Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Haram al-Sharif: A Pan-Islamic or Palestinian Nationalist Cause?

The World Islamic Conference, held in Jerusalem in 1931 under the auspices of Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Supreme Muslim Council, marked a turning point in the Palestinian nationalist struggle as well as in the struggle between the two main factions—the more extremist one led by Hajj Amin and the more moderate Opposition—for control of the Palestinian leadership. The Conference, though co-sponsored by Shawkat ‘Ali and the Muslim Indian Congress, and ostensibly representative of the worldwide community of Muslims, was effectively dominated by Hajj Amin and his Palestinian supporters. Through his control of its proceedings, Hajj Amin was able to redefine the Palestinian nationalist cause as essentially a pan-Islamic one, in connection with the perceived need to defend the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem against Zionist encroachment. Contrasted here with the World Islamic Conference (and held concurrently with it) is the Second Arab Orthodox Congress. Whereas the World Islamic Conference sought to redefine an issue arguably specific to Palestine as pan-Islamic, the local Christian Orthodox community, in keeping with its desire to Arabise Palestine's Greek Orthodox Church (hence their self-designation as the Arab Orthodox Church in Palestine), sought to redefine what was essentially a religious matter—concerning the succession of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem—in nationalist terms. It was not simply a matter of differing ideological perspectives; defining the cause of the Haram al-Sharif as a pan-Islamic one also served a political objective, namely the enhancement of Hajj Amin's position vis-à-vis his political rivals. Nonetheless, whatever the motivations involved, this development was a factor in the marginalisation of the Christian Arab component of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Whereas at the start of the British Mandate they had played a role disproportionately large relative to their actual numbers, by its end, their role in the nationalist movement had diminished almost to the point of near inconsequence, as evidenced, for instance, by their marginal involvement in the Arab Revolt (1936–1939).     

The Zionist–Arab incident of Zarnuqa 1913: a chronicle and several methodological remarks

The article deals with the Zarnuqa incident which took place on 23 July 1913 between the colonists and guards of Rehovot, and the Arab rural population in their vicinity, an incident which is considered by historians as a milestone in Zionist–Arab relations in late Ottoman Palestine. The aim of the article is to present the various narratives available to researchers today, starting with the various Jewish sources, then examining the Arabic sources and, finally, external ones. We analyse each of the sources and draw general conclusions about the sources historians can use today when studying this formative period of Zionist–Arab early encounters. The decision to examine several different narratives provides a multidimensional perspective on the event. Our aim is not to determine whose narrative is closer to historical reality (which would certainly be elusive), or to find out who started the fight and who is to be blamed but rather to present the different narratives, how each side described the event, and what the narrators chose to emphasize and what to omit. The article illustrates the difficult task facing historians dealing with late Ottoman Palestine, the period of the early Zionist–Arab encounter and conflict.     

The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)

The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with and traveled to Zionist institutions in Palestine for academic, athletic, and leisure purposes. For Arab students on campus, therefore, Zionism was not an abstract concept, but rather a national identity embodied by fellow classmates and friends on campus. As the conflict in Palestine increased in the 1930s and 1940s, so too did political activism and tensions on campus between Zionist and Arab nationalist students. This article analyzes this unique period of exchange, collaboration, and friction at AUB, which came to a swift end with the outbreak of the 1948 War. By focusing on the interactions between Arab and Zionist Jewish students at AUB, I seek to extend the ‘relational’ approach towards Jewish-Arab contact beyond Palestine's borders.     

The Struggle Against Oppression Everywhere: The Global Politics of Palestinian Liberation

This article situates the Palestine Liberation Organization in an international network of liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s. As such, it is a transnational history of the early days of the Palestinian liberation movement, whereas most scholars have treated that movement inside the confines of the long-running Arab–Israeli conflict. By analyzing the intellectual and political linkages between the PLO and other liberation movements in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam, the article seeks to reframe the Palestinian struggle in the context of other postcolonial struggles of that era.     

