Introduction: The Last Days of Ottoman Rule 1876-1918
PALESTINE was the name applied by Herodotus and other Greek and Latin writers to the Philistine coastland, and sometimes also to the territory between it and the Jordan Valley. Early in the Roman Empire the name Palaestina was given to the region around Jerusalem. The Byzantines in turn named the province west of the Jordan River, stretching from Mount Carmel in the north to Gaza in the south, Palaestina Prima.
ROME AND BYZANTIUM
In A.D. 70 the Roman emperor Titus suppressed a Jewish revolt in Palestine, razed Jerusalem to the ground, and destroyed its Temple. After a second Jewish revolt (A.D. 132-135) the emperor Hadrian built a new, pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem, which he called Colonia Aelia Capitolina and forbade Jews to enter. After Hadrian's reign the number of Christians living in Jerusalem rose steadily until, with the conversion to Christianity of the emperor Constantine I (died 337) and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 320 of his mother, Queen Helena, the Christian character of Jerusalem and Palestine began to predominate over the pagan. Constantine himself built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and his successors, particularly Justinian (died 565), covered the country with churches and religious monuments. The Byzantines allowed the Jews to enter Jerusalem only one day a year to weep by a stone on the site of the Temple, but in deference to Jesus' prediction in Matt. 24:2, they kept the site desolate.
ISLAM AND THE UMAYYADS
Long before the rise of Islam in the seventh century, there had been continuous intermingling between the Christian peoples of Palestine and the Arab inhabitants (some of whom were also Christians) to the south and east. At first the prophet Muhammad and his followers turned in their prayers to Jerusalem, not Mecca. According to the Koran, Muhammad was miraculously transported in nocturnal flight from Mecca to Jerusalem, whence he ascended in seven stages to the presence of God. To this day Muhammad’s spiritual journey is celebrated throughout the Muslim world on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month of the Muslim calendar. Centuries after the event, the Muslim accounts of Muhammad's ascension became a source of inspiration to Dante in the writing of the Divine Comedy.
The Arabs captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 637. To show his respect for the city, Omar (the second caliph after the death of the Prophet) accepted its surrender in person and treated its inhabitants with extraordinary clemency and moderation. In the words of Sir William Fitzgerald: "Never in the sorry story of conquest up to that day, and rarely since, were such noble and generous sentiments displayed by a conqueror as those extended to Jerusalem by Omar." Omar was anxious to identify the places associated with Muhammad's ascension. The rock from which the ascension had taken place was located with difficulty, as it lay buried under a dunghill. After cleansing the rock, Omar led his entourage (which included many Companions, i.e., close associates, of the Prophet) in prayer beside it. The call to prayer was made for the first time since Muhammad's death by Bilal, his muezzin. One of the Companions who attended the ceremony, Ubadah, was appointed by Omar as first qadi ("judge") of Jerusalem, and died in the city while holding that office. The Arabic name given to Jerusalem was al-Bait al-Muqaddas (the Holy House) in apposition to al-Bait al-Haram (the Sacred House), Mecca’s designation. The Byzantine province of Palaestina Prima became the administrative and military province (djund) of Filastin -- the Arabic name for Palestine since then.
Palestine was particularly honored by the Umayyad Arab dynasty (661-750), whose capital was Damascus. Mu'awiya (661-680), founder of the dynasty, had himself proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem. One of his successors, the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik (685-705), built the magnificent Mosque of the Dome of the Rock over the rock from which Muhammad had ascended to heaven; Adb al-Malik's son Walid (705-715) built the adjacent Mosque of al-Aqsa. The Mosque of the Dome of the Rock, a dazzling synthesis of Byzantine, Persian, and Arab architecture, is the earliest surviving Muslim monument anywhere. The area of the two mosques became known as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). The Umayyads' preference for Palestine and Jerusalem was in part politically motivated, because during the earlier decades of the dynasty Mecca and Medina were in the hands of rivals. But their attitude was also rooted in the Traditions (i.e., sayings) of the Prophet, some of the most famous of which equated Jerusalem with Mecca and Medina. It was to these Traditions that the Umayyads appealed when they urged Muslims to perform the pilgrimage at Jerusalem instead of in the two other holy cities. Thus even after Mecca and Medina came under Umayyad control in 692, the seventh Umayyad caliph, Suleiman (715-717), had himself invested with the caliphate in Jerusalem; he also built the city of Ramleh in Palestine, which he made his residence and adorned with a magnificent mosque and palace. Long after the Umayyads, the magnetic pull of Jerusalem was noted by the Persian traveler Nasir-i-Khusrau, who on visiting the city in 1047, wrote: "The people of these parts, if they are unable to make the pilgrimage of Mecca, will go at the appointed season to Jerusalem."
THE ABBASIDS
The Abbasid dynasty (750-1225), with its seat in Baghdad, succeeded the Umayyads. It reached the zenith of its power and influence within a century of its foundation. Thereafter many provinces of the empire fell under local Muslim rulers holding only nominal allegiance to the Abbasid caliph, whose role resembled that of the holy Roman emperor after the decline of his power. For the greater part of the period from the end of the ninth century until the Crusades, Palestine was governed by Muslim rulers based in Cairo.
At the height of their power, two Abbasid caliphs made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph (754-775), visited Jerusalem twice and ordered the repair of damage to the city caused by an earthquake. Al-Mahdi, the third Abbasid caliph (775-785), visited Jerusalem especially to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque. The seventh Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (813-833), ordered major restorations to be carried out in the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock under the supervision of his brother and successor, al-Mu'tasim (833-842), who was then his viceroy in Syria. So anxious were the Abbasids to be associated with Jerusalem that they ineptly substituted in inscriptions on the dome the name of al-Ma'mun for the Umayyad Abd al-Malik as the builder of the mosque.
Descriptions of Palestine in the centuries preceding the Crusades abound in the writings of Muslim and Arab geographers. Ya'kubi from Khorasan noted in 891-892 that Palestine had "a numerous population of Arabs...and a certain proportion of non-Muslims, Christians, Jews and Samaritans." Ibn-al-Fakih from Hamadhan, who wrote in 903, related the Traditions about Jerusalem and gave detailed descriptions of its mosques. Ibn-Abd Rabih (died 940) from Cordova described the Dome of the Rock as well as other Muslim sanctuaries in Jerusalem, as did Istakhri (fl. 950) from Persepolis, closely followed by ibn-Hawkal (died 977). Overshadowing all of these accounts is the work of Muqqadasi (died 986), a native of Jerusalem. He enumerated the principal products of Palestine, "among which agricultural produce was particularly copious and prized: fruits of every kind (olives, figs, grapes, quinces, plums, apples, dates, walnuts, almonds, jujubes and bananas), some of which were exported, and crops for processing (sugarcane, indigo, and sumac). But the mineral resources were equally important: chalk earth...marble from Bayt Djibrin, and sulphur mined in the Ghawr [Jordan Valley] not to mention the salt and bitumen of the Dead Sea. Stone, which was common in the country, was the most generally used building material for towns of any importance."
In the wake of the caliphs from Omar onward, pious men and women in their thousands made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Jerusalem exerted a powerful attraction on the adherents of the mystical Sufi movement from its beginnings in the eighth century. For example, Rabi'a al-Adawiyah (ca. 717-801), a woman mystic accorded first place in the list of Muslim saints, who preached a life of "penitence, patience, gratitude, holy fear, voluntary poverty and utter dependence (tawak-kul) upon God,” chose to leave her native Basra in Iraq in order to live, meditate and die in Jerusalem. In addition to ordinary pilgrims and mystics, Jerusalem attracted a steady flow of scholars: experts in Koranic exegesis and in the Traditions, theologians and grammarians who came to write and lecture in the city's grand mosques and the dozens of colleges affiliated with them.
The greatest of these scholars was al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), the leading theologian of Islam and one of its most original thinkers. Al-Ghazzali left his post as lecturer at the prestigious Nizamiyah Academy in Baghdad in 1095 to take up residence in Jerusalem, where he began to work on his magnum opus, The Revivification of the Sciences of Religion, a magisterial reconciliation of rationalism, mysticism, and legal orthodoxy which, in addition to revitalizing Islamic theology, left its mark through partial Latin translations on Jewish and Christian scholasticism. Also in Jerusalem, at the insistence of his students there, al-Ghazzali completed a concise exposition of the Muslim creed, calling it The Jerusalem Tract.
Omar had allowed Christians the undisturbed use of their churches in Jerusalem. His successors strictly maintained this policy except for some serious outbreaks of anti-Christian fanaticism in Jerusalem in 966 (in which Jews took part with Muslims), and again in 1009. Otherwise Christian pilgrimage to the holy places continued uninterrupted. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), of legendary fame, acceded to Charlemagne’s request that hostels for Christian pilgrims be established in Palestine and nuns be permitted to serve in Jerusalem.
Jews had been debarred from living in Jerusalem first by the Romans under Hadrian and then by the Christian Byzantines. In their negotiations for the surrender of the city to Omar, the Christian inhabitants probably demanded that the ban on the residence of Jews be included in the treaty of the surrender. Nevertheless, Omar's successors deviated from the terms of the treaty with regard to the Jews, and gradually allowed Jews to take up residence in the city. The first mention of a synagogue in Jerusalem after Hadrian seems to be one made by Persian traveler Nasir-i-Khusrau in 1047.
THE CRUSADES AND COUNTER-CRUSADES
Arab and Muslim rule over Palestine was interrupted by the Crusader invasion and the establishment of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187). The counter-Crusades, led by Saladin (died 1193) and his successors, persisted until 1291, when the last Frankish strongholds, Caesarea and Acre, were retaken. After their entry into Jerusalem, the Crusaders had tortured, burnt, and massacred thousands of defenseless Muslims (men, women, and children) as well as the small number of Jewish residents who had taken refuge in their synagogue. By contrast, Saladin's entry into Jerusalem in 1187, at the pinnacle of his military might, displayed the same reverence for the city and compassion for its Christian inhabitants that the caliph Omar had shown some five hundred years earlier. As Stanley Lane-Poole commented: "If the taking of Jerusalem were the only fact known about Saladin, it were enough to prove him the most chivalrous and great-hearted conqueror of his own, and perhaps of any, age."
Saladin's first task after entering Jerusalem was to cleanse the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque of defilement. For a whole week, noble and humble men alongside each other washed the walls and floors of the buildings and sprinkled them with rose water. The relatives and descendants of the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem (who had been made refugees by the Crusader conquest of the city) were given back their family properties; and where no owners could be found, the dwellings were assigned to well-known Arab clans. Saladin introduced the institution of themadrasah ("collegiate mosque") into Jerusalem and endowed one bearing his name (al-Salahiyyah). He also endowed a hospital and two hostels for scholars and mystics. The soldiers who had died in his campaign were buried outside the Gate of Mercy on the eastern side of the Haram al-Sharif (Nobel Sanctuary) by his command. In 1193 Saladin's son al-Afdal built the Magharibah Mosque near the gate of the same name on the southwest side of the Haram; this was the site where Muhammad had tethered his wondrous mount before his ascension. Al-Afdal dedicated the land outside the gate as waqf ("religious endowment") for the mosque and for pilgrims and scholars from North Africa.
Saladin and his successors, the Ayyubids, allowed Christians to reside and practice their faith in Jerusalem; and the city was kept open to Christian pilgrims from Europe, although the fear persisted for centuries that the Franks might attempt to reconquer it. The number of Jews residing in Jerusalem under the Crusaders had declined to one, a dyer, noted by the Jewish traveler Rabbi Pethahiah of Regensburg (ca. 1177). But Saladin and his successors revived the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Indeed, after the Crusades all of the lands of Islam became a haven for Jews from Europe, inasmuch as the Crusades were equally anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim.
The Crusades and counter-Crusades inspired a resurgence of intense Muslim and Arab interest in Palestine, which took three forms: (1) A host of writers and poets celebrated the religious significance and value of Jerusalem in a new literary genre known as the Books of Virtues (Fada’il). The themes of these works were the special efficacy of prayers offered in the city and the advantages of pilgrimage to it or residence and death in it. But Jerusalem was not the only place singled out for veneration. Great emphasis was laid both on Muslim tombs and shrines in different parts of the country (e.g., the tomb of Hashim, grandfather of Muhammad, at Gaza) and on sites associated with the Hebrew prophets – tombs or reputed tombs and birthplaces or spots the prophets had visited or dwelt in. (2) Pilgrimages and visits to Palestine multiplied and became a popular regional phenomenon. (3) Competition arose among Muslim rulers and affluent individuals to build public institutions (schools, hostels, soup kitchens, clinics, baths, and fountains) as endowments for the mosques and other Muslim shrines in Palestine.
This resurgence of Muslim and Arab interest in Filastin/Palestine was no passing mood in mere reaction to the Crusader threat. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, it took yet another form. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem became a central tenet of many Sufi tariqahs (“brotherhoods”). The Mosque of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (which housed the rock from which Muhammad ascended to heaven) became the site of special rituals and elevating experiences. There the mentors of thetariqahs would instruct their disciples in programs of rigorous fasting and contemplation. Special prayer sessions known asdhikrs (“recollections”) were held at which the attributes of God and the Prophet were repeatedly recollected in such variations as to induce a state of religious ecstasy. These sessions were in preparation for the climactic experience of identification, at the very site of the Prophet’s ascension, with the Prophet’s own imagined spiritual state during his ascension. For to the Sufis, Muhammad’s ascension symbolized the soul’s escape from its corporeal moorings. Palestinian and other Arab adherents of Sufitariqahs are still found today.
