Pre-1918 Palestinian Demographic, Economic and Political Development’ Category
Introduction
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
Behind the Arab-Israel conflict a yawning ideological dichotomy separates Zionists and Arab Palestinian nationalists, each adopting a divergent historical interpretation of the socio-political landscape in pre-1918 Palestine.
Zionists assert that prior to their immigration, Palestine was desolate and under-populated and that much of the arable land in the plains remained untilled while other areas were malarial swamp. With backbreaking labour and overcoming malarial disease they started to drain the swamps and convert abandoned land to being highly productive.
In contrast Arab Palestinian nationalists assert:
- Palestine was not desolate and without population;
- Indigenous Arabs occupied and worked the land from time immemorial;
- Jewish immigration and land purchases pushed Arab fellahin off the land and forced them to move to the towns where they were compelled to change their lifestyles and find alternative employment if they were so able.
Neither scenario is devoid of some element of truth.
Geography, politics and demographics of the region all undoubtedly shaped the outcome of the struggle being played out between the opposing Jewish and Arab interests but other influences operating internationally influenced the local scene.
In addition, cultural differences between Jews and Arabs began to play a highly significant role in generating the animus and hostility which characterised the emerging political landscape.
To enable readers to weigh and evaluate the respective claims and counterclaims, a clearer understanding of the various factors which bear on their validity is an essential prerequisite, and they are here summarised:
Settled Population Affected by Topography and Marauders
The coastal plains being ipso facto vulnerable to marauding Bedouin tribes were more or less desolate and unproductive:
- The Northern coastal plain – was swamp-like and malaria-ridden as was the land around the Hula lake and the Lake of Galilee;
- The Southern coastal plains – were inundated with sand dunes
- To the extent that such land was capable of being cultivated, wild marauding Bedouin tribes present in the area discouraged any permanent rural settlement or agricultural development.
As a consequence:
- Arab urban and rural settlements were to be found mainly in the hill country west of the Jordan River in Judea and Samaria and parts of the Galilee, avoiding the coastal plain.
- Jews, prior to acquiring and developing the barren coastal plains, had a significant urban presence in and around Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safad and Jaffa and in other smaller towns.
This subject is examined in greater detail in Section 1 below
Aside from these conditions there were a number of other factors external to Palestine which also contributed to the complex dynamics of the region.
Egyptian Population Migrations into Palestine – increased the indigenous Arab population beyond its natural birth rate.
The migrants included:
- those fleeing from compulsory military service 1839 – 1849 in the Egyptian army;
- deserters from the Egyptian army following its the withdrawal from Palestine after a ten year military occupation; and
- those seeking to avoid forced labour in the construction of the Suez Canal 1861-1871.
Section 2 below expands this point
Foreign Diplomatic Political and Economic Pressure on Ottoman Independence
The Ottoman government, (seated at the ‘Sublime Porte’ or entry to the Sultan’s Palace in Constantinople – now Istanbul) referred to by Europeans as the ‘Porte’, was subject to strong European pressure and influence. This was exerted through:
- exploitation of the ‘Capitulations’ – provisions in international agreements between European states and the Ottoman government granting trade preferences and customs concessions – extended well beyond their originally intended scope. The term ‘Capitulations’ is derived from the Italian ‘capitula’ meaning a chapter or paragraph in the agreement
(see Section 3.a below); and
- restructuring the financial loan arrangements for the repayment of the enormous Ottoman debts owed to the Europeans incurred by the former in fighting the Crimean War and the suppressing of ethnic uprisings in the Empire. (Section 3.b)
European Political and Financial Pressure Induced Changes in Ottoman Internal Policy
These changes included
- the opening of its domestic markets to foreign investment in general;
- reform of its land ownership, registration and land taxation systems. (Section 3.c.ii); and
- modernisation of its civilian administrative structure and military organisation (Section 3.d).
all of which caused changes in the loci centres of power of the Palestinian Arab elites’ and brought social and economic consequences in the welfare of the fellah (See Section 4. below)
Internal Changes within the Ottoman Empire Created Further Opportunities for European Intrusion.
These changes resulted in Non-Ottoman citizens being permitted to acquire land freely without obtaining a special permit. This stimulated Christian religious institutions to acquire property in the Holy Land (see Section 5.a). Religious European and Yemenite Jews were also drawn to return to Eretz Yisrael by their ethnic, cultural and religious roots and their belief of an immanent messianic appearance (see Section 5.b).
However, the most powerful force leading to a Jewish return to Eretz Yisrael lay in European anti-Semitism. In Rumania and Russia, this was overtly violent (pogroms) and in Western Europe, notwithstanding the removal of legal obstacles to Jewish assimilation in France and Germany, was covert and discriminatory; in the Dreyfus affair there was even a conspiracy.
These latter events and Jewish attempts to convert them into a positive force supporting Jewish nationalism in the Zionist movement are examined in Chapter V.
1. General Topography and Population
Monday, September 29th, 2008
Several adverse characteristics prevailing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shaped the economic and social conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean region: under-population, marauding Bedouin clans, poverty, malarial sickness and lack of investment in efficient and scientific land utilisation.
The many descriptions of the region provided by travellers and foreign consuls at the time were generally not grounded on hard data or academic research. They failed to take into consideration that conditions which prevailed in some parts of Palestine did not pertain in others. In examining its economic and political development, Palestine must be divided into
- four longitudinal regions paralleling the Mediterranean Sea: (i) the coastal plain, (ii) the hilly region (the Negev and the south) (iii) Judea and Samaria in the central region and (iv) the Galilee in the north;
- the Jordan Valley which lies to the east of the Galilee and includes the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee (Tiberias) which forms part of the Great Rift Valley;
- the hills of Transjordan.
(see Y. Karmon, Israel: A Regional Geography, John Wiley & Sons London, 1981)
These regions differed from one another in respect of the ethnic origin, population growth and decline, agricultural development and economic vitality.
- To the extent that land in the coastal and other plains was capable of being cultivated, wild marauding Bedouin tribes present in these areas discouraged any permanent rural settlement or agricultural development. Consequently the lower flat lying areas were more or less desolate and unproductive. In addition:
- the Northern and central coastal plains were swamp-like and malaria-ridden as was the land around the Hula lake and the Lake of Galilee;
- the Southern coastal plains were inundated with sand dunes;
- Consequently, Arab urban and rural settlements tended to avoid the coastal plains and were to be found mainly in the hill country west of the Jordan River in Judea and Samaria and parts of the Galilee,
- Jews, prior to acquiring and developing the barren coastal plains, had a significant urban presence in and around Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, Safad and Jaffa and in other smaller towns.
a. The Land and Its Indigenous Rural Population
For many centuries, travellers to Palestine described it as sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely neglected – an expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. European consuls located in Jerusalem and Cairo during the 18th and 19th centuries confirmed these opinions.
