PROCESS OF FORMATION OF PALESTINIAN COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES:

The Ottoman and Colonial Periods*

(to be published in Middle Eastern Studies) (to be published in Middle Estern Studies)

ABSTRACT: This paper describes and analyzes the first stages of the process of formation and invention of Palestinism, as a collective identity of Palestinian peoplehood. Palestinism emerged along with other alternative local (such as the clan, the village, town, region) and more comprehensive (i.e., Ottomanism, Syrianism, Arabism and Islamism) collective identities. Not all these identities were necessarily mutually exclusive, and in some configurations are even complementary. Adopting and changing collective identities by newly formed peoples, at their proto-nationalistic stage, is seen as a major sociopolitical strategy of survival in threatening situations, in face of Jewish colonization and society building processes and other external economic and political powers.

---------------------------------------

     Palestinian history seemingly reached a significant turning point with the signing of the Declaration of Principles by the late Israeli Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization on September 13, 1993, and the agreements which followed. As these agreements are gradually implemented - in a part of "historical Palestine" (the West Bank and Gaza strip) - they will presumably lead within the upcoming years to a full state of self-determination for the Palestinians. About a year before the signing of the DoP, within the framework of a larger survey, the Arab population of the occupied territories was asked about their ultimate loyalties, interpreted here as an expression of their major collective identities.^[1]  The distribution of their attitudes, at that point of time were as follows:
 
 

     In historical perspective the most striking finding is the almost complete rejection of pan-Arabist collective identity, and the persistence of the familial identity, and what seems to be an increase in the Islamic identity among men and its rejection by women (in favor of the familial identity and Palestinian nationalism). Palestinian identity is not a self-evident identity, just as many political nationalisms are not self-evident, authentic and "natural" as many nationalist elites and theoreticians would like to argue. Historically Palestinianism is a recent "creation," which is sometimes admitted not only by its political opponents, but even by Arab and Palestinian nationalists themselves. On the other hand, Palestinianism is hardly an invented tradition, imposed by elites on a group of people without any common past and collective memory. However, this past was interpreted differently in various periods in accordance with contradictory group interests.

      When an independent Palestinian educational system is built, along with a more or less consensual national culture and civil religion, they will supply legitimacy to the socio-political order by the inevitable creation of a coherent Palestinian historioraphy. But such historiography cannot be constructed merely on an a-historical mythological linkage with the Canaanitees on one side and the present day martyrs of the "armed struggle" on the other. From "antiquity" to the "present" the "story of creation of the Palestinian people" resembles a lego set, constructed and reconstructed from a diverse amount of components and colors. From this point of view, the Palestinian "case study" is an excellent case for testing some theories of nationalism in its embryonic forms.

      A collective identity is not necessarily a "national identity," however it is a necessary precondition for it. Collective identities are an essential part of the process of construction, maintenance and change in the nature of the constitution of different levels of social order - from small groups (e.g. familial or local) to large collectivities (class, ethnic, religious or national) or even transnational entities.^[2]  They are also an integral part of the makeup of the individual level of identities and feelings of loyalty towards different socio-political entities. Collective identities allow individual members, in actual or desired, existing or imagined communities,^[3]  to make sense of "us" versus "them" and the creation of societal boundaries.^[4]  Identity is a membership card and a social passport. Identities determine the objective and the subjective location of individuals and groups within a society, and articulate the social goods they are entitled to possess in terms of prestige, power and wealth.^[5]  Collective identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive and individuals and groups can be considered or consider themselves as belonging at the same time to different collectivities. Yet, it is just as self evident that individuals and groups are tied to a nuclear or extended family, a community, a locality, a region, or a class. For larger collectivities - such as ethnic, racial or religious entities, states, nations, multi-national states, empires, cultures or civilizations - collective identities craft physical and social boundaries, the domestic social order and the accepted rules-of-the-game that govern the collectivity. Social change is expressed and reflected by changes occuring within collective identities, and fundamental internal struggles take place around the adoption of competing collective identities.^[6]  Hegemonic sociopolitical orders are based on a single unchallenged collective identity, that is supported by strong political strata, classes, ethnic groups etc.

      Collective identities are not free floating ideas; they tend to "organize" themselves within concrete institutional/political arrangements and organizations. In fact existing societal entities and orders are interested in creating, adopting or imagining identities for themselves in order to gain legitimacy and stability and improve their ability to mobilize the members of a collectivity. Sometimes identities are forcefully imposed on diverse groups, especially on subjugated and minority groups, as a part of their surveillance and control. In this spirit, paraphrasing Charles Tilly's famous saying, it is helpful to assume the assertion that states make collective identities (nationalist identities or any other type) and collective identities make states. To expand this idea, it must be presumed that different kinds of states will produce different types of identities, and that different identities will shape different types of collectivities and different degrees of stateness.^[7]

      The main purpose of the present paper is threefold: i. To analyze the creation, invention, production and reproduction of the collective identity called "Palestinian," as a distinct identity from other "Arab" identities, in its particular historical, social, cultural, and political contexts, as well as in competition with other competing "friendly" and

     "alien" identities. ii. To understand the role of the rise of an ideology of "Palestinism," that politicized and intellectualized the Palestinian collective identity. iii. To explore the institutional arrangements and institution-building processes that accompanied and s(or blocked) the development of the Palestinian identity (or perhaps - identities). In many ways, the crystallization, the failure, and later the partial and conditional success of the Palestinian attempt to survive as a distinct collectivity and identity, has many parallels among the other new nations of the post-colonial era; but, at the same time the Palestinian case has several unique characteristics.

The Notion of Asabiyya

     Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Arab philosopher, developed the concept of asabiyya, which in Arab cultures can be interpreted as a solidarity or identity group based on real or imagined blood or primordial ties, strengthened by actual or invented common ancestry.^[8]  The range (boundaries) and the content of the asabiyya varied in time, space and socio-political context. In the nomadic context it was interpreted as a loyalty towards the tribe, while in settlements it is expressed through participation in the hamule (extend family, or clan), a local rural or urban alliance (for mutual protection).^[9]  Later asabiyya was expropriated for rival identities, such as the Islamic religious vs. pan-Arabist secular umma, the cultural and sociopolitical equivalent to the European term of "nation."^[10]

      With a similar connotation, but in a more politicized form, referring to loyalties toward the territorial space of the Fertile Crescent and Arabia (namely, Iraq and Greater Syria, including Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan and Hijaz) is the term qawm (people), which led to the adjective qawmiyya, mainly used as alqawmiyya al-Arabiyya (or a kind of a general Arab peoplehood). The complementary, but at the same time contrasting, term was the adjective watani or the noun wataniyya, which referred to loyalty towards a kind of local and particular region, which stands apart from the umma or qawmiyya. Sometimes it is regarded in a pejorative form as "regionalism" (iqlimiyya) and condemned as a particularistic and factionalist orientation contradicting the asabiyya principle.^[11]

      By and large, both the qawmiyya and wataniyya were initially a direct response to Ottoman rule over the region and its accompanying doctrine - Ottomanism; as well as, to the dispersion of European ideas of nationalism amongst the Arabs. Ottomanism was not just an extension of Turkish nationalism, which added an Islamic dimension (including the protection and control of hard core Islamic territories, such as Mecca and Medina in Hijaz, Jerusalem, Damascus and Baghdad), but also of a multi-ethnic world Empire, situated between Europe and Arabia. This location opened up even the most peripherial territories of the Empire to different winds. Three kinds of not necessarily exclusive responses evolved out of the early 20th century transformation of Ottomanism into a secular Turkish particularistic nationalism, and its withdrawal from the Empire. The first response was cultural and political Arabism, which demanded Arab self-determination in the framework of the Empire. The second response was a political disengagement from the Empire, which took diverse forms in the different Arab polities and political practices. Despite mixing the notions of qawmiyya and wataniyya, a wide variety of "Arab states," or "would be states," were constituted. First there was Muhammad 'Ali's modernization, bureaucratization and state building efforts in Egypt,^[12]  then Husayn's ibn-'Ali Amir of Mecca's successful attempt to free himself and Hijaz from Ottoman influence and establish a kind of autonomous state, Faysal's ibn-Husayn attempt to establish a modern enlarged Syrian state,^[13]  and the establishment of completely new entities such as Iraq, Lebanon and reduced-Syria. The third type of response to Turkish nationalism was the emergence of a pan-Arabism, claiming that all Arabic speaking people belong to one great Arab nation. Some were inspired by the vision of recreating an all embracing caliphate or empire, while others wanted to plant the seed for a "local" and particularistic nation-state type of political entity.

      The additional ingredient in the process of formation of a collective identity on Arab speaking lands, and the supplier of fuel for political motivation, in this context is Islam. Islam has always been a highly politicized religion, and a major force behind Arab conquests and empire building.^[14]  However, as Islam spread beyond the Arab world the notion of al-umma al-islamiyya, the theory of existence of one organic and indivisible Muslim community, based on religious belief and a social-moral order of total obedience to the Qur'an, its practices (sunna) and the ruler (caliph) or other local representatives of Allah, replaced the notion of al-umma al-'arabiyya (the doctrine of the existence of one Arab nation). The Ottoman Sultan, the secular-political ruler of the empire and the highest authority for all the Muslims believers, and some court-elite groups, were the most prominent sources of this doctrine. In fact, non-Arabic political orders, such as Iranian Khomaynism, tend to stress an all embracing Islamic state-theocracy, while most of Arab-Islam tends to mix Arab local or general nationalism and Islam. Thus, Saudi Professor Ahmad Muhammad Jamal asserted that "Arab familiarity with asabiyya, was an authentic pattern of nationalism long before the historical phenomenon related to this ideology took place in Europe or the Americas."^[15]  The same arguments are stressed by some Jewish historians, including Anthony Smith, regarding the complete overlapping between religion and ethnie (ethnic nationalism) in Judaism.^[16]

      At the eve of the birth of contemporary Arab nationalisms (which are considered by many as a revolt or a secular replacement for religion) Ottomanism and Islam were considered in the region to be congruent forces. The first Arab nationalist thinkers, such as Muhammad 'Abduh (1849-1905), Muhammad Rashid Rida and 'Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi - indeed accepted the primacy of Islam, but tried to harmonize it with the modern notion of nationalism. All Muslims are regarded as a single nation, regardless of ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences. However, they argued that Islam is first and foremost an Arab religion, the Prophet was an Arab and the Qur'an an Arabic book. Thus, an Arab renaissance is a necessary condition for the restoration of Islamic grandeur.