THE MAMELUKES
In 1260 power passed from the hands of Saladin’s descendants, the Ayyubids, to those of the Mameluke sultans of Egypt. From that date until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt of 1517, Palestine remained part of the Mameluke realm. It was the Mamelukes who drove the last Crusaders out of Palestine and who in 1260, at the battle of Ayn Jalut near Nazareth, defeated the Mongol hordes under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan saving the country from certain destruction. Except during the period of the Crusades, the administrative unit of the djund of Filastin, established by the caliph Omar, had been maintained. The Mamelukes reorganized the country administratively by dividing it into six districts: those of Gaza, Lydda, Kakun (after a village north of Lydda), Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus. These territories west of the Jordan River continued to serve as a major crossroads linking Cairo with Damascus and Aleppo, traversed as much by merchants as by administrators, pilgrims, and couriers.
The Mamelukes granted Jerusalem special favors. Several of the sultans lightened its taxes or presented splendid copies of the Koran to its mosques, while most undertook repairs and additions (e.g., colonnades and minarets) to its sanctuaries. Sultan Baibars (1260-77) built a khan, or inn, for the relief of the poor, and Sultan al-Ashraf Ka’it Bay (1468-95) rebuilt on a grand scale madrasahthat still bears his name (al-Ashrafiyyah). Muslim geographers made frequent mention of Palestine and Jerusalem during this period, among them Yakut (1179-1229) from Asia Minor; Abdul Fida (1273-1332), a descendant of Saladin’s brother; and ibn-Battuta (1304-77) from Tangiers. They recounted the references to Jerusalem in the Koran and the Traditions, and described its mosques, sanctuaries, schools, bazaars, inns, and pious foundations. Most important for Jerusalem as well as Hebron under the Mamelukes is the work written in 1495 by the qadi of Jerusalem Mujir al-Din, who also listed the names of famous Muslim scholars, soldiers, rulers, and many mystics buried in the city, in addition to the many Jerusalemites who attained high office in the service of the Mamelukes.
THE OTTOMANS
From 1516 until the end of World War I, the whole region of western Asia was part of the Ottoman Empire. The majestic superstructure of the walls encircling the Old City of Jerusalem, built by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66), attests to Jerusalems’s standing in Ottoman eyes. Equally revealing is the endowment made in 1552 by Khasseki Sultan (known in Europe as Roxelana), the favorite and queen of Suleiman. Seeking “the pleasure of Allah,” she built a complex in Jerusalem “for the poor and the needy, the weak and the distressed” that included a monastery “with fifty-five doors” and an inn together with a public kitchen, bakery, stables, and storerooms. The endowment deed specified the range of employees required to run this institution – stewards, clerks, master cooks (and apprentices), food inspectors, dishwashers, millers, handymen, and garbage collectors. It described in detail the menus to be served, the ingredients to be used, and the quantities to be cooked. For the maintenance of the establishment, it set aside the revenues from twenty-three Palestinian villages as well as those from a village in northern Lebanon, and shops and soap factories in Tripoli. Khasseki Sultan’s public kitchen and bakery were still functioning under the British Mandate.
The Ottomans scrupulously continued the Muslim tradition of tolerance toward Christian religious interests in Palestine. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem was acknowledged in the sixteenth century as the custodian of the Christian holy places, and from about the same time France became the guardian of the Latin clergy. Like earlier Muslim powers, the Ottoman Empire opened its gates to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Spain and other parts of Christendom. But the vast majority, as in the earlier centuries after the Crusades, did not choose to live in Palestine. Thus the number of Jews in Jerusalem in the first century after the Ottoman conquest dropped from 1,330 in 1525 to 980 in 1587. Even by the middle of the nineteenth century, only a few Jews had availed themselves of the opportunity to settle in the Holy Land. Those who did so lived in the four cities of special significance to Judaism: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. The Ottomans presided over a set of regulations and understandings, known as the “status quo”, that governed privileges and access rights of Jews and Christians at their respective religious sites and monuments. These regulations and understandings were based on customary practice as it had accumulated over the years. They included rights acknowledged by earlier Muslim rulers and the decisions of Muslim courts in support of these rights, as well as Christian and Jewish commitment to adhere to customary practice.
The activities of European merchants in the coastal towns of Palestine were unimpeded by the Ottomans. The agriculture and industrial products of the interior found their way to Europe via the ports of Gaza, Acre, and Jaffa. As before, the overland trade routes between Syria and Egypt passed through Palestine, while the pilgrimage routes to Mecca (whether from Cairo, Damascus or beyond) converged at the Palestinian port of Aqaba. By the mid-nineteenth century, many European powers had consulates in the country, and during the second half of the century Christian missions – Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox – proliferated along with their schools, hospitals, printing presses, and hostels. In 1892 a French company completed the building of a railroad connecting Jaffa and Jerusalem. Of all the Arab provinces in the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of the Maronite sections of Mount Lebanon, Palestine was the most exposed and accessible to Christian and European influences.
The exposure also had its disadvantages, particularly with the gradual decline of the Ottoman political and military power. The industrial revolution and the European economic penetration of the region dealt a severe blow to local crafts and industries, while increasing European political leverage against Constantinople. One much-abused avenue for such leverage was afforded by the so-called Capitulations – a system of extraterritorial privileges granted to nationals of European powers who resided in the Ottoman Empire. The early Zionist immigrants and settlers were to make full use of the Capitulations.
In 1887-88, the area that later became Mandatory Palestine was divided into three administrative units: the district (sanjak) of Jerusalem, comprising the southern half of the country, and the two northern districts of Nablus and Acre. The two northern districts were administratively attached to the province (vilayet) of Beirut, but because of its importance to the Ottomans, the district of Jerusalem was governed directly by Constantinople. The area across the Jordan River (Trans-Jordan or Jordan) was administratively separate from the Palestinian districts and formed part of the province of Syria, with Damascus as its capital. At this time the population of the three Palestinian districts was ca. 600,000, about 10 percent of whom were Christians and the rest mostly Sunnite Muslims. The Jews numbered about 25,000; the majority were deeply religious, devoting themselves to prayer and contemplation and deliberately eschewing employment or agricultural activity. Until the advent of Zionism, relations between Palestinians and Jews were stable and peaceful, mellowed by more than a millennium of coexistence and often shared adversity.
Contributing to the climate of tolerance was the reverence held by Islam for the Hebrew prophets, enhanced in the case of Palestine by the tradition of pilgrimage to biblical sites. Palestinian Muslims, more than any other Muslims, were particularly imbued with such reverence if only because they lived in continuous proximity to the sites associated with these prophets. The inscription of Jaffa Gate (the main western gate into the Old City of Jerusalem) reads: “There is no God but Allah, and Abraham is his friend.” Mosques and Muslim shrines honoring Hebrew prophets and bearing their names in Arabic were regular features of the Palestinian landscape. Perhaps unique among Muslims was the Palestinian practice of celebrating religious festivals in honor of Hebrew prophets. No less distinctive was the widespread use by Palestinians of Hebrew first names. The same tolerance is evident in the attitudes of Palestinian Muslims toward their Christian compatriots, relations with whom have been remarkably free of tension (unlike the situation in some neighboring Arab countries). It is no coincidence that the various Christian sects in Jerusalem have traditionally entrusted the keys of the Holy Sepulcher to a Palestinian Muslim family.
Although proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from the Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them. Acutely away of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history, the Palestinians saw themselves as the heirs of its rich associations. Politically their loyalty was to Constantinople, partly because the Ottoman sultan was also caliph and head of the Muslim community (ummah) and partly because they felt like citizens rather than subjects of the empire. Their feeling of citizenship derived from the fact that the Ottoman Turks had never colonized the Arab provinces in the sense of settling in them; thus among the Arabs Ottomanism had acquired the connotation of partnership between the peoples of the empire rather than that of domination by one ethnic group over another. Nevertheless, relations between the different ethnic groups within the empire became increasingly strained during the period from the turn of the century to World War I, largely under the influence of growing European nationalism. Both Arabs and Turks were affected by this climate, which strengthened the appeal of the specific ethnic and political identity of each. A powerful secondary influence in the same direction was the Arab intellectual and literary renaissance that crystallized toward the end of the nineteenth century and radiated its influence from Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut.
The promulgation of the new Ottoman Constitution in 1876 (short-lived as it was) enabled the first elections to be held to the Ottoman Parliament, in which many delegates from the Arab provinces, including Palestinians from Jerusalem, took their seats. (It is ironic that Palestinians were sitting in the Parliament in Constantinople twenty years before the Zionists held their first congress in Basel in 1897.) Arabs, including Palestinians, were appointed to high office not only in the civil service, the diplomatic corps, the judiciary, and the army, but also as ministers in the Ottoman cabinet. The “Young Turks” Revolution in 1908, which brought reformists to power, further raised Arab and Palestinian expectations, stimulating political debate and intellectual activity best exemplified in Palestine by the appearance of new journals and newspapers. Delegates from Jerusalem, Jaffa, Nablus, Acre, and Gaza were elected to the Ottoman Parliament in 1908 and 1912. But Ottoman reforms could not keep abreast of deteriorating Turkish-Arab relations. Many Arabs wanted a greater share in government. Some advocated decentralization; others spoke of Arab unity, revolt, and independence.
ZIONISM AND WORLD WAR I
Meanwhile, during the 1880s an important development in Eastern Europe began to cast its lengthening shadow on the future of the Palestinians. The phenomena of European nationalism and colonialism had inspired a national political movement known as Zionism among a growing number of East European Jewish intellectuals. The Zionists yearned to escape from Jewish minority status and the twin threats of assimilation and persecution. They saw the acquisition of territory where a Jewish sovereign state could be established as the means of national fulfillment and salvation. The ancient Jewish association with and religious attachment to Palestine were regarded as justifying its choice as the site for such a state, though some early Zionists were willing to consider alternative sites.
The Zionist decision, late in the nineteenth century, to colonize Palestine with a view to turning it into a Jewish state irrespective of the existence and wishes of its indigenous population ushered in the turbulent modern phase of Palestinian history, whose consequences are with us today. The course set by the Zionists was bound to lead to conflict and tragedy, an outcome foreseen by some Zionists leaders themselves. For Palestine, as we have seen, was not an empty land. Its inhabitants lived in a score of cities and towns, and some eight hundred villages and hamlets, built of stone. While the bulk of the population gained their living from agriculture, the townspeople engaged in commerce and the traditional crafts; some were in the civil service, others in the professions. Many of the urban rich were landlords, but members of the older families were also in the upper echelons of the civil service, the judiciary, and the professions. The Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, formed a proud and vibrant community that had already crossed the threshold of an intellectual and national renaissance. They shared and reflected the cultural and political values of the neighboring Arab metropolitan centers. For centuries they had had trade links with Europe and contact with Europeans who came as Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. For decades they had been exposed to modernizing influences as a result of the educational and medical work of European and American Christian missions. Service in the European and Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire had widened their horizons.
The Palestinians were as deeply entrenched in their country on the eve of the Zionist venture as any citizenry or peasantry anywhere. The contemporaneous photographic collection of Félix Bonfils (1831-85) and his son Adrien (1860-1929) is visual testimony to this fact. No less telling is the evidence of the many European artists and painters who visited Palestine before the advent of Zionism, e.g., William Henry Bartlett (1809-54), David Roberts (1796-1864), Edward Lear (1812-88), and William Holman Hunt (1827-1910). After all, the Palestinians’ main grievance against Constantinople was that they wanted greater recognition of their rights and more responsibility in government; they were altogether unlikely to acquiesce in the Zionist political program, which challenged their very title to their land.
The first Zionist colony in Palestine was founded in 1878, and the first wave of Zionist immigrants arrived in 1882. In the same year a French Jewish millionaire, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, began his support of Jewish colonization in Palestine. In 1896 a German Jewish millionaire, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, established a branch of his Jewish Colonization Association in Palestine, while Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew, published Der Judenstaat – a treatise that integrated prevailing Zionist ideas and outlined a program of implementation. The following year in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, which created the World Zionist Organization, the insitutional framework of subsequent Zionist diplomacy and operations. In 1901 the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund) was established in London to acquire land in Palestine that would remain inalienably Jewish and on which only Jewish labor would be employed. Between the 1880s and 1914 some thirty Zionist colonies were founded, and by 1914 the total Jewish population in Palestine had reached about eighty thousand, although the majority retained their European nationalities.
The initial phases of Zionist activity in Palestine took place in spite of the mounting alarm and opposition of the Palestinians. The Ottoman authorities repeatedly tried to legislate controls on Zionist mass immigration and land acquisition only to be frustrated by the pressure of European powers, the corruption of their own local officials, the greed of individual landowners, and Zionist ingenuity in exploiting the Capitulations system. The earliest tensions between Palestinians and Jews developed as a result of the colonizing program and declared political purposes of European Zionist immigrants. Vast estates were purchased by the central Zionist institutions from feudal absentee landlords in Beirut, over the heads of Palestinian tenants and sharecroppers.
World War I brought Britain and those Arabs who were dissatisfied with Ottoman rule into an alliance with each other. Sharif Hussein of Mecca hoped, by siding with Britain and the Western Allies against Constantinople, to win unity and independence for the Arabs at the end of the war. In July 1915 Hussein undertook a correspondence in good faith with Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner of Egypt. Concluded in 1916, the Hussein-McMahon correspondence was interpreted by the Arabs to mean that, in the post-war settlement, the British would recognize the independence of a united Arab state comprising the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. By May 1916, however, Britain, France, and Russia had reached a secret agreement according to which the bulk of Palestine was to be internationalized. Most significant for future developments was a secret letter addressed in November 1917 by Arthur James Balfour, British secretary of state for foreign affairs, to Baron Lionel Walter de Rothschild, a British Zionist, promising British support for the establishment in Palestine for a national home for the Jewish people. This document marked the historic watershed in the fortunes of Zionism. Jerusalem was captured by British and Dominion forces under the command of General Sir Edmund Allenby in December 1917. The rest of the country was occupied by October 1918. The road to the realization of Zionism lay wide open.
