in the city itself, as well as the bombing of the “Montefiore” neighborhood and Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. The Holy Jihad forces were able to control the transportation lines that link most of the Zionist colonies in Palestine.
At the end of March 1948, al-Husseini went to Damascus to seek weapons from the Arab League, but his hope was disappointed, and during his absence from Jerusalem, the village of Al-Qastal fell into the hands of the Jews, and Abd al-Qadir arrived in the holy city on the morning of April 7, 1948. So he organized an armed attack on Qastal, and his forces were able to retake the site the next day, but this commander had passed away in an assassination crime while he was in his early forties, while he was holding his weapon in defense for his homeland, and he was buried in Jerusalem next to the grave of his father Musa Kazem Al-Husseini.
The angry crowds went out to pay the funeral of the martyr Abdul Qadir al-Husseini, the Zionist gangs refused and committed another massacre, so they attacked the village of Deir Yassin and carried out a bloody massacre, and within hours they turned it into rubble and remains of martyrs and victims.
