Search

British rule over Palestine between 1920 and 1948 was a vibrant and fateful period in the modern history of the country in all arenas (political, economic, societal, demographic and cultural), one of the most active of which in Palestinian society at the time was education. Many Palestinian educators assumed their role as freedom fighters, agents of Arab nationalism and defenders of the homeland. These educators saw the British and the Zionists as bitter enemies to be resisted and expelled, though some had a distinctly progressive humanistic vision that allowed them to view the collective enemy as worthy human beings. This complex reality created many internal contradictions and difficulties among these humanistic educators, led by prominent Palestinian educator Khalil al-Sakakini (1878–1953). This article attempts to describe and understand Sakakini's contradictions and internal conflicts and how he dealt with these internal contradictions and distinguished between Jews and Zionists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the shifting meanings of the tarbush (or fez) among Oriental Jewish men in late-Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. It demonstrates how the seemingly superficial issue of what men wore on their heads in fact reveals much about the broader historical changes in Oriental Jewish social identities and political loyalties during a period of rising Jewish and Arab tension in Palestine. Under late-Ottoman rule, many urban Jewish, Christian, and Muslim men alike donned this red, felted headgear as a unifying symbol of local and Ottoman identity. Over time, however, as the Jewish-Arab national boundary grew more rigidly defined under British rule, the tarbush increasingly became a marker of difference : It came to signify predominantly Arab, non-Jewish identity. While some Oriental Jewish men in Palestine continued to wear the tarbush for decades, thereby preserving a visible sartorial link with Palestinian Arabs, most eventually abandoned this headgear. Some did so in favor of more "modern" clothing endorsed by the British rulers and European-dominated Zionist leadership, while others were forced to abandon the tarbush during outbreaks of ethnic and national violence, when they were occasionally targeted by both Palestinian Arab and Jewish militants. Building on recent scholarship exploring the role of Oriental Jews in the Zionist movement and Arab-Jewish social relations in Palestine, this article demonstrates that removing the tarbush was not simply a matter of changing fashions; it was socially and politically imposed through symbolic and real violence that sought to eliminate any Arab-Jewish middle ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most complex issues facing British rule on the local municipal level towards the end of the Mandate period was the problem of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods. This question, which emerged with the outbreak of the 1936 disturbances, engaged the government thereafter until the end of the Mandate. The demand by the residents of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods for annexation to Tel Aviv – actually for municipal detachment from Jaffa – constituted the root of the problem. In this setting of the sharpening of relations between the authorities and the Jews and Arabs in 1945–1947, all three involved parties found themselves deeply immersed in it in the attempt to bring about its resolution. The annexation problem ceaselessly preoccupied the institutions of the Jewish Yishuv as a Zionist–Yishuv struggle of the highest order. This period gave rise to a series of unprecedented moves by the Jewish side, which were intended to influence the British government toward solving the problem. The article examines its development of the problem from the viewpoint of the three sides concerned in the years 1945–1947, with the focus on the policy line adopted by the Jewish side, its implications and its results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the social and political aspects of the development of electrification in Jaffa District of Tel Aviv, Palestine (contemporary Israel) during the 1920s and early 1930s by Jewish engineer Pinhas Rutenberg, including its impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The impact that Rutenberg's electric power had on creating boundaries between the Palestinian and Jewish communities, including Zionists' perspective on this, is discussed.