PALESTINE was the name applied by Herodotus and other Greek and Latin writers to the Philistine coastland, and sometimes also to the territory between it and the Jordan Valley. Early in the Roman Empire the name Palaestina was given to the region around Jerusalem. The Byzantines in turn named the province west of the Jordan River, stretching from Mount Carmel in the north to Gaza in the south, Palaestina Prima.
ROME AND BYZANTIUM
In A.D. 70 the Roman emperor Titus suppressed a Jewish revolt in Palestine, razed Jerusalem to the ground, and destroyed its Temple. After a second Jewish revolt (A.D. 132-135) the emperor Hadrian built a new, pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem, which he called Colonia Aelia Capitolina and forbade Jews to enter. After Hadrian's reign the number of Christians living in Jerusalem rose steadily until, with the conversion to Christianity of the emperor Constantine I (died 337) and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 320 of his mother, Queen Helena, the Christian character of Jerusalem and Palestine began to predominate over the pagan. Constantine himself built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and his successors, particularly Justinian (died 565), covered the country with churches and religious monuments. The Byzantines allowed the Jews to enter Jerusalem only one day a year to weep by a stone on the site of the Temple, but in deference to Jesus' prediction in Matt. 24:2, they kept the site desolate.
ISLAM AND THE UMAYYADS
Long before the rise of Islam in the seventh century, there had been continuous intermingling between the Christian peoples of Palestine and the Arab inhabitants (some of whom were also Christians) to the south and east. At first the prophet Muhammad and his followers turned in their prayers to Jerusalem, not Mecca. According to the Koran, Muhammad was miraculously transported in nocturnal flight from Mecca to Jerusalem, whence he ascended in seven stages to the presence of God. To this day Muhammad’s spiritual journey is celebrated throughout the Muslim world on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month of the Muslim calendar. Centuries after the event, the Muslim accounts of Muhammad's ascension became a source of inspiration to Dante in the writing of the Divine Comedy.
The Arabs captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 637. To show his respect for the city, Omar (the second caliph after the death of the Prophet) accepted its surrender in person and treated its inhabitants with extraordinary clemency and moderation. In the words of Sir William Fitzgerald: "Never in the sorry story of conquest up to that day, and rarely since, were such noble and generous sentiments displayed by a conqueror as those extended to Jerusalem by Omar." Omar was anxious to identify the places associated with Muhammad's ascension. The rock from which the ascension had taken place was located with difficulty, as it lay buried under a dunghill. After cleansing the rock, Omar led his entourage (which included many Companions, i.e., close associates, of the Prophet) in prayer beside it. The call to prayer was made for the first time since Muhammad's death by Bilal, his muezzin. One of the Companions who attended the ceremony, Ubadah, was appointed by Omar as first qadi ("judge") of Jerusalem, and died in the city while holding that office. The Arabic name given to Jerusalem was al-Bait al-Muqaddas (the Holy House) in apposition to al-Bait al-Haram (the Sacred House), Mecca’s designation. The Byzantine province of Palaestina Prima became the administrative and military province (djund) of Filastin -- the Arabic name for Palestine since then.
Palestine was particularly honored by the Umayyad Arab dynasty (661-750), whose capital was Damascus. Mu'awiya (661-680), founder of the dynasty, had himself proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem. One of his successors, the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik (685-705), built the magnificent Mosque of the Dome of the Rock over the rock from which Muhammad had ascended to heaven; Adb al-Malik's son Walid (705-715) built the adjacent Mosque of al-Aqsa. The Mosque of the Dome of the Rock, a dazzling synthesis of Byzantine, Persian, and Arab architecture, is the earliest surviving Muslim monument anywhere. The area of the two mosques became known as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). The Umayyads' preference for Palestine and Jerusalem was in part politically motivated, because during the earlier decades of the dynasty Mecca and Medina were in the hands of rivals. But their attitude was also rooted in the Traditions (i.e., sayings) of the Prophet, some of the most famous of which equated Jerusalem with Mecca and Medina. It was to these Traditions that the Umayyads appealed when they urged Muslims to perform the pilgrimage at Jerusalem instead of in the two other holy cities. Thus even after Mecca and Medina came under Umayyad control in 692, the seventh Umayyad caliph, Suleiman (715-717), had himself invested with the caliphate in Jerusalem; he also built the city of Ramleh in Palestine, which he made his residence and adorned with a magnificent mosque and palace. Long after the Umayyads, the magnetic pull of Jerusalem was noted by the Persian traveler Nasir-i-Khusrau, who on visiting the city in 1047, wrote: "The people of these parts, if they are unable to make the pilgrimage of Mecca, will go at the appointed season to Jerusalem."
THE ABBASIDS
The Abbasid dynasty (750-1225), with its seat in Baghdad, succeeded the Umayyads. It reached the zenith of its power and influence within a century of its foundation. Thereafter many provinces of the empire fell under local Muslim rulers holding only nominal allegiance to the Abbasid caliph, whose role resembled that of the holy Roman emperor after the decline of his power. For the greater part of the period from the end of the ninth century until the Crusades, Palestine was governed by Muslim rulers based in Cairo.
At the height of their power, two Abbasid caliphs made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph (754-775), visited Jerusalem twice and ordered the repair of damage to the city caused by an earthquake. Al-Mahdi, the third Abbasid caliph (775-785), visited Jerusalem especially to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque. The seventh Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (813-833), ordered major restorations to be carried out in the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock under the supervision of his brother and successor, al-Mu'tasim (833-842), who was then his viceroy in Syria. So anxious were the Abbasids to be associated with Jerusalem that they ineptly substituted in inscriptions on the dome the name of al-Ma'mun for the Umayyad Abd al-Malik as the builder of the mosque.
Descriptions of Palestine in the centuries preceding the Crusades abound in the writings of Muslim and Arab geographers. Ya'kubi from Khorasan noted in 891-892 that Palestine had "a numerous population of Arabs...and a certain proportion of non-Muslims, Christians, Jews and Samaritans." Ibn-al-Fakih from Hamadhan, who wrote in 903, related the Traditions about Jerusalem and gave detailed descriptions of its mosques. Ibn-Abd Rabih (died 940) from Cordova described the Dome of the Rock as well as other Muslim sanctuaries in Jerusalem, as did Istakhri (fl. 950) from Persepolis, closely followed by ibn-Hawkal (died 977). Overshadowing all of these accounts is the work of Muqqadasi (died 986), a native of Jerusalem. He enumerated the principal products of Palestine, "among which agricultural produce was particularly copious and prized: fruits of every kind (olives, figs, grapes, quinces, plums, apples, dates, walnuts, almonds, jujubes and bananas), some of which were exported, and crops for processing (sugarcane, indigo, and sumac). But the mineral resources were equally important: chalk earth...marble from Bayt Djibrin, and sulphur mined in the Ghawr [Jordan Valley] not to mention the salt and bitumen of the Dead Sea. Stone, which was common in the country, was the most generally used building material for towns of any importance."
In the wake of the caliphs from Omar onward, pious men and women in their thousands made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Jerusalem exerted a powerful attraction on the adherents of the mystical Sufi movement from its beginnings in the eighth century. For example, Rabi'a al-Adawiyah (ca. 717-801), a woman mystic accorded first place in the list of Muslim saints, who preached a life of "penitence, patience, gratitude, holy fear, voluntary poverty and utter dependence (tawak-kul) upon God,” chose to leave her native Basra in Iraq in order to live, meditate and die in Jerusalem. In addition to ordinary pilgrims and mystics, Jerusalem attracted a steady flow of scholars: experts in Koranic exegesis and in the Traditions, theologians and grammarians who came to write and lecture in the city's grand mosques and the dozens of colleges affiliated with them.
The greatest of these scholars was al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), the leading theologian of Islam and one of its most original thinkers. Al-Ghazzali left his post as lecturer at the prestigious Nizamiyah Academy in Baghdad in 1095 to take up residence in Jerusalem, where he began to work on his magnum opus, The Revivification of the Sciences of Religion, a magisterial reconciliation of rationalism, mysticism, and legal orthodoxy which, in addition to revitalizing Islamic theology, left its mark through partial Latin translations on Jewish and Christian scholasticism. Also in Jerusalem, at the insistence of his students there, al-Ghazzali completed a concise exposition of the Muslim creed, calling it The Jerusalem Tract.
Omar had allowed Christians the undisturbed use of their churches in Jerusalem. His successors strictly maintained this policy except for some serious outbreaks of anti-Christian fanaticism in Jerusalem in 966 (in which Jews took part with Muslims), and again in 1009. Otherwise Christian pilgrimage to the holy places continued uninterrupted. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), of legendary fame, acceded to Charlemagne’s request that hostels for Christian pilgrims be established in Palestine and nuns be permitted to serve in Jerusalem.
Jews had been debarred from living in Jerusalem first by the Romans under Hadrian and then by the Christian Byzantines. In their negotiations for the surrender of the city to Omar, the Christian inhabitants probably demanded that the ban on the residence of Jews be included in the treaty of the surrender. Nevertheless, Omar's successors deviated from the terms of the treaty with regard to the Jews, and gradually allowed Jews to take up residence in the city. The first mention of a synagogue in Jerusalem after Hadrian seems to be one made by Persian traveler Nasir-i-Khusrau in 1047.
THE CRUSADES AND COUNTER-CRUSADES
Arab and Muslim rule over Palestine was interrupted by the Crusader invasion and the establishment of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187). The counter-Crusades, led by Saladin (died 1193) and his successors, persisted until 1291, when the last Frankish strongholds, Caesarea and Acre, were retaken. After their entry into Jerusalem, the Crusaders had tortured, burnt, and massacred thousands of defenseless Muslims (men, women, and children) as well as the small number of Jewish residents who had taken refuge in their synagogue. By contrast, Saladin's entry into Jerusalem in 1187, at the pinnacle of his military might, displayed the same reverence for the city and compassion for its Christian inhabitants that the caliph Omar had shown some five hundred years earlier. As Stanley Lane-Poole commented: "If the taking of Jerusalem were the only fact known about Saladin, it were enough to prove him the most chivalrous and great-hearted conqueror of his own, and perhaps of any, age."
Saladin's first task after entering Jerusalem was to cleanse the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque of defilement. For a whole week, noble and humble men alongside each other washed the walls and floors of the buildings and sprinkled them with rose water. The relatives and descendants of the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem (who had been made refugees by the Crusader conquest of the city) were given back their family properties; and where no owners could be found, the dwellings were assigned to well-known Arab clans. Saladin introduced the institution of themadrasah ("collegiate mosque") into Jerusalem and endowed one bearing his name (al-Salahiyyah). He also endowed a hospital and two hostels for scholars and mystics. The soldiers who had died in his campaign were buried outside the Gate of Mercy on the eastern side of the Haram al-Sharif (Nobel Sanctuary) by his command. In 1193 Saladin's son al-Afdal built the Magharibah Mosque near the gate of the same name on the southwest side of the Haram; this was the site where Muhammad had tethered his wondrous mount before his ascension. Al-Afdal dedicated the land outside the gate as waqf ("religious endowment") for the mosque and for pilgrims and scholars from North Africa.
Saladin and his successors, the Ayyubids, allowed Christians to reside and practice their faith in Jerusalem; and the city was kept open to Christian pilgrims from Europe, although the fear persisted for centuries that the Franks might attempt to reconquer it. The number of Jews residing in Jerusalem under the Crusaders had declined to one, a dyer, noted by the Jewish traveler Rabbi Pethahiah of Regensburg (ca. 1177). But Saladin and his successors revived the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Indeed, after the Crusades all of the lands of Islam became a haven for Jews from Europe, inasmuch as the Crusades were equally anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim.
The Crusades and counter-Crusades inspired a resurgence of intense Muslim and Arab interest in Palestine, which took three forms: (1) A host of writers and poets celebrated the religious significance and value of Jerusalem in a new literary genre known as the Books of Virtues (Fada’il). The themes of these works were the special efficacy of prayers offered in the city and the advantages of pilgrimage to it or residence and death in it. But Jerusalem was not the only place singled out for veneration. Great emphasis was laid both on Muslim tombs and shrines in different parts of the country (e.g., the tomb of Hashim, grandfather of Muhammad, at Gaza) and on sites associated with the Hebrew prophets – tombs or reputed tombs and birthplaces or spots the prophets had visited or dwelt in. (2) Pilgrimages and visits to Palestine multiplied and became a popular regional phenomenon. (3) Competition arose among Muslim rulers and affluent individuals to build public institutions (schools, hostels, soup kitchens, clinics, baths, and fountains) as endowments for the mosques and other Muslim shrines in Palestine.
This resurgence of Muslim and Arab interest in Filastin/Palestine was no passing mood in mere reaction to the Crusader threat. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, it took yet another form. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem became a central tenet of many Sufi tariqahs (“brotherhoods”). The Mosque of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (which housed the rock from which Muhammad ascended to heaven) became the site of special rituals and elevating experiences. There the mentors of thetariqahs would instruct their disciples in programs of rigorous fasting and contemplation. Special prayer sessions known asdhikrs (“recollections”) were held at which the attributes of God and the Prophet were repeatedly recollected in such variations as to induce a state of religious ecstasy. These sessions were in preparation for the climactic experience of identification, at the very site of the Prophet’s ascension, with the Prophet’s own imagined spiritual state during his ascension. For to the Sufis, Muhammad’s ascension symbolized the soul’s escape from its corporeal moorings. Palestinian and other Arab adherents of Sufitariqahs are still found today.