Mark Twain, who had visited the Holy land in 1867, described it as
“[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds – a silent mournful expanse… Desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action… We never saw a human being on the whole route…there was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country” (Twain “Innocents Abroad” cited in Bard Myths and Facts AICE 2001, p. 30)
The Report of the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission quotes what it believed to be a truthful and unbiased description of the Maritime Plain as it existed in 1913:
”The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts…no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]….Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen….The ploughs used were of wood….The yields were very poor….The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist….The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert. . . . The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants”. (Cmd. 5479 p. 233)
The Report also drew on contemporary descriptions of the economic situation in Palestine, written in the 1830s and supplied to the Commission by Lewis French, the British Director of Development:
We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria…. Large areas…were uncultivated… The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbour these and other criminals. The individual plots…changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin’s lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbours, the Bedouin”. (Cmd. 5479 pp. 259-260)
Meyer Levin, the American writer (1905 -1981) recounts in “My Search” that it was impossible to travel directly northwards from Tel Aviv to Netanya, some 25 km away without deviating a considerable distance inland because of the intervening marshland. The present-day route of the “old” Tel Aviv – Haifa road still reflects this.
Derived from the reports of foreign travellers and early settlers (Oliphant), cartographers (Van de Velde), and foreign exploratory expeditions (Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF)), Arie Avneri, in a detailed study provides a description of the topographical and demographic conditions prevailing in the various regions of Palestine immediately prior to Jewish settlement.
(Arie L. Avnieri, The Claim of Dispossession- Jewish Land-Settlement and the Arabs 1878-1948, Yad Tabenkin, Efal, Israel 1982 “Avnieri”)
For example, he notes the fertility of the soil but the sparseness of population and lack of agricultural development in the valleys of the Hula, Kinorot, and the Kishon, owing to their marshy and malarial conditions.
In the valleys of Beit-Shean, Jezreel, and Zevulun, located on the trade routes and where permanent human habitation was possible, Bedouin raids on the settlements – especially in drought years – discouraged any permanent Arab settlement.
Mount Carmel was also waste land. Development was ruined by foreign and local wars and its western slope was malaria ridden, all of which contributed to the abandonment of seventeen villages before Jewish settlers arrived in 1882
(Avnieri pp 49-50).
(Avnieri pp 49-50).
The coastal area of Samaria (Shomron) starting at the foot of Mount Carmel and stretching south to the Sharon Plain was in a state of desolation and completely ravaged after the military campaigns of Napoleon and Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt (see Section 2 below).
The coastal Sharon Plain was poorly cultivated owing to the sandy nature of the soil and marshlands created by the Alexandra River and further south by sand dunes. Those villages which did exist, described in 1874 by C.R.Condor, were miserable and half in ruins, the villagers downtrodden and browbeaten by money–thirsty absentee landlords (Avneiri p.53).
The Mountain Regions were varied in their population. Parts around Tulkarm were relatively well populated, providing a refuge from malaria and protection against Bedouin raiders. Nevertheless, internal feuds between village clans caused many villages to be destroyed, although their inhabitants tended to remain in the area. The lack of security, however, inhibited the fellahin from investing much effort in improving the soil conditions.
Villages lower down the mountain and closer to the sea, such as Auja, Sidna Ali, Ramadan, Kabani and Hadera, were scattered and thinly populated, because of the sandy soil, punctuated by swampy stretches.
Southern Judea and the Negev, although not plagued by malaria, were no better for agricultural use or permanent settlement. These regions lacked rain and were frequently drought ridden, and the soil was sandy, being often invaded by sand dunes.
By way of contrast, Gaza in 1886 was a town with a population of some 20,000 inhabitants (but see section 2 as to their place of origin). Its people were poor and lived mostly from trade with the Egyptians. In the narrow strip between the coastal sands and desert interior, some fellahin were found to be growing fruit, watermelons and vegetables.
b. Lack of Security for Persons and Property
During the first three decades of the 19th century, Palestine, like the remainder of the Ottoman Empire, was in a general state of decline and stagnation. Despite the ten years of Egyptian military occupation of Palestine between 1831-1841 which brought in its wake significant Egyptian migration (see section 2 below), the total indigenous population of the area did not exceed 250,000.
Under Ottoman rule the Arab male fellahin were extremely insecure both in their person and economically, being eligible both for military conscription while at the same time suffering Egyptian and Bedouin incursions into their homesteads.
Bedouin terror prevented any significant permanent settlement in the principal plains of Palestine – the coastal plain and the Plain of Esdraelon – and compelled the Arab fellahin to retreat to the hill country of Judea and Samaria, which was more secure but less productive.
“According to Turkish registration books from 1596, it seems that the [coastal plain] served as home to Bedouins (Arab nomads) and Turkish and Kurdish nomads. In the eighteenth century, according to tradition, the amir (chief) of the Hawara Bedouins, who hailed from Bilad Hareth …in Eastern trans-Jordan, occupied part of the coastal plain by force. Hawara Bedouins did not cultivate the land; rather they occupied themselves with brigandage and inter-tribal wars. The outcome of their predatory activities was that Wadi Hawarith was described in the nineteenth century as abandoned, swampy, and malaria-ridden and that its passage was dangerous. The lands of the Wadi were described by the Ottoman governor of the Jerusalem region (1906-7) as abandoned lands that were sparsely inhabited by Bedouins”…
“Thus only a small part of the country was being used for agriculture. The towns of Palestine at the beginning of the last [19th] century are best defined as large villages each built on a small area and possessing a limited economic base and a small population of up to 10,000”
“Thus only a small part of the country was being used for agriculture. The towns of Palestine at the beginning of the last [19th] century are best defined as large villages each built on a small area and possessing a limited economic base and a small population of up to 10,000”
(Ruth Kark, Changing Patterns of Land Ownership in Nineteenth-Century Palestine, (1984) 10 J of Historical Geography, 357, 374 ; ‘Landownership and Spatial Change in Nineteenth Century Palestine in Transition from Spontaneous to Regulated Spatial Organisation’ Inst. of Geography and Spatial Organisation, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 1983 (“Kark 1983”) pp 185-187
Even by 1895, after the rural population had descended from part of the hilly areas and had begun to settle in plains, only ten per cent of the total area of Palestine was under cultivation, (Kark 1983 p. 189) notwithstanding that Arab urban entrepreneurs and absentee landlords had begun to assemble large tracts of land for resale, following the Ottoman land reform legislation (see section 3.c.ii. below).
c. Fellah’s Economic Situation
Economically, the fellah was generally in a state of chronic poverty and indebtedness to his absentee landlord, seed suppliers and money lenders, owing to a number of interrelated causes: poor soil, lack of water, poor means of communication with the towns, unsuitable marketing arrangements, frequent crop season failures, and an antiquated land system. Even before the first modern Jewish settlement, established in 1855, Palestinian Arab society was already socially fragmented between the peasantry and landowning interests. This became exacerbated after the Ottoman land reform in 1858.
(Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East, Lynne Rienner, London, 1987, p.75 (‘Gerber).
