The origins of airpower in Palestine can be traced back to the interwar British Mandate. Understanding the development of airpower in Palestine is not only crucial for historians but also for scholars of media and communications as it reveals how modern communication technologies, often idealised through a Habermasian lens of dialogue and democracy, emerged from projects rooted in colonial governance and violence. What we have learned from analysing the development of British airpower is that modern communication technologies and infrastructures, such as wireless and radio, emerged as much from colonial conflicts in the Middle East as from Euro-American democratic discourses. Even more strikingly in the context of Palestine, focusing on the historical development of airpower and aerial communications reveals that before the establishment of Israel, Palestine was used as a “laboratory” for emerging information-weaponry systems designed to track, locate, observe, predict, and act upon Palestinians from the sky.
The British were able to enact aerial policing by innovating early techniques and technologies developed in Mesopotamia and refitting them for a settler-colonial context in Palestine. The central question for British officials in the Mandate of Palestine was: How could airpower and aerial networks, as advanced and cheap alternatives to ground forces, be utilised to police, survey and confine the Arab population? This question became one of necessity during the bloody 1936-1939 al-Thawra al-Kubrā (“The Great Arab Revolt”). It was during the revolt that airpower and aerial communications were tested, refined and improved against an insurgent Arab population.
While the contexts of Israeli and British uses of airpower differ, understanding a genealogy of its development shows us that the air has long been the site of colonial technological war and brutal population control. Both the British and the Israeli state utilise/d what Dr Burçe Çelik and I have defined as the ontological and epistemological force of aerial media to simultaneously govern and shape both land and subjects from the skies. In this two-part blog article, I will outline the development of airpower in the Middle East and examine Palestine as an inflection point in the development of aerial policing and colonial warfare. In this part I will look at how the British utilised airpower to produce a view of Palestine from above.
Developing a view from above
At the centre of Britain’s postwar settlement, a contradiction impelled officials to turn to airpower as the primary technological tool of policing and surveying the Middle East. The question for officials was how to run an extended empire with the acquisition of Mesopotamia, Transjordan and Palestine, during a period of postwar financial constraints. In this context, airpower was understood as a “technological fix”, a modern, effective and cheap alternative to garrisoning troops. Airpower also had a cultural and symbolic significance as a totem of British technological superiority and promise. In a 1933 lecture on British airpower in the Middle East, Sir Philip Sassoon, Under-Secretary of State for Air (1924–1929 and from 1931–1937), described how Britain could police Palestine from the air. He contrasted the Roman Empire’s reliance on an entire legion with Britain’s ability to control the territory using just a squadron of aeroplanes, one section of armoured cars, and the support of local forces (Sassoon, 1933). Aircraft promised a cheap and mobile technology, ideal for the fast-moving irregular warfare in the region that had emerged during the war.
British aircraft in the Middle East were imagined as having a “moral” effect on native populations. Aerial violence became intertwined with prevailing ideas of “civilization” and in the context of so-called Middle Eastern “savagery,” such violence was deemed particularly necessary. Sassoon made this clear by stating that even if disarmament were to succeed among “civilized” nations, aerial policing against Middle Eastern Arab populations would be necessary because, “we are dealing on the frontiers with peoples who do not understand peace conferences, but do understand firm rule.” (Sassoon, 1939, p. 404).
Airpower was not only used as a tool of violence against the colonial populations. It was also utilised to “know” Palestine. During and after the war, aerial photography was employed as a tool of knowledge production and surveillance, helping to define the geography and territory of Palestine from above. In this context, aerial photography in Palestine was layered over earlier imperial projects of surveying and geographic representation. Long before the advent of aircraft, the first British maps of Palestine produced in the early nineteenth century had framed the region from an elevated perspective, presenting it as a representational space imbued with religious and historical significance of the Holy Land (Talbot et al., 2020, pp. 192–193).
During the war, archaeological surveys conducted by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) in the 1870s were repurposed by the RAF to contextualize and guide their aerial photography. These new photographic surveys echoed the aesthetics of earlier mapping efforts. More than just a representational means of “knowing” space, an aerial aesthetic emerged, shaped by orientalist assumptions about Palestine. British war artists Sydney and Richard Carline produced a series of aerial paintings depicting the land as sparsely populated, devoid of human presence, and barren (Talbot et al., 2020, pp. 206–207). These aerial views reinforced the idea of Palestine as an “empty land,” imagined as biblically fertile and “ripe for development” (Talbot et al., 2020, p. 209).