The Christians of Palestine: Strength,Vulnerability, and Self-restraint within a Multi-sectarian Community

Based on fieldwork in the Bethlehem area, this article uses the issue of internal land disputes as a starting point to describe a series of developments that have served to weaken the Christian communities in Palestine, and to identify some dilemmas they face, as Palestinians and as members of a minority community in Palestine. The article describes a situation where a weak and dysfunctional legal system under the Palestinian Authority (PA) has left Palestinians dependent on family and community networks for security and protection. Due to a history of emigration, combined with distinct social and demographic characteristics, Christian Palestinians find themselves in a position of structural vulnerability, subject to land theft and other criminal violation. Cautious about igniting sectarian divisions, Christian community leaders have a hard time addressing these issues within a public discourse. Fearful of harming Palestinian national interests, they are also reluctant to utilize international contacts and seek external support to secure their own rights and interests in Palestine. The article argues that this reflects both a commitment to an ethos of national unity among Christian Palestinians, and an acute awareness of the impact of ‘framing’ in preserving sectarian harmony.     

The British Mandate and the crisis of Palestinian landlessness, 1929–1936

This article examines landlessness among Palestinians as a facet of colonial policy in Mandate Palestine before the 1936 revolt. The growth of what was sometimes called a ‘landless class’ came into official view after the violence of 1929. Subsequent investigations indicated that landlessness was a significant problem and that it threatened to destabilize the Mandate. The effort to ameliorate the crisis of landlessness, however, clashed with the dominant colonial conception of settler developmentalism, the notion that Jews, not Arabs, were the agents of modern economic development in Palestine. The first part of this examination revisits the contest over the 1930 White Paper, focusing on its relationship to the advent of mass landlessness. The rapid defeat of the new policy via the MacDonald letter left the landlessness problem to fester while simultaneously obscuring it. As the situation in the Arab countryside continued to deteriorate, the onset of the fifth aliya temporarily reinforced erroneous assumptions about the potential to rectify the problem through the yishuv's development. By the time mass landlessness was ‘rediscovered’ and new land controls designed to protect Arab smallholders were on their way to promulgation in 1935–1936, the Palestinian countryside was just months away from determined revolt.     

The Second World War as a turning point in Arab–Jewish relations: the case of Jaffa and Tel Aviv

One of the gravest outcomes of the period of the Arab revolt was the heavy economic damage caused to the Arab community. Jaffa, which suffered greatly in the years 1936–1939, sought to rebuild and restore the city to its status as a leading economic center in Palestine. This need intensified still more with the outbreak of the Second World War. Hence, it was in Jaffa's evident interest to bring about an improvement in relations with Tel Aviv and with Jews generally. Problems regarding the proper management of economic life in wartime exercised the Jewish settlement also; therefore, Jewish–Arab cooperation steadily grew in this period. The article gauges the measure of this cooperation and the nature of the ties that consolidated between Arabs and Jews during the war. The situation of Jaffa and Tel Aviv serves as a test case well exemplifying the force of the subsequent change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.     

Italian Involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939

Italian involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936–1939) was perhaps the most explicit example of Rome's attempt to destabilize London's position in the Middle East, prior to Italy's entry to the Second World War. This article examines the mechanisms of Fascist Italy's assistance to the rebels in Palestine, focusing on the secret contacts between Italian officials and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. It describes the financial support given by Italy as well as the attempts to smuggle arms to Palestine. The article also analyses Rome's diplomatic manoeuvres in connection with Palestine and its pro-Arab propaganda. It is argued that Italian policy in Palestine was governed by, and subordinate to, wider considerations of Italian policy such as imperial competition with Great Britain and a desire to increase Italy's influence in the Middle East. In fact, Fascist involvement in the ‘first Intifada’ teaches us more about Italian foreign policy than it does on the course of events in Palestine during the Arab rebellion.     

‘I came naïve from the village’: on Palestinian urbanism and ruralism in Haifa under the British Mandate

ABSTRACT

During the Mandate period (1920–1948), Haifa attracted thousands of Palestinian rural migrants, who constituted a significant portion of its Arab population. The article examines the experience of rural migrants in urban life and the influence of this social group on urban society. I argue that rural migrants contributed to Haifa’s economic development, participated in political and cultural activity and formed a connecting link between the city and their villages of origin. Rural migrants played a significant role as agents of change in Palestinian society, owing to the conjunction of rural and urban characteristics in their daily life. To demonstrate this, I focus on three arenas of their agency: the labour market, civil society and militias during the Arab Revolt. Their involvement in civil associations and in the Arab Revolt was central to their construction of modernity, and they disseminated it in widening circles in their villages of origin and among their acquaintances in the city.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Madawi Al–Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia
Mohammed El–Nawawy and Adel Iskandar, Al–Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East
Steven Spiegel, The Dynamics of Middle East Nuclear Proliferation
Donald Wagner, Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000
Charles M. Sennott, The Body and the Blood: The Holy Land's Christians at the Turn of a New Millennium, A Reporter's Journey
Mohamed Bin Huwaidin, China's Relations with Arabia and the Gulf 1949–1999     