Geographical and Sociopolitical Boundaries

     One of the most significant conditions - although not the only one - for the formation and creation of cultural, social and political collective identities, is the existence of geographic or physical boundaries, which facilitates certain types of social and political configurations. Moreover, as stated by Armstrong, "geographic boundaries are not only tangible, they possess other important attributes, they often acquire intense symbolic significance, and the direct impact of political action is frequently earliest and strongest in a geographic context."^[17]  In spite of the fact that the precise boundaries of the territory later denoted as modern "Palestine" were never defined, and from time to time was politically or administratively fragmented, the area has since time immemorial been a distinct "territory," commonly referred to as the "Holy Land" (al-Ard al-Muqadassa). This religious territorial identity was mainly reinforced by the indisputable geopolitical and symbolic center - Jerusalem (or al-Quds in Arabic). The Jewish mythological kings, David and Solomon established their capital there three thousand years ago, making it the site of the Jewish Temple, after it was captured from the Canaanites. The Holy Land was the land of Jesus's birth and Christianity's source, with Jerusalem as the place in which he preached his final sermon and was crucified. Finally, according to Islamic interpretation (Sura 17, of Qur'an) Jerusalem was the site Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven.

      The territory has several natural boundaries: to the West is the Mediterranean sea, to the East running North to South is the Jordan River which flows into the lake known as the Dead Sea, and the Southern boundary is a vast desert, running from Arabia to the Nile. Only the Northern boundary is somewhat blurred, even though the Litani River has usually served as a demarcation line. The country itself is divided into four natural regions surrounding Jerusalem: the central mountains, Jabal al-Quds, the Judean Mountains, today commonly known as the West Bank, with its biblical cities of Nablus and al-Khalil (Hebron). This region was the central area of the ancient Jewish civilization (Judean and Samaritan kingdoms) and territorial identity, and served during the last three hundred years as the core territory of the traditional Arab peasant society. A narrow coastal plain extends from the small city of Gaza in the South through Haifa's bay in the North, passing through the Karmil region up to Sidon. Here the old maritime civilizations - such as the Phoenicians and Philistines - settled, along with their presence in the cities of Gaza, Jaffa, Acre and Haifa. This coastal area should be seen much more as a frontier rather than as a boundary zone, because it placed Palestine within the Mediterranean basin's climatic, political, commercial and economic system. The third and the most fertile zone includes the valleys and hills of al-Jalil (the biblical Galilee) extending from the city of Acre to the territory's northern area which incorporates the valley of Marj Ibn Amir Baysan (the Jezreel Valley). These lands were the major agricultural land reservoirs of the territory and were cultivated by the mountain peasants when they felt secure from human predators. Finally, the other frontier region was the desert extending South from Bir al-Sab' (Beersheba), located on the cross-roads of nomadic Bedouin tribes, and trans-desert merchant caravans traveling from Asia to Arabia. All these regions served from time to time as bases of sub-identities reinforced by regional coalitions; however, for a long time the most important and salient collective identities were built on localities. The small rural localities overlapped with the larger familial identities, loyalties and authorities. Within this kind of traditional order the "individual" is not considered a distinct social category, except in the case that one was fulfilling a prominent political or bureaucratic role.

      In the period around 1850, the point from which reasonable estimations based on available Ottoman records are possible, the territory was populated by about 340,000 permanent inhabitants^[18]  - 300,000 Muslims, 27,000 Christians (mostly Arabs) and 13,000 Jews. In 1882, when the modern Jewish colonization of the territory began, there were 462,000 inhabitants, of whom 15,000 were Jews. The most important process in the territory was the fast development of the coastal cities, mainly of Jaffa and the new road which directly connected it to Jerusalem in 1869 and the hinterland with the world market. The inland hilly villages and traditional townlets (such as Nablus that competed for primacy with Jerusalem and the coastal urban centers) supplied the coastal cities with their products and crops, as well as with a growing labor force, which soon created a new semi-urban underclass, the shabab.^[19]  The most important characteristic of this new class, was its detachment from the old traditional familial loyalties, without being committed to any new loyalties, and as such it was a stratum without any common identity. In exchange, the city granted occasional economic rewards and a degree of protection from the tyranny of the authorities, as well as a springboard for new opportunities and ideas.

      Mutual dependence lead to a system of enmity-amity between the coastal region and mountainous hinterland, between a rapidly urbanizing and secularizing area and a more traditional and religious realm.^[20]  The urban notables and wealthy merchants were regarded by the mountainous peasant society as influenced by corrupt non-Islamic ideas and practices. During the entire Ottoman period, except for a very brief period of time,^[21]  the land was divided administratively,^[22]  with the physical, economic and social conditions creating the contours of a more or less common stratificational system of the country which was latter called "Palestine." This common system was reinforced by the rise of a weak, but common "field of authority." The one source of authority was the legal-religious authority of the Jerusalemite 'ulama (the religious learned class), the shari'a courts, the heads of the al-awqaf, the Muslim religious endowment, and the special position of the mufti, which in the case of Jerusalem tended to impose its authority over all the other local religious authorities in the Holy Land, with accountability to Istanbul alone (at the time, the highest Muslim authority in the world - after the conquest of the Fertile Crescent and Hijaz). The Jerusalemite 'ulama succeeded to a large degree (especially after the defeat of the Ottomans) to acquire control over the appointments of all the clerical positions of the territory, including the appointment and dismissal of quadis (sharia court judges) or Quar'anic school teachers. The emphasis of the special status of Jerusalem was legally expressed in 1887, when it was declared as an independent administrative unit, directly responsible to Istanbul.

      The other source of Jerusalem's authority was the concentration of large notable-families within its district. One of the aims of the 1864 District Act was to shift the responsibility for tax collection and conscription from the rural chieftains (shaykhs) to the more powerful and rich urban notables (a'yan), who in turn gained in wealth and power. The Ottoman reforms between 1839-1876, the so-called Tanzimat, included a law in 1858 on registering and parceling the land. This introduced into the territory, the notion of private titles and the possibility of land accumulation and the creation of large estates.^[23]  Moreover, it created another precondition for creation of notions of the individual and individualism.

      The institution which was appointed to carry out the new policy was the newly established local councils (majalis al-idra), which were mainly constituted by townsmen who paid high taxes.^[24]  The Jerusalemite families - such as the Khalidis, Nusaybas, Nashshibis, Husaynis, Dajanis and 'Alamis - on the surface seemed less wealthy than the other large families in the country, however they were better educated both in religious and civic terms and were more powerful politically, due to their century long tradition of service in the Ottoman political, bureaucratic and cultural system.^[25]  For centuries, these notable families - especially the Jerusalemites - generated for their interest an Imperial Ottoman collective identity. Ottomanism in this case meant that the Ottoman Empire was seen as the direct inheritor of the Arab Caliphate and an embodiment of the universal Islamic state, which from one side protected the Faithful from European and Western colonialism, and from the other side permitted slow technological changes and administrative reforms, in order to adapt the economic, political and social fabric to the changing world. Only Muslims were considered as political subjects entitled to full rights, while others such as Christians (including Arab-Christians) or Jews were considered as "protected minorities" (dhimi), who have to accept the supremacy of Islam, to pay a poll tax (ferde) and to accept certain social disabilities (e.g., a prohibition to bear arms). Thus, the boundary of the collectivity and its identity was sharply defined politically by religious criteria. All subjects of the empire sustained a double loyalty toward the Sultan, as a political head of state and at the same time head of the Faithful. Ottomanism was of course a very convenient ideology for the notables, because they were - as go-betweens for the local population and "the Empire" - the major benefactors of this sociopolitical order. For most of the period Ottoman rule in Southern Syria (Surya al-Janubiyya) districts, later known as "Palestine,"^[26]  was weak enough that it was possible for the local clans, strongmen and even Bedouin chiefs, to rule de-facto local areas and impose "law and order" in the name of the empire in exchange for "protection" tributes. The authority of Istanbul was mostly exercised within the cities and some of the hinterland, and along the main roads. The other dimension of this situation was the perpetual political - but no less bloody - quarrels between the rival clans and rulers of the diverse regions.

The Forgotten Revolt

      From 1831 for a period of approximately ten years, Syria (including future Palestine) was conquered and taken out of the orbit of Ottoman rule, and placed under the control of the Egyptian ruler, a former vassal of the Ottomans, Muhammed 'Alli and his son Ibrahim Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army. On May 19, 1834 a meeting of imporfamilies and sheiks from Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron took the dangerous step of informing the Egyptian military governor that they could no longer supply their quotas of conscripts for military service. The peasants, they asserted, had fled from the villages into the mountainous area which were difficult to reach. This group was lead by Qasim al-Ahmad, chief of Jamma'in subdistrict of Jabal Nablus.

      Ibrahim, who desperately needed more soldiers, after suffering heavy causalities in previous battles and planning another round against the Ottomans, saw the notables declaration as a betrayal and rebellion. The first clash between the local fellahin and Bedouin tribes broke out in the Hebron area, where about 25 Egyptian soldiers who arrived to impose the conscription order were killed. However, the center of the resistance against the Egyptians was Nablus, from which hundreds of rebels marched to place Jerusalem, the symbol of the government, under siege. The turning point occurred when the Abu Ghush clan, which controlled the road between Jaffa and Jerusalem as well as the surrounding villages, joined the rebel forces. On the last day of May the Muslims of Jerusalem succeeded in opening the city's gates, and the rebels conquered the city, with the exception of its citadel where Egyptian troops found shelter. In June, Ibrahim attempted a series of counter attacks, using heavy artillery, managing to regain control over Jerusalem, but with a cost of thousands of casualties and without managing to quell the spread of the revolt. The small townlet Haifa was placed under siege and the ancient town of Safed and Tiberias fell under rebel control.^[27]

      Most of the territory was removed from Egyptian control and the defeat of the Egyptian army in Palestine endangered the success of Muhammed 'Ali's state building project, which forced him to take immediate action. His fleet, including a reinforcement of 15,000 troops armed with cannons, lead by Muhammed 'Ali himself arrived in Jaffa. However, his first move was "diplomatic." Through a skilled reading of the socio-political map of Palestine, he managed to split the coalition of rebellious notables by guaranteeing amnesty to the Abu Ghush clan and diverse concessions, including positions in the Egyptian administration. From that point on the road both to Jerusalem and the inland was open and secure for the Egyptian troops. On July 4, 1834 the punishment expedition began; first, against the Nablus region (16 villages on the road were reduced to ash) with the town of Nablus conquered on July 15. The last battle brought about the leveling of Hebron on August 4th and the slaughter or conscription of most of the men, the rape of women, and the abduction of about 120 adolescents to serve at the disposal of Egyptian army officers. Parts of the Muslim population and notables of Jerusalem, and all of the Bethlehem notables, were removed, placed into captivity or killed. Ten thousand fellahin were recruited and shipped to Egypt and the local population was disarmed.

      The 1834 revolt was triggered by the conscription duties, the collection of arms from the Muslim population and the more efficient tax collection that was imposed on peasants and city-dwellers by the Egyptians, in comparison to previous Ottoman system. Other important reasons for the rebellion, include the facts that for the first time an almost country-wide coalition of Bedouins, fellahin and notables was formed, incorporating a wide variety of social and regional segments in a single cooperating movement. The Egyptian central administration's threat to the a'yan's traditional political and material power base as tax collectors^[28]  and their other administrative roles, was another important reason for the upheaval. The introduction of a secular legislature restricted the power of shari'a bureaucracy, and made them dependent on state's salaries and rules. The rebels heavily emphasized the Islamic religious meaning of revolt, presenting Muhammed 'Ali as an infidel (gavur), and an ally of "foreigners" (Europeans, Westerners, etc.). On the Bedouin side, the tribes primary "occupation" of giving "protection" to merchants and other clients was diminished as a result of the vigorous Egyptian law enforcement policy, and thus gave them incentive to join the rebellion.

