Germany / Palestine / Israel: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, meeting with...

Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, born between 1895 and 1897; died July 4, 1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the Mandatory Palestine. Al-Husseini was an Arab nationalist and following the end of the First World War positioned himself in Damascus, as a supporter of the Arab Kingdom of Syria. However, following the fiasco of the Franco-Syrian War, his positions on pan-Arabism shifted to a form of local nationalism for the Arabs of Palestine and he moved back to Jerusalem. From 1921 to 1937 al-Husseini was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, using the position to promote Islam and rally Arab nationalism against Zionism. During the 1948 Palestine War, Husseini represented the Arab Higher Committee and opposed both the 1947 UN Partition Plan and King Abdullah's entente with Zionists to annex the Arab part of British Mandatory Palestine to Jordan. In September 1948, he participated in the establishment of an All-Palestine Government. Seated in Egyptian ruled Gaza, this government won a limited recognition of Arab states, but was eventually dissolved by Gamal Nasser in 1959.