Thus, while Palestine as a whole cannot be said to have been desolate and without population as claimed by the Zionists, its people were certainly not thriving. In the hilly areas, the Arab population, while not poverty stricken, was barely self-sustaining. In the plains and the valleys the travellers’ descriptions were a true reflection of the situation – vast desolate expanses devoid of permanent population, malaria infested and subject to the uncontrolled power of the nomadic Bedouin.
Aside from these environmental conditions there were a number of other factors that also contributed to the complex dynamics of the region.
2. Egyptian Population Migrations into Palestine
Sunday, September 28th, 2008
Palestinian Arabs have long argued that they have been indigenous to the area for generations- indeed some claim from time immemorial. This may be true for a segment of the population living in the hill country but in the remainder of Palestine, the reality is otherwise: there were considerable Egyptian and other Arab population movements into and out of Palestine taking place.
The indigenous population of the plains, such as it was, was migratory in character. In addition to the insecurity created by marauders, the environmental, physical economic conditions of the area were hard. Fellahin would come, settle for a short time and move on when living conditions became intolerable. In particular, other than in the hills, rural settlement was threatened by Turkoman devastation. However the Arab population increased beyond its natural birth rate due to significant migration into Palestine from Egypt fleeing from compulsory military service 1839 – 1849 or forced labour on the Suez Canal construction 1858-1869.
a. Inward Arab Settlement of Palestine pre 1918
Inward migratory settlement came from both Ottoman (Turkish) and Egyptian sources:
i. Ottoman Grant of Asylum to Muslim Refugees
The Ottomans granted asylum to Moslem refugees fleeing from their homelands for political and religious reasons:
- After the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, many Algerians settled in Lower and Upper Galilee. This region also attracted other immigrant Moslem Arabs from Damascus, and Kurds from Syria;
- In 1878, the Ottomans permitted Circassian refugees fleeing from Christian-Russian rule in the Caucasus to settle in cis- and trans-Jordan;
- Turkoman tribes from the mountains of Iraq were allowed ultimately to settle on the slopes of Mount Carmel;
- In 1908, Arabs from Yemen settled in Jaffa.
ii. Egyptian Émigrés
One of the most important Arab migrations into Palestine came from Egypt during the early and min-nineteenth century.
- Egyptian Army Conscription
- Muhammad Ali, (aka Mehemet Ali) the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt between 1805-1849, instituted a number of administrative reforms within his territory. Most significantly he established a standing army by means of conscription in 1829. As a consequence, many Egyptian peasants fled to Palestine to avoid such service. This was to be of little avail, because Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, invaded and occupied Palestine between 1831-1841 and they again came under his control. During this period he ‘imported’ more Egyptian labourers into Palestine in addition to those who were already there.
- Ultimately, Ottoman forces supported by the European powers – especially Britain – forced Ibrahim Pasha to withdraw. In the process, however, his army suffered considerable desertion from its ranks, and those who escaped remained in Palestine, hiding in small settlements. British intelligence estimated that the number of troops reaching Cairo in the withdrawal approximated some 33,000, compared with 125,000 before the retreat, leaving 92,000 unaccounted for.
- In the 1860’s over 1.5 million Egyptian labourers were conscripted for the construction of the Suez Canal, of whom 120,000 died in the process. This, too, may also have created an impetus to flee Egypt and to settle in Palestine. (Arieh L. Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession Jewish Land- Settlement and the Arabs 1878-1948, Yad Tabenkin, Efal, Israel, Herzl Press, New York 1982 (hereinafter ‘Avneri’); Interview Prof. David Grossman 28.07.08)
- Employment Opportunities on Public Works Projects
Inward migration to Palestine was also stimulated by new employment opportunities. The Ottoman government commenced railway, road and port construction projects in Palestine, most of which was financed from Europe. These works created increased commercial traffic through the ports of Jaffa and Haifa and the general economic boom that attracted Arab labour from Egypt, Syria and Trans-Jordan, as well as the indigenous Palestinian fellah.
Egyptian settlers particularly were scattered among many urban and rural points, appropriating large tracts of land and lending variety and numbers to the existing population. The Ghawarna and Arab ez-Zubeid Bedouin tribes and other Egyptian immigrants settled in the Hula (near the Sea of Galilee) and Beit-Sheaan Valleys; members of the Arab el-Ufi and ed-Damair tribes settled respectively in Wadi Hawarith (near Tulkarm) and in the vicinity of Hadera; while other Egyptian migrants settled in and around Jaffa.
The assimilation of the Egyptians with the indigenous Arab population was a drawn-out process. After his visit to Palestine in 1917, Philip Baldensperger relates that the existing population of Jaffa, although essentially Arab, contained at least twenty five different nationalities, most of them Palestinian and Egyptian Arabs (Avneri p.14).
b. Outward Arab Migration Caused by Personal and Property Insecurity Within Palestine
Although Arab migration into Palestine increased, the total Arab population in the nineteenth century rose only slightly, because of internecine strife leading to internal instability which caused significant emigration:
i. numerous and incessant village and factional internal wars:
- between “Quais” and the “Yaman” villages located near Jerusalem (see Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim,Jerusalem and its Environs, Quarters Neighbourhoods Villages , 1800 -1948, Wayne State University Press, 2001, pp 232-234)
- in Nablus, between the pro-Egyptian Abd el-Hadi faction and pro-Turkish Tuqan faction;
- along the ridge of Mount Carmel seventeen Druse villages were destroyed in the chaos which followed in the wake of the Egyptian retreat from Palestine;
- during the late 1830’s, 1860’s and 1870’s, Bedouins ousted fellahin from the Jordan Valley, the Sharon Plain, Beit Shean and the Jezreel Valley, leaving the land desolate and uncultivated; (Avneri, pp 20-22)
- in the Hebron region during the late 1890’s, between the Bedouin ed-Dulam and fellahin of Yatta village.
ii. Marauding Bedouins uprooted settled fellahin, stimulating their emigration.
The nature and extent of Bedouin attacks have been discussed earlier and they were a prime factor in creating outward migration
iii Arab emigration to North and South America
Palestine experienced significant Arab emigration by those who perceived a better life in the New World. Avneri quotes Arthur Ruppin, a contemporary sociologist, as stating:
Palestine experienced significant Arab emigration by those who perceived a better life in the New World. Avneri quotes Arthur Ruppin, a contemporary sociologist, as stating:
There is emigration from the Christian districts, such as Bethlehem, Beit-Jala and Ramallah to North and South America, even though in smaller numbers than in Lebanon…. The American Consul in Jerusalem (Daily Consular Trade Reports 6-6-14) estimates the emigration from the Jerusalem District at 3000 annually, of whom 30% are Christians, 35% Moslems and 35% Jews. Thus from the Jerusalem District alone, 2000 Arabs emigrated annually (pp. 25-26)
A similar population exodus occurred from the north of Palestine in the area of Safed.
iv. Escapees from Turkish Army Conscription
During World War I many young Arab men fled from Palestine in order to evade Turkish military conscription.