‘A source of considerable annoyance’: an Israeli–Palestinian backchannel in the efforts to release the blocked Palestinian bank accounts

In addition to the great emotional toll that the Nakba inflicted on the Palestinian people, the 1948 exodus occasioned substantial material losses for the refugees as well. As the 1948 War ground to a halt, the international community had to decide how to deal with all of this, and in the early 1950s the matter of the so-called ‘blocked’—or frozen—Palestinian bank accounts became one of the main issues on the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission’s agenda. Initially, its effort included the government of Israel and the British-owned Barclays Bank. As things progressed, however, Israeli diplomats also engaged a group of Palestinian refugees in an informal backchannel. This article sheds light on this largely overlooked episode and shows how the channel was established, and how the Palestinian group faced nothing but strong international opposition, most notably from the British Foreign Office. Protecting the interests of its regional ally Jordan, as well as those of Barclays Bank, the Foreign Office did what it could in order to make sure that this particular Israeli–Palestinian backchannel was promptly closed.     

They Were Prepared: The Palestinian Arab Scout Movement 1920–1948

This article explores different historical aspects of the Palestinian scouting movement, mainly during the British Mandate (1920–1948). I begin with the general contours of the movement's development and its deteriorating relationship with the Mandate government. I then proceed to reconstruct and analyze scouting culture, showing how it exposed Palestinian boys and young men to a vast array of socializing practices which solidified identification with local communities, parent organizations, and the Palestinian Arab nation. The article also shows that scouting was a visible and powerful component of the Palestinian public sphere. This article explores a historical phenomenon significant to the broader history of Palestinian society and the development of the national movement.     

The Nakba in Palestinian Memory in Israel

Changes in the international, regional and domestic arenas in the late 1990s resulted in discursive change with regard to interpretation of the Al Nakba in the political and civil societies of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Apart from fuelling a discursive challenge to the Israeli dominant discourse about the 1948 events, this reinterpretation allowed the Palestinian Arab citizens to discuss the historical roots of the problems they experienced within the Israeli political and civil societal spheres. This article analyses the nature and significance of discursive change of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on the Nakba by referring to its impact on their identity politics as well as their political and civil societal activities.     

The church and landed property: The greek orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem

This article analyses the creation of the accelerated Arabic language studies programme in the Israeli-Jewish school system, ‘The Oriental Classes’, over the years 1950–67. The article investigates the networks that enabled and controlled the ‘Oriental Classes’, the main actors involved in its operation, the aims of this programme as well as the ways to achieve them. It argues that this flagship programme serves as an example of the dominant orientation with which Arabic studies have been associated in Israeli-Jewish society, that of political and military intelligence needs, and that this can add a new angle to our understanding of the way Israel perceives the Arab world, vis-à-vis its relations with the Arab ‘other’ and the Palestinian citizens of Israel.     

Things that matter: nostalgic objects in Palestinian Arab homes in Israel

This article addresses the complex identity of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens from an atypical perspective: through manifestations of their material culture. The cultural expressions that will be examined are objects from the past and objects that relate to the past, particularly to the rustic Palestinian life profoundly destabilized by the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. These objects, displayed in the homes of some of Israel's Arab citizens, are interpreted by contemplating their design, the design of their environment, their relationship to other objects, and their placement within the domestic sphere. Our study is animated by the desire to sketch a cultural portrait of Palestinian Arab Israelis, as well as by a methodological interest in interpretations based on a socio-architectural reading of objects.