      Thus, the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, according to Shamir,^[29]  signified "the first application of the concept of territorial state... This was the inception of the modern history of Palestine." The 1834 revolt was an impulse of different segments of the territory's population facing a common threat that stemmed from the changes that had taken place in the relations between rulers and subjects, and concomitantly in the fabric of social stratification and order, and maybe even the entire cosmic order. Momentary coalitions among the various segments of the population did not instantly create a new kind of asabiyya and loyalty; however, this does not mean that they did not create the preconditions for a new self-consciousness or collective identity. What needs to be re-emphasized is the already existing geo-political, economic, and cultural conditions (carried by some local dialects of Arabic, customs, fellahin clothing, etc.). These were complemented by a distinct stratificational system in its embryonic state, that facilitated the coalitions and budding consciousness in the first place.

      Another scholar writes that "the decade of the Egyptian invasion can now be seen to have cut across the spectrum of Middle Eastern history like a band. The old ways of life were profoundly altered. The balance of power and expectations in which the Druze, Christians and Muslims; the townsmen, villagers, and Bedouins; and the amirs, sheikhs and peasants had lived was shattered. The relationship of the government to the governed, the market to the producers, the foreigner to the native were radically changed."^[30]  Inspite of this, what the Egyptians were unable to provide - or did not have enough time to provide - was a sense of collective identity, at least for the notables and other elite groups, which Ottomanism had partially succeeded in doing. Moreover individual or familial loyalties - like the Abd al-Hadis of Nablus toward Mohammed 'Ali or Ibrahim - only contributed to the depth of the internal cleavages that occurred in this society-in-making. These divisions also seem to have been a contributing factor to the revolt. In addition, the revolt introduced a bud of a common Islamic identity, disconnected from the original Ottomanism, a prototype of popular Islam in which Islam provides not only as a basis of a kind of assabiyya, but an organizing principle in which the mosque serves as an institution for mobilization, revolt (at least in Jabal Nablus) and the dissemination of information.

      In Palestinian collective memory this bloody event has fallen by the wayside (in contrast, for example, with the contemporary "Great Arab Revolt" of 1936-39 or the intifada), and is not considered in Arab (Egyptian) historiography as anything other than the "Syrian Peasant Revolt;" even though its focus was the quadrant of Jaffa-Nablus-Hebron-Jerusalem, with only the ricochets reaching Lebanon, Syria and the Southern desert. But this is not surprising, for until recently, the Palestinians were a people without a codified written history and a highly fragmented (mainly based on local and regional traditions) collective memory; which is a common feature to other developing nations in the world.^[31]  The 1834 Revolt, just as Bernard Lewis described, "is the history of events and movements, that is to say, at some stage and for some reason rejected by the communal memory, and then, after a longer or shorter interval, recovered by academic scholarship - by the study of records and the consequent reconstruction of a forgotten past."^[32]  The humiliating and traumatic events of 1834 were conveniently erased from the collective memory (and were documented mainly by Egyptian bureaucracy), as the local social or political actors had no interest in "remembering" and glorification. Once Ottoman rule was restored i1841, following diplomatic bargaining and arrangements between Muhammad 'Ali, the Ottomans, and the European Powers, seemingly no one in the territory had any interest in mythologizing a revolt mainly based on interior hill region peasants^[33] , and against taxes and conscription, which continued to be both in the local notables' and Ottoman ruler's interests. The notables of the territory were deeply interested in maintaining a cordial relationship with the neighboring Egyptian power, one of the main commercial and cultural links to the outside world; and at the same time to re-adjust themselves to Ottoman rule, which vigorously continued the Egyptian reformist policy under the label of the Tanzimat (of 1840s and 1860s), in so far as they had the power to initiate change.

Identity, Boundary Formation and World Order

     Connections with the "outside world" - i.e., mainly European markets, merchandise and merchants, missionaries, pilgrims and tourists, consuls and settlers - had differing impacts on the "native" population of the territory. On the one side, contacts with aliens is one of the strongest triggers, especially in a xenophobic traditional milieu, for boundary-formation between "us" and "them," and a base from with the creation of a separate and distinct collective identity can take off. On the other side, the penetration of local "space" by strangers can fragment local structures, deepen existing cleavages, and create and encourage particularistic vested interests. In the pre-colonial Holy Land both trends existed, and complemented one another.

      The Crimean War (1854-56) and the American civil war (1861-65) were two remote events that accelerated several developments in future Palestine. Until then the territory had pretty much escaped the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Short term consequences of the two wars, created shortages in certain raw materials and crops, especially cotton crops, which hurt the English and continental industries and increased the demand for agricultural cash-crops which raised prices in the world market. Merchants and investors from the Mediterranean basin expanded their search to the east of the basin, reaching the coasts of Gaza, Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Sidon. They found as go-betweens the local rural a'yans and merchants. Acquisition of crops and cash advances provided incentives for the local merchants and notables to accumulate land and to establish relatively large estates. A new land owning self-conscious class, backed by the Tanzimat reforms, was created.

      Most of the southern hinterlands around Gaza were devoted to growing wheat, barley and maize for export. In other parts of the territory, such as the valleys and northern coastal plain, cotton and sesame were grown. In more mountainous areas olives (manufactured as oil and soap) and grapes were cultivated. On the coastal plain between Gaza and Jaffa orange and lemon orchards appeared, demanding sophisticated cultivation, irrigation, financing and marketing skills. Cash crops such as olives and sesame had long been known as "specialties" of the territory, but widespread cultivation of cotton and intensive planting of orchards requiring large long term investments, were a major economic and social innovation.^[34]  All these were triggers for major changes in land holding, in the rise of a new wealthy urban stratum, in the continuous enlargement of the urban underclass of the major coastal cities (mainly Jaffa, which became a relatively modern Mediterranean city),^[35]  as well as a new Arab leadership that would stay in power until the collapse of the Palestinian polity in 1948. The Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad connection in 1892 symbolized the opening up of the country to new technologies and communications systems, preceded by the telegraphic services first provided from Jerusalem since 1865. The Holy Land had been linked in both directions to the world system.

      However, the Holy Land drew the attention of foreign powers less because of its economic importance, and more for its religious and cultural (later for some of the great powers, a strategic) significance. After the destruction of the Christian Kingdom by Saladin, the Christian interest in the Holy Land was dormant for an extended period; however, since the middle of the 19th century this interest once again rose to the surface. Probably, most of the 340,000 inhabitants of the territory were completely unaware of the importance of their locale to "the world," and how many plans, discussions and competition among the elites of Christian, Western and capitalist societies over the "Holy Land" had taken place.^[36]  As long as the Ottoman regime was powerful enough to protect the territory from an influx of "strangers," it provided a screen from the outside world. But as the Capitulation System grew, Patriarchates such as the Latin-Orthodox, Greek-Orthodox and Anglican Church were established in Jerusalem in 1845-47, causing frictions between Greeks who were new in the land and native and non-native Christian Arabs, who began to import Arab nationalistic ideas from Europe and which were reinforced by reform oriented Muslims.^[37]  Even more important, is the fact that between 1838 and 1858 all the Great Powers had heavy consular presence in Jerusalem, each of them protecting communities of strangers, missionaries and churches, and later settlers, in the city in particular and the Holy Land in general.

      The first modern European settlers in the Holy Land were the German Templar religious sect in the 70s, followed in the 80s by the first wave of traditional Jewish immigrants. Both groups primarily established agricultural colonies, and as such, from the local population's point of view they had limited impact. However, they were a part of a larger cumulative process in which the country opened up before aliens, which served to build a sense of the Holy Land as distinct from other parts of the region. This created a kind of imagined boundary, distinct from the border of the Ottoman administrative districts.^[38]  These boundaries lacked geographical, social and political clarity, but they possessed a clear and fixed center - the city of Jerusalem.

The Greater Syria Episode

     Except for the development of Arab-Jewish relations as an incipient political conflict, little happened during the late Ottoman period within the territory. The first wave of Jewish immigration, retrospectively proved to be the first step towards a massive colonization enterprise; but, at the time it was small in its scope and lacked explicit political aspirations and support. After 1904-5 a very different kind of Jewish immigrant arrived in the country: young, single, mainly male, highly politicized, and very poor. They turned toward the existing Jewish colonies pushing the ideology of "Jewish labor" and "Jewish defence," that entailed the exclusion of Arab workers from the colonies and the replacement of the local "strongman" protection system with Jewish armed guards, which formed the nucleus of a Jewish army.^[39]  Moreover, they talked in terms of modern secular Jewish nationalism - i.e., Zionism - about the goal of creating a Jewish political commonwealth. Several years later, Chaim Weizmann the president of the World Zionist Organization, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, stated that the Zionist goal is to make "Palestine becomes as Jewish as England is English." For the first time the Jewish presence became noticeable but not yet threatening, because of its very limited scope. During the World War the country suffered Turkish oppression, conscriptions, famine, that not only ceased the Jewish immigration but also decreased the scope of the Jewish presence in the country. After the British arrival the economic and social situations slowly recuperated. In general, British rule over the country had far-reaching consequences, which will be analyzed later.

      Even before the territory's occupation by the British forces was complete, the well known Balfour Declaration of November 1917 was announced, in which the British government viewed "with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."^[40]  From the poinof view of the majority Arab-Muslim population of the country, their "own" Islamic Ottoman rule was replaced by an alien European (Christian) Power, which had a declared policy to transform the land into a Jewish country.^[41]  The overall impact of the British rule over Palestine will be analyzed later, but the mention of the very presence of the British is needed in order to understand the following episode:

      On October 5th, 1918 the Amir Faysal ibn Husayn proclaimed in Damascus an "independent Arab constitutional government with authority over all Syria", that will provide equal rights to its Muslim, Christian and Jewish subjects. Local British military officers, including General Allenby, seemed to support the move and perceived it in the same spirit as McMahon's promise to the Sharif of Mecca; however, in even greater harmony with British interests.^[42]  The French were ready to recognize the partial independence of the "Syrian nation," if it remained under French control and influence, which was agreed after long negotiations in Paris with premier George Clemenceau and officials of Quai d'Orsay. This should have been be a major achievement for Faysal, however the agreement was rejected by most of the young and enthusiastic nationalists in Damascus (such as the members of al-Fatat and al-'Ahd groups). They saw the relinquishment of the great Syrian Arab national state, and the loss of Palestine to Jewish colonialism and British imperialism as an unacceptable situation.^[43]  In the meantime at the end of July 1920, the French concentrated their troops and entered Damascus. Faysal and his men left the city and General Henri Gouraud was appointed high commissioner. The first 20th century attempt to establish a modern Arab nation-state and failed,^[44]  but the idea survived.