In addition to those fleeing from conscription, the Ottoman central military authorities concluded that the presence of Arabs and Jews in coastal plains constituted a security threat. However the regional military commander applied a discriminatory policy of expulsion. Arabs were left undisturbed. Jews on the other hand were expelled from the port areas of Jaffa and Haifa. But for the intervention of the German government, they would also have been expelled from the coastal lands which they had developed agriculturally.
(see Isaiah Friedman, Germany, Turkey and Zionism 1897-1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977,pp.—)
(see Isaiah Friedman, Germany, Turkey and Zionism 1897-1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977,pp.—)
Thus, in summary and contrary to contemporary Palestinian claims, a very large percentage of Arab settlers in Palestine were neither indigenous nor had they worked the land from time immemorial. Like the Jews, they too, were immigrants who settled only a generation or two prior to the start of significant Jewish immigration.
3. Increasing Foreign Diplomatic, Political and Military Involvement in Domestic Ottoman Matters: Consular Protection Extended to Non Ottoman Residents
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
In the wider arena of international power politics a new dimension emerged, in the form of European political, economic and commercial penetration into the Ottoman domain. This arose from three sources:(a) the Capitulations, (b) Ottoman debt burden following the Crimean War, (c) Legislative reforms necessitated by the debt burden and (d) European ‘aid’ extended to support, maintain and modernise the Ottoman Government.
a. The ‘Capitulations’
a. The ‘Capitulations’
- Origin
Although Christian-European interface with the Arabs in relation to Palestine found its nemesis in the Crusades, and Arab military expansion into Europe reached its watershed with the Ottoman defeat in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman Empire never presented itself as monolithic and impenetrable to European influence. However, after the European victory, the Ottomans found it expedient to enter into agreements with various European states (France leading the way), granting them preferential trading privileges, and exemptions in respect of excise and customs duties expressed in the various Capitulations.
- Personal Jurisdiction of Non-Ottoman Subjects
Today, sovereignty is primarily linked to territory but a connection also exists between the sovereign or state on the one hand, and the subject on the other, whereby the latter, if found to be within the jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign or state, could then and still can today, claim in times of danger or personal distress, the extraterritorial protection of his own sovereign or state. The Capitulations therefore also included provisions in which the Ottoman government conceded power to the foreign states to safeguard the interests of their respective subjects. Such protection enabled foreign diplomats, consular officials and non-Muslim merchants to reside in the Ottoman Empire indefinitely without becoming either subjects of the Sultan and/or falling under his jurisdiction.
- Foreign Subjects Exempted from Ottoman Local Laws
The Capitulations also contained exemptions from the application of considerable Ottoman legislation to foreign subjects engaged in trade who resided within the Ottoman jurisdiction. Such exemptions included liability to pay Ottoman poll taxes, bearing the cost and inconvenience of billeting Ottoman troops, and conscription from serving in the Ottoman armed forces as well as other financial impositions.
The European powers pressured the Ottomans into extending these privileges to non-Muslim middlemen (dragomans) and many others who could in any way be associated with foreign trade, such as currency changers, European-Arabic translators, warehousemen, artisans and even shopkeepers.
- European Extension of the Scope and Exploitation of the Capitulations
In the course of the nineteenth century the abuse of the Capitulations became so rampant that European protection could even be bought as a commodity, and Ottoman deeds of appointment (berati) as dragoman virtually became transferable. The privileges acquired by non-Islamic non-Ottoman subjects were extended to the establishment of foreign banks, post offices and commercial houses, which took full advantage of Turkish weakness. In contrast, the foreign consuls became more powerful, each vying with the other in trying to advance the interests of their respective States.
- Foreign Dhimmis (Non Muslims) Also Benefited
The foreign consular exploitation of the capitulations also enabled foreign dhimmis to avoid the indignities which they would otherwise have had to suffer had they been Ottoman subjects. Although non-Muslim Christians and Jews were in Islamic eyes treated as inferior persons, they could nevertheless acquire, if they were non-Ottoman subjects, a degree of consular protection against Ottoman autocracy greater than the Sultan’s own Islamic subjects could achieve for themselves. This could not but engender disaffection between the newly arrived foreign immigrant Jews on the one hand, and the Arab effendis and fellahin on the other hand, with whom they were in contact.
b. Ottoman Foreign Debt Burden and the Costs of Ethnic Uprising in the Empire
During the Crimean War (1853-1856) and for the nineteen years following, the Ottomans incurred heavy foreign indebtedness, which enabled the European states and their consular representatives to exert greater political pressure in favour of the non-Ottoman nationals under their protection. The first foreign loan, contracted in 1854, created a degree of indebtedness which enabled the Western powers to exercise only a limited influence on Ottoman internal affairs. However, from 1863 onwards, debts accumulated and snowballed, so that by 1875 the Empire was bankrupt. In 1876 financial matters were made worse by the uprising of ethnic Bulgarians against Ottoman sovereignty and the involvement of Russia in the process (Russo-Turkish War 1977-78).
Although the uprising was ultimately suppressed with heavy loss of life, ethnic opposition to Ottoman rule was to make the Ottoman government very sensitive to the concentration of ethnic minority groups within the Empire generally and was to influence its future policy regarding the settlement in Palestine of individual Jews and their supportive political and financial organisations.
This notwithstanding, the Ottoman need to repay its European-owed debts still demanded a restructuring of its governmental and financial administration. The latter was achieved by the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration in 1881 which took control over state revenues which benefited, to some degree, by the sale of public lands to sectarian interests, both Christian and Jewish.
The Ottomans found themselves in a cleft stick however. On the one hand, the reorganisation of the public debt management brought them some financial stability but, on the other, the process of reform allowed the European states and their diplomatic and consular representatives to exercise a degree of influence and pressure on Ottoman internal policy that would have been unthinkable a decade or two earlier.
(see Stanford Jay Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975, Cambridge University Press, 1977; Birdal, M. “Cooperation, Commitment and Enforcement: Understanding the Ottoman Public debt Administration” , 2005-03-05 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p71340_index.html
Thus European foreign consuls acquired further leverage to extend legal protection and privileges which hitherto had not been available to their foreign protégés resident in the Ottoman Empire. Unsurprisingly, Jewish and other non-Muslim immigrants arriving in Palestine preferred to retain their original foreign nationalities and claimed protection from the various foreign consuls against the arbitrary treatment meted out by Ottoman officialdom.
Such preference could not have created anything but resentment among the Islamic urban poor and middle class and among the rural fellahin. The exploitation of the 1858 Ottoman land legislation (subsection c.ii. below) by non-Ottoman nationals in their moves to acquire land in Palestine could only have added to this resentment.
c. Ottoman Legislative Reforms Necessitated by Debt
i. Non-Ottoman Subjects Gain Equality with Ottomans
The Capitulations, coupled with the financial consequences of the Crimean War coerced the Ottoman government into introducing important reforms designed to gain the support of its European Allies. Published on the eve of the 1856 Paris Peace Conference, the Hatt-i Humayun (Imperial Rescript) granted to foreign Christians and other non-Muslims rights equal to those of its Muslims subjects in respect of protection of their persons and property, freedom of worship, and provision of education for children of all religious communities.