THE MAMELUKES
In 1260 power passed from the hands of Saladin’s descendants, the Ayyubids, to those of the Mameluke sultans of Egypt. From that date until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt of 1517, Palestine remained part of the Mameluke realm. It was the Mamelukes who drove the last Crusaders out of Palestine and who in 1260, at the battle of Ayn Jalut near Nazareth, defeated the Mongol hordes under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan saving the country from certain destruction. Except during the period of the Crusades, the administrative unit of the djund of Filastin, established by the caliph Omar, had been maintained. The Mamelukes reorganized the country administratively by dividing it into six districts: those of Gaza, Lydda, Kakun (after a village north of Lydda), Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus. These territories west of the Jordan River continued to serve as a major crossroads linking Cairo with Damascus and Aleppo, traversed as much by merchants as by administrators, pilgrims, and couriers.
The Mamelukes granted Jerusalem special favors. Several of the sultans lightened its taxes or presented splendid copies of the Koran to its mosques, while most undertook repairs and additions (e.g., colonnades and minarets) to its sanctuaries. Sultan Baibars (1260-77) built a khan, or inn, for the relief of the poor, and Sultan al-Ashraf Ka’it Bay (1468-95) rebuilt on a grand scale madrasahthat still bears his name (al-Ashrafiyyah). Muslim geographers made frequent mention of Palestine and Jerusalem during this period, among them Yakut (1179-1229) from Asia Minor; Abdul Fida (1273-1332), a descendant of Saladin’s brother; and ibn-Battuta (1304-77) from Tangiers. They recounted the references to Jerusalem in the Koran and the Traditions, and described its mosques, sanctuaries, schools, bazaars, inns, and pious foundations. Most important for Jerusalem as well as Hebron under the Mamelukes is the work written in 1495 by the qadi of Jerusalem Mujir al-Din, who also listed the names of famous Muslim scholars, soldiers, rulers, and many mystics buried in the city, in addition to the many Jerusalemites who attained high office in the service of the Mamelukes.
THE OTTOMANS
From 1516 until the end of World War I, the whole region of western Asia was part of the Ottoman Empire. The majestic superstructure of the walls encircling the Old City of Jerusalem, built by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66), attests to Jerusalems’s standing in Ottoman eyes. Equally revealing is the endowment made in 1552 by Khasseki Sultan (known in Europe as Roxelana), the favorite and queen of Suleiman. Seeking “the pleasure of Allah,” she built a complex in Jerusalem “for the poor and the needy, the weak and the distressed” that included a monastery “with fifty-five doors” and an inn together with a public kitchen, bakery, stables, and storerooms. The endowment deed specified the range of employees required to run this institution – stewards, clerks, master cooks (and apprentices), food inspectors, dishwashers, millers, handymen, and garbage collectors. It described in detail the menus to be served, the ingredients to be used, and the quantities to be cooked. For the maintenance of the establishment, it set aside the revenues from twenty-three Palestinian villages as well as those from a village in northern Lebanon, and shops and soap factories in Tripoli. Khasseki Sultan’s public kitchen and bakery were still functioning under the British Mandate.
The Ottomans scrupulously continued the Muslim tradition of tolerance toward Christian religious interests in Palestine. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem was acknowledged in the sixteenth century as the custodian of the Christian holy places, and from about the same time France became the guardian of the Latin clergy. Like earlier Muslim powers, the Ottoman Empire opened its gates to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Spain and other parts of Christendom. But the vast majority, as in the earlier centuries after the Crusades, did not choose to live in Palestine. Thus the number of Jews in Jerusalem in the first century after the Ottoman conquest dropped from 1,330 in 1525 to 980 in 1587. Even by the middle of the nineteenth century, only a few Jews had availed themselves of the opportunity to settle in the Holy Land. Those who did so lived in the four cities of special significance to Judaism: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. The Ottomans presided over a set of regulations and understandings, known as the “status quo”, that governed privileges and access rights of Jews and Christians at their respective religious sites and monuments. These regulations and understandings were based on customary practice as it had accumulated over the years. They included rights acknowledged by earlier Muslim rulers and the decisions of Muslim courts in support of these rights, as well as Christian and Jewish commitment to adhere to customary practice.
The activities of European merchants in the coastal towns of Palestine were unimpeded by the Ottomans. The agriculture and industrial products of the interior found their way to Europe via the ports of Gaza, Acre, and Jaffa. As before, the overland trade routes between Syria and Egypt passed through Palestine, while the pilgrimage routes to Mecca (whether from Cairo, Damascus or beyond) converged at the Palestinian port of Aqaba. By the mid-nineteenth century, many European powers had consulates in the country, and during the second half of the century Christian missions – Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox – proliferated along with their schools, hospitals, printing presses, and hostels. In 1892 a French company completed the building of a railroad connecting Jaffa and Jerusalem. Of all the Arab provinces in the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of the Maronite sections of Mount Lebanon, Palestine was the most exposed and accessible to Christian and European influences.
The exposure also had its disadvantages, particularly with the gradual decline of the Ottoman political and military power. The industrial revolution and the European economic penetration of the region dealt a severe blow to local crafts and industries, while increasing European political leverage against Constantinople. One much-abused avenue for such leverage was afforded by the so-called Capitulations – a system of extraterritorial privileges granted to nationals of European powers who resided in the Ottoman Empire. The early Zionist immigrants and settlers were to make full use of the Capitulations.
In 1887-88, the area that later became Mandatory Palestine was divided into three administrative units: the district (sanjak) of Jerusalem, comprising the southern half of the country, and the two northern districts of Nablus and Acre. The two northern districts were administratively attached to the province (vilayet) of Beirut, but because of its importance to the Ottomans, the district of Jerusalem was governed directly by Constantinople. The area across the Jordan River (Trans-Jordan or Jordan) was administratively separate from the Palestinian districts and formed part of the province of Syria, with Damascus as its capital. At this time the population of the three Palestinian districts was ca. 600,000, about 10 percent of whom were Christians and the rest mostly Sunnite Muslims. The Jews numbered about 25,000; the majority were deeply religious, devoting themselves to prayer and contemplation and deliberately eschewing employment or agricultural activity. Until the advent of Zionism, relations between Palestinians and Jews were stable and peaceful, mellowed by more than a millennium of coexistence and often shared adversity.
Contributing to the climate of tolerance was the reverence held by Islam for the Hebrew prophets, enhanced in the case of Palestine by the tradition of pilgrimage to biblical sites. Palestinian Muslims, more than any other Muslims, were particularly imbued with such reverence if only because they lived in continuous proximity to the sites associated with these prophets. The inscription of Jaffa Gate (the main western gate into the Old City of Jerusalem) reads: “There is no God but Allah, and Abraham is his friend.” Mosques and Muslim shrines honoring Hebrew prophets and bearing their names in Arabic were regular features of the Palestinian landscape. Perhaps unique among Muslims was the Palestinian practice of celebrating religious festivals in honor of Hebrew prophets. No less distinctive was the widespread use by Palestinians of Hebrew first names. The same tolerance is evident in the attitudes of Palestinian Muslims toward their Christian compatriots, relations with whom have been remarkably free of tension (unlike the situation in some neighboring Arab countries). It is no coincidence that the various Christian sects in Jerusalem have traditionally entrusted the keys of the Holy Sepulcher to a Palestinian Muslim family.
Although proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from the Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them. Acutely away of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history, the Palestinians saw themselves as the heirs of its rich associations. Politically their loyalty was to Constantinople, partly because the Ottoman sultan was also caliph and head of the Muslim community (ummah) and partly because they felt like citizens rather than subjects of the empire. Their feeling of citizenship derived from the fact that the Ottoman Turks had never colonized the Arab provinces in the sense of settling in them; thus among the Arabs Ottomanism had acquired the connotation of partnership between the peoples of the empire rather than that of domination by one ethnic group over another. Nevertheless, relations between the different ethnic groups within the empire became increasingly strained during the period from the turn of the century to World War I, largely under the influence of growing European nationalism. Both Arabs and Turks were affected by this climate, which strengthened the appeal of the specific ethnic and political identity of each. A powerful secondary influence in the same direction was the Arab intellectual and literary renaissance that crystallized toward the end of the nineteenth century and radiated its influence from Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut.
The promulgation of the new Ottoman Constitution in 1876 (short-lived as it was) enabled the first elections to be held to the Ottoman Parliament, in which many delegates from the Arab provinces, including Palestinians from Jerusalem, took their seats. (It is ironic that Palestinians were sitting in the Parliament in Constantinople twenty years before the Zionists held their first congress in Basel in 1897.) Arabs, including Palestinians, were appointed to high office not only in the civil service, the diplomatic corps, the judiciary, and the army, but also as ministers in the Ottoman cabinet. The “Young Turks” Revolution in 1908, which brought reformists to power, further raised Arab and Palestinian expectations, stimulating political debate and intellectual activity best exemplified in Palestine by the appearance of new journals and newspapers. Delegates from Jerusalem, Jaffa, Nablus, Acre, and Gaza were elected to the Ottoman Parliament in 1908 and 1912. But Ottoman reforms could not keep abreast of deteriorating Turkish-Arab relations. Many Arabs wanted a greater share in government. Some advocated decentralization; others spoke of Arab unity, revolt, and independence.
ZIONISM AND WORLD WAR I
Meanwhile, during the 1880s an important development in Eastern Europe began to cast its lengthening shadow on the future of the Palestinians. The phenomena of European nationalism and colonialism had inspired a national political movement known as Zionism among a growing number of East European Jewish intellectuals. The Zionists yearned to escape from Jewish minority status and the twin threats of assimilation and persecution. They saw the acquisition of territory where a Jewish sovereign state could be established as the means of national fulfillment and salvation. The ancient Jewish association with and religious attachment to Palestine were regarded as justifying its choice as the site for such a state, though some early Zionists were willing to consider alternative sites.
The Zionist decision, late in the nineteenth century, to colonize Palestine with a view to turning it into a Jewish state irrespective of the existence and wishes of its indigenous population ushered in the turbulent modern phase of Palestinian history, whose consequences are with us today. The course set by the Zionists was bound to lead to conflict and tragedy, an outcome foreseen by some Zionists leaders themselves. For Palestine, as we have seen, was not an empty land. Its inhabitants lived in a score of cities and towns, and some eight hundred villages and hamlets, built of stone. While the bulk of the population gained their living from agriculture, the townspeople engaged in commerce and the traditional crafts; some were in the civil service, others in the professions. Many of the urban rich were landlords, but members of the older families were also in the upper echelons of the civil service, the judiciary, and the professions. The Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, formed a proud and vibrant community that had already crossed the threshold of an intellectual and national renaissance. They shared and reflected the cultural and political values of the neighboring Arab metropolitan centers. For centuries they had had trade links with Europe and contact with Europeans who came as Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. For decades they had been exposed to modernizing influences as a result of the educational and medical work of European and American Christian missions. Service in the European and Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire had widened their horizons.
The Palestinians were as deeply entrenched in their country on the eve of the Zionist venture as any citizenry or peasantry anywhere. The contemporaneous photographic collection of Félix Bonfils (1831-85) and his son Adrien (1860-1929) is visual testimony to this fact. No less telling is the evidence of the many European artists and painters who visited Palestine before the advent of Zionism, e.g., William Henry Bartlett (1809-54), David Roberts (1796-1864), Edward Lear (1812-88), and William Holman Hunt (1827-1910). After all, the Palestinians’ main grievance against Constantinople was that they wanted greater recognition of their rights and more responsibility in government; they were altogether unlikely to acquiesce in the Zionist political program, which challenged their very title to their land.
The first Zionist colony in Palestine was founded in 1878, and the first wave of Zionist immigrants arrived in 1882. In the same year a French Jewish millionaire, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, began his support of Jewish colonization in Palestine. In 1896 a German Jewish millionaire, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, established a branch of his Jewish Colonization Association in Palestine, while Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew, published Der Judenstaat – a treatise that integrated prevailing Zionist ideas and outlined a program of implementation. The following year in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, which created the World Zionist Organization, the insitutional framework of subsequent Zionist diplomacy and operations. In 1901 the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund) was established in London to acquire land in Palestine that would remain inalienably Jewish and on which only Jewish labor would be employed. Between the 1880s and 1914 some thirty Zionist colonies were founded, and by 1914 the total Jewish population in Palestine had reached about eighty thousand, although the majority retained their European nationalities.
The initial phases of Zionist activity in Palestine took place in spite of the mounting alarm and opposition of the Palestinians. The Ottoman authorities repeatedly tried to legislate controls on Zionist mass immigration and land acquisition only to be frustrated by the pressure of European powers, the corruption of their own local officials, the greed of individual landowners, and Zionist ingenuity in exploiting the Capitulations system. The earliest tensions between Palestinians and Jews developed as a result of the colonizing program and declared political purposes of European Zionist immigrants. Vast estates were purchased by the central Zionist institutions from feudal absentee landlords in Beirut, over the heads of Palestinian tenants and sharecroppers.
World War I brought Britain and those Arabs who were dissatisfied with Ottoman rule into an alliance with each other. Sharif Hussein of Mecca hoped, by siding with Britain and the Western Allies against Constantinople, to win unity and independence for the Arabs at the end of the war. In July 1915 Hussein undertook a correspondence in good faith with Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner of Egypt. Concluded in 1916, the Hussein-McMahon correspondence was interpreted by the Arabs to mean that, in the post-war settlement, the British would recognize the independence of a united Arab state comprising the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. By May 1916, however, Britain, France, and Russia had reached a secret agreement according to which the bulk of Palestine was to be internationalized. Most significant for future developments was a secret letter addressed in November 1917 by Arthur James Balfour, British secretary of state for foreign affairs, to Baron Lionel Walter de Rothschild, a British Zionist, promising British support for the establishment in Palestine for a national home for the Jewish people. This document marked the historic watershed in the fortunes of Zionism. Jerusalem was captured by British and Dominion forces under the command of General Sir Edmund Allenby in December 1917. The rest of the country was occupied by October 1918. The road to the realization of Zionism lay wide open.