This article examines an aspect of British counter-insurgency in Palestine in the 1930s during the Arab revolt there against British colonial rule and Jewish settlement: the pro-British, anti-rebel Palestinian militia ‘peace bands’, associated with the Palestinian Nashashibi family and raised with British and Jewish military and financial assistance, and with support from the British Consul in Damascus, Gilbert MacKereth. Using Hebrew, Arabic and untapped local British regimental sources, it details how the British helped to raise the peace bands and the bands’ subsequent activities in the field; it assesses the impact of the bands on the course of the Arab revolt; and it sets out the views of the British Army towards those willing to work with them. In doing this, it extends the recent thesis of Hillel Cohen on Palestinian collaboration with Zionists to include the British and it augments the useful but dated work of Yehoshua Porath and Yuval Arnon-Ohanna on the subject. Such a study is significant for our understanding of British methods of imperial pacification, especially the British Army’s manipulation during colonial unrest of ‘turned’ insurgents as a ‘loyalist’ force against rebels, an early form of ‘pseudo’ warfare. The collaboration by Palestinians resonates with broader histories of imperial and neo-imperial rule, it extends military histories on colonial pacification methods, and it provides rich, new texture on why colonial subjects resisted and collaborated with the emergency state, using the Palestinians as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the British role in establishing and maintaining a Jewish–Arab demarcation line by means of a policy of Jewish unity and by enabling Ashkenazi Zionist control of the Yishuv. In the first part, it analyses British policy towards the local Sephardi as well as the local Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox communities, both of which for different reasons did not neatly fit into the Jewish/Zionist–Arab binary. I argue that the British followed a policy of Jewish unity at the inception of the Mandate which they upheld repeatedly against Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox efforts and which by 1936 had created a truism enforcing a binary understanding of the conflict. In the second part, this article analyses the ways in which these communities presented themselves vis-à-vis the British. I argue that despite different strategies of maximizing their influence, both communities foundered on the existing power configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wadi al-Hawarith (Emek Hefer) affair was considered to be one of the prominent land disputes between Jews and Arabs in Palestine during the British mandate period. The region in which the dispute broke out was found south of Hadera in Emek Hefer. The purchase of lands of Wadi al-Hawarith, by Jewish bodies, had already started at the end of the nineteenth century and continued for four decades, and during this there were disputes between the Jews and Arabs, which were accompanied by legal hearings. The Jewish National Fund tried to reach an arrangement by means of compensation for the Bedouin tenants who dwelled on the lands of the valley, in exchange for their willingness to leave the territory. From time to time, the Bedouins agreed to this, but they went back on their agreement. Despite the effort to reach compensation arrangements with the Bedouins, the Palestinian political leadership was interested in inflaming the opposition of the Bedouins to leaving the land. This is what caused a long string of trials, which continued for many years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Haifa was named a ‘mixed city’ by the British, who ruled Palestine from 1917 to 1948, in reference to the two national communities that inhabited the town. This definition was not neutral, and reflected the Brits aspirations to create national coexistence in Palestine among the diverse urban societies. Reality was more complicated. The basic assumption of this paper follows the idea that the bi-national urban society of Mandatory Haifa developed into dual society, albeit with much overlapping in economic and civil matters, but takes it one step further: through highlighting changes in the urban landscape, I wish to argue dominance of the national European modern Hebrew society over the Palestinian-Arabs and the traditional and oriental Jewish societies and ideas alike. The changes in the urban landscape tell us the story of Zionism's growing influence and dominance, and the way the urban landscape was used to embody Zionism's modern European ethos. The neighbourhood's segregation, therefore, represents not only the effort to separate but to create a modern national ‘sense of place’ that influenced the city development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The most extensive participation of Jews in the literary Arabic revival (The Nahda) was in monarchial Iraq. Jewish Intellectuals had contributed to the development of national Iraqi culture. These intellectuals have been studied in the context of the non-Jewish Iraqi intellectuals, focusing on their national and cultural integration in the new Iraqi state. This article observes the participation of those intellectuals in two non-Iraqi Jewish journals which were published in literary Arabic, Israʾil, published in Cairo, and al-ʿAlam al-Israʾili, published in Beirut. By changing the point of view from Iraqi Jews in the non-Jewish Iraqi cultural sphere to Iraqi Jews in a non-Iraqi Jewish cultural sphere, the article examines their relation between Iraqi identity and the national Jewish identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The outbreak of the Arab revolt marked the start of the continuous economic decline of Jaffa, which hitherto had been known as an outstanding and flourishing economic centre. The decisive factor that highlighted above all others the city's economic deterioration was the decline of its port. This carried notable moral implication for the Arab public, as Jaffa port, the city's symbol and legacy, was deemed a national emblem and a foundation stone of the Palestinian Arab economy. Its decline from 1936 onwards instigated a bitter struggle to restore it to its halcyon days. The article examines the measures taken by the local Arab leadership bodies and by the Arab Higher Committee to resurrect the port and its status, from the outbreak of the 1936 disturbances until the war that broke out in 1947. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1948 war resulted in a sweeping spatial transformation of areas included in the bounds of the newly formed Jewish state, including that of the western Jerusalem. Arab neighbourhoods were almost totally depopulated during fighting and shortly after resettled by Jews, most of which has been war refugees from Jerusalem's Jewish neighbourhoods or newly arrived immigrants. The effect of war on human spatial structures is in many cases abrupt and sweeping. Yet, due to the limited use of heavy weaponry by both belligerent sides, the damage to built-up structures and infrastructure systems was not inclusive. Repopulation of former Arab areas by Jews was of large scale and carried out by different local and national institutions. Yet it seems as in many cases it was personal initiatives, especially of war refugees that sought for alternative housing that had a crucial effect over the newly formed settlement pattern. One way or another, the spatial structure of Jerusalem that was formed in decades of urban dynamic development was drastically transformed after a short period of fighting between December 1947 and early 1949, that affects the spatial structure of Israel's capital city until now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the foundation of the first Jewish settlements in the Negev, at the start of the 1940s, the Bedouins welcomed the Jewish settlers. The local personal connections and mutual acquaintance between them created a feeling of closeness. The symbiosis of daily life and mutual help in the fields of personal needs, from medicine to transport, replaced their mutual fears. However, two factors quickly changed this attitude. The first was a severe drought, which struck the Negev in the winter of 1947, and brought with it a difficult economic situation, followed by several robberies and disputes, and damage to property. The second factor was the incessant encouragement given by the leaders of the Palestinian National Movement to the Bedouins to join the struggle against the Jewish population, especially after the UN decision in November 1947, that is, after the partition of Palestine and the inclusion of the Negev within the borders of the Jewish state. Most of the Bedouins joined the Palestinian National Struggle. Friends of yesterday became today's enemies. The years 1947–1949 were a period of anarchy, which continued well into the 1950s. In this period the State of Israel was established. Consequently, the Jewish population in the Negev was no longer the party responsible for the relationship with the Bedouins, as the Israeli government took its place. Also contact between neighbors was reduced after the Bedouins were evacuated toward the ‘fence’ region, in the Beer-Sheva Valley. The freedom the Bedouins enjoyed before the war did not exist anymore. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on declassified reports in the Central Zionist Archives, this article brings to light a virtually unknown disinformation project implemented by the Jewish Agency (the governing body of the Yishuv before 1948) in the Arab world during the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt. Operating via a JA front organization—an Arabic-language news agency set up in Cairo—and out of the Jerusalem-based JA Political department's intelligence services, the project involved inter alia the planting of fabricated articles in the Lebanese and Syrian press with the aim of influencing public opinion. Whatever the project's impact, the article provides insights into the Zionist leadership's thinking internal debates, and operating methods, and shows the degree of corruption that existed in certain segments of the Arab elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an in-depth examination into the Palestinian Western Wall riots of 1929, focusing on the violence seen in the cities of Jerusalem, Safad and Hebron. The authors analyze the outbreaks as Arab attempts to control or re-define communal boundaries within the region in opposition to the rising immigration which came with the emerging Zionist movement. Details are given mapping the specific results of the riots as well as discussing the event's conceptual influence on contemporary nationalist politics among Palestinian Arabs.

