In December 1935 Jamal attended a memorial ceremony for Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in Haifa, and made a speech to the crowd of 6,000 in which he predicted that al-Qassam would become a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Following the crushing of the al-Qassam insurgency the Wauchope administration put forward new proposals for a legislative council coupled with restrictions on land sales. The Jewish Agency swiftly rejected the proposals while the Palestinian Arab Party did not reject them completely until April 1936 several months after they had been blocked by the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament. The party appeared to be in closer touch with public opinion when, in 1936, it declined an invitation to talks with the Colonial Office in London which the other parties had accepted. A week later, on 21 April 1936, the party announced its support for the General Strike. Four days later the Higher Arab Committee was formed from the leadership of all the main factions. Hajj Amin was chairman and Awni Abd al-Hadi was secretary. One of the Committee's priorities was an end to Jewish immigration. Jamal later replaced Hadi as secretary following Hadi's internment at Sarafand military base in June 1936. At the same time a four-man delegation, including Jamal, were given visas to go to London for meetings at the Colonial Office to find a way of ending the strike. It is suggested that Jamal was forced to take a harder line than he wished due to pressure from more radical elements. The talks failed. On 1 October 1937 the authorities banned all Palestinian Arab nationalist organisations and Jamal went into exile.