He was captured on the Caucasus front and spent three years in a prisoner of war camp in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.

[1] In Krasnoyarsk, he edited a newspaper in handwritten Arabic called Nakatullah [Camel of God] and translated Ernst Haeckel's Die Weltraethsel ("The Riddles of the Universe") into Turkish.

[3] Al-Aref attended the Nebi Musa religious festival in Jerusalem in 1920 riding on his horse, and gave a speech at the Jaffa Gate.

According to Benny Morris, he said "If we don't use force against the Zionists and against the Jews, we will never be rid of them",[4] while Bernard Wasserstein wrote "he seems to have cooperated with the police, and there is no evidence that he actively instigated violence".

[2] In fact, "Zionist intelligence reports of this period are unanimous in stressing that he spoke repeatedly against violence".

[2] In Damascus, al-Aref became a deputy to the General Syrian Congress and with Hajj Amin and others formed al-Jam'iyya al-'Arabiyya al-Filastiniyya (Palestinian Arab Society).

[2] He returned to Jerusalem late in 1920 after being pardoned by the new British High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, but the government refused to allow his newspaper to reopen.

[2] In 1921, he was appointed as a district Officer of the British administration by the Civil Secretary, Colonel Wyndham Deedes.