'Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine 1936' [‎97v] (199/294)

44816-1
148
was six miles in about three hours, whereas without a moon five miles
was a fair distance for a night's march on similar ground, and this would
take about five hours to complete. It may tnerefore be concluded that
night marches, particularly by moonlight, were sometimes usefulj but
that offensive operations other than small ambushes and patrols were to
be avoided during the hours of darkness.
ACT ion to capture arms and wanted men
The Problems of Disarmament
No description of any action taken with a view to capturing arms can
be complete without some reference to the special circumstances which had
led to the very widespread possession of illegal arms by the civil popu
lation. To the Arab the carrying of arms had always been a matter of
prestige and personal dignity, while the lack of public security in
Palestine both before and after the V/ar had often made them a practical
need as well. Thus every Arab of standing did his best to maintain
some sort of firearm for personal use without necessarily having any
original intention of using it for aggressive purposes. The Jews too
needed them even more for self-defence, and - not with reason perhaps -
were not inclined to depend solely upon the small sealed armouries of
shot-guns which were authorised for the protection of their colonies.
Thus the majority of the civil population, on both sides, were at pains
to secure as many arms as possible, and considerable numbers were held
secretly by both Arabs and Jews.
Illegal possession of arms was rendered all the more prevalent by
the ease with which they could be obtained. The aftermath of the Great
Wan had flooded the whole of the Near East with stocks of arms of all
sorts, while various outbursts in Palestine as well as the Druse rebellion
against the French in 1925 had opened up many opportunities for the pro
fessional smuggler* Certain foreign nations too were not above suspicion
of having given practical aid to the latter; while in Trans-Jordan and
the desert region beyond it the carrying of arms was universal and without
restriction and it was not difficult to pass them across an almost open
frontier. Thus by various means the inhabitants had steadily been
accumulating arms for years and when the rebellion opened they had been
widely distributed in every village and hamlet throughout the length
and breadth of the country. Not only were there large stocks of rifles
and revolvers, but the Arabs had also plentiful supplies of explosives
and machines for refilling and recapping cartridge cases.
The Arab arms were mostly very inferior: many of them were wartime
relics of various nationalities while others were of the primitive type
familiar in all Arab countries. Pistols v/hich were easier smuggled,
were usually of good quality, and there was also a smattering of modem
weapons - including some half dozen light automatics - which had been
filched from British, French or Iraqi sources. Ammunition was of even
lower quality than the rifles, much of it being wartime stock unearthed
from old dumps and perhaps refilled by home-made methods. Though
smuggling did undoubtedly continue throughout 1936 the standard of
weapons captured from the rebels points against the belief that there
was an appreciable inflow of modern rifles. It is probably safe to
assume that the greater proportion of the rebel arms were already in the
country when the rebellion started, md that smuggling was confined
chiefly to pistols and ammunition, apart from the personal weapons of
Arabs from neighbouring countries who managed to pass undetected across
the land frontiers.