Also included in the 1856 legislation was permission, at least theoretically, for foreigners to acquire land in their own names without their having to obtain a special firman from the Sultan. For Jewish would-be purchasers, however, there were still other problems to be overcome, as will be shown below.
The point being made at this juncture is the fact that Jewish non-Ottoman subjects resident within the Ottoman Empire generally and Palestine in particular, received extensive diplomatic protection from the vagaries of local Ottoman officialdom, a fact which impacted on an expanding Jewish land acquisition policy. To mitigate the effects of foreign interference in internal Ottoman Affairs and to ‘encourage’ permanent settlers to renounce their foreign protective status, the Ottoman Nationality Law was enacted in 1869, which created a common Ottoman citizenship, irrespective of religious or ethnic divides.
(see Kark, p.359; Maurits H. van den Boogert, Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls and Beraths In The 18th Century, (Studies in Islamic Law and Society) Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden 2005
(see Kark, p.359; Maurits H. van den Boogert, Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls and Beraths In The 18th Century, (Studies in Islamic Law and Society) Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden 2005
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/9004140352/ref=sib_dp_pop_fc?ie=UTF8&p=S001#reader-link Isaiah Friedman, Germany, Turkey and Zionism, 1897-1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK 1977 especially Chap 3. hereinafter “Friedman, 1977” )
ii. Ottoman Land Reform Legislation, 1865
Motivated by the need to open up the Empire to foreign investment in order to overcome its financial crisis, the Ottoman government introduced significant reforms in relation to land, its registration, title holding, disposition, benefits and burdens, the totality of which had a major influence upon the redistribution, ownership and occupancy of rural land.
- Customary Rights in Land
Prior to the introduction of the Ottoman Land reform legislation, ownership of land evidenced by registration of legal title in government records or written agreements was less important than its physical occupation and cultivation.
- Peasants – fellahin – could acquire ‘ownership’ to uncultivated land, nominally owned by the State, if they planted and took its produce for two consecutive years.
- They could also acquire rights of pasturage on communally controlled ‘musha’ land located close to the village land and used in common.
From the peasant’s perspective, musha tenure gave him neither incentive to work the land to the best of his ability nor to invest in it. While the system may have encouraged village independence, it also contributed to village disharmony.
“It was common practice for the urban landowning agent, who often functioned as the intermediary between the landowner and the peasantry, to move tenants or other agricultural labourers from plot to plot within a larger area of land so to prevent the fellah from claiming legal title on any particular parcel of land….
Not surprisingly, moving a peasant from one plot to another after every growing season disadvantaged him: it did little to engender a sense of economic security; it created harsh local jealousies over who received the most of often meagre amounts of good and mediocre land; it caused the peasant to extract what he could from his land and, antithetically, dissuaded him from upgrading a land area with physical (weeding, terracing, manuring) investment because the land would become someone else’s during the next growing season. …
Already strained by hamula or clan conflicts, a village regularly withstood periods of uneasiness each time unequal village lands were redistributed. Land disputes, encroachment on another’s land, and uprooting of trees were not uncommon where cultivable lands were sparse and the local village population increased over time.”
Kenneth W. Stein, “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” in Laurence J. Silberstein (ed) “New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early years of the State” New York University Press, 1991 pp. 57-81 (hereinafter “Stein”)
Not surprisingly, moving a peasant from one plot to another after every growing season disadvantaged him: it did little to engender a sense of economic security; it created harsh local jealousies over who received the most of often meagre amounts of good and mediocre land; it caused the peasant to extract what he could from his land and, antithetically, dissuaded him from upgrading a land area with physical (weeding, terracing, manuring) investment because the land would become someone else’s during the next growing season. …
Already strained by hamula or clan conflicts, a village regularly withstood periods of uneasiness each time unequal village lands were redistributed. Land disputes, encroachment on another’s land, and uprooting of trees were not uncommon where cultivable lands were sparse and the local village population increased over time.”
Kenneth W. Stein, “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” in Laurence J. Silberstein (ed) “New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early years of the State” New York University Press, 1991 pp. 57-81 (hereinafter “Stein”)
http://www.ismi.emory.edu/BookChapters/Hundred%20Years%20Social%20Change.html
- Land Reform 1858
In 1858, the Ottoman Government introduced significant land reform legislation in order to help discharge its foreign debts and to finance an ever growing bureaucratic government. This was to be achieved by (i) attracting foreign investment in land development, (ii) increasing central government income from land transfer fees and (iii) imposing higher taxation on both existing worked arable land and from bringing waste land into cultivation. Failure to pay the tax assessed on the land could result in its being forfeited and resold by public auction.
The legislation provided, inter alia, for:
- dissolution of the communal musha ‘ownership’ of village lands and its redistribution among villagers into registered plots in accordance with a cadastral survey;
- holding of kushans, or title deeds as evidence of ownership or title to the land – independently and distinct from its rights of occupation;
- the acquisition of land – other than by purchase or inheritance - by adverse possession (i.e. possession without objection from any other owner claiming valid title) for a period of ten years;
- ownership to the land lapsed if it was not worked for three consecutive years (mahlul);
- Government forfeiture of land remaining uncultivated for three years (without a legally acceptable reason), which would then be offered for re-sale by public auction;
- Non-Ottoman subjects were permitted to purchase land in their own names which, prior to the legislation, could only be done through an Ottoman nominee or with special permission of the Sultan.
- Effect of the Legislation on the Fellah
The implementation of the legislation had serious consequences for the Arab fellahin.
- It put the fellahin under economic pressure to sell their land holdings, especially the now distributed musha shares, to urban interests or non-resident effendi landlords in order to discharge their pre-existing indebtedness and to reduce the risk of uncertainties in agricultural yields. The landlords in question, after consolidating their holdings into larger parcels, would subsequently sell them at highly inflated prices to Jewish development companies and individuals at considerable profit. Such was the situation that, by 1859, British born Lawrence Oliphant was able to report that almost every acre of the Plain of Esdraelon was under intense cultivation and the nomadic Bedouin presence all but eliminated, owing to the commercial activities of the new landlords, who charged exorbitant rents, payable in hard cash under penalty of instant eviction;
- Although land title registration enabled there to be a clear separation between the ownership of land from its occupancy, the registration itself was accompanied by the payment high fees and additional tax valuations. Fellahin therefore preferred to have the ownership of their lands (including the newly redistributed musha) registered formally in the name of urban notables while they continued to cultivate the land in a share-cropping arrangement as previously.
- Land registration also enabled the Ottoman officials to identify those eligible for compulsory military service. Fellahin, forcibly taken into the Ottoman army and away from their lands for more than three years, often found on their return that their land was now “owned” by another.
