Jamal al-Husayni

Jamal al-Husayni (1894-1982) (Arabic: جمال الحُسيني‎‎) was born in Jerusalem and was a member of the highly influential and respected Husayni family.

Husayni served as Secretary to the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress (1921–1934) and to the Muslim Supreme Council. He was co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Arab Party, established in Jerusalem in 1935, and in 1937 became a member of the first Arab Higher Committee, led by Amin al-Husayni, later becoming its chairman.

During the 1936-39 Arab revolt he escaped first to Syria (1937) and then to Baghdad, Iraq (1939). He led the Arab delegation to the 1939 London Conference and was Palestinian representative to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry. Husayni was arrested by the British in 1941 and exiled to Southern Rhodesia. He was released at the end of World War II and returned to Palestine in 1946. He was an unofficial delegate to the United Nations in 1947-48. In September–October 1948 he was the foreign minister in the Egyptian-sponsored All-Palestine Government.

Husayni was born in 1894 into the Husayni family, one of the most influential families in Jerusalem. He went to the Church of England school, St Georges, where he was the first pupil to wear western style clothes and where he became an enthusiastic player of the new sport – football. On finishing his secondary education, aged eighteen, he entered the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut to study medicine. At that time the Medical faculty was alive with debate about the status of Arabs under a Government based in Istanbul and dominated by Turks and Turkish. Jamal became a member of the Nadi Al-Arabi and al-Muntada al-Adabi movements in 1918-19 which, according to Isaac Friedman, were "hostile to British rule and who wanted to reinstate Turkish rule in the former Ottoman Nadi Al-Arabian Asiatic provinces." During the time of Jamal's membership, al-Muntada al-Arabi were committed to the concepts of pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism and supported a new Greater Syrian nation under King Faisal. In May 1919 this political activity was such that the British government prohibited any further meetings, speeches, or public activities by the club.

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