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By the summer of 1929, a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem became steadily more violent.

On Friday, August 16, 1929, after an inflammatory sermon, a demonstration organized by the Supreme Muslim Council, marched to the Wall and proceeded to burn prayer books and supplicatory notes left in the Wall's cracks. To the Jewish protests, the acting High Commissioner Harry Luke anwered that "no prayer books had been burnt but only pages of prayer books". The riots continued, and the next day one Jew was killed in the Bukharan Quarter. His funeral were turned into political demonstration.

On August 20, Haganah leaders proposed to provide defense for 600 Jews of Old Yishuv in Hebron or help them evacuate, but the community leaders declined these offers, insisting that they trust the A'yan (Arab leadership) to protect them.

The next Friday, August 23, 1929, Arabs, inflamed by false rumors that two Arabs had been killed by Jews started a murderous attack on Jews in the Old City. The violence quickly spread to other parts of Palestine, Arab policemen often joining the mobs.

Throughout the British Mandate of Palestine, British authorities had only 292 policemen, fewer than 100 soldiers, six armored cars and five to six aircraft.

While a number of Jews were being killed at the Jaffa Gate, British policemen did not open fire. By August 24, seventeen Jews were killed in Jerusalem area.

The worst atrocities occurred in Hebron and Safad, where massacres of Jews occurred. In Hebron, Arab mobs killed 67 Jews and wounded many others using clubs, knives and axes. The lone British policeman in the town was overwhelmed and the reinforcements he called for did not arrive for 5 hours (leading to bitter recriminations).

British police chief Raymond Cafferata later testitifed:

"On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a police constable named Issa Sherif from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out-shouting in Arabic, "Your Honor, I am a policeman." ... I got into the room and shot him."

Most of the other Jews survived by hiding with their Arab neighbors. The surviving Jews were evacuated from the town. A few dozen families returned in 1931 but the community never reestablished itself and there were no Jews remaining in Hebron by 1936.

In areas where the Jewish self-defense was strong, such as Tel-Aviv and Haifa, the Arab leaders called for calm. One such Arab leader was beaten and riots erupted there on August 25, but were repulsed either by the British forces who arrived or by the Haganah.

During the week of riots, the fatalities were:

• Killed: 133 Jews, 116 Arabs.
• Wounded: 339 Jews, 232 Arabs.

On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned "the atrocious acts of committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evildoers... murders perpetrated upon defenseless members of Jewish population... accompanied by acts of unspeakable savagery."

In his testimony to the commission of inquiry headed by Sir Walter Shaw, Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni accused Jews with attacking Arabs and used the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a reference. The commission recommended that Jewish emigration and land sales the Jews be halted, and the secretary of Palestine Arab Executive (PAE) Alfred Rock called the commission's report "70% favorable to the Arabs."

References

• Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
• The British in Palestine by Bernard Wasserstein

• Israeli history
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Massacres