- The separation of legal title from the rights of occupancy enabled absentee effendi landlords to threaten with eviction the Arab fellah who worked the land if he failed to pay his rent, and enabled the landlord to sell the property over his head to would be Jewish purchasers. The Arab fellah naturally felt resentment against the Jew rather than against the effendi because, prior to the legislation, there was hardly any market for land, and if a fellah failed to pay his rent, the landlord really had no option but to permit the fellah to remain in occupation and allow the latter’s indebtedness to increase.
As a consequence of these reforms, the Arab fellah in Palestine became inexorably dependent upon those who would provide him with temporary relief from economic hardship, and yet were, at the same time, the main cause of his situation. Ultimately, by necessity, he forfeited individual control over his own life and livelihood to others:
The Ottoman reform movement strengthened and benefited a relatively small, urban, landowning elite of no more than several thousand out of a population of more than half a million. Through the dependency of the patron-client relationships that evolved, landowning interests accrued local political prestige and influence, ensured themselves access to the accumulation and disposal of land, and used land as a commodity to obtain capital for maintaining their comfortable lifestyle. (Stein)
- Government Sales of State Lands Ultimately Purchased by Jews
Registration of land ownership, as distinct from its occupancy, also encouraged the sale of government owned land to large scale Arab land speculators such as Alfred Sursoq of Beirut who purchased some 200,000 dunams at a suspiciously low price. The speculators were prepared subsequently to re-sell their interests at greatly inflated prices to Jewish land development companies. Such was the situation that by the end of the Ottoman period only 144 extensive landowners owned 3.1 million dunams (1 acre = 4.047 dunams). (Kark)
iii. Socio-Economic Consequences of the Land Reform
Thus, what started as an attempt by the Ottomans to bring about land reform as one of the means to ease their debt burden, ended with the abandonment by many Palestinian peasants of their agricultural occupations and their gravitation to nearby urban centres. While not yet ‘political refugees,’ because they still remained in their patrimony, nevertheless in the decades before the 1947 UN partition resolution, many Palestinians were already disenfranchised by their own leadership and then displaced from villages and from lands which they had either regularly or periodically worked.
The sale of land and the movement of the peasant population to the towns resulted in the fellah’s loss of his traditional livelihood. It created economic friction and an ever widening cultural gap between himself and the urban Palestinian population. To this was added social and economic unrest felt from an increasing non-Muslim presence in the Land.
Although the legislation had the effect of enabling Jews to purchase land directly and occupy legally in their own names, the implementation of the law encountered regional opposition, forcing its suspension by the Ottoman central government.
This notwithstanding, continual foreign consular pressure coerced the Porte to remove the suspension and to permit Jewish purchasers to take advantage of the legislation when the occasion arose – as it did later in the 1880’s.
(see Raphael Patai, Musha’a Tenure and Co-Operation in Palestine, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1949), pp. 436-445; Gerber, especially Chapter 5; also Islam, Land & Property, Research Series, paper 2, Islamic Land Tenures and Reform, UN-Habitat 2005, http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/3546_86904_ILP%202.doc ; N. Forni, Land tenure policies in the Near East Land tenure policies in the Near East, UN Food and Cultural Organisation, http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y8999T/y8999t0f.htm ; David Hurwitz, Agrarian Problem of the Fellahin, in Enzo Serini and R.E. Ashrey (eds),Jews and Arabs in Palestine, Hechalutz Press, New York, 1936 p.49
d. German ‘aid’ extended to support, maintain and modernise the Ottoman Government
As part of the Porte’s efforts in extracting itself from its weak financial and political situation, it turned to Germany for assistance. She responded by making investment in transportation – communication infrastructure and transferring military and civilian administrative know-how to the Ottoman government. It naturally brought with it an extension of Germanic hegemony, trade links in the Middle East and military dependence on and strategic subordination to Germany’s political interests.
In particular, Germany financed and constructed a railway intended to run from Berlin to Baghdad, with an extension of the Hejaz branch from Damascus to Ma’an and thence to Medina – deep into the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. The new railway links were to be used to develop Ottoman internal communications, the transportation of grain, collection of taxes, military conscription and troop movement.
This last purpose was to become of crucial strategic value to Germany in the coming 1914-1918 World War. It converted the Hejaz into a strategic military asset; the numerous inlets along the peninsula provided German submarines with safe havens and opportunities to attack and sink Allied shipping en route to the Gulf and to India. Any German expansion eastwards towards would endanger British oil interests in the region, as well as undermine British commercial and strategic interests in the Suez Canal and unhindered access to Indian subcontinent and the Far East.
The German supplied organisational know-how for the restructuring and training of the Ottoman military machine also was to raise British fears. These brought repercussions in World War I when the indigenous Hashemites of the peninsula were faced with the choice of supporting the Central Powers (Germany,Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans) against the Western Allies. As will be shown later, Hussein, King of Hejaz succeeded in extracting from Britain the latter’s recognition of a Hashemite sphere of influence extending well beyond the Hejaz: establishing the Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Transjordan, as well as asserting a claim to the territory west of the Jordan River. This was, of course, to have a direct impact on Jewish aspirations to establish a homeland in Palestine.
In civilian matters, the Porte attempted to restructure its governmental organisation in accordance with Weberian concepts of industrial specialisation and governmental bureaucratic organisation; abandoning government traditionally based of nepotism and the sale of offices to the highest bidder and to replace it with one founded on meritocracy and specialisation as the bedrock for hierarchical authority.
As will be shown in Section 4 next following, this impacted on the loci of Arab centres of political power in Palestine. Ultimately, Chapters V and VI will show how these changes influenced in turn both the effendi and the fellah in their respective relationship with the Jewish immigrants and their supporting organisations as well as with the British military and civilian governments after World War I.
Also not to be overlooked was Germany’s political support of Theodore Herzl in his attempts to obtain a Charter from the Sultan for the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. Far from being altruistic, such support was intended to achieve two objectives: (i) to establish in the eastern Mediterranean the potential for a political entity friendly to German interests and (ii) as a means for ridding Germany of its Jews. This subject is also examined more closely in Chapter V.
4. Changes in the Loci of Arab Elite Power Bases: From the Land to the Towns and the Metropolis
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Traditionally internal power and patronage of the Arab elites was traditionally centred in the local village and relied upon land ownership. External factors – particularly the financial predicament in which the Porte’s found itself in the latter half of the nineteenth century were to change this.
To manage its heavy public debt burden more efficiently, the Porte attempted to centralise and assert greater administrative control over the population and territory under its jurisdiction. The Young Turks, after their revolution against the rule of Sultan Abdulhamit II in 1908, propelled this movement and tendency towards the centralisation of power with greater enthusiasm.
Prior to World War I The Ottoman administrative structure placed Palestine in the regional Wilayet (Wali) of Beirut and the independent Sajak of Jerusalem. The wilayet themselves were subdivided into administrative subunits- sanjaq – which were further subdivided into local qaza . The local qaza of Palestine consisted of Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Sefad, Tiberius, Jenin, Tulkarm, Beersheba, Gaza, Hebron, Jaffa and Jerusalem. As will become apparent in Chapter V, the appellation of administrative wilayet within which Palestine lay became a central issue in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence over the alleged conflicting promises Britain gave to the Jews and to the Arabs over the disposition of Palestine following World War I.