British tourism in Palestine, particularly sightseeing of the holy land, were developed alongside the expansion of airpower. Like earlier mapping efforts, the arrival of aircraft offered a view of Palestine as a land marked with ancient and holy significance. From an aerial perspective, British officials were able to look down on Palestine and place themselves as the rightful Christian heirs to the Holy Land. In the first meeting of the PEF, the archbishop of York captured this sentiment by stating that ‘this country of Palestine belongs to you and to me. It is essentially ours’ (Talbot et al., 2020, p. 201).
Airpower acted as both the technological medium and justification for colonial rule. To British administrators, such as the former District Commissioner in Jerusalem, Arthur Crust, for centuries under Ottoman rule, Palestine had passed ‘out of history’ (Crust, 1936). British airpower symbolised the re-entry of Palestine into modernity and the field of history with its past, present and future now legible from the skies. As Philip Sassoon remarked in 1933, from the air one could witness ‘something of the new prosperity which has sprung up in Palestine since we took over the mandate’ (Sassoon, 1933).
Mandate rule relied on the use of aerial photography and the technical expertise of pilots, geographers, and administrators to map and survey Palestine’s varied peoples and landscapes. Shortly after the war, a political officer in Baghdad commented that aerial photographs had ‘been used with effect for political purposes,’ greatly increasing his ‘ability to exercise control over events’. (Political Office, Baghdad, 1918) From the air, the territory could be “seen” in new ways, with areas inaccessible by foot or armoured car rendered visible. Aerial photography was utilised for land surveying and determining property ownership with vertical line strip photography was used to demarcate where land claims began and ended.
This view from above, developed in the late nineteenth century and advanced through airpower during and after the war, helped to establish and expand a new aerial view of Palestine. Developing a view from above produced a way of seeing Palestine that provided an epistemological lens to survey, bomb and later confine the Arab population. It was from this view from above that British officials began to weaponise the air through developing new techniques to combat and police an insurgent Arab population in 1936.
Palestinian Revolt 1936-1939: Weaponising air and communications
The British colonial project in Mandate Palestine was anchored in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised a Jewish national home in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous population, devised as a solution to Europe’s own antisemitism. Unlike British governance in Iraq or French rule in Syria and Lebanon, where the mandate nominally aimed to prepare populations for self-rule, the Palestine Mandate systematically excluded Arabs from political and economic power. Instead, it facilitated Zionist settler dominance through state-sponsored mechanisms, including discriminatory policies within the communicative sphere: censorship of the Palestinian press, exclusion of Arabs from key roles in postal, telegraph, and telephone networks, and the erasure of Palestinian representation from formal political structures (Battershill, 1937).
In response to structural repression Palestinian’s engaged in a series of revolts throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The largest one began in April 1936 with a guerrilla attack and a general strike led by the Arab High Committee, prompting a British state of emergency and promises of reform. When the 1937 Peel Commission proposed partition and the forced displacement of Palestinians, the revolt reignited, and from 1937 to 1939, the British Mandate became a laboratory of repression, using legal, technological, and political tools to suppress resistance and entrench imperial control.
From the outset of the 1936 revolt, debate emerged between the RAF and British civil authorities over the use of aerial bombing in Palestine. Operating within the framework of a ‘liberal’ interwar Mandate and in a densely populated, multi-religious territory, officials questioned what forms of collective violence and aerial policing would be acceptable to colonial administrators, the British public, and the press. Philip Sassoon, Under-Secretary for Air, had advocated strongly for bombing, insisting that “the aeroplane is the only kind of policeman to which no sort of country is any effective bar; but it cannot perform its police duties effectively unless it is allowed to bomb” (Sassoon, 1933, p. 402).
Others within the imperial establishment disagreed. Air-Commodore C.F.A. Portal, in a 1937 lecture, argued that airpower was ill-suited to the conditions in Palestine, where guerrilla fighters operated among civilian populations: “the whole thing is on too small a scale to give scope for the characteristics of the aeroplane—its speed, hitting power and independence of communications” (Portal, 1937, p. 344). Portal recommended ground forces take the lead. Likewise, in September 1936, High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope opposed the use of bombing, challenging the RAF’s claim that Palestine could be cowed as Iraq had been. He warned that such assumptions rested on a “false analogy” (High Commissioner for Palestine, 1936).
