We were joined by Professor Hughes for the third event of our series of events to mark the centenary of the British Mandate in Palestine (1922-48).

Professor Hughes used material from his recent book on Britain’s repression of the Arab revolt in the 1930s to detail Britain’s devastatingly effective methods against colonial rebellion. The British army had a long tradition of pacification that it drew upon to support operations against Palestinian rebels in 1936. An Emergency State of repressive colonial legislation underpinned and combined with military action to crush the Arab revolt. The British had established in the 1920s in Palestine a civil government that ruled by proclamation and it codified in law norms of collective punishment that British soldiers used in 1936. This was ‘lawfare’. It ground out the rebellion with legally bounded curfews, demolition, fining, detention, punitive searches, shootings, and reprisals. Such repressive legislation facilitated soldiers’ violent actions. Rebels were disorganised and unable to withstand such pacification measure, and so they lost.