Between early 1947 and May 1948, the Zionist movement went from being a non-state actor representing the minority population within the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine to establishing the State of Israel, which would be recognised almost instantaneously by the world's two Superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Such a result, however, was never a given. What processes allowed a non-state actor, the Zionist movement, to secure international acceptance for the creation of a Jewish state in highly ambiguous circumstances? This analysis explores the dual-track adopted by the Zionist movement, whereby it worked to create facts on the ground within Palestine whilst securing support for its state-building project at the international level. By establishing state-like institutions in Palestine whilst building international support, the Jewish Agency was able to secure for itself a unique place from which to declare statehood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The moves leading to the military involvement of the Arab states in the Palestine war in May 1948 deserve an examination in the context of the socio-political conditions that prevailed in the Arab states, The invasion of Palestine by Arab armies marked the intersection of two lines of conflict. One was the conflict between the Arab states and the ruling dynasties. The other was the socio-political conflict between the ruling conservative elites opposed to the deep socio-economic and political reforms needed by the modern middle strata, the effendiyya. The purpose of this article is to examine the domestic socio-political struggles, the compelling nationalist discourse in the Arab states and the interaction of that discourse with the regional inter-Arab relations that led the Arab states to war against Israel in May 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyses national ways of forgetting. Following the eminent British Anthropologists Mary Douglas, I relate here to “forgetting” as “selective remembering, misremembering and disremembering” ( Douglas 2007 : 13). The case study offered here is that of the Israeli-Jewish forgetting of the uprooting of the Palestinians in the war of 1948. This paper discusses three facets of the collective forgetting: In I analyze the foundations of the Israeli regime of forgetting and discern three mechanisms of removing from memory of selected events: narrative forgetting: the formation and dissemination of an historical narrative; physical forgetting: the destruction of physical remains; and symbolic forgetting: the creation of a new symbolic geography of new places and street names. In , I look at the tenacious ambiguity that lies in the regime of forgetting, as it does not completely erase all the traces of the past. And finally, in , I discuss the growth of subversive memory and counter-memory that at least indicates the option of a future revision of the Israeli regime of forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the actions of the British military in suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine during the region's occupation in the later 1930s. Contextual information is given regarding the extent of British political and social engagement with the region during the Mandate tenure. Statistics and conflicting accounts are offered citing the levels of violence and death-tolls which resulted from clashes between British and Arab forces, noting several which suggest brutal actions by the British military. Questions are raised evaluating the extent of British military abuse in the period.

