Thawrat Al -Buraq in British Mandate Palestine: Jerusalem, mass mobilization and colonial politics, 1928--1930

In August 1929, the Buraq Revolt began over control and access to one of the most contested and holiest sites in Palestine---the Buraq/Wailing Wall. This volatile and complicated episode marked a significant watershed moment in Mandate Palestine. The revolt fundamentally changed local Arab politics as well as the means and methods of the colonial power. This is a thesis about beginnings---of mass mobilization, popular politics and severe British repression---all of which combined to form a template that forecast the future years of the British Mandate in Palestine.;I argue throughout this thesis that the marked difference in 1929 was the political will and active participation of non-elite elements of Arab society. The conflict over the Buraq/Wailing Wall combined religious and political rights to create fertile ground for a popular national movement. The national revolt and the crisis over the Buraq Wall, in all of its phases, combined the religious and political elements prevalent in Arab Palestine with a growing resentment towards colonialism.;Although politics of the opposition among the Arab population, outside of the framework of elite politics, was still at a nascent stage, the revolt represented a break from this traditional past. Politics of resistance had not reached an organized or coherent level, but all this was to change dramatically in the course of the riots and as a direct result of them. A close analysis of the revolt and its significance show a changed political trajectory of local Arabs towards national liberation and foreign occupation. Though the revolt was not planned or organized, its impact actually served as a catalyst for mass political mobilization. The combined events of the Buraq Revolt also fundamentally changed the means and apparatus the British utilized to run and control Palestine.;The revolt was a product of mass mobilization, the popular exercise of political consciousness in a people who not regarded in people to have had one. An analysis of the Buraq Revolt, specifically, allows for a new construction of Jerusalem, as an urban space that included all these non-elite communities. Popular riots broke out, but there was a political sense to the violence. There were rationales and reasons that had to do with religion, nationalism, and colonialism that motivated people and marked a significant historic change in modern Palestine.