Introduction: From the British Occupation to the Great Palestine Rebellion 1918-1935
THE end of World War I brought bitter disappointment and a pervasive sense of foreboding to the Palestinians, as news spread of the secret agreements between the Western powers and particularly of the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinians were terrified by the prospect of a Jewish national home in their country. This was what they had suspected to be the aim of Zionism since the 1880s, but in spite of its weakness the Ottoman government had itself, at least, been opposed to Zionism. Now the paramount imperial power in the world, Great Britain, had taken Zionism under its wing. The wording of the Balfour Declaration added insult to injury by referring to the Palestinians as the "non-Jewish communities," even though they constituted 92 percent of the population. The Palestinians categorically rejected the proposition that Jewish association with Palestine in biblical times gave contemporary European Zionists a political title that overrode the Palestinians' birthright to their ancestral homeland. They were outraged at the cynicism of Britain in giving their country to a third party. Their disillusionment and feeling of betrayal were all the greater because of Britain's wartime promises to Sharif Hussein and the Arab wartime alliance with Britain against Constantinople.
THE POSTWAR SETTLEMENT AND THE MANDATE SYSTEM
In June 1919 the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations were signed. The future of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire was ostensibly to be governed by Article 22 of the covenant, emanating from the lofty Wilsonian principle of self-determination. Article 22 stipulated that the well-being of the Arab provinces was "a sacred trust of civilization." The communities inhabiting them were to be recognized as "independent nations" subject to the rendering of administrative assistance by a Mandatory. The wishes of the communities themselves would be "a principal consideration" in the selection of the Mandatory.
The Palestinians reacted to the Balfour Declaration and the proposed Mandate system by identifying themselves more closely with the pan-Arab national movement led by Sharif Hussein, whose son Emir (Prince) Faisal had installed himself in Damascus. In July 1919 Palestinian delegates attended a pan-Arab congress there at which Faisal was elected king of a state comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria. Faisal's rule in Damascus was short-lived; by July 1920 he had been deposed by the French, who proceeded to impose their rule on Lebanon and Syria in accordance with an agreement made with Britain.
During 1919-20 the Palestinians pinned their hopes on the King-Crane Commission of Inquiry, dispatched in May 1919 by President Woodrow Wilson to ascertain the wishes of the region's inhabitants regarding their future. In August 1919 the commission reported on the depth of Palestinian fear of Zionism. Noting that the Zionists "looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine by various forms of purchase," they recommended serious modification of the Zionist program. Nothing came of the report, however, because of Wilson's disabling illness and the Senate's failure to endorse his signature on the Versailles treaty, which resulted in the disengagement of the United States from the postwar settlement. The following April riots broke out in Palestine, in which five Jews were killed and two hundred wounded. A British commission of inquiry attributed the riots to Palestinian "disappointment at the non-fulfillment of the promise of independence" and "fear of economic and political subjection" to the Zionists.
Undeterred, the British proceeded forthwith to implement the Balfour Declaration while still in military occupation of the country and before their status there had been approved by the League of Nations. They inaugurated their regime by dismissing the Palestinian mayor of Jerusalem for opposing the Zionist program. The Mandate for Palestine was "allotted" to Britain in April 1920 by the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference at San Remo without any reference to the wishes of the Palestinians. In July the British appointed Sir Herbert Samuel, an avowed Zionist, as first high commissioner of a new civilian administration. Without Palestinian consent, Samuel announced in August a quota of 16,500 Jewish immigrants for his first year in office. In May 1921 Palestinian protests against Zionist mass immigration resulted in new riots, in which 46 Jews were killed and 146 wounded. Another British commission of inquiry confirmed that fear of the consequences of Zionist immigration was the reason for the disturbances.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians had begun to organize themselves. Christian-Muslim associations were formed throughout the country. These associations in turn elected delegates to a national congress, which elected an Executive Committee. Three national congresses were held between January 1919 and August 1922. All three congresses expressed fear of Zionist political objectives and rejected the Balfour Declaration. Demanding the cessation of Zionist mass immigration and of the transfer of Palestinian land to Zionist ownership, they called for a government on the basis of proportional representation. In 1921 and 1922 the Palestinians also sent three delegations to London to present their case.
In 1922 the British government issued a White Paper (statement of policy) explaining its objectives in Palestine: The intention was not that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish national home, but that such a home should be established inPalestine; Jewish immigration would continue and be regulated by "the economic absorptive capacity" of the country; Transjordan would lie outside the scope of the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinians rejected the 1922 White Paper because Zionist mass immigration, which had a declared political objective, would be regulated solely by economic criteria - the very reason why the Zionist leadership accepted it.
The terms of the Mandate were approved by the League of Nations Council in July 1922 without the consent of the Palestinians. Article 2 made the Mandatory responsible for placing the country under such "political, administrative, and economic conditions as [would] secure the establishment of the Jewish national home . . . and the development of self-governing institutions." Article 4 allowed for the establishment of a Jewish agency, representing the Jews of the world, to advise the Mandatory. Article 6 stipulated that the Mandatory, "while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population [were] not prejudiced, [should] facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions ... and close settlement by the Jews on the land."
The Mandate as a whole was seen by the Palestinians as an Anglo-Zionist condominium and its terms as instruments for the implementation of the Zionist program; it had been imposed on them by force, and they considered it to be both morally and legally invalid. But the isolation of the Palestinians was complete inasmuch as all the neighboring Arab countries had themselves recently fallen under foreign occupation – Lebanon and Syria under the French, and Transjordan and Iraq under the British (Egypt had been under British occupation since 1882). The one factor that favored the Palestinians was the status quo in regard to the demography and ownership of the country: The Palestinians constituted the vast majority of the population and owned the bulk of the land. Inevitably the ensuing struggle centered on this status quo. The British and the Zionists were determined to subvert and revolutionize it, the Palestinians to defend and preserve it; hence the Palestinians' instinctive and persistent feeling that they were on the defensive, reacting to the actions and designs of their opponents. The main issues of conflict concerned mass immigration, land transfer, and representative government. The Zionists and the British clearly aimed at using mass immigration to change the demographic balance between Zionist immigrants and Palestinian residents, and land transfer to change the landownership balance between the two groups. The Palestinians' only hope lay in the application of representative government. But neither the British nor the Zionists at any time during the Mandate accepted the democratic principle as applicable to Palestine, because its observance would have entailed acknowledging the presence of a Palestinian majority, which would have prejudiced the development of the Jewish national home.
The years between 1923 and 1929 were relatively quiet, with a dramatic decline in Zionist immigration occurring in 1927-28. But the Jewish national home continued to grow. From 1918 to 1929 some sixty new Zionist colonies were established, Zionist landownership rose from 2.04 percent of the total area of the country (in 1919) to 4.4 percent (in 1929), and the proportion of the Jewish population rose (largely through mass immigration) from 9.7 percent to 17.6 percent during the same period.
MOUNTING PALESTINIAN FEARS
The pent-up feelings of the Palestinians were released by two contemporaneous events. In August 1929 the Jewish Agency (envisaged in the Mandate), representing all the Jewish communities in the world and including both Zionists and non-Zionists, was created. The appearance of some world-famous Jewish figures as members of the Jewish Agency increased Palestinian fears of Zionist political influence on Britain. The other event was an unprovoked and unprecedented political demonstration held at the Wailing Wall adjacent to the Muslim Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). The demonstrators were militant right-wing secular members of the Zionist Revisionist Party, so called because it advocated the "revision" of the Mandate to include the forcible colonization of Transjordan in addition to Palestine. (This party had been founded in 1925 by the Polish Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky.) The demonstration was perceived as evidence of Zionist designs on the mosques of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa inside the sanctuary, and gave rise to violent clashes in which 133 Jews were killed and 339 wounded.
In March 1930 the report of a British commission of inquiry attributed the 1929 clashes to the fact that the Palestinians "have come to see in Jewish immigration not only a menace to their livelihood but a possible overlord of the future." Another report, issued in October by a British expert, established that there was no additional land available for agricultural settlement by new Zionist immigrants. The British government immediately issued a White Paper that took cognizance of the findings of these two reports and advocated greater attentiveness to Palestinian grievances. Not unexpectedly, the Zionist leadership fiercely criticized the 1930 White Paper, fearing that a British policy of evenhandedness would militate against the achievement of Zionist goals. Bowing to Zionist pressure, the British government virtually withdrew the White Paper in February 1931 and dispatched to Palestine a new high commissioner, General Sir Arthur Wauchope, with instructions to accelerate the development of the Jewish national home.
The retraction of the 1930 White Paper convinced the Palestinians that there could be no legal redress of their grievances, and that expert recommendations based on direct knowledge of the facts and merits of their case could always be annulled by the exercise of Zionist political leverage at the center of power in London. In December 1931 a Muslim congress held in Jerusalem and attended by delegates from twenty-two Muslim states warned against the political dangers of British pro-Zionist policies. Unconcerned, the British replied by sponsoring Zionist mass immigration (mostly from Poland) in ever-larger numbers. Between 1931 and 1936, sixty-four more Zionist colonies were established. Zionist landownership rose from 4.5 percent to 5.4 percent of the total area of the country, and the proportion of the Jewish population rose (largely through immigration) from 17.8 percent to 29.5 percent.
The escalating rate of immigration (30,000 in 1933, 42,000 in 1934, and 61,000 in 1935) was what finally produced panic and desperation among the Palestinians. The massive convergence on Palestine of Jewish immigrants was, of course, a result of the serious deterioration of living conditions for Jews in many European countries. It was also a result of the Zionists' deliberate channeling of Jewish immigration toward Palestine to the exclusion of other countries of possible refuge with much greater absorptive capacities. This Zionist policy played into the hands of powerful conservative elements in the United States and the British dominions, who felt absolved of any moral obligation to liberalize their own immigration legislation so as to allow the reception of substantial numbers of Jewish refugees. It also caused the Jewish leadership in these countries to conform to Zionist preferences and refrain from exerting any pressure on their own governments in the direction of liberalization. Thus Zionist pre-World War II immigration policies in effect kept the doors of the United States and the British dominions virtually closed to large-scale Jewish immigration, and thereby drastically reduced the number of Jews who could have left Europe before it was too late. Paradoxically, the opposition on religious grounds (particularly in Poland) of the mainstream Jewish religious leadership to Jewish emigration under Zionist auspices further inhibited prewar Jewish emigration from Europe, even to Palestine.
The leadership of the Palestinian national movement had passed in 1933 to Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti (highest Muslim dignitary) of Jerusalem. Haj Amin was coming under increasing pressure from both popular mass sentiment and the intelligentsia for his failure to stand up to the British. The political restlessness of the country was reflected in the rapid formation of five new Palestinian political parties during the period from 1932 to 1935. A general consensus was emerging that political and diplomatic efforts were ineffective and only an armed rebellion directed at Britain could yield results. An early expression of this view led to the death in action against the British, in November 1935, of a Muslim preacher and reformer from Haifa named Izz al-Din al-Qassam, together with his comrades. Theirs was the first Palestinian guerrilla operation, and al-Qassam and his comrades became national martyrs overnight.
In December 1935 in a last-minute attempt to allay Palestinian fears, the British administration in Palestine suggested the formation of a local Legislative Council composed of twenty-eight members, fourteen of whom would be Palestinians. Although the Palestinians then constituted 70.5 percent of the total population, they were willing in their despair to accept the proposal. But when the British House of Commons proceeded to debate the matter, the government was forced to withdraw the Legislative Council proposal because of vehement attacks by pro-Zionist members of Parliament, who argued that it would hinder the development of the Jewish national home. For the Palestinians this was final confirmation, if any were needed, that there could be no appeal, in their case, to the British sense of fair play.
Introduction: The Great Rebellion 1936-1939
By early May 1936 the Palestinians were in open rebellion. National Committees, which would become the organizational base of the rebels, had been established in April in all the Palestinian towns and larger villages. Before the end of the month, all five Palestinian political parties had united to form the Arab Higher Committee under the chairmanship of Haj Amin al-Husseini. The pressure on Haj Amin to act now intensified. On May 8 he summoned a conference in Jerusalem of all the National Committees. Raising the cry of "No taxation without representation," the conference called for civil disobedience and a general strike to protest British pro-Zionist policies
THE FIRST PHASE
The rebellion endured for three years and fell into three phases. The first phase lasted from May 1936 to July 1937, with the general strike continuing for the first six months of it, from May until October 1936. The strike was strictly observed and brought commercial and economic activity in the Palestinian sector to a standstill. Unrest spread to the countryside, where villagers took up arms and engaged the British security and military forces in open guerrilla warfare.
The British rushed in reinforcements and demolished parts of the Old City of Jaffa as a punitive measure. Some volunteers from the Arab countries came to the aid of the Palestinian rebels, but the brunt of the fighting was borne by the Palestinians themselves. The British intensified their military operations, simultaneously sending a commission of inquiry under Lord Peel to ascertain the causes of the rebellion. The heads of the neighboring Arab states then appealed to the Arab Higher Committee to call off the general strike and appear before the Peel CommisCommission. On October 11, the Arab Higher Committee acceded to their request. There was a short lull in the rebellion between November 1936 and January 1937 while the commission toured the country. But tension subsequently mounted again until it exploded in unprecedented violence in July 1937.