      Faysalism was for a moment in Arab history, a great new hope - a new asabiyya, based on the post-war promise of a new world order (such as Woodrow Wilson's promise for "self determination" for all the nations). It was a combination of a Syrian wataniyya with an all-Arab qawmiyya,^[45]  achieved by Arab forces (Damascus was "liberated" from the Ottomans not only by British and French troops, but also by the "Northern Arab Army" with its Sherifian flags and banners). Faysal's court was filled by the best Arab intellectuals and young professionals of the region, including Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian and former Ottoman officers and civil servants. Even if Faysal's agreement of 1919 with Weizman, the president of the World Zionist Organization, was attacked by his own adherents and considered by some as a betrayal of the Arab cause, it was an original political move with the aim of freeing himself from complete dependence on British and French control, through a limited cooperation with the Zionist movement.

      The Palestinian association of al-Nadi al-'Arabi (the Arab Club) established in Damascus in 1918, together with other local nationalist groups such as al-Fatat (founded in Paris in 1911 by two Palestinian students - Awni Abd al-Hadi and Rafiq Tamimi), and the Arab Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal al-'Arabi) were a substantial part of the Faysalian regime. However other groups, such as the local Damascus intellectuals and notables and Al-'Ahd (The Covenant) Iraqi nationalist group, had their own agenda, each of them concentrated around the specific interest of their own territories. On June 3rd, 1919 the General Syrian Congress assembled in Damascus and included, in addition to the above mentioned groups, delegates from Lebanon, the Druze Mountains and al-Karak (Transjordan). Faysal's major aim was to exchange the French protectorate with English mandatory power, however the Congress majority was more extreme and rejected any idea other than an independent Greater Syria (including Palestine, Lebanon and the East of the Jordan territories), and declared Faysal as the king of the independent state. The Congress was still convening when the French troops occupied the city on July 28th, 1920 suppressing what they defined as "revolt."

      Membership in a newly established Arab state was a solution to the desperate situation of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Thus the proclamation of the Faysalian state, provoked in Palestine a stormier response in comparison to the reaction in other places. Implementation of the Syrian Congress's aims meant nullification of the Balfour Declaration and the hope of freedom from British colonial rule. Without hesitation the Muslim population of Palestine adopted the identity and political program of Southern Syria and most of the newly created nationalistic feelings and energy.^[46]  Thus, the first public appearance of the young Palestinian leader Hajj Muhammed Amin al-Husayni was the organization of a mass demonstration on March 8th, 1920, the day of Faysal's proclamation as King of Syria (and Palestine). Country-wide riots broke-out several days later, when in April during the holiday of al Nabi Musa Amin al-Husayni raised a portrait of Faysal and shouted "Here is our king". The crowd replied with "Allah save the king" and attacked the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.

      During the short period of Faysal's rule in Damascus, thousands of Palestinian notables, teachers, professionals and intellectuals signed and sent petitions to the British rulers as well as to the representatives of the great powers, expressing their willingness in the name of the local population, to be included under Syrian rule and their belief that the territory is a part of Syria, namely Surya al-Janubiyya. A newspaper with this title was launched in Jerusalem in September of 1919 in order to propagate the same idea. The other two veteran local newspapers al-Karmil of Haifa and Filastin^[47]  of Jaffa were mobilized for the same purpose. The First Palestinian Arab Congress held in Jerusalem at the beginning of 1919 stated in its resolution that, "We consider Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated from it in any stage. We are tied to it by national (qawmiyya), religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographic bonds."^[48]  After the fall of Faysal and the disappearance of the pan-Syrian option for the Palestinians, the Surya al-Janubiyya collective identity almost completely disappeared from the local political scene. From time to time it was brought back to life for brief periods.

The British Colonial State and the Building of Palestinism

     If one wants to single out one major factor that shaped and built the Palestinian collective identity and made the Palestinians into a people, but at the same time contributed to their failure - we can point to the role of British colonial power. Not that the Zionist colonization, the changing world order, the Arab world and the Palestinians themselves were not important actors in this process - it was the British, however, that were the crucial factor. From this point of view, although somewhat out of the ordinary, the Palestinians were similar to other new and not-so-new nations, a by-product of the colonial system. The British colonial state (in its legalistic "mandatory" dress) gave the country and a segment of its inhabitants their name ("Palestine"),^[49]  as well as its final geographical, political and social boundaries and identity.

      "Mandatory Palestine" was a minimalistic state, that supplied only the basic needs for all its subjects: law and order, a monetary and a fiscal system, basic but modern communication systems, postal, transportation infrastructure (roads and railways, telegraph, phone and broadcasting services) and modest, but not insignificant welfare, health and education services. The welfare services were mainly for the Arab subjects.^[50]  Considerable efforts were made to regulate and rationalize the agrarian and land system, mainly by trying to transform the mu'sha communal land holding into parcelized private titles, as well as to encourage by means of material incentives agrarian marketing cooperatives and the use of fertilizers.^[51]  Municipalities and local self management were also encouraged. For practical, but also symbolic reasons, the colonial state provided to its subjects identity c, passports and a limited and conditional sense of citizenship and citizen-rights in its Western meaning. In exchange for these services and "goods," the colonial state demanded a minimal loyalty (acceptance of its legitimacy to rule, cooperation within the administration and obedience to its laws).

      At the same time the British state provided the political and administrative umbrella for the creation of the Jewish-Zionist polity within the country, by creating favorable conditions for immigration to the country and land purchase (during most of the Ottoman period, more severe restrictions existed on both Jewish immigration and land acquisitions).^[52]  It must be added that after the initial period of British rule, Zionist satisfaction with the scope and the rate of the British immigration quotas and land policies ended, as they began to limit short term growth and development of Jewish colonization. These policies were intended in order not to frighten the local Arab population by the increased development of the Jewish community. Thus, from time to time increased limitations were imposed on the growth of the Jewish "presence" in the country. However, despite these obstacles^[53]  the Zionists managed to create a continuum of "Jewish territory" (mainly on the coastal plain and the great valleys), with hundreds of new settlements, including a new city (Tel Aviv) and new neighborhoods in old cities (Haifa and Jerusalem). They constructed a viable economy, including industries, intensive agriculture (horticulture, orchards and vineyards), educational systems (from kindergartens to a university) and their own culture (Hebrew vernacular, newspapers, publishing houses, theaters). Most impressive was the Jewish immigrant-settler society's success in building separate and parallel political institutions and leadership to the colonial state - based on semi-volunteer participation and mechanisms of resource absorption and distribution, supported by a partially mobilized diaspora.^[54]

      Maybe the most frustrating phenomenon from the local Arab point of view, was the nationalists inability to wield enough social control over the local landlords, in order to prevent the sale of lands to Jews. The high prices that the Jews were able and ready to pay for land, was a major temptation for the owners and a perceived threat to the peasant society. This was the reason that the Arab community constantly demanded from the British rulers, not only restrictions on Jewish immigration, but also restrictions by law of land transfers from one national group to the other. Two institutions were established to combat the Jewish National Fund land purchases, the Arab Bank (1930) and the Arab National Fund (1931). Both failed to recruit enough funds for their purpose, because of lack of external sources, similar to those of the Zionist movement. All the major inquiry commissions on the "situation in Palestine" (Shaw Commission, Strickland's report, John Hope Simpson, Lewis French and Peel Commission reports),^[55]  found that even though it had not been established that a critical mass of Arab peasants and tenants had lost their holdings as a direct consequence of the Jewish land acquisitions,^[56]  the issue had become very threatening and had raised anxiety among the Palestinian peasant society. The Jewish land purchases directly reduced the land and territorial reservoirs of the fast growing local population. Together with the usual xenophobia existing in any traditional society, the land issue was one of the major causes of the creation of two kinds of consciousness which formed the bases of sub-identities: a kind of popular nationalism rooted in the enmity towards Jewish society, and a kind of popular class awareness rooted in the enmity toward the a'yan, effendis and other urban notables, that not only failed to protect them from British imperialism and Zionist colonialism, but were perceived as their partners, betraying the peasantry and the Arab peoples' interests. Both feelings were strongly expressed during the final stages of the "Great Arab Revolt," when the national rebellion against the British and the Jewish settlement turned into a bloody civil war of peasant gangs against city dwellers.

Institution Building and New Palestinism

     Palestinism is a general belief that the Arab population of the British colonial state of Palestine became a distinct collectivity from the other surrounding states and states-in-making of the region, and at the same time a part of al-qawmiyya al-Arabiyya from which the right of self-determination is drawn within the geographical boundaries of the mandatory state. This belief appeared within a relatively short period of time, and was nourished by three factors: a. the regional political reality created after W.W.I, i.e., the creation of other independent or would-be independent Arab watani; b. the actual creation of the British colonial state; and, c. the fast development of Jewish settlement, which aspired to the same goal for the Jews over more or less the same territorial entity.^[57]  The development, the spread and the penetration of this new asabiyya among various strata and groups of the Arab society of Palestine, was accompanied by an accelerated institution building process in various spheres.

      More or less concomitantly with the conquering of the territory by the British troops, Muslim-Christian Associations were formed in almost every city, town and major locality. The aim of these MCA's were to express an Arab-Muslim and Arab-Christian solidarity^[58]  in face of the new ruler, who appeared to endorse an explicit policy of Judification of the country (the Balfour Declaration as well the nomination on July 1st, 1920 of a self-proclaimed English Zionist-Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel as high commissioner). Most of the local notables, but also considerable segments of the younger, educated professionals and intelligentsia, were recruited to the MCA. The MCA launched petitions and formed delegations to represent their concerns to the representatives of the new rulers, demanding an alteration of the pro-Zionist policy of Britain, and to pay heed to the political rights of the country's Arab majority. The simultaneous, spontaneous and grass roots creation of these MCA exhibited impressive political skill and awareness on the part of the local elite.^[59]  The most important step of the MCA was a de facto acknowledgment of the Jerusalemian MCA as the coordinator and the leader of the new movement.