Kenneth.W. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine 1917-1939, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1984, (hereinafter Stein) p 9
Kenneth.W. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine 1917-1939, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1984, (hereinafter Stein) p 9
If the Ottomans were to extract themselves from their economic plight and dependency on external influences, their government re-organisation now demanded a more highly trained and centralised bureaucracy. However, since it was hard to recruit qualified candidates, the reforms which the Porte wanted to institute failed to be realised for the most part. Instead, the bureaucratic structure which they established created many new official positions. These presented elites with opportunities to serve on local councils, committees, boards and commissions, often holding more than one administrative position at the same time and over an extended period, as exemplified in sanjaqs of Acre and Nablus.
The administrative reorganisation coupled the exploitation of the land reform legislation – discussed earlier in Section 3.c.ii – permitted the elites to accumulate both property and power and enabled them to place their tribal kinsmen at pivotal points in the administrative structure. The qaza level of administration required numerous civil servants to support the local councils, tax and finance commissions, courts of first instance, agricultural and commercial committees, chambers of commerce, education committees, land registry, military transportation commissions, telegraph and postal services and the local police. The appointed incumbents of the official positions and their supportive staff, each in his own sphere and in the exercise of his authority, were thus enabled to generate considerable ‘emoluments,” and advancement in social status. (see Stein pp 7-8)
As a consequence, small town patrons who previously had wielded power and garnered their wealth based on land holdings, now saw the larger urban centres as the arenas in which to operate for their own advancement and that of their kinsmen. Accordingly, Arab elites migrated from the villages to the larger towns and from the latter to Istanbul, Damascus and Beirut directing their attentions and efforts to wider horizons.
This shift in the locus and system of patronage from that based on local land ownership left the fellah under the control of a lower status kinsman or at the mercy of an indifferent agent, and bereft of his traditional patron to whom he could turn in times of trouble. Consequently, when Jewish settlements began to appear, it naturally created tension between Jews and Arabs, as one group intentionally or otherwise interfered with the land resources claimed by the other. Cultural and language barriers between the two probably exacerbated the issues of contention.
Furthermore the middle-ranking official and bureaucratic supportive Arab staff employed at all levels of public administration later provided Arab-Palestinian nationalists with unexpected political and administrative leverage in their subsequent dealings with the local British military and civil governments in Palestine after 1919.
(see Donna Robinson Divine, Politics and Society in Ottoman Palestine: The Arab Struggle for Survival and Power, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, 1994 http://www.questia.com/library/book/politics-and-society-in-ottoman-palestine-the-arab-struggle-for-survival-and-power-by-donna-robinson-divine.jsp)
(see Donna Robinson Divine, Politics and Society in Ottoman Palestine: The Arab Struggle for Survival and Power, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, 1994 http://www.questia.com/library/book/politics-and-society-in-ottoman-palestine-the-arab-struggle-for-survival-and-power-by-donna-robinson-divine.jsp)
5. External Responses to Ottoman Internal Changes
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
One of the most significant changes in Ottoman internal policy which impacted on foreign interests generally and sectarian concerns in particular (both Christian and Jewish), related to the acquisition of land in Eretz Yisrael- Palestine.
As explained earlier the sale of land to Christians and Jews under 1858 Ottoman land reformation legislation was generated not by a new liberalism per se. On the contrary, the internal economic exigencies associated with the costs of the Ottoman centralisation of its public administration and discharging its foreign indebtedness made the Porte more vulnerable to foreign influence, brought to bear by respective foreign consuls.
a. Christian Land Acquisitions.
Events in Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth brought a degree of Christian interest in developing their holy sites. The objective of these acquisitions was to gain and maintain control over distinctive and separate Christian holy places in Palestine and to establish religious institutions.
For the Christians, these purchases were motivated by missionary, humanitarian, philanthropic, social and political objectives. Other, private, individual investors were also encouraged by the Ottoman government to acquire and develop land, especially if they surrendered their European citizenship and assumed that of the Ottomans.
France gave its support to the Roman Catholic acquisition in Nazareth (and to the Maronite Christians), Russia supported the Eastern Church in Jerusalem and Germany supported the Templar settlements in Jerusalem and Haifa. Britain extended its protection to the Anglicans and also to the Jews.
According to Professor Kark, the churches and the missions were the most active land purchasers among the Christians in the second half of the nineteenth century. Prominent among them were the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, Roman Catholics, Armenians, Anglicans, German Evangelist Community and smaller churches, including Ethiopians, Copts, and Greek Catholics. In the aggregate, the Christian Churches acquired both directly and indirectly through Ottoman nominees extensive urban property interests in and around Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Haifa, Beit Jalla, Acre and large rural holdings in areas that were sparsely populated, such as the Coastal Plain, Jezreel Valley, Galilee, Beit Shaan, and Jordan Valley. This activity provided a purchasable (fluid) inventory of relatively empty and inexpensive lands. (Kark p. 362).
Kark also makes particular reference to The Temple Society founded in Germany during the mid-nineteenth century, whose members believed in the importance of settling in Palestine. It established centres in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, as well as a number of small villages. On the eve of World War I, the Society’s population in the cities amounted to some 1,400 persons, in addition to 624 persons in the villages (Kark p.365)
Initiatives by private investors in land development were also forthcoming from European entrepreneurs, amongst whom were Emil Bergheim, a banker who established a farm near Tel Gezer managed on European principles and equipped with modern machinery, Swiss-born Johannes Frutinger – both of whom were German subjects, and British-born Lawrence Oliphant.
In addition to establishing their own religious institutions, a number of influential Christians writers, notably Alexander Keith of the Church of Scotland, writing in 1843, English social reformer, Lord Shaftsbury, in his 1853 correspondence with Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, and William Eugene Blackstone, an American Christian, writing in 1881 on his return to the United States after a visit to the area, saw for themselves the extent of human habitation in Palestine or, more accurately, the relative absence of it, and advocated the restoration of a Jewish population to Palestine as an essential part of their respective belief systems.
b. Religious Jewish Land Acquisition
i. Expansion of Existing Urban Settlement.
Religiously motivated Jewish migration from Europe (and also from Yemen) in anticipation of the coming of the messianic millennium succeeded in encouraging only a very limited Jewish migration to Palestine.
The faith of religious Jews in Palestine was sorely tested by political-sectarian violence and by natural and human disasters.
Politically, between 1831-1841, Muslim authorities and the local Arab population encouraged Arab fellahin to rebel against the rule of Egyptian Muhammed Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, during his occupation of Palestine. In the process, they rampaged against the Jews of Safed and other towns, looting their property; destroying their homes; desecrating their synagogues and study-houses; raping, beating and, in many cases, killing Jews.
In 1837 an earthquake killed more than two thousand Jews in the Galilee; the Messiah failed to appear in 1840, contrary to the predictions of the Kabalists; and plagues raged throughout the region.
