Wailing Wall Disturbances

The Wailing Wall disturbances of 1929 took place in the British Palestine Mandate and were instigated when British police removed a group of worshippers and their screens from the area. Before this there had been a long standing dispute over the Jewish right to access the remains of the Western Wall (the Wailing Wall of the Temple of Herod. For the Jews this is a holy site; for Muslims, they also had deep religious attachments to the wall and its immediate surroundings. Jews were certainly allowed to visit the wall, but they were restricted from setting up chairs, benches, or screens to separate men and women during prayer.

When the police offers removed the worshippers and their screens from the area, this resulted in Jewish protests. These protests resulted in Arab mobs that attacked two Jewish quarters in Jerusalem and killed Jews in the towns of Hebron and Safad. By the time British forces quelled the riots, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs had lost their lives.

The real causes of these disturbances go much deeper than just a dispute over the wall. The distrubances initiated the first of a series of British commissions into Palestine.

Parapharsed from:

Cleveland, William L. A History of the Modern Middle East. 3rd Ed. Colorado: Westview Press, 2004.