This article reveals the various layers of meaning within these nostalgic displays in all their diversity, and will discuss at length their uniqueness, which is linked to the past traumas and present difficulties of Israel's Arabs. Our main purpose is to develop a line of thought whereby objects that express nostalgia are understood as the embodiment of a consciousness that is characteristic of the present.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969–1993 , by Edward W. Said.
Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years , by Israel Shahak. Foreward by Gore Vidal.
All That Remains: the Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Walid Khalidi, ed.
The Palestine Liberation Organization: From Armed Struggle to the Declaration of Independence , by Jamal R. Nassar.
Building Peace in the Middle East, Challenges for States and Civil Society, edited by Elise Boulding.
Crisis in the Arabian Gulf: An Independent Iraqi View , by Omar Ali.
America and the Iraqi Crisis, 1990–1992: Origins and Aflermath , by Lester H. Brune.
Iraqi Statesman: A Portrait of Mohammed Fadhel Jamali , by Harry J. Almond.
Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of the Electronic Media in the Middle East , by Douglas Boyd.     

The Social Texture of the Baqa Well:Drawing History from an Old Well in a Palestinian Arab Town in Israel

Water sources have always played a significant role in Palestinian rural life. Springs and wells are frequently depicted in orientalist sources, yet they have barely been studied from the perspective of oral history. This article explores the social texture of an ancient well, located in the Palestinian Arab town of Baqa al-Gharbiyya in Israel, by using fragmented memories of the old women and men who drew water from that well more than half a century ago. This study examines the well as a powerful reservoir of local memories, focusing on the feminine experience that was formed at the well, on its symbolic meaning in the lives of Palestinian women, and on a silent language of implicit expressions that was once used at the well.     

The arithmetic of rights: Zionist intellectuals imagining the Arab minority May–July 1938

ABSTRACT

This article examines Zionist debates regarding the status of the Arab minority in the Jewish State following the Royal Commission's recommendation to partition Palestine. Three conclusions arise from the debates: first, that the Zionist leadership regarded the civil and political rights of the Arab minority to be dependent on the power equilibrium between Jews and Arabs in all of Palestine. Second, the Zionist leaders imagined the Jewish State as a parliamentary democracy, but argued that a democratic regime should be created only after a Jewish majority had been achieved. Finally, because democracy in the Jewish State – including minority rights – was dependent on the creation of a Jewish majority, Zionist plans to transfer Arabs out of the Jewish State were not considered by them to be undemocratic, but rather a precondition to the creation of a Jewish and democratic state.     

Hasan Bey Shukri and His Contribution to the Integration of Jews in the Haifa Municipality at the Time of the British Mandate

The relations established between the Jews and the Haifa mayor Hasan Bey Shukri were undoubtedly one of the special and fascinating features in the history of the Jewish–Arab conflict at the time of the Mandate. Shukri's ability to create a common language with the Jews made the Municipality an institution graced with cooperation whose like did not exist in other mixed cities in Mandatory Palestine. It was particularly evident in the setting of the escalation in the Jewish–Arab conflict generally. Shukri believed this conflict could be settled, and that the foundation for Jews and Arabs living together lay in the sides talking to each other as a basis for making peace. Now, for the first time in Palestine, the Jewish side had the opportunity to cooperate in a municipality controlled by Arabs by participating in its management. This situation accorded with the assumption prevalent among some of the leadership of the Jewish Yishuv that understanding could be reached with the other side in mixed municipalities. This article sets out to analyze the relations that formed between Shukri and the Jews. It shows that the cooperation that materialized between them was based on mutual trust, stemming from an identical approach by both sides to municipal activity.     

Was Jerusalem Part of Palestine? The Forgotten City of Ramla, 900–1900

When the Muslims conquered the Levant in the seventh century they at times changed the meaning of ‘Palestine’. They preserved its erstwhile sense as a region but also came to see Palestine as synonymous with the city of Ramla. From the tenth to the early twentieth century, dozens of Muslim exegetes, travellers and chroniclers explained that Ramla and Palestine were the same place. Others thought Palestine was a small region based around Ramla, one that did not include Jerusalem, or that Palestine had much more to do with Ramla than it did Jerusalem. The association had much to do with the cultural tendency in the Arab Middle East to conflate cities and regions as well as the critical role Ramla played in Palestine for much of its history: it served as the capital of the District of Palestine for more than three centuries, its economic hub for many more and its imagined geographical centre up until the early nineteenth century.