      On December 13, 1920 the Third Palestinian Congress was held in Haifa by delegates of MCA and other local "clubs" from all over the country (the second was forbidden by the government following the April riots of the al-Nabi Musa feast). The Congress elected an Arab Executive Committee, which was designed to be a unified representative of the Palestinian Arabs in face of the British authorities, as well a consensual political leadership for all the Arabs of Palestine and a counter-balance to the Jewish Agency.^[60]  The most important difference between the First and Third Congress was not only the establishment of a local institutionalized leadership, but its inward shift of focus. Palestine was no longer regarded as a part of Syria or any other larger identity; but, rather as a distinct polity unto itself. Amongst others, the Congress adopted a resolution calling upon Britain to establish a national government (hukuma al-wataniyya) responsible to a representative assembly of members that would be chosen from "the Arabic-speaking people who inhabited Palestine until the outbreak of the War." In other words, this was a demand to start the process of building an independent Arab state, within clearly defined sociopolitical boundaries (excluding non-Arabic speaking [Askenazic] Jews and Jews who immigrated during and after W.W.I).^[61]

The Islamic Factor

     The other focus of power in the emerging Palestinian society was created by the colonial state, in cooperation with a part of the local leadership, but soon became an almost independent factor. Since the territory was cut out of the Ottoman state, it remained without central religious leadership forthe majority Muslim population. In order to fill this vacuum the Muslim population was defined as an autonomous religious community (a millet). Symbolically this was degrading to the Muslim population, because it meant the leveling of Muslim status to the status of the minority religious groups (various Christians and Jewish communities).^[62]  However, institutionally the redefinition of the Palestinian Muslims as a religious community allowed the creation of local religious institutions and leadership. The institution created in January 1922 was the Supreme Muslim Council with its presidency unified with that of the mufti of Jerusalem. To both of these offices was appointed, not without considerable resistance from the old religious and traditional leadership, the young and militant Amin al Husayni. al-Husayni was a student at Egypt's most prestigious Qu'aranic institute al-Azhar, where he was exposed to the teaching of Muhammad Rashid Rida. He was also a son of the powerful Husayni clan, and was suspected as responsible for the 1920 Nabi Musa Arab violence.^[63]

      The Council and its president were on one hand British "civil servants," on the other hand they gained a critical power position, creating a new Palestinian Islamic hierarchy. Control of the country-wide al-awqaf (the Islamic endowment) and the authority to appoint and dismiss all Islamic officials and role holders (such as sha'ria court judges and clerks, mosque and Qu'ranic school system teachers), made al Husayni the most powerful Arab leader in the newly created colonial state. Sunni Islam was a powerful actor in the basically traditional Palestinian society, however as a consequence of the Ottoman legacy it was not a dominant politicized ideology (except for a short trial during Sultan Abdulhamid II reign [1896-1909] when attempts were made to fight the European powers by using Islamic symbols).

      Amin al-Husayni, even before his appointment to the office of mufti (he added to this title the adjective "the Great"), realized the political power of religion,^[64]  and certainly perceived himself as the religious leader of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. He tried with some success to build himself an international stature as an Islamic leader; for example, convening an Islamic world conference in Jerusalem in 1931, and launching a successful world wide campaign on behalf of the renovation of the al-Aqsa mosque. However, these were only two of his many activities to accumulate more power within Palestinian society. He also knew that too heavy an accentuation on Islam and Islamic symbols would alienate the very important Arab Christian population from the national movement.^[65]  Almost since the beginning al-Husayni tried to use his religious power for nationalist purposes. Thus, he launched a fatwa, a religious verdict, which entailed the excommunication of any believer who sold land to Jews. He used the mosques, as was done throughout the Muslim world, as a pulpit for political preaching and as a fast and efficient communication network in a traditional society. However, in the aftermath of W.W.I, Islam and pan-Islamism was not a salient movement, and its usefulness as a means of political mobilization was limited. Of course from time to time violent outbreaks in Palestine were connected with religious feelings and xenophobia - based on the suspicion that the Jewish intention was to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque in order to rebuild their ancient "Third Temple". Fears such as these, fueled Muslim anxiety and were exploited by their leadership. All the violent outbreaks were in one way or another connected with these fears. For example, the Great Revolt of 1936-39 was preceded by the challenge of a small militant Muslim group, using isoteric Islamic slogans, and lead by the charismatic sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam who was killed in 1935 by British troops. Al-Qassam provided the first martyr and hero for the Palestinian national movement.

      Generally, Jewish settlement was perceived as a penetration of "pure" traditional Islamic society and its corruption by kufrs (non-believers), who were regarded as secularist, colonialist, imperialists and communists. This was a general xenophobic and anti-modernist attitude, in which religion was only one ingredient amongst others. The life of the traditional religious peasantry was regarded as the healthy and "right", similar to the Russian Narodnik movement's views. The Jews (and their women, who were pictured as the incarnation of "evil") were perceived not only as a national enemy or an intruder into the land, but also an entity that violates (Islamic) cosmic order.^[66]  This leads to a binary perception of the sociopolitical world-order of the good-pure-Islamic peasant society vs. the Jewish/British-corrupt-evil, yet always tempting society.^[67]  Thus, Islam, especially its popular forms, was politicized and used for political mobilization and socialization, but at this initial stage of the crystallization of the Palestinian collective identity it was not a determinant factor. The Muslim Brotherhood, as a political party established in Egypt by the sheikh Hasan al-Bana in 1928, spread into Palestine and formed several local branches in the 1930s. The sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his followers were an offshoot of this movement. However, during the colonial period, they never succeeded in becoming a country-wide political power.

Epilogue

     The inner-logic of the post-W.W.II era, and the following de-colonization process, was that the framework of the major statist-institutions and the colonial state's power and authority were usually transferred to the representatives of the majority population group. In our case this did not happen, and when in 1948 the colonial power left the country no settled transfer of authority, either to the majority Arab-Palestinians nor to the Jewish state-in-the making, took place. The reasons behind the Palestinians' collapse in this period preceded the 1948 war, and are beyond the scope of present analysis;^[68]  however, the results were far-reaching: the territory of colonial Palestine was broken up into three parts - Israel, the West-Bank annexed to Trans-Jordan, and the Gaza Strip which was placed under Egyptian control.

      In at least in two of these parts, a systematic and coercive attempt was made at "de-Palestinization;" mainly through educational attempts to re-construct their collective identity and harsh political control and surveillance. The Hasemites imposed a "Jordanian" identity, and the Israelis created an "Israeli-Arab" identity. The rest of the Arab states preserved the Palestinian identity, but mostly within the framework of pan-Arabism - i.e., the solution of the Palestinian problem was supposed to be "solved" only in the framework of a victorious establishment of an all-embracing Arab qawmiyya. But the Palestinian identity did not disappear. It was preserved in the refugee camps, mainly by belonging to a certain village or city (thus third generation camp-dwellers still perceive themselves as Jaffanians, Miarians or Dier-Yassiners). Following 1967 the three territorial parts of colonial Palestine were re-united under Jewish-Israeli control, which in many ways recreated the initial "Palestinian condition." The major cleavage amongst the Palestinians was now between those who found themselves in their country, but under a hegemonic Jewish rule; and, those who remained in gourba (exile), out of the historic territory of Palestine, dispersed in different countries and continents. The Palestine Liberation Organization, in its second stage, lead by the Fatah^[69]  also contributed to the building of new kinds of Palestinian identities, mostly connected with the concepts of "armed struggle" and "popular resistance." The last turn in this process was the mutual recognition that has recently taken place between the Israelis and the mainstream of the Palestinian national movement and the gradual establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in a small part of "Palestine," as was defined territorially by the boundaries of British colonial power.

Conclusions

     The Palestinians are a devnation - yet stateless, working towards an ambiguous "autonomy," at least for those who were in the occupied territories by Israel since the 1967 War. Like most "new nations," their initial collective identity was in a great measure shaped by a colonial power, which created for its own convenience the Palestinian's geographical, social and political boundaries. However, these boundaries were far less arbitrary than in many other colonial cases (as arbitrary as, for example, most of the sub-Saharan cases). Some contours of the future Arab Palestinian society, located between the Mediterranean coastal plain and Jordan River valley, existed long before the creation of the British colonial state. The "classic" scholars of nationalism perceived it as a "natural" and authentic expression of ancient primordial communities. Anthony Smith followed them, demonstrating the ancient ethnic bases of political nationalism and the nation-state. ^[70]  Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, from very different perspectives, saw any national identity as a fabrication of elite groups and somehow a artificial product of Western modernity. Benedict Anderson refers to nationalism as a "cultural artifact transformed into an imagined community,"^[71]  which does not necessarily contradict any of these approaches. This essay does not present an overall alternative thesis about the formation of national identities. The aim is only to present the sociopolitical preconditions and mainly external forces that lead towards the formation of such an imagined entity. One of these preconditions in our case was the presence of the Jewish settler-society, which had a growing impact as time passed and as the Jewish presence became increasingly tangible. Yet, Jewish settlement was only a part of the greater British colonial venture; as, neither the Jewish settlers, nor the British ruler perceived each other as an extension of their own system. However, by and large the British rule and the Jewish colonizers complemented each other, at least from the point of view of the local "native" Arab Palestinian population. Jewish settlement provided the British rulers with some of the functions of "classical" settler roles - in economy, civil service and in some cases as a factor for control and surveillance of the local population. The Jews also drew some of the local populations violence towards them, instead of the colonial power. For the Jewish immigrant-settler society the British rule provided a limited political and military umbrella, which ensured within colonial "law-and-order" the possibility of growth (purchasing lands and enabling immigration) and the development of a society that was ready to switch from a state-in-the-making to a sovereign nation-state, when the colonial state ceased to exist. It was also very helpful for the Jewish polity in 1948, that the British colonial state's bureaucracy and institutions did not transfer to the Arab majority when colonial rule terminated, and the Arabs of Palestine were not administratively or politically prepared for such a take-over. As the colonial government allowed the Jews to built strong political institutions, it was not so friendly toward Arab institution building efforts. The Jewish state-in-the-making did not depend on the colonial state and was institutionally prepared to replace the colonial state. These were probably the causes of the Palestinian political anxiety and one of the reasons they relied so heavily on the help of the already sovereign Arab "brother states" and the mistaken transfer of the responsibility over their own fate to the Arab states.

      Several Arab and Palestinian social scientists and historians assert the "exceptional" nature of the Palestinian case, especially its need to confront the "Jewish challenge."^[72]  However, even if Jewish settlement introduced an additional factor into the institutional and identity building and dismantling processes - in the historical stages that preceded 1948, the Palestinian case was not exceptional and does not significantly differ with the experiences of some other colonial-produced collectivities of the time (not to mention the Algerian experience). Moreover, the Palestinians were not just a passive subject of the initiative of "others," as they are often presented in their self-portrayal. Immediately after the Egyptian invasion, they manifested an ability for collective action stretching across familial, class, urban-rural and regional cleavages - without having a distinct collective identity.

      Ottomanism was a convenient identity and ideology for the urban elites, merchants and notables as far as the Ottoman regime supplied fluctuating levels of law and order, the feeling of participation in a sociopolitical order, as well as some offices and other material and status benefits (tax-collection and other concessions). At the same time, for the peasantry and lower classes the most meaningful identities were those of the clan, the region and perhaps the ancient primordial grouping around the Qays and Yaman factions. Islam provided some common denominators to bridge gaps between fellahin and effendis, poor and rich, ignorant and literate, however it did not offer a sense, at that time, of being a partner in an all-embracing umma al-islamiyya. In short, Islam was a part of the more embracing Ottomanism. The ability to adopt a new kind of "modern" collective identity, the pan-Syrian identity, that could be interpreted in both a particularistic context of wataniyya (near to the nation-state notion) or its more universalistic context of qawmiyya, or the first stage toward the integration into umma al-arabiyya - proved the flexibility of the embryonic Palestinian society and self-consciousness. The adoption first of the "Southern Syrian" identity, as a reaction to Faysal's success and then to Faysal's failure, the beginning of the formation of an implicit Palestinian identity, has far reaching implications. It hints that collective identities - at least before they become a kind of secular or civil religion, such as nationalism - should be regarded as an additional sociopolitical strategy of coping with changing threatening situations. They draw and redraw the collective boundaries, constructing loyalties and imagined communities, but all based on certain changing sociopolitical realities.