Despite these reservations, aircraft were deployed extensively during the Great Revolt. Yet unlike Iraq, bombing in Palestine was officially restricted. The British Cabinet ordered that there be “no indiscriminate bombing of the civil population,” though military authorities retained broad discretion. Bombing was permitted against “the houses of criminals or their sympathisers,” provided prior warning and evacuation had occurred (Cabinet Proceedings, Sept 2, 1936). The RAF objected to these constraints, arguing that villages could become safe havens for insurgents. They maintained that when houses or villages were used as bases for attacks, they forfeited any claim to civilian immunity—even while admitting that “non-combatants will suffer in the process” (William, 1936).
Concerned about public reaction, Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore emphasized the need for media management. He directed the RAF’s Vice Air Marshal to coordinate with press officers and ensure public explanations were offered if civilian casualties occurred (J.E. Shuckburgh, 1936). The international repercussions of such bombings were already becoming clear. In 1938, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden warned that even “very mild and wholly legitimate” bombings in Hadramaut had provoked foreign criticism and weakened Britain’s position in denouncing aerial attacks in Spain and China (Eden, 1938, p. 105; in Hughes, 2019, p. 172).
By early September 1936, the government rescinded the general use of 112 lb bombs, requiring special authorisation from HQ for future deployment. In their place, the High Commissioner proposed machine gun strafing of houses in villages from which aircraft had been fired upon—an approach soon implemented. On September 6, 1936, pilots at Ramleh received orders authorising “air action by machine gun fire… against a house or those houses in villages from which hostile rifle fire has been directed against aircraft and security forces” (Diary No.6 (Bomber) Squadron, 1936).
Co-ordinating ground and air warfare
Limited ground and air communication posed a major challenge to the deployment of airpower in Palestine. As late as the 1936 revolt, communication between aircraft and ground forces still depended on manually dropping written messages from the air. While these unsophisticated communication methods led to delays and occasional confusion, they also prompted the military to develop new techniques for aerial policing out of necessity.
On September 21, 1936, the General Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan issued an order to the RAF and ground units, identifying an “outstanding military problem” in the form of the “vigorous action of rebel armed bands.” These groups, typically composed of 5 to 70 individuals armed with rifles, were “well led” and exhibited “signs of military training,” including the capacity to ambush British convoys and motor patrols, as well as to effectively target aircraft, particularly when “low flying reconnaissance” missions rendered them “an irresistible target for rebel bands.”
While urban centers could be controlled through the deployment of police and army forces, “the rocky hills forming the central spine of Palestine, which flanked the vital road from Jerusalem to Haifa for over 100 km,” were reportedly “infested” by these armed groups. In response, the order called for “early support by air action” through several tactical innovations aimed at suppressing guerrilla activity (General Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan, 1936). Chief among these was the XX call system, a key strategy designed to synchronize ground and air forces through the provision of near-instantaneous information. Attributed to Senior Air Staff Officer Wing Commander D.F. Stevenson, the XX call constituted a method of close air support, enabling the rapid relay of intelligence via wireless technology. This system linked aircraft, airbases, and military ground units in a coordinated communicative network, transmitting unidirectional information that swiftly identified the location of “enemy” activity and relayed it back to RAF bases across Palestine, thereby allowing for immediate aerial response.
Although wireless could not yet be reliably installed in RAF planes, it was nonetheless effectively employed to transmit information back to airbases. British airbases in Mandate Palestine were strategically positioned, with Ramleh functioning as a central node along the Jaffa–Jerusalem road and adjacent to the wartime railway (Air Ministry, May 1921). Army patrols were equipped with RAF wireless tenders capable of direct communication with aircraft stationed at aerodromes where two striking forces were held in readiness. These tenders, known as RODEX, accompanied convoys and monitored their movement. When ambushed or encountering enemy fire, patrols would transmit an “XX” call, a simplified coded emergency signal. Several aircraft were kept on standby, ready to be deployed immediately upon receipt of such a signal. The XX call served a dual function enabling the precise location of “enemy” combatant and communicating coded information concerning the targeted “kilostones” where bombs would be deployed. These bombing coordinates were calculated in anticipation of the rebels’ projected movements.
To enable the effective execution of the XX strategy, a new aerial cartography of Palestine was devised—one predicated on the view from above. The country was “divided into four aircraft zones,” each assigned a squadron or detachment, with Ramleh functioning as the principal node of aerial artillery and communication (General Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan, 1936). This central hub was linked to other key sites—Semakh, Gaza, and Jisr Mejamie—several of which were outfitted with wireless and aircraft bases during the revolt specifically to operationalize the predictive and locational mechanics of the XX call system.