Despite these setbacks, Jewish religiously motivated urban migration continued to grow but at a low rate. It must be borne in mind that the religious Jewish urban communities were not self-sustaining. Their male population did not engage in agriculture, manufacturing or commerce, but were, in the main, committed to the performance of religious precepts, the study of Jewish religious texts and the philosophic evolution of religious thought (including Kabbalah). It was the Jewish woman who, in addition to caring for their husbands and households, engaged in ‘trade’ and marketing. The communities relied upon the distribution (‘halukah’) of financial donations sent voluntarily by Jewish communities in the diaspora or collected by Jewish emissaries sent from Palestine for that purpose.
(see Andrew G. Bostom, Under Turkish Rule, FrontPage magazine July 27, 2007 (Part I) http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=68314118-6D77-4E06-B4D5-282AF4285BC9 and Part II August 3, 2007 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=3CA6CAE4-04C9-4AC6-BA1C-08B047719A1A
In 1855, English missionary W.H. Bartlett records in his book, ‘Jerusalem Revisited,’ that the Jewish community in Jerusalem numbered over 11,000. James Finn, the second British consul in Jerusalem, confirms this fact in his book Stirring Times, published in 1878. Other writers, notably, Mary Elisa, Andrew Bonar and W.F. Lynch, confirm in their respective books and reports during the 1840-1860’s an increased Jewish immigration and active Jewish communities and institutions in Haifa, Nablus and Jaffa, respectively. (see Behat)
Notwithstanding the danger to life and limb from Bedouin raids, pillage and general banditry in the region, Jewish residents of the Old City of Jerusalem were compelled, by reasons of overcrowding and insanitary conditions prevailing there, to seek the aid of Sir Moses Montefiore in establishing Jewish urban settlement outside the walls of the City.
Montefiore had already received a firman from the Sultan allowing for the reconstruction of a synagogue in the Old City. In the process he took the opportunity of purchasing a tract of land to the west of the city as the site for almshouses, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, for Jerusalem’s Jewish population overflow. In 1859, however, implementation of the project was suspended under orders of the local Ottoman authorities, who were no longer willing to classify it as a business or trade or even to consider it as philanthropy (which would have been permissible). It took a year of considerable effort to persuade Fuad Pasha, the Ottoman Foreign Minister, to grant Sir Moses an ‘exceptional permission’ to proceed with the construction of housing (which without the special permission would have been prohibited) for twenty families. The project was completed and dedicated in 1861. (Friedman, 1977, p. 36)
The continuing growth of the Jewish urban population in Eretz Yisrael put pressure on the community to create a second urban settlement outside Jerusalem’s walls. In 1880, Mea Shearim was established by a building society comprising 100 shareholders, who pooled their resources to acquire a tract of land a little farther away from Mishkenot Sha’ananim. Constructed by both Jewish and non-Jewish workers, 100 apartments were ready for occupancy by October 1880. Development continued, such that, by the turn of the century, the suburb had 300 houses, a flour mill and a bakery.
However, the existing Jewish population could barely sustain itself – let alone expand – being downtrodden, poverty stricken and lacking local resources. Support – financial, human and spiritual – had to come from the European Jewish Diaspora. But even this was not achieved without difficulty.
- Indeed one of the main fears lying in the hearts of the existing Jewish urban settlements was that the haluka on which they relied would be reduced if demands for other purposes were made on Jewish philanthropists in the Diaspora. It was this fear that led a number religious Jews to oppose the settlement in Eretz Yisrael of poverty stricken Jewish migrants fleeing from East-European anti-Semitism.
- It must also be remembered that, in general, the Ottoman authorities were opposed to any settlement in Palestine by persons who claimed foreign consular protection. Even individual Jews who were born in the Empire and inherited property but claimed to be under foreign jurisdiction were told that unless they renounced their consular protection their title deeds would be invalidated.
ii. Early Attempts at Establishing Jewish Agricultural Settlement
During the second half of the nineteenth century, there were also attempts at establishing a Jewish agricultural settlement. In 1859 a Baghdadi Jew, Shaul Yehuda, with the aid of British Consul James Finn, purchased farmland on the outskirts of Jerusalem in Motza, from the nearby Arab village of Colonia, for agricultural and industrial purposes (a tile factory). Unfortunately, legal complications prevented the construction of the settlement for some considerable time, although a travellers’ inn was established at the site in 1871.
While rural settlement close to Jerusalem may have been blocked for the time being, as was earlier noted in Chapter the Jewish messianic impetus to bring about a Jewish return to agricultural work still continued.(see Arie Morgenstern,Dispersion and Longing for Zion 1240-1840 in Azure, 2002, Winter Issue, Shalem Center, Jerusalem, (hereinafter ‘Morgenstern’ http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=264 )
Although the Jewish migration to Palestine grew out of the messianic dream, it was an obscure orthodox Sephardi rabbi, Rabbi Judah Alkelai from Belgrade, who began to promote the necessity for establishing Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine as a prelude to the Redemption. By the 1870’s he succeeded in attracting only a small group of followers to settle together with him in Palestine, before his death in 1878, but his extensive writing stirred others to consider doing likewise.
Contemporaneously, other rabbinical figures in Poland with substantial followings, such as Rabbis Zvi Hirsh Kalischer and Eliyahu Guttmacher, believed that the Jewish people would be redeemed only after they first returned to the land of Israel, worked the land and observed the commandments relating to the land. Instead of waiting passively for the Messiah, redemption could be achieved by natural means – self help. Jews should purchase land in Palestine, establish agricultural settlements and send poor Jews from Europe to be farmers, so as to colonize Palestine without delay.
Only when many pious and learned Jews volunteered to live in Jerusalem, Kalischer explained, would the Creator hearken to their prayers and speed the Day of Redemption. Prayers would not suffice. Kalischer urged the formation of a society of rich Jews to undertake the colonization of Zion; settlement by Jews of all backgrounds on the soil of the Holy Land; the training of young Jews in self-defence; and the establishment of an agricultural school in the Land of Israel where Jews might learn farming and other practical subjects. Far from undermining the study of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), “the policy we propose will add dignity to the Torah …. ”
(Howard M. Sachar A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd ed. New York 2003 (Sachar- History ) pp.7-8
(Howard M. Sachar A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd ed. New York 2003 (Sachar- History ) pp.7-8
To implement their ideas, Guttmacher and Kalischer made appeals to European Jewry to raise money for Jewish settlement in Palestine and participated in a conference in Thorn (Torun, Western Poland) in 1860. This laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Society for the Settlement of the Land of Israel.
However, Jewish religious efforts to return to Eretz Yisrael in significant numbers had to await the occurrence of East European (Rumanian and Russian) Anti-Semitic Violence and the failure of Western European secular ‘Haskala’ (Enlightenment) movements to eliminate Anti-Semitism in order to produce a combined Jewish religious and secular response expressed in practical, cultural and political Zionism.
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