Home | Profile | CV | Publications | Interview | Zionism | Religion, Nationalism & Democracy | Legislation | Palestinian Identity

^{[[*]  ]}  The author would like to express his gratitude to Ezra Kopelowitz for his substantial contribution to this paper and to the five anonymous readers of IJMES for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions. Requests for reprints and correspondence should be sent to Baruch Kimmerling, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. e-mail: mskimmer@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il; fax: +972-2-5828247. Return to Text

^[1] The extensive survey was carried out in June, July and August 1992. The representative sample included 2,500 Palestinian households in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem. See Marianne Heiberg, "Opinions and Attitudes," in Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (Oslo: Fagbevegelsens senter for forskining utredning ogdokumentasjon, 1993), 249-312. The survey did not include Israeli Palestinian citizens or Palestinians in the diaspora. The great discrepancies between men and women regarding their identities are almost self evident. Islam appears to impose great restrictions on women, who are divided between the two major competing components of the Palestinian collective identities, the traditional family and Palestinian nationalism. The same level of strength of the familial identity was found in a Jewish-Israeli sample, but not among the Israeli Palestinians who expressed a strikingly different structural pattern of their collective identity, preferring Arabism and Palestinism, and pushing the familial identity into a relatively marginal position. See Baruch Kimmerling and Dahlia Moore, "Collective Identity as Agency, and Structuration of Society: Tested by the Israeli Case," International Sociological Review (forthcoming). Return to Text

^[2]  See, Harrison C. White, Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Return to Text

^{[ ]} 3Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. revised ed. (London: Verso, 1983). Return to Text

^{[ ]} 4N. Ellemers, "Identity Management Strategies: The Influence of Socio-Cultural Variables on Strategies of Individual Mobility and Social Change." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 1991. Also see, Dahlia Moore and Baruch Kimmerlng, "Individual Strategies in Adopting Collective Identities," International Sociology, 10, 4:387-408. Baruch Kimmerling, "Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System," in The Israeli State and Society, ed. B. Kimmerling. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 265-284; How and for what national identities are constructed see, Anderson, Imagined Communities. Return to Text

^[5] J. Sidanius, et al., "Ideological Constraint, Political Interest and Gender: A Swedish-American Comparison." European Journal of Political Research. 15:471-492., 1987; or J. Sidanius and G. Duffy, "The Duality of Attitude Structure: A Test of Kerlinger's Critical Referents Theory within Samples of Swedish and American Youths," Political Psychology, 1988, 9:649-670. Return to Text

^[6] Changing identities are also a way to recruit people to cope with hardship such as foreign rule and uncertainties of social changes and "modernization". Thus, Greenfeld perceived nationalism as tool for political modernization, contrary with perceptions like Gellner's who saw nationalism as outcome of modernity. First, it is the privilege of the elite to be "sovereign" and later to the entire people. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992). Return to Text

^[7] The state is examined in the recent literature as a conceptual variable, measured by its roots in a particular society's culture and tradition. See, J.P. Nettl, 1968. "The State as a Conceptual Variable," World Politics, 1968, 20:559-522. Return to Text

^[8] In his monumental work Muqaddima (Prolegomena). See, Abd alRahman Ibin Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). For an innovative discussion on the term, see Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry (London: Macmillan, 1990), 138-141. Return to Text

^[9] For Qays and Yaman factions in Jabel Nablus area see Miriam Hoexter, "The Role of Qays and Yaman Factions in Local Political Division: Jabal Nablus compared with Judean Hills in the First Half of Nineteenth Century," Asian and African Studies, 1973, 9, 3:245-59. Compare this with Salim Tamari, "Factionalism and Class Formation in Recent Palestinian History," in Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Roger Owen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 181-186. Tamari called them "fictive alignments" because they were used as a principle of legitimacy for coalition formations. Return to Text

^[10] Originally, the umma was used to denote a man's tribe, community, kinfolk or people, and was later accepted as the Islamic concept of the "community of all the believers in god and his prophet Muhammed." The notion was juxtaposed to the individual-person, which does not exist without being a part of the organic moral community of the umma. However, S. Haim's analyses of modern Arab nationalist thought, especially that of Sati' al-Husri (who was influenced by German Romanticism), asserted that the notion has been modernized and Westernized and can unequivocally be translated as 'nation' in the European sense. See, Sylvia G. Haim, "Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism," in Middle East in Transition, ed. Walter Z. Laqueur (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1958), 287-298. Also see, "Introduction" in Arab Nationalism: An Anthology, edited by Sylvia G. Haim. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 3-74; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). The Qur'anic word umma - "the people" or "community" - is sometimes connected with umm (mother), seems to be a word taken from Hebrew or Aramaic "motherhood." Today there is also a difference between sha'b (people) and umma (nation). See, Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 17. Return to Text

^[11] See, C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973, passim; Sylvia G. Haim, Arab Nationalism, 39; and Lewis, The Political Language of Islam, 40-41. Also see, William L. Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati al-Husri (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Return to Text

^[12] The Asian Arab nationalism (mainly a venture of Syrian-Lebanese and Christian intellectuals) was different from Egyptian and North African Arab nationalism. Only the Egyptian occupation of Syria and Palestine created some connections among these entities. See, Henry H. Dodwell, The Founder of Modern Egypt: A Study of Muhammad 'Ali, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1931] 1967). However, basically the initial Egyptian nationalism lacked most of the Arab components and stressed Egyptian distinctiveness. James Janowski, "Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism, 1908-1922," in Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih and Reeva S. Simon, eds. The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 244-245. Return to Text

^[13] The Syrian General Congress, claiming to be the representative of "Greater-Syria" (i.e., Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, including Transjordan), declared independence on March 8, 1920. The declaration also demanded a federation between Iraq and Syria, because they "possess linguistic, historical, economic, natural and racial ties, which make the two regions dependent on each other." See, Sati' al-Husari, The Day of Maysalun, Beirut: al-Maqsuf, 1945, 246-273 [Arabic]. Al-Husri himself was a prominent ideologue of a secular pan-Arab nationalism. This was a clash with French imperial power, which following the post-W.W.I armistice among the Great Powers, was supposed to rule the territory. Al-Husri was very close to Amir Faysal during his abortive trial to establish the Syrian state in 1918-1920; also see Muslih "The Rise of Local Nationalism in the Arab East," in Khalidi et. al., Ibid, 189-203. Return to Text

^[14] See, Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Volume 1: The Formative Period (London: Routledge, 1990), 47-58. The Muslim Ottomans incorporated the territory into the Empire in 1516, and conquered it from the Mamluks. During the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent and Selim II (1520-1574) there was a temporary economic revival, including renewal of Jewish settlement in Tiberias by Don Joseph Nasi, a banker and counselor of Selim. Return to Text

^[15] Cif., Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1990), 6. Many modern Jewish thinkers claim the same about the Judaism, which is perceived as a religion which hidden within it, since the first exile of the Jews from their patrimony, are strong ingredients of modern nationalism. Many other nationalistic ideologies - e.g., Irish, Polish, Italian - include strong religious ingredients. Return to Text

^[16] Jacob Katz. Jewish Nationalism (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1983) Return to Text

^[17] John A. Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 9. Also see, Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1961); Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), and his "Tribalism and the State in the Middle East," in Tribes and State Formations in the Middle East, eds. Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostier (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Comp. 1991). Return to Text

^[18] See, Justine McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Mandate Period and the Mandate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 10 and passim. In 1860 in the twelve cities of Palestine there were an estimated 90,000 city dwellers, which grew to 120,000 in the following twenty years. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, "The Population of the Large Towns in Palestine During the First Eighty Years of the Nineteenth Century According to Western Sources." in Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period, ed. Moshe Ma'oz. (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1975), 68 [Hebrew]. Return to Text

^[19]  Shabab literally means "youth," however it was generalized for people who cut their traditional familial loyalties and became an urban underclass. Return to Text

^[20] Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People. 2nd ed.(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 36-63. For the classic analysis of the distinction between Mediterranean coast and hinterland and the interplay between the regions, see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), vol. 2. Return to Text

^[21] In 1799 the Ottoman governor of Acre Ahmed Pasha al-Jezzar turned back the advancing French revolutionary army of Napoleon, enhanced Haifa and its region, and subsequently imposed a lengthy siege on Jaffa forcing the Ottoman governor to flee. For a brief period Jezzar became the first "master" of a part of the territory later known as Palestine. He benefited from the initial stages of the European Industrial Revolution, trading cotton and grain for firearms to equip his soldiers. See, Joel S. Migdal and Baruch Kimmerling, "The Shaping of a Nation: Palestinians in the Last Century of Ottoman Rule," New Perspectives on Turkey, (Spring 1994), 10:75-94. Other powerful and nearly autonomous governors (walis) of the territory were Tahir, Sulayman and 'Abdallah Pashas. Return to Text

^[22] This following the 1864 Provinces [Wilayat] Act: The northern district (sanjaq) of Acre (including Akka (Acre), Hayfa, Tabarya (Tiberias), Safat and the mountain region of al-Balq' (including Nablus, Janin and Tulkarem) were a part of the province (wilaya) of Beirut. The country's central areas were included into the province of Damascus, which also held the districts of Hawran and Amman. The district of Jerusalem was the only one which included pure Palestinian sub districts (aqdiya), namely Yafa (Jaffa), Gazza, Hebron and Beersheba. Return to Text

^[23] For a full description and impact of the reforms see, Moshe Ma'oz, Ottoman Reforms in Syria and Palestine, 1840-1861: The Impact of Tanzimat on Politics and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). Return to Text

^[24] Hourani asserted that intention of the Tanzimat was to strengthen the control of the central government in Istanbul; the consequence of which was the empowerment of the local leadership, on which its implementation was based. Albert Hourani, "Ottoman Reforms and the Politics of Notables," in The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, eds. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 41-60. Return to Text

^[25] Other large, wealthy aristocratic families in the territories were: Shak's, Misris, Tuqans, 'Abd al-Hadis, Nimrs, Qasims and Jarrars of Mount Nablus; Jaffa was the center the Dajanis, Qasims, Bitars, Bayydas, Abu Khadras and Tayyans; in Ramla the Tajis and al-Ghusayns; in Gaza the Shawwas and Husaynis local branch possessed estates of orchards, textiles, pottery and soap industries; the 'Amrs controlled the Hebron area for a century manufacturing glass products, breeding sheep and goats, and the Shuqayrs had a base in Acre. Only in Haifa was there a Maronite family such as Bustani and Greek-Orthodox families of Hakim and Nassar. Some intermarriage (musahara) eventually took place among the big clans, such as between Nashashibis and Jabris or 'Alamis, or Khalidis and the wealthy Salam clan of Beirut. For a brilliant and detailed description of the Nablusian families and their role in the economic and social development of the territory, see Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). He also demonstrated the intensive regional trade networks developed by these families, contrary to the initial image that only the coastal region urban families were involved in "international trade." Return to Text