Two of the basic terms used in defining the principles, thought, and action of the Jewish side in the Jewish-Arab conflict are havlagah (self-restraint) and tohar haneshek (purity of arms). They became catchwords replete with ideological and political meaning in the Zionist movement in general and especially in the Labor movement during the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. This article intends to locate the precise historical context within which these terms emerged and to outline the political and ideological dispute associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay deals with the way Palestinian villages, emptied during the 1948 war when their inhabitants fled or were expelled, were visually preserved in Israeli consciousness. The essay analyses a group of photographs in official Israeli archives that were taken by Israeli photographers between 1948 and 1951. These images, taken for Israeli national propaganda to describe the new Jewish immigrants who had been settled by the new Israeli state in these villages, show how they implement the Zionist world view. In contrast to these purposes, however, reading these institutional photography archives also makes it possible to learn about Palestinian identity before 1948 and gain insight into the Palestinian people, who are missing from these photographs. The essay shows how the manner of reading these archives makes possible the extraction of different layers of meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the opinions of France regarding the formation of Israel. Changes which have occurred in France's opinions after a vote by the United Nations regarding the formation of Israel are discussed. The way in which France's involvement with the Arab world impacted the country's opinions regarding the formation of a Jewish state is mentioned. Conflicting opinions which existed of whether or not France should play a role in the formation of a Jewish state or stay out of it to protect the relationship they had with the Arab world are discussed. The possibility of dividing Israel amongst the Jews and Palestinians is mentioned.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist Party of Great Britain was a significant force in Britain on the left-wing of the labour movement and among intellectuals, despite its relatively small membership. The narrative it provided on developments in Palestine and on the Arab nationalist movements contested Zionist accounts. After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, the party, to gain the support of the Jewish community for a broad anti-fascist alliance, toned down its criticism of Zionism and, in the immediate post-war period, to accord with the Soviet Union's strategic objectives in the Middle East, it reversed its earlier opposition to Zionism. During the 1948 war and for some years thereafter it largely ignored the plight of the Palestinians and their nationalist aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, excerpted and adapted from the early chapters of a new book, emphasizes the systematic preparations that laid the ground for the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from what became Israel in 1948. While sketching the context and diplomatic and political developments of the period, the article highlights in particular a multi-year "Village Files" project (1940-47) involving the systematic compilation of maps and intelligence for each Arab village and the elaboration--under the direction of an inner "caucus" of fewer than a dozen men led by David Ben-Gurion--of a series of military plans culminating in Plan Dalet, according to which the 1948 war was fought. The article ends with a statement of one of the author's underlying goals in writing the book: to make the case for a paradigm of ethnic cleansing to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of, and the public debate about, 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the health services for the Bedouins in Palestine under the British mandate system. Health conditions and health care administration during World War I; Medical relations between Jews and Arabs; Establishment of health care facility in Beersheba under the Ottomans and British; Traditional medicine by Bedouins in treating various diseases and illnesses.

Examines Great Britain's (GB) administration in Palestine during a civil war between Jews and Arabs from December 1947-May 1948. Inability of GB to implement its policy; Evacuation from Palestine by GB; Adoption of the partition resolution by the United Nations; Hagana's takeover of Haifa, Israel.

Focuses on the conflict between Palestine and Israel which is covered by layers of ideological polemic aimed at justifying one's own views and politics and negating contending approaches. Explanation for the Palestinian defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war; Factors that underlay the Palestinian response to the United Nation's Partition Resolution; Developments that took place which led to the shift in the strategy of Hagana Command.

Focuses on the decision of Great Britain in 1947 to bring the problem of Palestine before the United Nations (UN). Difficulty in reconciling the Arabs and Jews in Palestine; Arabs' demand for a unitary state based on a majority rule; Zionist aspirations for statehood; UN's proposal for the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states to be linked by a joint economic board overseeing the two states.

This article discusses the relationship between H. Saint John Philby and the Zionist movement. According to the author, Philby was one of the Englishmen that had been suspected by the Zionist movement. The author observes that Zionists felt that men who were so devoted to the Arabs were bound to sympathize with the latter's feelings regarding Palestine and consequently take an antagonistic attitude to Zionism. Moreover, the author explores the involvement of Philby in a plan for solving the Jewish-Arab in 1929.