THE SECOND PHASE
The second phase of the rebellion lasted from July 1937 until the fall of 1938. What triggered the new escalation of violence was the publication in July 1937 of the Peel Commission's report, which unhesitatingly declared that "the underlying causes of the disturbances" were two: the desire of the Palestinians for independence, and their "hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish national home." The report then proceeded to recommend the partition of the country into a Jewish state, a Palestinian state to be incorporated by Transjordan, and enclaves reserved for the Mandatory.
The Palestinians were outraged by these recommendations. They could not accept the legitimization of a Zionist political title in Palestine. Hundreds of Palestinian villages would fall within the Jewish state, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would become a subject minority in it. The Jewish state would acquire about 33 percent of the total area of the country (including the fertile regions of Galilee, all Palestinian- owned, and the coastal plain from the Lebanese border to Jaffa, owned equally by the two communities) at a time when Jewish ownership did not exceed 5.6 percent of Palestine.
The Palestinians feared the confiscation of their land inside the Jewish state through the application of the guidelines governing the activities of the Jewish National Fund. They resented the incorporation of the proposed Palestinian state into Transjordan. Above all they were horrified at the commission's recommendation that they be forcibly transferred, if necessary, out of the Jewish state. Even the commission itself sounded sheepish in its summing up of the report when it hypocritically argued, "Considering what the possibility of finding a refuge in Palestine means to many thousands of suffering Jews, is the loss occasioned by partition, great as it would be, more than Arab generosity can bear?"
The British responded to the escalating Palestinian resistance by determining to break its backbone. Seizing the opportunity afforded by the assassination, in September 1937, of a British senior administrator in Nazareth by Palestinians, they promptly outlawed the Arab Higher Committee in addition to all Palestinian political parties and organizations. They arrested scores of Palestinian leaders and exiled five principal ones to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. They threw thousands of Palestinians into special "detention camps"; among those detained were professionals, civil servants, clergymen, students, and farmers. In combat they used their air force, tanks, and heavy artillery against the rebels. Military tribunals passed summary sentences, including death by hanging, for the possession of arms. Collective punishment was imposed on towns and villages by blowing up entire residential quarters, closing schools, levying fines in kind or cash, and billeting troops at the expense of the residents.
At the same time, the British built up Jewish military strength. In cooperation with the Jewish Agency's secret army, the Haganah, they organized, trained, and armed a special force called the Jewish Settlement Police (JSP), which by early 1939 was 14,000 strong. In June 1938 they created an Anglo-Jewish unit called the Special Night Squads (SNS) for "special operations" against Palestinian villages. It was during this second phase of the rebellion that the new tactics of throwing grenades and planting time bombs in crowded marketplaces were introduced into the Zionist-Palestinian conflict by the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), the military branch of the right-wing Zionist Revisionist Party.
In 1938 alone the number of Palestinians killed in action by the British was conservatively estimated at not less than one thousand, while 54 Palestinians were executed by hanging, and 2,463 Palestinians were detained. The Palestinian population at the time did not exceed one million.
In spite of all these measures the Palestinian rebellion continued unabated during 1938, and several areas of the country, including the Old City of Jerusalem, fell under rebel control. Palestinian resistance elicited strong expressions of support and solidarity from the neighboring Arab countries. In September 1937 a popular pan-Arab congress, held in Bludan, Syria, endorsed Palestinian opposition to partition. Palestinian demands were again endorsed in October 1938 by the Arab Parliamentarians' Congress and the Arab Women's Congress, both held in Cairo.
THE THIRD PHASE
The third phase of the rebellion extended from the fall of 1938 until the summer of 1939. The British seemed to be moving on two tracks. As early as April 1938, they had dispatched another commission of inquiry, under the chairmanship of Sir John Woodhead, ostensibly to study the technical aspects of the implementation of partition. The Woodhead Commission's report was published in November 1938, and its general conclusion was that partition was not practicable. Nevertheless, the British planned an all-out offensive to crush the rebellion. They brought in massive new reinforcements and transferred the administration of the country to military commanders. The ensuing engagements were the severest so far. Fifty-five Palestinians were executed by hanging, at least twelve hundred Palestinians were killed in action by the British, more than twice as many Palestinians were detained as in the previous year (1938), and five times as many rifles were seized from Palestinians in a drive to achieve their total disarmament.
With the publication of the Woodhead report, the British government also announced its intention to hold a general conference in London to be attended both by Zionist and Palestinian leaders and by representatives of the neighboring Arab countries. However, the British shortsightedly vetoed the participation in the conference of paramount Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, chairman of the still-outlawed Arab Higher Committee. After escaping arrest in September 1937, Haj Amin had been directing the rebellion from his exile in Lebanon. The London Conference lasted from 7 February to 27 March 1939 without reaching a settlement satisfactory to the Zionists and Palestinians.
In May the British government published a new White Paper in which it undertook to implement, irrespective of Palestinian and Zionist objections, the policy enunciated: Britain's obligations to the Jewish national home had been substantially fulfilled; indefinite mass Jewish immigration to and land acquisition in Palestine would contradict Britain's obligations to the Palestinians; within the next five years, 75,000 more Jews would be allowed into the country, after which Jewish immigration would be subject to "Arab acquiescence"; land transfers would be permitted in certain areas, but restricted and prohibited in others, to protect the Palestinians from landlessness; and an independent unitary state would be established after ten years conditional on favorable Palestinian-Jewish relations.
Many Palestinians were positively impressed with the White Paper, but could not accept it because of the ambiguity of the phrase "Arab acquiescence" in relation to continuing future Jewish immigration, and the conditional nature of the promised independent unitary state. The Zionists accused the British of "appeasing" the Arabs and consulting their strategic interests in the area due to the deterioration of the international situation. The 1939 White Paper marked the beginning of the end of the Anglo-Zionist entente ushered in by the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Introduction: From the London Conference to the UN Partition Recommendation 1939-1947
The period between the end of the Great Rebellion and the events of 1948 unfolded in two phases: the war years (1939-45) and the two years immediately following (1945-47). During the first phase the Palestinians were generally quiescent. Their passivity was due partly to the brutality and thoroughness of the British repression of the rebellion, and partly to the relatively reassuring provisions of the 1939 White Paper on Zionist immigration and land acquisition. Other contributing causes were the economic war boom brought about by an increased level of expenditure on the part of British and Allied forces deployed in the Middle East, and the pronouncements made by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in favor of postwar Arab unity - a cause popular with Palestinian and other Arab nationalists.
THE WAR YEARS
Throughout the war years, and in spite of the 1939 White Paper and Eden's pronouncements, the British continued to outlaw the Arab Higher Committee as well as all other Palestinian political activity. The principal Palestinian leaders remained in hiding, exile, or under arrest; Haj Amin al-Husseini himself escaped jail and worse (the British plotted his assassination in exile) by fleeing in 1941 to the Axis countries, where he spent the remaining war years. In addition, the British continued to hold thousands of Palestinian activists in detention camps, and persevered in their campaign to disarm the Palestinian population. Nevertheless, some eight thousand Palestinians volunteered for service with the British forces in North Africa.
In October 1944 a preparatory conference on Arab unity was held at Alexandria, Egypt. Five months later, in March 1945, the League of Arab States was born. Comprising Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen, the Arab League pledged itself to safeguard the Arab character of Palestine. As the war drew to a close, many Palestinians looked to the League for help in the coming days.
Anglo-Zionist relations were generally strained during the war as a result of the 1939 White Paper. But the Nazi threat, and especially the North African German expedition against Egypt, muted rising Zionist hostility toward Britain, except in the case of the dissident terrorist group known as the Stern Gang. Some 27,000 Jews from Palestine enlisted in the British forces, and the Jewish industrial base in Palestine was vastly expanded to meet British war requirements.
Both at the beginning of the first phase and throughout the second phase, the 1939 White Paper's policy on immigration was a particular target of Zionist political strategy. In the early war years, the Zionist leadership tried to undermine the White Paper policy by organizing the admission of unauthorized immigrants without reference to the White Paper quota, i.e., instead of using it fully. The British reply was to offer the illegal immigrants alternative accommodation outside Palestine for the duration of the war, but this measure served only to infuriate the Zionists. The Zionists charged that Britain's White Paper policy prevented the rescue of Jews from the barbarities of Nazism; as already noted, however, Zionist prewar immigration strategy itself had not focused on pressuring countries with vast absorptive capacities (e.g., the United States and the British dominions) to admit the maximum number of Jewish refugees from Europe. Moreover, the tragic fact was that the rapid pace of military developments in Europe, and their horrendous consequences for the Jewish communities there, later prevented the Zionist leadership from using even the visas authorized by the White Paper for the five-year period from April 1939 to April 1944. For this reason the British decided in November 1943 to extend the five-year period beyond April 1944 without obtaining Palestinian "acquiescence" as prescribed in the White Paper. In the event, the 75,000 visas permitted by the White Paper were not all used until December 1945.
The most significant indication of the breakdown of the Anglo-Zionist entente occurred during the war years. Early in the war the Zionist leadership in Palestine decided to attempt to activate the American Jewish establishment as a means of mobilizing the United States government on behalf of the Zionist cause. Representing the Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion traveled to the United States, where in May 1942 a conference was held at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. Attended by leading American Zionists, the Biltmore Conference called for the establishment of all Palestine as a "Jewish commonwealth"—a euphemism for "Jewish state." This maximalist program constituted a frontal assault on the 1939 White Paper and even on the Balfour Declaration, which had merely envisioned a Jewish national homein Palestine. As the tide of war receded from Egypt and North Africa, but before Hitler had been defeated, the Irgun and the Stern Gang opened a campaign of terror against the British. Increasing Zionist aggressiveness toward Britain reflected not only increasing American support, but also the steady cumulative shift in the local balance of power - in favor of the Zionists and at Palestinian expense - that had been taking place under British protection over the preceding three decades. If the Zionists were dependent on the British in 1917, this was no longer the case in 1945.
THE ZIONIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST BRITAIN
The second, postwar phase (1945-47) saw the Zionists escalating their confrontation with the British and setting the pace for events that led to London's decision to refer the Palestine problem to the United Nations as a prelude to British abandonment of the Mandate.
The Zionist campaign against the British was waged on three levels: the diplomatic, the military, and the propagandistic. On the diplomatic level, the Zionists found a powerful ally in President Harry Truman soon after his inauguration. Pressuring London first on the immigration issue, Truman repeatedly (in August 1945, June 1946, July 1946, and October 1946) called for the immediate unconditional admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jewish immigrants, thus altogether undermining the 1939 White Paper. Truman's motivation has been attributed to humanitarian considerations, but these should presumably also have been reflected in concurrent and equally urgent efforts to set an example by admitting a proportionate number of Jewish immigrants into the United States.
In August and October 1946, Truman went a step further in his support of Zionism by endorsing a Jewish Agency plan for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. The plan envisaged the incorporation into the Jewish state of some 60 percent of Palestine at a time when Jewish landownership in the country did not exceed 7 percent. Truman's support for these Zionist territorial ambitions destroyed whatever hopes remained (and they were not plentiful) for negotiated federal or cantonal solutions that the British were proposing at the time.
The Zionist military offensive took the form of terrorist attacks against British personnel and installations. The attacks relied heavily on the use of mines and other explosives, as well as on assassination. It was during this second phase that the car bomb was first introduced, by the Irgun, into urban warfare. For some time the Haganah participated in these attacks, mostly against installations (bridges, harbor and communications facilities, etc.), but decided in the early summer of 1946 to desist for fear of massive British retaliation. The Haganah's military cautiousness toward the British did not, however, prevent it from exploiting the political and psychological advantages resulting from the continued operations of the Irgun and Stern Gang.
Actually, British reaction to the Zionist terror campaign was surprisingly mild, on account of three factors: Britain's war weariness, Zionist support in the United States, and Britain's reluctance to employ the same measures against a European community that it had resorted to against the Asian Palestinians. Thus, for example, the Arab Higher Committee had been outlawed for eight years, but members of the Jewish Agency were arrested on 29 June 1946 only to be released on November 5 of the same year. The restraint of British countermeasures is perhaps best illustrated by the casualty figures for each side: 169 British killed as compared with 37 Zionist terrorists—probably a unique ratio, in the annals of rebellion, of casualties suffered by security forces in relation to those of the insurgents.
The most effective propaganda tactic used by the Zionist leadership during the postwar phase was the staging of large-scale illegal immigration. Dozens of ships (often unseaworthy) were loaded with Jewish refugees at various European ports and directed by special units of the Haganah toward the shores of Palestine. If they succeeded in evading the British naval patrols, another blow would be struck at the 1939 White Paper; if the British intercepted them, this action could be (and was) presented to the world as callously depriving the wretched remnants of the concentration camps of their only hope of survival.
But the war was at an end, and the survivors of the concentration camps had been removed from their horrible surroundings and put under humane Allied care. There was ample opportunity for countries genuinely concerned on humanitarian grounds to contribute to the alleviation of the survivors' plight by lifting the restrictions on refugee immigration across their own borders. The British government had already reneged in November 1945 on its 1939 White Paper promises by allowing continued Jewish immigration into Palestine (after the exhaustion of the five-year quota) at a monthly rate of fifteen hundred, in spite of the clear absence of Palestinian "acquiescence."
ENTER THE UNITED STATES
The Palestinians and the neighboring Arab countries viewed these developments with growing alarm. Early hopes that American policy would be evenhanded were based on a meeting held at the Suez Canal in February 1945 between President Franklin Roosevelt and King ibn-Saud of Saudi Arabia. At the meeting Roosevelt had assured ibn-Saud that the United States would take no action on the Palestine problem that "would be hostile to the Arabs." Yet within a matter of months President Truman opened his campaign against the 1939 White Paper and soon thereafter declared his sponsorship of Zionist territorial demands. By so doing he began the "dialogue of the deaf" on Palestine that has continued to this day between Washington and the Arab world, and gratuitously launched the Arabs on their path of alienation from the United States.