^[26] Since the late 19th century until the 1920s, Arab and Palestinian nationalists perceived the lands of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine as a unitary geographical, cultural, political and economic unit under the umbrella of "Greater Syria" (or Bilad esh-Sham). We will see later how, why and when the Palestinians attached and detached themselves from this identity. Return to Text

^[27] For a full description of the rebellion and its suppression, see Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians., Chapter 1. Return to Text

^[28] Even the poll tax on the non-Muslim minorities (dhimmis), the Christians and Jews was abolished. This also had a far reaching symbolic impact, ending the dominant status of Muslims in the country, and created a universalistic notion of "citizenship" for all subjects of the Egyptian state. This was perceived as a major deviance from the stratified Muslim world order. However, the dhimmis also played a central role in the regional economy as merchants, tax collectors and financiers of the local strongmen's' military and economic enterprises. The Muslim's position was also undermined by the Egyptian "emancipation," which included the minorities in the local councils (majlis idare). Thomas Philipp, "Jews and Arab Christians: Their Changing Position in Politics and Economy in Eighteenth Century Syria and Egypt," in Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868-1948), eds. Amnon Cohen and Gabriel Baer (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), 150-166. Return to Text

^{[ ]} 29Shimon Shamir, "Egyptian Rule (1832-1840) and the Beginning of the Modern History of Palestine," in A. Cohen and G. Baer," eds. Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868-1948) (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), 220-221. Mirian Hoexter, draws a different picture on the impact of the short period of Egyptian rule in Palestine, or more precisely on the Jabal Nablus area. The direct rule was not imposed and the Egyptians relied heavily on the local elite families and the 'ulama, and especially on the 'Abd al-Hadis. M. Hoexter. "Egyptian Involvements in the Politics of Notables in Palestine: Ibrahim Pasha in Jabal Nablus," Ibid., 190-213. For more documents from Cairo archives, also see, Mohammed Sabry, L'empire egyptien sous Mohamed-Ali et la question d'orient (1811-1849) (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1930), 329-394. Sabry, a great admirer of 'Ali, described the enormous benefits that the Egyptian administration granted to the population of Syria and Palestine, and the great enthusiasm with which Ibrahim was welcomed. He referred to the revolt and to intrigues of the Turks and European powers. Despite this, the short period of Egyptian rule is considered by Tibi (Arab Nationalism, 96-105) not only as a first opening to modernization, through the introduction of new educational systems and curricula by Christian schools, but also the first cry of the new Arab nationalism as opposed to older Ottomanism. Return to Text

^[30] For detailed documentation see, Asad Jibrail Rustum, The Royal Archives of Egypt and the Disturbances in Palestine, 1834 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, Oriental Series, 1938), No. 11. A. J. Rustum, A Corpus of Arabic Documents Relating to the History of Syria under Mehemet 'Ali Rasha (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1929-34), vols. 1-5. For an account of some of the events from the perspective of the notable families (such as the Jabel Nablus Nimr family, who supposedly remained loyal to the Ottomans over the entire period of the revolt) see, Ihsan al-Nimr, Ta'rikh Jabal Nablus wa'l-Balqa, Damascus, 1938 (2 volumes). This author argues that the idea of rebellion against the Egyptians was raised during a hajj journey of Nimrs and other sheikhs to Mecca, giving the halo to the Nimrs and a religious meaning to the revolt. A large number of sources are in Sabry, passim. Return to Text

^[31] William Roe Polk, The Opening of South Lebanon, 1788-1840: A Study of the Impact of West on the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), xix. Return to Text

^[32] Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented. Princeton: (Princeton University Press, 1975), 12. Importantly, Lewis warned that there is a danger in the processes of "recovering history," and that if this process is done for extra-historical purposes it can lead to the fabrication of facts and events or their suppression, and a resultant "invented history." For impressive examples see Eric Robert Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982). In our context, such an invented history is the claim that the ancient Canaanites were in fact Arabs, who pre-dated the first Israelite tribes. See, Ishaq Musa al-Husayni, 'Urubat Bayt al-Maqdis (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization, 1969); or Muhammad Adib al-'Amir, Urbat Filastin (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Asriyya, 1972). Return to Text

^[33] Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, 7. Return to Text

^[34] For the economic development of the territory see, Alexander Scholch, "European Penetration and Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882," in Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Roger Owen. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 10-87; Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East. Boulder (CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1987), passim; Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Iris Agmon, "Foreign Trade as a Catalyst of Change in the Arab Economy in Palestine 1879-1914," Cathedra, (October 1986):107-132 [Hebrew]; Sa'id B. Himadeh, ed. Economic Organization of Palestine (Beirut: American University Press, 1939). Also Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy (New York: Metheun, 1981); and Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians, 12-14. Return to Text

^[35] For an excellent description of the rise of Jaffa as a modern commercial port-city see Ruth Kark, Jaffa: A City in Evolution. trans. Gila Brand (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Press, 1990). However, what Kark ignores is the place of Jaffa as the modern Arab commercial center of the territory, and in general the basic Arabic character of the city is underplayed and blurred. Return to Text

^[36] For example von Moltke, then the Germam military envoy in Istanbul, published a plan to establish Palestine as a Jewish autonomous state under German control. See, Mordechai Eliav, "German Interests and the Jewish Community in Nineteenth Century Palestine," in Ottoman Reforms. 426-7. Guizot wished the internationalization of Palestine, in the framework of a French "Levant," similar to a plan by Palmerston and other British politicians and intellectuals. Return to Text

^[37] Shimon Shamir, "The Impact of Western Ideas on Traditional Society in Ottoman Palestine," in Ma'oz, Ottoman Reforms, 507-516; Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875-1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). Return to Text

^[38] This assumption goes beyond E. H. Carr's assertion that a geographical unit can serve as a source of collective consciousness. This also deals with the criticism as to the "invention" of an nonexistent-yet Palestinian identity, by going beyond the general historiographical tendency to consider a territorial unit as corresponding with events that happened long before and after the analyzed period. Here I am suggesting a methodology which treats a population of a territory as a single analytical unit over a period of about a hundred years. In sociological terms this is considered a "case study." Return to Text

^[39] See, Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socioterritorial Dimension of Zionist Politics. (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1983); Gershon Shafir, Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For later developments see J.C. Hurewitz, The Struggle for Palestine (New York: Norton, 1950). For the most comprehensive and detailed overview see, Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Return to Text

^[40] Usually the Balfour Declaration is contrasted to the exchange of a letter between Husayn the "Sherif of Mecca" and the British envoy in Egypt Sir Henry McMahon, in which "Great Britain is prepared to recognize and support the independence of Arabs in all the regions within all the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca" (October 24, 1915). The Sherif's as well the British limits did not included areas of relevance to Palestine. On the British dual-obligations, promises and the interpretation of the "letters". See Elie Kedourie, The Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations, 1914-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). In fact in 1916 Britain and France divided much of the Middle East amongst themselves into "zones of influence" (Sykes-Picot agreement). See, Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East, The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire 1914-1922 (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1956), 128. Finally following San Remo meeting on April 1920 the Sykes-Picot agreement was implemented and decided by the allies to put Syria and Lebanon under French mandate and Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (which would be in 1921 was cut into in two territories in order to grant another son of Husayn Abdullah, his own emirate, later known as Transjordan). The League of Nations confirmed these arrangements and granted them international recognition. The boundaries of Palestine were finalized in an Anglo-French convention in March 1923. Return to Text

^[41] In many ways this perception was anachronistic. Since the Young Turks coup of 1908, the whole empire underwent a Turkification process, which was accompanied almost from the beginning with the secularization, modernization and centralization of the bureaucracy. Thus, in the Nablus area the government displaced the local Arab notables (of Tuqan, Abd al-Hadi and Hammad clans) from their posts with Turkish civil servants. The Nablusites reacted with stormy demonstrations, demanding the return to power of Sultan Abdulhamid and the rules of shari'a. Zeine Nour-Ud-Din Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism: With Background Study of Arab Turkish Relations in the Near East (New York: Caravan Books, 1973). Return to Text

^[42] See, Kedourie, England and the Middle East, 76.Return to Text

^[43] See, Muhammed Y. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 124. Return to Text

^[44] On this exceptional attempt see, A. L. Tibawi, A Modern History of Syria, Including Lebanon and Palestine (London: Macmillan, 1969), 305-14. Also see, George Antonious, The Arab Awaking: The Story of Arab National Movement (London: Capricorn, 1965). Antonious, the young Christian Lebanese nationalist and intellectual, was a member of Faysal's inner-circle, during the attempt at state building. Also see, Malcolm B. Russell, The First Modern Arab State: Syria Under Faysal, 1918-1920 (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1985). Later Faysal was compensated by being nominated by the British as the ruler of Iraq. Return to Text

^[45] Gawn is used as "people" rather "nation"; however both are possible, depending on period and context. Return to Text

^[46] For the sudden outbreak of a local proto-nationalist movement see the next section. As for the description of Palestinian nationalist activity during the mandatory period, see Yehoshua Porath's three volumes, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 (London: Cass, 1974); The Palestinian National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 1929-1939 (London: Cass, 1977); and In Search of Arab Unity, (London: Cass, 1986). This was a pioneering and comprehensive effort to document and describe the rise of the Palestinian nationalist movement during the British colonial period. However, lacking any analytical framework about nationalism and national movements, or even a working definition of what nationalism is, the author failed to reach any conclusions beyond a detailed chronology of arbitrarily chosen events. Also see William B. Quandt, Fuad Jaber and Ann Mosely Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press, 1973); Ann Mosely Lesch, Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979). Return to Text

^[47] Al-Karmil weekly, published in Haifa, was founded in 1908 by Najib Nasser, a Palestinian pharmacist settled in Tiberias, with the major aim of fighting Arab land sales to Jews. Filastin was founded as a bi-weekly by the al-'Isa cousins in Jaffa in 1911, and became the Arab newspaper with the largest circulation in the country. The boundaries of the geographical region envisioned by the title "Filastin" (Palestine) are not clear. The paper changed loyalties several times in the course of the local struggle amongst the Husaynis and the Nashashibis. See, Rashid Khalidi "The Role of the Press in the Early Arab Reaction to Zionism," Peules Mediterranees (July/September, 1982), 107-122. Return to Text

^[48] Quoted by Muslih, Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, 181, from Akram Zu'aytir unpublished manuscript. The Congress included delegates of Muslim-Christian Associations from most of the major towns in the country. On these see the following section of this paper. Return to Text

^[49] The origin of the name was coined after the Philistines a maritime people, probably from Phoenician culture, who settled the coastal plain of the country in 1190 B.C., at the same time that the mythological Hebrew tribes lead by Jehosuah conquered most of the Land of Canaan and annihilated most of the local inhabitants. The Philistines, were defeated by King David, in a series of bitter battles, and disappeared from history. A long time after these events, following a series of Judean rebellions against the Hellenstic and Roman rulers, the second Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire (in 70 A.D.) and in the year 135 most of the Jews were exiled, effectively destroying the Jewish polity. The territory was then renamed by the Romans, using the Philistine title. When in 635-7 the Arab warriors captured the territory from the Byzantines, they called it jund [military district] Filastin. These semi-historical and semi-mythological events, which occurred 2,000 to 3,500 years ago, are still used and abused in the "historiography" of the present struggle for the land of Palestine. Return to Text