As decisive as RAF innovations like the XX call system may have been, Palestinian resistance demonstrated a capacity for rapid adaptation and counter-innovation. An officer stationed at Ramleh reported that rebels quickly developed strategies to evade and exploit the XX system, hiding until aircraft began to decelerate while climbing, at which point they would attempt to shoot them down (MacDonald, 1980). Moreover, Palestinian fighters, sometimes trained by Arab nationalist networks across the Middle East, employed metal grids to pattern rifle fire skywards and successfully downed several aircraft.
The unidirectional nature of the XX system introduced significant operational limitations for the British. As one official explained, “there was no way of stopping it [the aircraft] once it was airborne.” Pilots, furnished only with coordinates, often lacked critical intelligence regarding the nature or identity of their targets. This frequently led to indiscriminate attacks: “anything he saw on the hillside, which could have easily been a [British] soldier” (MacDonald, 1980).
Refining airpower
By late 1938 and into 1939, Air Vice-Marshal Arthur T. Harris—later earn fame as “Bomber Harris”—demonstrated his ruthless tactical ingenuity in Palestine through the development of the air-pin system. This innovation triangulated air and ground forces through a new communicative and spatial technique that addressed the limitations of the earlier XX emergency call system. Harris (1939) explained that this was needed as the rebels had adapted to and devised counters to the XX system:
“rebel intelligence and signalling systems were so well organised that not only did they usually receive prior warning, sometimes in detail, of projected land operations, but the moment a soldier so much as stood up and scratched himself or put his hat on, they fathomed out his likely or possible objectives”.
In response, Harris justified punitive aerial violence by eroding the distinction between civilians and combatants. As he remarked in 1939, “even when not bandits at heart, [Palestinians] are always all out for a scrap, or a lark with a gun, whenever they think that they can get away with it.” While historian Matthew Hughes (2019, p. 531) argues that many villagers had only “patchy knowledge of the activities of guerilla groups,” and that numerous fighters arrived from outside Palestine, the general population nevertheless bore the brunt of indiscriminate air-based repression.
By 1939, British aerial policing in Palestine had shifted towards the air-pin or air-cordon mechanism, devised and operationalized under Harris. Responding to both the tactical innovations of the Palestinian rebels and his own racialized belief that most Palestinians were inherently hostile and thus legitimate targets, Harris devised the air-pin and air-cordon. This mechanism operated by having ground troops request that aircraft “pin” a village or region using an air cordon, thereby immobilizing the population within a defined spatial perimeter until British forces arrived to inspect, interrogate, and detain suspects. As Harris explained, aircraft would drop messages to the encircled area, warning inhabitants that they would not be harmed if they remained within the cordon: “no one would be hurt if they did not try to get out of the ring”. The aim was to deploy aerial surprise as a psychological weapon and what Harris described as a “bolt from the blue”, with aircraft circling overhead to induce fear and compliance. Harris claimed that the RAF had “killed hundreds” of those attempting to escape the cordon and arrested many more in the villages.
Harris was explicit about the intended psychological and tactical effects of the system. Rebels, he claimed, “no longer dare stay in the villages in daylight or remain in one locality for more than a few hours,” and “whenever they see an aeroplane they discard their arms and hide.” Crucially, the Gloster Gladiator aircraft used in Palestine were equipped with the TR9D radio set, which enabled simultaneous contact with ground units.
By 1939, Harris proudly declared the air-pin a “highly developed method well understood by all the troops and indeed by the rebels!” Variations were introduced, including “flushing patrols,” in which aircraft surveilled a large area, watching for those who fled villages upon the approach of planes. Fleeing became a signal for ground troops to act, with aircraft relaying coordinates via wireless. Other methods relied on local informants leaving signs visible from the air to indicate when a cordon should be initiated. According to Hughes (2019: 168), both Jewish and Arab collaborators were trained in basic signaling techniques to call in support.
Thus, it was the integration of mobile wireless technologies, airpower, and ground coordination that constituted the emergence of a sophisticated system of colonial control in Palestine. From the XX system to the air-pin, these systems embodied a combined-arms logic that saw the transformation of the air into both a communicative medium and sphere of violence where surveillance, transmission, and racial terror were fused together through aerial infrastructures. Despite the refinement of this atmospheric network and the confinement of Palestinian bodies subjected to real-time imperial experimentation, Palestinians continued to resist, adapt, and fight back.
By Dr. Sebastian James Rose