Although now organized in the Arab League, the Arab countries were far from capable of effective collective action. The League itself was a loose confederal association still very much in its infancy. The dynasties of Saudi Arabia and Egypt were in conflict with those of Iraq and Transjordan. The ruler of Transjordan had dynastic claims in republican Syria and Lebanon. It was not until 1946 that Syria and Lebanon rid themselves of the last French troops left over from the former Mandatory regime. Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan were all tied to Britain by unequal treaties that considerably circumscribed their power to act in the military, diplomatic, and economic fields. Although Iraq had been producing oil for some time, its oil revenues were minimal as a result of inequitable agreements with Western oil companies. Saudi Arabia was still on the threshold of oil production. Nevertheless, the League countries were all deeply concerned about developments in Palestine. Their publics instinctively sympathized with the Palestinian cause and demanded government action in its support.
Throughout the postwar phase, the cornerstone of Arab League strategy was to pressure Britain to adhere to the 1939 White Paper. This pressure was exerted mainly through quiet diplomacy and negotiations. Some Arab countries (as well as Arab public opinion in general) demanded economic sanctions against Western oil interests in retaliation for American pro-Zionist policies; but no official Arab consensus was ever reached on the subject. Inside Palestine, Arab League strategy was to avoid involvement in the fighting between the Zionists and the British, to encourage conciliation between Palestinian factions, and to support the reconstituted Arab Higher Committee, which the British finally permitted to function again in 1945. The League also set up an agricultural fund to advance credit to Palestinian farmers and thereby curb Zionist land acquisition. In sharp contrast to Zionist strategy, there was a total absence on the Arab side of any military preparedness or planning. The first time the Arab League seriously faced this question was in September 1947, though even then the measures decided on were altogether inadequate. Arab inattention to the military dimension resulted largely from a misplaced belief that Britain would not abdicate its responsibilities as the Mandatory power in Palestine.
But the British were caught at the point of intersecting pressures generated by Washington and the Zionists on the one hand, and the Arab League on the other. They were now harvesting the crop sown with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Reluctant to crush the Zionist rebellion, and unable to implement either the 1939 White Paper policy (because of Zionist opposition) or partition (because of Palestinian and Arab opposition), they were rapidly reaching the end of their tether. At first they tried to coopt the United States into serious joint decision-making on Palestine as a means of tempering the American bias in favor of Zionism. In November 1945 they suggested the formation of an Anglo-American committee of inquiry as well as another joint team of experts to follow up on the committee's findings. This effort failed, however, because President Truman endorsed only those recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee's report (issued in May 1946) that supported the Zionist viewpoint. And the joint team's plan for a federal solution of the Palestine problem (issued in July 1946), which neither the Arabs nor the Zionists accepted, was dealt a final blow by Truman's endorsement in August 1946 of the Zionist plan for partition. When another plan, put forward in February 1947 by Britain and based on the concept of provincial autonomy, was also rejected by both Zionists and Arabs, the British referred the whole matter to the United Nations.
By now it had become abundantly clear that a partition plan providing for the establishment of a Jewish state in the greater part of Palestine was the only solution acceptable to the Zionists. It had been equally clear for a decade that such a "solution" was abhorrent to the Palestinians for the same reasons that had spurred them to fight their bitter fight against partition in 1937-39. Only Britain stood in the way of a direct collision between the two protagonists.
Meeting in a special session in April and May of 1947, the United Nations General Assembly decided on the dispatch to Palestine of yet another commission of inquiry: the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). In September the new committee produced a majority report endorsing partition and a minority report recommending a federal solution. On 29 October 1947 Britain indicated that it would leave Palestine within six months if no settlement agreeable to both Zionists and Palestinians were reached. Britain was getting out of the way.
Introduction: Civil War and the Destruction of the Palestinian Community: November 1947 - May 1948
INTRODUCTION
THE Palestine problem was now rapidly approaching its catastrophic climax. On 29 November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recommending the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, and a special international regime (corpus separatum) for Jerusalem and its environs; an economic union would be set up between the Jewish and Palestinian states. The Palestinians and other Arabs were as stunned as the Zionists and their sympathizers were jubilant. The very reactions of each side belied the claim that partition was a compromise solution.
PALESTINIAN OPPOSITION TO PARTITION
The member states that championed and endorsed partition did so in the full knowledge of bitter Palestinian and Arab opposition to it. The Palestinians had lost some four thousand lives fighting partition from 1937 to 1939. Since its creation the Arab League had been warning against partition. The UN partition plan was based on the Zionist plan that President Truman had endorsed as early as August 1946. From the Palestinian perspective, partition was Zionist in provenance and conception, and tailored to meet Zionist needs and demands. That the UN resolution won 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions and one delegation absent, was largely due to the enormous pressure brought to bear by the United States (including the personal intervention of President Truman) on member states to vote for it. To be sure, the Soviet Union voted for partition also, but only in order to end British rule in Palestine. Significantly, no African or Asian state voted in favor except Liberia and the Philippines. India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan all voted against, while China abstained. Many Latin American countries (including Mexico) abstained. Even the Canadian representative was heard to say that his country supported partition "with a heavy heart and many misgivings." The United Kingdom coyly abstained.
Partition was seen by the Palestinians as imposing unilateral and intolerable sacrifices on themselves. The reasons for their opposition were the same as in 1937, except that the UN partition plan gave the proposed Jewish state 50 percent more territory than the 1937 plan had. The area of the Jewish state according to the UN plan would actually be larger than that of the proposed Palestinian state (5,500 square miles as compared with 4,500 square miles) at a time when the Jews constituted no more than 35 percent of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. Within the proposed Jewish state, Jewish landownership did not in fact exceed 600 square miles out of the total area of 5,500 square miles. Nearly all the citrus land (equally divided in ownership between Jews and Palestinians), 80 percent of the cereal land (entirely Palestinian-owned), and 40 percent of Palestinian industry would fall within the borders of the proposed Jewish state. Jaffa, the Palestinian state's major port on the Mediterranean, would be altogether cut off from its hinterland, and Gaza would lose its traditional links with the wheatlands of the Negev. Hundreds of villages would be separated from communal fields and pastures. The Palestinian state would lose direct access both to the Red Sea and to Syria. The economic union between the two states, on which partition had been postulated, was known beforehand to be impracticable. The patchwork of subunits into which partition would divide the country bore little relationship to the human and social realities on the ground.
The Palestinians failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust (the ultimate crime against humanity, committed in Europe by Europeans), and recalled that Zionism was born in the 1880s, long before the advent of the Third Reich. They failed to see why it was not fair for the Jews to be a minority in a unitary Palestinian state, while it was fair for almost half of the Palestinian population - the indigenous majority on its own ancestral soil - to be converted overnight into a minority under alien rule in the envisaged Jewish state according to partition.
The injustice of the UN partition resolution was further exposed in Palestinian and Arab eyes by the General Assembly's rejection of relevant draft resolutions proposed by the Arab delegates before the vote on partition. The Arab delegates pleaded that the International Court of Justice be consulted on whether the General Assembly was "competent to enforce or recommend the enforcement" of partition against the wishes of the majority of a country's population. The draft resolution to that effect was defeated in the Ad Hoc Committee by a 21 to 20 vote. Another draft resolution, proposing that all UN member states participate in alleviating the plight of Jewish refugees in Europe "in proportion to their area, economic resources . . . and other relevant factors," was not carried in a 16 to 16 vote (with 25 abstentions). In the circumstances the Palestinians and other Arabs felt that they were not bound by the partition resolution, which in any case was a nonmandatory recommendation by the General Assembly.
ZIONIST PREPARATIONS FOR WAR
As early as May 1942 the Zionist leadership had begun preparations to convert the whole of Palestine into a Jewish state, a policy embodied in the Biltmore Program. The Zionists were all the more capable of implementing a plan envisaging a Jewish state in part (albeit the greater part) of Palestine, i.e., partition. They had paid careful attention to the balance of power between themselves and the Palestinians. They had evolved strategies to offset and diminish the Palestinian quantitative advantage, and had foreseen a sequence of stages leading to the desired revolution in the local status quo. The classic exposition of these policies was made in 1932 by Chaim Arlosoroff, director of the Political Department in the Jewish Agency Executive. The European background of the Zionist immigrants and the Zionist leadership's ability to tap the professional, diplomatic, and financial resources of the Jewish communities in the industrialized Western countries stood the Zionist venture in good stead. By 1944 the government statistician in the Palestine administration could say: "The Jewish economy of Palestine is . . . radically different from the Arab economy and is in fact not very dissimilar from that of the United Kingdom."
Military organization was a high Zionist priority. The main armed force was the Haganah (Defense) under the command of the Jewish Agency. The Haganah had evolved in the early days of the Mandate as an offshoot of the pre-Mandatory Hashomer (Watchman), itself descended from the secret societies of Czarist Russia. In 1947 the Haganah had had a continuous existence of at least thirty years. Although officially it was a secret, illegal paramilitary organization, the British not only tolerated the Haganah but assisted it both directly and indirectly. The 14,000-man Jewish Settlement Police, for example, a force trained and supported by the British, became virtually the training cadre for Haganah reservists. By 1946 the Haganah had grown into a relatively formidable force; the Anglo-American Committee reported Haganah strength to be about 62,000. In spite of repeated acts of Zionist terrorism (including Haganah attacks) against British security forces, Britain left the Haganah unscathed. So self-confident was the Haganah command that, in a memorandum submitted to the Anglo-American Committee on 25 March 1946 in Jerusalem, it said:
As far as the strength of the Arabs in Palestine is concerned, we are in possession of well-founded information. There is no doubt that the Jewish force is superior in organization, training, planning and equipment, and that we ourselves will be able to handle any attack or rebellion from the Arab side without calling for any assistance from the British or Americans. If you accept the Zionist solution [partition and a Jewish state in the greater part of Palestine] but are unable or unwilling to enforce it, please do not interfere, and we ourselves will secure its implementation.
The Zionist leadership began detailed military planning as early as 1945 in anticipation of the coming showdown. In a statement to his biographer, David Ben-Gurion confirmed that "the major preparations to convert Haganah into an army were begun three years before the birth of the state." On a special visit to the United States in 1945, Ben-Gurion (then chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive), called together nineteen leading American Jewish figures and persuaded them to contribute to the wholesale purchase of military industrial machinery being sold as scrap at the end of the war. The machinery was smuggled into Palestine under the Mandate and became the nucleus of a heavy Jewish military industry.
In May 1946 the Haganah developed a strategy embodied in the so-called May 1946 Plan, in which the central concept was that of "counteraction." Such action was to be of two kinds: "warning" action generally confined to the area of the enemy's own operation, and "punitive" action unrestricted in its geographical scope. Because of inherent "difficulties," counteraction would not always be aimed at the specific Palestinian perpetrators of a previous action. Therefore, the human targets to be sought should be Palestinian political and military leaders, those who financed them, and those who incited them ("e.g., journalists") in addition to those who had carried out actual operations. The objective should be to "inflict physical harm," take the individuals in question "hostage," or "liquidate them." The material targets should be "clubs, cafes, and other meeting places, communication centers, flour mills, water plants and other vital economic installations." Villages, urban residential quarters, and farms used for planning operations or as bases for attack and withdrawal should be surrounded and occupied. "Everything possible in them should be burned and the houses of those who had incited or participated in operations should be blown up."
Soon after the UN partition decision, work began on a new plan, Plan Dalet (D). The objective of Plan Dalet was to take over and control the area of the proposed Jewish state. "It was obvious," in the words of Haganah historians, "that no Jewish colony outside the Jewish state - according to the UN partition resolution - would be abandoned or vacated and that the Haganah would do everything to organize their resistance." Within the Jewish state proper, Palestinian villages that resisted "should be destroyed ... and their inhabitants expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state." A similar strategy would be applied to the towns. "Palestinian residents of urban quarters which dominate access to or egress from the towns should be expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state in the event of their resistance." Outside the Jewish state, towns such as Qalqilyah and Tulkarm should be occupied; Acre, Nazareth, Lydda, Ramleh, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Hebron should all be put under siege. "The inhabitants of Jaffa should be imprisoned within their municipal boundaries and not dare to leave them." All the villages between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem should be occupied. All the Palestinian quarters of West and East Jerusalem, as well as all the environs of the city, should be conquered.
PALESTINIAN AND ARAB COUNTERMEASURES
On their side, the Palestinians had to start from scratch in reorganizing themselves. The 1946 report of the Anglo-American Committee, which estimated Zionist military strength to be ca. 62,000, made no mention of Palestinian military forces. The Palestinians looked to the Arab League to counterbalance Zionist military preponderance. But the league suffered from the constraints and divisiveness already noted. Its first tentative move to meet Palestinian defense needs was made in September 1947 when it formed the Technical Military Committee, headed by an Iraqi former chief of staff, General Ismail Safwat, to report on Palestinian defense requirements. Safwat's first report, submitted on October 8, was somber and realistic. He accurately assessed Zionist strength and asserted that the Palestinians possessed nothing remotely comparable to the Zionist forces "in manpower, organization, armament or ammunition." Urging the Arab states to "mobilize their utmost strength" promptly and form a general command, he warned that the Palestinians were in dire straits. The only Arab League reaction to Safwat's urgings was the allocation on October 15 of one million pounds sterling to the Technical Committee. On November 27, just before the UN partition vote, Safwat again warned: "It is well nigh impossible to overcome the Zionist forces with irregulars .... the Arab countries cannot afford a long war.... " He pleaded with the Arab countries to "ensure superiority in numbers and materiel and act with maximal speed."