^[50] Most of the Jewish population rejected or did not take advantage of most of the "goods" and services provided by the colonial state, in the attempt to build an independent parallel system, or a "state within-a-state." For this see Baruch Kimmerling, "State Building, State Autonomy and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State," The Journal of Historical Sociology, 1993, 6, 4:396-430. Return to Text

^[51] For the agrarian policy of the colonial state see, Ylana N. Miller, Government and Society in Rural Palestine: 1920-1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). For the general development of the mandatory rule see, Jacob Reuveny, The Administration of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920-1948: An Institutional Analysis (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1993) [Hebrew]; Baruch Kimmerling, The Economic Interrelationship between the Arab and Jewish Communities in Mandatory Palestine (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979). Return to Text

^[52] For the impact of Jewish colonization on Palestinian peasants see, Charles Kamen, Little Common Ground: Arab Agriculture and Jewish Settlement in Palestine (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Kenneth W. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine 1917-1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, 1983. Miller also emphasized the impact of land sales on the formation of peasant nationalism. For formation of a Palestinian semi-urban proletariat see Rachelle Taqqu, "Peasants into Workmen: Internal Labor Migration and the Arab Village Community under the Mandate," in Palestinian Society and Politics, ed. Joel S. Migdal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 261-286. Also see, Sara Graham-Brown, "The Political Economy of the Jabel Nablus, 1920-1948," 88-178, in Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ibid., ed. Roger Owen. Return to Text

^[53] For example, the Jewish immigration was limited to the "absorption capacity" of the country, measured by the amount of overall unemployment. Nadav Halevy, "The Political Economy of Absorptive Capacity - Growth and Cycles in Jewish Palestine." Middle Eastern Studies, 1983, 19: 456-469. Return to Text

^[54] For the most comprehensive analytical presentation of the development of the Jewish settler-society in colonial Palestine see Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine Under the Mandate (Chicago and London: University of Press, 1978). Also see, Dan Horowitz, "Before the State: Communal Politics in Palestine under the Mandate," in The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers, ed. Baruch Kimmerling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). For the presentation of the British economic system in Palestine and its goals and policy, see Nachum T. Gross, The Economic Policy of the Mandatory Government in Palestine (Jerusalem: Falk Institute for Economic Research. Discussion Paper No. 81.06, 1981) [Hebrew]. For the connection between scarce and high cost land and the building of the centralized type of Jewish settler-immigrant society see Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy (Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman, 1983). For the best analyses of Zionism, from a sympathetic point of departure see the volumes of David Vital, The Origins of the Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Zionism: The Formative Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Zionism: The Crucial Phase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Also see, Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1972). For a history of perceptions of the Jewish-Arab relations see, Yosef Gorny, Zionism and The Arabs: 1882-1948 - A Study of Ideology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Return to Text

^[55] The most important report was the Peel commission's report, or Palestine Royal Commission. 1937. Report. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of His Majesty. London: HMSO [Cmd. 5479]. This commission suggested officially for the first time the partition of the country, formulating the problem as a struggle between two national movements. The previous reports were the Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbance of August 1929, London, 1930 [Cmd. 3530 - Shaw report]; Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development by Sir John Hope Simpson (London, 1930 )[Cmd. 3686]; Report by Mr. C. F. Strickland of the Indian Civil Service on the Possibility of Introducing a System of Agricultural Cooperation in Palestine (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1930); Report of A Committee on the Economic Conditions of Agriculturalists in Palestine and the Fiscal Measures of Government in Relation Thereto (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1930); Cooperative Societies in Palestine: Report by the Registrar of Cooperative Societies on the Development During the Years 1921-1937 (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1938). For a summary of the development of Palestine see, ESCO Foundation for Palestine, Palestine; A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). Return to Text

^[56] Since the 1910s most of the tenants removed from land purchased by Jews received alternative parcels or compensations, or both. Anyway, the Jews were no more prepared to purchase land from which the Arab tenants were not previously removed by the original Arab owners, in order to avoid ethnic or national clashes. Both on the Arab and Jewish side, there appeared skilled entrepreneurs specialized in the land market. See Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory.Return to Text

^[57] For a survey of the development of diverse kinds of Palestinian nationalism and collective identities see, Helena Lindholm, "Official and Popular Palestinian Nationalism: Creations and Transformations of Nationalist Ideologies and National Identities, 1917-1993," Licentiate Thesis (Goteborg: Goteborg University, Peace and Development Research Institute, 1994). Return to Text

^[58] The Christian Arabs were about 15% of the Arab population of the country belonging to various churches and congregations. During the Ottoman period the Christian Arabs were often threatened with enmity and treated on a formal level as a minority group, in a similar manner to the Jews. Several times when there were "disturbances" in the country, for example, during the rebellion against Muhammed 'Ali's regime, pogroms were directed towards Christian communities by the Muslims. Later, some of the most prominent Palestinian and pan-Arab nationalists were of Christian origin. Return to Text

^[59] At the same time and under the influence of the developments in Syria and other similar phenomenon in Europe, some semi-clandestine organizations and "clubs" were established. Here the boundaries between cultural, political and semi-military activities were highly blurred. If the MCAs were associations of the established notables and elite groups these "clubs" were the venue for younger and more radical intelligentsia. The most important organizations were the "al-Muntada al-Adabi" (The Literary Club) and "al Nadi al-'Arabi" (The Arab Club). Al-Muntada was very active in 1919-1921, mostly dominated by Nashashibi coalition, but also included some Husaynis, developing a hard core anti-Zionist, pan-Arab ideology. Al-Nadi was an offshoot of the Damascus based al-Fatat and shared the ideology of al-Nadi, but was dominated by a coalition of younger Nablusian and al-Husaynis. A grass root association, composed mainly of policemen and other lower officials in the British civil service, was the Jamiiyyat al-Ikha wal-Afaf, which prepared to "execute" Arabs who cooperated or sold land to Jews - seemed to have been dissolved by British intelligence in 1918-19. Muslih asserts that during Faysal's regime in Damascus some Palestinians formed para-military organizations, collecting arms and recruiting members in order to struggle against the British and Jews in Palestine, Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, 171-2. Return to Text

^[60] The Jewish Agency for Palestine was the official local branch of the World Zionist Organization, and was recognized by the mandate as the representative of the Zionist Jewish community. The Arabs demanded the same recognition for the Executive Committee. The British agreed, so long as the Arabs would be ready to recognize the legitimacy of the mandate. The Arab leadership refused, anxious not to appear to accept the Balfour Declaration. Thus, de jure the Executive was never recognized, but for all practical purposes the British refered to the Arab Executive as a fully recognized leadership. See Porath, The Emergence of Palestinian National Movement, 1974. Return to Text

^[61] The pan-Syrian or pan-Arabic identities and their formulation as a political goal never completely disappeared from the Palestinian public agenda. They were brought up again by several delegates during the Fifth Congress (Nablus 1922), and was apart of the 1930s Istiqlal Party platform (lead mainly by men who had been associated with Faysal), was part of one of the slogans used by rebels in 1937-38, and was imposed on Palestinian refugees in camps under Egyptian and Syrian rule during the 1950s and early 1960s. Return to Text

^[62] Under the Ottoman law and millet system (of autonomous religious communities) Christian Arabs were considered as a minority group like the Jews. However, they constituted the most educated and wealthy, mainly urban Arab population. In the Palestinian historiography today the discrimination in past and present of the Christian Palestinians and the periodical tensions among the Muslims and Christians are regarded as taboo. The Palestinians are considered as one unified nation. Return to Text

^[63] For more on al-Husayni see, Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin Al-Husayni and the Palestinian-Arab National Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Taysir Jbara, Palestinian Leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Mufti of Jerusalem (Princeton: The Kingston Press, 1985). For a detailed description of the events around the formation of the SMC and the British involvement see, Porath, The Emergence of Palestinian National Movement, 1974, chap. 4. Return to Text

^[64] Al-Husayni's first "Palestinian" activity was the exploitation of a local popular religious, mainly folkloristic, festival of Nabi Musa, which he tried to convert into a country-wide religious event. Return to Text

^[65] A very interesting case is an attempt in the early 1930's to establish a memorial day for Salah al-Din (Saladin) and its Hittin victory (1187) over the Crusaders, which led to the dismantlement of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187). However, when it became clear that such a commemoration will hurt the Christians, it was canceled. The parallels between the Crusaders and the Zionist settlement was often made in Arab historiosophy, as an example of how a technologically superior foreign power conquered the country, but was not able to hold it for a long period of time. Return to Text

^[66] See, Baruch Kimmerling "A Model for Analysis of Reciprocal Relations Between the Jewish and Arab Communities in the Mandatory Palestine," Plural Societies, 1983, 14:45-68. Return to Text

^[67] In a way, a version of this perception was preserved in the collective memory of the refugee-camp-dwellers about the "lost Paradise," as a memory and social identity of the places in Palestine from they were uprooted following the 1948 nakbah (catastrophy). See, Rosemary Sayigh, "Source of Palestinian nationalism," Journal of Palestine Studies, 6:17-40, 1977; and especially her Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed Books, 1979). For the formation of the refugee problem see, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Return to Text

^[68] See, Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People, 1994, Chap. 5. For an Arab analysis of Palestinian disaster, see Constantine K. Zurayk, The Meaning of Disaster. trans. R. Bayly Winder (Beirut: Khayat's College Books Cooperation, 1956 [1948]). Return to Text

^[69] For a history and development of the PLO see, Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For a description of the internal ideological struggles see Alain Gresh, The PLO - The Struggle Within. trans. A.M. Berrett (London: Zed Books, 1988); also see Kimmerling and Migdal Palestinians, part III. Return to Text

^[70] Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations.(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Return to Text

^[71] Anderson, Imagined Communities. Return to Text

^[72] See Salim Tamari, "Problems of Social Research in Palestine: An Overview," Current Sociology, 1994, 42, 2:68-86. Tamari asserted that this was made under the influence the Israeli sociology and historiography that stressed the sui generis character of Israeli-Jewish case study. The view of "incomparability" and "exceptional" nature of the Israeli as well Palestinian cases was recently broken by Ian Lustick in his volume Unsettled States/Disputed Lands: Britain in Ireland, France in Algeria, Israel and the West-Bank-Gaza (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). Also see Shafir, Land, Labor, 1989, and Baruch Kimmerling, "Ideology, Sociology and Nation Building: The Palestinians and Their Meaning in Israeli Sociology," American Sociological Review, 1992, 57, 4:446-460; Zionism and Territory, Chap. 1. Palestinian Identities: 37

Home | Profile | CV | Publications | Interview | Zionism | Religion, Nationalism & Democracy | Legislation | Palestinian Identity