On the occasion of the 1929 riots , the Jewish Communists were split between those who sympathised with victims of the massacres , and others who , like the Arab Communists , considered the moment to be one of an Arab revolt against the British occupation , land seizure and the pauperisation of the peasantry . Based in Haifa , where he supervised the Party 's local branch , Sidqi maintained regular contacts with Sheik Izz ad-Din al-Qassam , and defined the latter 's death in 1935 as one of martyrdom . The Comintern had instructed the Palestine Communist Party to Arabise as early as 1924 , without much success . One of the tasks the Party assigned to Sidqi was to undertake this Arabisation . The Palestine branch of the party was largely dominated by Jews with socialist tendencies and was suspected of having in its ranks militants with crypto-Zionist sympathies . In 1930 , Sidqi was picked up by the British police in Jaffa and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment , which he served in Jerusalem , Jaffa and Akka . His elder brother Ahmad , who had also studied with him at KUTV , was the chief witness for the prosecution . In Sidqi 's recollection , Ahmad is described as fragile and being coerced into confessions by beatings . British reports cast him as a police informer , who provided extensive details of Comintern contacts and training . Towards the end of 1932 , on his release from prison , where he made the acquaintance of Abu Jilda , the ' Dillinger of the desert , ' the Party ordered him to contact Awni Abd al-Hadi in order to begin to coordinate with the Istiqlal Independence Party . As British surveillance intensified , the Communist Party smuggled him abroad in June 1933 to Paris where he assumed the editorship of the Comintern 's Arabic-language journal , '' The Arab East '' . The French authorities subsequently arrested him and had him deported back to Palestine . He later dated his opposition to Nazism to this period - Hitler assumed power in 1933
1929 riots
1929 Palestine riots
Muhammad Najati Sidqi