The Arab League was loath to confront Britain, which had emphasized that it would remain solely responsible for the administration of Palestine until the end of the Mandate on 15 May 1948. At the same time a certain wishful thinking prevailed in many Arab capitals (a lingering residue of trust in Western liberalism) that somehow the justice of the Palestinian cause would be recognized and the Western powers would not allow the worst to befall the Palestinians. But with the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Palestine, the Arab countries could no longer postpone action, particularly after the UN partition resolution.
In December 1947 the Arab League decided to supply the Technical Military Committee with ten thousand rifles and to put at its disposal a force of three thousand irregulars. The latter were to form a volunteer Arab Liberation Army (ALA) composed of members from various Arab countries, among them five hundred from Palestine. After training in Damascus, ALA contingents would be sent to the threatened Palestinian areas. The formation of the ALA was the Arab League's compromise measure between exclusive reliance on diplomacy and Western good intentions on the one hand, and the serious action urged by Safwat on the other.
Since the UN partition vote in November, fighting had been escalating dramatically in Palestine. By January 1948 the Irgun and the Stern Gang had introduced the use of car bombs (originally directed against the British), and by March 1948 Palestinian irregulars were paying their opponents back in kind. Haganah attacks on villages and residential quarters were answered by Palestinian attacks on Zionist colonies, and vice versa. By 10 January 1948 the number of killed and wounded on both sides stood at 1,974.
Although militarily inferior, the Palestinians resisted firmly. This was partly a measure of their desperation and partly an effect of the infiltration from Syria of small ALA contingents during the period from January to March, which bolstered Palestinian strength and raised morale. But the real reason for the Palestinians' ability to hold their ground was that the military operations of the Haganah were still being conducted within the framework of the May 1946 Plan, i.e., the Zionist leadership had not begun to implement Plan Dalet. The Zionists were inhibited from doing so primarily because Plan Dalet required a high degree of Haganah mobilization, and the greater its mobilization the greater the chances of a confrontation with Britain, which claimed to be the de jure authority throughout the country until May 15.
Meanwhile, the appearance of a military stalemate in Palestine, the rising casualties on both sides, and the increasing involvement of ALA units in the fighting were having a considerable political impact in Washington and at the United Nations. A trend away from partition began to crystallize in March in the form of a call by the Truman administration for the General Assembly to reconsider the partition plan and to recommend the installation of a trusteeship regime instead. The American proposal created great alarm among the Zionists, who bitterly denounced it. Their alarm was all the greater because their line of communication with President Truman, their paramount champion, had broken down.
TRUMAN INTERVENES
For several months Truman had refused to meet with any American Zionist leader as a result of the intense pressure exerted on him by American Zionists since the partition resolution. How intense this pressure must have been to so alienate Truman is perhaps indicated by the fact that 1948 was a presidential election year. On March 8 Truman declared his own candidacy in the presidential elections. On March 18 he finally agreed to meet the veteran British Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann had been sent to the United States by the Zionist leadership in Palestine for precisely this kind of contact, at the highest level of government.
The meeting between Truman and Weizmann took place secretly at the White House. Although Truman had approved his State Department's recommendation of trusteeship, he may not have fully grasped its implications. The Zionists were at a crossroads. There were only two months to go until the end of the Mandate. If the trusteeship proposal (which the Arab League accepted) received the full backing of the American president, this could mean the indefinite postponement of the establishment of the Jewish state. Moreover, Plan Dalet had been completed and was awaiting implementation. British evacuation was progressing steadily, as was Zionist military mobilization. The end of the Mandate on May 15 would leave a juridical vacuum, which the Arab countries could use to their advantage. The Jewish state had to be made an accomplished fact before then. But without the implementation of Plan Dalet, the Jewish state could not be established. What the Zionist leaders needed to know at first hand was the American president's own attitude toward the establishment of a Jewish state in these circumstances.
President Truman did not disappoint Weizmann. As he informs us in his memoirs: "When he [Weizmann] left my office I felt that he had reached a full understanding of my policy and that I knew what he wanted." And as Abba Eban confirms: "The President gave his visitor a specific commitment. He would work for the establishment and recognition of a Jewish state of which the Negev would be a part." There can be little doubt that Weizmann promptly sent the news to Tel Aviv and that the Zionist leadership there had little difficulty in understanding its significance.
On March 19, the day after the Truman-Weizmann meeting, the United States chief delegate to the United Nations Security Council, Warren Austin, unaware of this meeting and its outcome, proposed that action be suspended on the partition plan and the General Assembly convene to discuss the trusteeship solution. The Arab countries, equally unaware of the Truman-Weizmann meeting, welcomed with relief the American trusteeship proposal, and the Arabic press celebrated the occasion. But Safwat, chairman of the Military Committee, in command of the Arab Liberation Army, had no such illusions. With his eyes on the ground in Palestine, he warned on March 23: "The operational initiative in most of Palestine is in Zionist hands .... Our relatively stronger garrisons in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa are strictly on the defensive .... "
PLAN DALET
Plan Dalet went into effect during the first week of April. Its many subsidiary operations continued to unfold with devastating cumulative impact during the remaining six weeks of the Mandate. Some of these operations dovetailed with one another in a single region. Others took place concurrently in different parts of the country. Psychological offensives designed to induce civilians to flee were orchestrated with the military operations; the former involved broadcasting by radio or loudspeakers (carried in vehicles) and spreading rumors by word of mouth or leaflets.
Six major operations were launched in April. Two of them, Operations Nachshon (April 5-15) and Harel (April 15-20), were designed to occupy and destroy the Palestinian villages along the whole length of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, thus splitting in two the central mass (according to the UN partition plan) of the Palestinian state. Palestinian villagers and irregulars fought desperately along the entire highway. A dramatic battle developed for the hilltop village of Castel, some five miles west of Jerusalem. The Palestinians fought under their charismatic commander Abd aI-Qadir al-Husseini, and the village changed hands several times. Abd aI-Qadir was killed on April 8 as he led a successful counterattack. On the following day, while the Castel battle was still in progress, Jrgun and Stern Gang units perpetrated the massacre of 245 civilian inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin, about three miles from Castel. The Deir Yassin massacre was one of the more gruesome instances of "competition" between the Labour-dominated Haganah (in charge of Plan Dalet) and the right-wing Revisionist Irgun. Meanwhile, the ALA field commander, Fawzi al-Qawukji, opened a diversionary attack against the colony of Mishmar Haemek, southeast of Haifa; the attack was repulsed. Arab public opinion reacted with horror and alarm to these events.
On April 10 the Palestine Committee, a high-level political coordinating body set up by the Arab League, met to consider the three disasters that had just occurred: the death of Abd aI-Qadir and the subsequent fall of Castel, the massacre at Deir Yassin, and Qawukji's defeat at Mishmar Haemek. For the first time, the assembled leaders gave serious consideration to the need for intervention by their regular army units in the wake of the failure of the Palestinian and ALA irregulars. But many more disasters were to follow before the Arab leaders would take their courage in their hands.
On April 18, in spite of their insistence on being the de jure authority in the country until the end of the Mandate, the British suddenly announced their withdrawal from Tiberias. This retreat paved the way for the conquest of Tiberias on the same day by the Haganah, and Tiberias became the first town to fall under Haganah control. Thousands of refugees streamed in panic into exile in Transjordan and Syria, creating a wave of shock and anger throughout the Arab world. Then on April 21 the British announced their withdrawal from Haifa; the Haganah promptly launched Operation Misparayim for the conquest of that city, which fell on April 22-23. Haifa was the first of the three major Palestinian cities (the other two being Jaffa and Jerusalem) to be conquered by the Haganah. Many more thousands of panic-stricken refugees fled either by sea to Lebanon and Egypt or overland across the Lebanese border.
During the last week of April, three other major operations were launched within the framework of Plan Dalet in different parts of the country: (1) Operation Chametz (April 25) to isolate and conquer Jaffa and the surrounding villages; (2) Operation Jevussi (April 26) to conquer the Palestinian residential quarters in West and East Jerusalem outside the Old City, as well as the villages in the northern and eastern suburbs; and Operation Yiftach (April 28) to conquer the whole of eastern Galilee.
The Irgun anticipated Operation Chametz by launching its own offensive against Jaffa. By the end of April, the combined Haganah-Irgun offensives had completely encircled Jaffa, forcing most of the remaining civilians to flee by sea to Gaza or Egypt; many drowned in the process. A desperate attempt at resistance by a Palestinian ALA unit that penetrated into Jaffa was unsuccessful.
Operation Jevussi achieved its objectives within the city limits of West and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian residential quarters of Katamon, Talbiyya, the German Colony, the Greek Colony, Upper Bak'a, and Lower Bak'a, all in West Jerusalem, were conquered. Their inhabitants were driven into exile in Ramallah and Bethlehem, or across the Transjordanian border. The British, as the de jure authority, continued to hold certain enclaves in Jerusalem and to fly the Union Jack over the official residence of the high commissioner on the hill just south of the city, historically and appositely known as the Hill of Evil Counsel. Operation Jevussi was unsuccessful in the suburban villages to the north (Nabi Samu'il) and east (Tur), where Palestinian and ALA irregulars put up a stout resistance.
Operation Yiftach opened its first phase with the conquest of villages in the neighborhood of the Galilean town of Safed.
The pattern of attack in all three operations was the same: intensive, indiscriminate bombardment with mortars, of which the Haganah had an abundant supply, followed by coordinated attacks using infantry and armored cars. Great reliance was placed on simultaneous psychological warfare. The Palestinian collapse resulted from bad leadership, totally inadequate civil defense arrangements, and military disparity in planning, numbers, and firepower. By the end of April the Palestinian community was badly mangled. Tens of thousands of refugees were on the trek overland, with thousands more in transit at sea. The Arab governments could no longer ignore the pressure of public opinion on them to send their regular armies to help the Palestinians.
On April 30 Arab League leaders held a meeting in Amman, to which they summoned the chiefs of staff of their armies for counsel regarding the turn of events in Palestine. This was the very first such meeting of the Arab military heads. Accurately assessing Zionist strength, they estimated that the minimum force required to overcome the Haganah would be six divisions and six air squadrons. The political leaders, however, were unable or unwilling to bring themselves to believe this appraisal. Evidently, they still preferred to hope for a last-minute intervention by the Western powers, and to think that a mere show of force by their regular armies would bring it about. Therefore, they regarded the assessment of their military experts as exaggerated and unwarranted. They still could not contemplate intervention by the Arab armies before the formal end of the Mandate on May 15. And when the time for intervention came, a force less than half the minimum considered necessary by the military heads was all that was sent.
Meanwhile, the Haganah command pressed on with the business of Plan Dalet. On May 8-9 Operation Maccabi was launched to occupy and destroy the remaining villages in the central plain between Ramleh and Latrun. On May 11-12 the town of Safed was conqueredj its inhabitants fled to Syria and Lebanon. The town of Beisan met the same fate on May 12 its inhabitants fled to Transjordan and Syria. On the same day Operation Barak was launched in the south to occupy and destroy the villages leading to the Negev. The inhabitants of these villages were driven into the Hebron hills.
Not until May 12 did Egypt, the strongest Arab country, agree to military intervention. Finally, its prime minister, bowing to Muslim and Arab public opinion, secured parliamentary approval for Egypt's intervention. The other Arab countries that had already agreed to intervene were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan.
But the Arab countries' decision to intervene came too late if it was meant to prevent the destruction of the Palestinian community. It was also too late to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state.
On May 13 Chaim Weizmann wrote President Truman a letter asking for recognition of the Jewish state. On May 14 the British high commissioner left his official residence in Jerusalem on his way home to peaceful retirement in England. The new state came into existence at one minute after midnight Palestine time, or 6:01 P.M. Washington time. By 6:11 P.M. President Truman had recognized Israel.
Thus were sown the seeds of the Palestinian diaspora and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Legal and Historical Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel
ReplyDeleteBefore examining the all-important international legal decisions by the Supreme Allied Powers, made at San Remo in 1920, and confirmed by the Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne which incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration, including the Faisal Weizmann Agreement, it is useful to trace back a few years to get a sense of the legal and political environment that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, leading up to these significant legal and diplomatic events that both emerged from historical roots and went on to shape Jewish contemporary history.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration
The history of the international legal turning point for the Jewish people begins in 1917. World War I was exposing a growing need of Jews dispersed all over the world to have a "national home". Thus, in 1917 Prime Minister David Lloyd George expressed to the British War Cabinet that he "was convinced that a Jewish National Home was an historic necessity and that every opportunity should be granted to reconstitute the Jewish State". This ultimately led to Great Britain issuing, on 2 November 1917, a political declaration known as the "Balfour Declaration". This Declaration stated that:
Legal and Historical Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel
ReplyDeleteBefore examining the all-important international legal decisions by the Supreme Allied Powers, made at San Remo in 1920, and confirmed by the Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne which incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration, including the Faisal Weizmann Agreement, it is useful to trace back a few years to get a sense of the legal and political environment that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, leading up to these significant legal and diplomatic events that both emerged from historical roots and went on to shape Jewish contemporary history.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration
The history of the international legal turning point for the Jewish people begins in 1917. World War I was exposing a growing need of Jews dispersed all over the world to have a "national home". Thus, in 1917 Prime Minister David Lloyd George expressed to the British War Cabinet that he "was convinced that a Jewish National Home was an historic necessity and that every opportunity should be granted to reconstitute the Jewish State". This ultimately led to Great Britain issuing, on 2 November 1917, a political declaration known as the "Balfour Declaration". This Declaration stated that: