By 1937 Britain realized the Mufti was sponsoring the violence not just against Jews but against the English as well. Al-Husseini fled Jerusalem and settled in Lebanon. So glad were the British to see the Mufti leave that they did not even bother to ask the French powers governing Lebanon to extradite him.
Meanwhile in an attempt to please the Arabs the UK’s Peel Commission violated the League of Nations Mandate by offering a proposal to divide the land designated as the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations Mandate of 1922. Instead under the Peel Commission proposal of 1937 only a small part of the land would become the Jewish state.
A year later the Peel Commission issued another proposal with even less land offered to Jews. Some time after that the British issued the White Paper of 1939 rejecting the idea of a Jewish National Home and severely restricting Jewish immigration. It was hoped for in London that such concessions to Arab nationalists would appease al-Husseini and his supporters. Yet only two years after the White Paper the Mufti would come back to strike the British again.
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In 1940 it looked as if Hitler’s armada was unstoppable. Having already conquered France Austria Czechoslovakia Poland Norway Denmark Holland Belgium and Luxembourg Hitler and his friends in Italy Spain and the occupied countries were clearly the rulers of continental Europe. Hitler had also allied himself with the USSR under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 which divided Eastern Europe by giving the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania to the USSR while letting the Germans take over western Poland Romania and other European nations.
Meanwhile the Japanese were the dominant force of Asia seemingly set to impose their control on that continent. Britain’s Winston Churchill stood virtually alone against the Fascist onslaught with the United States mired in radical isolationism refusing to take part in what many Americans saw as a European war.
The one region where the British still had significant influence was the Middle East. Hitler set out to change that. Al-Husseini wanted to get rid of the Hashemite-clan rulers in Iraq and Transjordan. Both men wanted to get rid of the Jews and the Brits. It was a marriage made in heaven.
Despite boasting a powerful navy the United Kingdom had an army that was modest in size and spread too thin. The Middle East especially Iraq seemed likely to be the next pawn to fall to the Third Reich.
In 1940 King Ghazi (son of King Faisal I) died leaving only his four-year-old son to govern. Emir Abdul-Illah the regent for the young Iraqi king felt the need to bring Rashid Ali al-Kaylani into the government as the prime minister despite the latter’s support for Nazi Germany and links with al-Husseini. The new head of state immediately shifted the policies of Iraq in favor of Nazi Germany guaranteeing suply of natural resources to Hitler and refusing to cut ties with Italy. The former Mufti of Jerusalem and his surrogates frequently acted as the government’s representatives with foreigners. Kaylani also asked from Hitler the right to deal with Jews in Arab states – a request that was granted.
Britain responded with severe economic sanctions which coupled with the UK’s initial defeat of German forces in North Africa and pressure from the Iraqi royal family brought down the pro-German government on January 31 1941. Kaylani and other pro-Axis Iraqis under the influence of al-Husseini conspired unsuccessfully to murder Abdul-Illah. But thanks to widespread support for Kaylani among government officials he was back in power two months later.
