Search

This article explores the history of Hamama, an Arab village in the Gaza Sub-District during the Late Ottoman and British Mandate period c. 1750–1948 CE, combining the often-disparate fields of Ottoman/Levantine archaeology and Ottoman/Palestinian history for tracing its rise from an ordinary village into the Sub-District’s third largest settlement. Ethnographic sources and historical evidence testify that the village of Hamama had been inhabited continuously from the Mamluk period until 1948. The paper uses the case of Hamama to argue that the detailed history of specific villages and towns cannot be reconstructed out of a synchronous (specific point-in-time) reading of the sources without considering the influence of previous stages in their socioeconomic development. Using a vast array of primary sources and archaeological materials, this study explores the interaction between local topography and existing social fabrics with broader transformative processes on the regional and trans-regional levels. It shows how the region of Hamama underwent a significant economic growth and settlement expansion. In the 1860s, local administrative re-structuring took hold as part of the implementation of the tanzimat reforms at the district level. The establishment of the “quarter system”—the division of village land between the groups of families—led to considerable economic development, which was evident in village land uses by the early 20th century. Later, British town plans and building permits testify to the involvement of the colonial administration in the architectural and spatial planning of the Arab countryside. These were local manifestations of globalization and the modernization efforts of the Ottoman Empire and later the British Mandate.

This paper provides a social and geographic account of al-Lajjun (Jenin Sub-district), a prominent Palestinian village during the British Mandate period (1918–1948). It portrays a countryside in renewal, encapsulated in the story of Umm al-Fahm’s expansion and Lajjun’s resettlement. In contrast to existing scholarship, the present work contextualizes the site within the wider diachronic, longue durée, history of the region, and the synchronous, shifting pattern of settlements in Marj ibn ‘Amir (Jezreel Valley), Bilad al-Ruha (Ramot Menashe), and Wadi ‘Ara (Nahal ‘Iron). It focuses on the development of the physical outlines of the (re)new(ed) village, with the development of three “Lajjuns” reflecting its founders’ Hebronite/Khalīlī patterns of settlement. Furthermore, it explores Lajjun’s diversified economy and its metamorphosis from a derelict hamlet into a hub of utilities and transportation infrastructure of regional importance under the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948).

This article explores the performance of shehitah (ritual slaughter according to rabbinic law) in British Mandate Jerusalem under the guidelines of the HCC (Hebrew Community Council)—an arm of the Jewish National Institutions—and the alliances that were forged around shehitah among various social and ideological sectors of the city. A prominent example is the collaboration of HCC at times with Agudath Israel, the main political-religious opposition party to the National Institutions, and at other times with Sephardi shehitah services, while creating shehitah regulations that negated the founding principles of the National Institutions. In the present article I argue that these alliances represent compromise over national principles that favored economic and civic interests; as such, civic compromise in Jerusalem engendered alliances in the communal sphere that would have been unrealizable in the national sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Ahli Arab Hospital of Gaza – formerly the CMS Mission hospital – has been the focus of public attention due to the 17 October 2023 explosion on its premises and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, less attention has been given to its history. Very little information is publicly available. This article addresses that gap, aiming to bring texture, nuance and depth to contemporary discussions. Taking a narrative approach, this article poses two questions: first, how did the social, political and religious contexts of the hospital’s founding period shape its identity and role in the community? Second, how did it fare in World War I and the political transition that followed it? This article argues that Anglican Missionaries from the Church Mission Society (CMS) established the hospital in 1881 with the motivation and inspiration of their evangelical faith. After facing resistance from the local population, the missionaries won people’s trust through medical service. Their work was boosted after local leaders gave their endorsements and British imperial agents offered support. The situation changed rapidly, however, during World War I and the Ottoman entry into the war on the German side. The missionaries were expelled and the hospital was closed and eventually destroyed. Yet, after British victory, the missionaries were granted permission to resume services and rebuild the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research provides an overview of the rise of the Zionist movement, starting from the establishment of the Jewish Colonial Society in 1891 by Maurice de Hirsch, leading to the formation of the World Zionist Organization and the creation of the Jewish National Fund in 1901. It discusses the controversial debates over the location of a Jewish homeland, including the Uganda Scheme, and the advocacy for Palestine by figures like Herzl. The impact of World War I on the Middle East was influenced by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British Mandate in Palestine, established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, had significant impacts on Jewish immigration, Arab displacement, and the road to statehood. The United Nations eventually issued a resolution in 1947 to divide Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. This was accepted by Jews but rejected by Arab states. Great Britain's actions towards the end of the mandate aimed to frustrate the establishment of the Jewish state envisioned by the United Nations plan. Drawing on primary and secondary sources from esteemed archives such as the British Library and personal accounts, this research seeks to elucidate the complex historical backdrop, contextualizing key decisions and conflicts that ultimately shaped the creation of the State of Israel. The analysis aims to provide nuanced insights into divergent perspectives held by Palestinians and Israelis regarding the resolution of this enduring conflict, rooted in a legacy of geopolitical manoeuvring and ideological fervour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the criminal prohibition against bigamy during the British colonial rule of Palestine, drawing particular attention to the exemptions it afforded to Muslims. Through archival research, the article analyses the debates that led to the legislation of the 1936 Criminal Code Ordinance through three distinct lenses – political, religious, and gendered to circumspectly explore the inconsistencies of the British approach toward Bigamy. I reveal how mandatory legislators prohibited it as a matter of public and criminal law while creating a broad exemption of its stipulations by essentially relegating the matter to the less heavily regulated 'private' sphere. I argue that the exemption provided for Muslims on the bigamy prohibition demonstrates the complexity of colonial law and its intrinsic paradox manifested in outlawing bigamy while accommodating it. This paradox and inconsistencies in colonial legislation are in line with colonial policies toward native populations, reflecting British colonial perception and anxiety towards colonial subjects and themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TYB Akademi Dil Edebiyat & Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Turkiye Yazarlar Birligi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The transition from life under Ottoman rule to life under the Iraqi Kingdom established in 1921 marked a positive shift in the fortunes of the country's Jewish community. During the British mandate for Iraq (1921–32), the Jews enjoyed equal rights and were economically and socially integrated into Muslim society. However, with the end of the mandate and the acceptance of Iraq's independence, a process of restricting the Jews and physically harming them began, culminating in the pogrom (known as the Farhud) of June 1941. During the decade attending the Farhud, the Iraqi government linked the fate of the Jewish community to that of the Palestinian Arabs. The state pursued a policy of oppression and discrimination, which eventually led to the displacement of the country's Jewish community from a place it had called home for thousands of years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Arab art music, or tarab, during the British Mandate for Palestine as the sonic harbinger of Palestinian modernism. It shows how the production, consumption, and dissemination of professionalized Arab art music in early twentieth-century Palestine was linked to the emergence of a Palestinian elite at a time when Palestine was undergoing rapid developments and becoming an important node of cultural exchange in the region. Arab art music thus provided a site for the construction of a cosmopolitanized urban identity across Palestinian cities, one that operated on two political registers: local Palestinian nationalism and regional pan-Arabism. The article concludes with a discussion on how Palestine's political elite negotiated the inherent contradictions of colonized modernity through Arab art music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon capturing Palestine in December 1917, Britain assumed the role of belligerent occupant, and therefore, it had no power to alter the legal order of the country, which it nonetheless did in 1920. In order to grant itself full power of governance over Palestine, Britain drew up the "Mandate for Palestine," a document in which it declared its aim of promoting a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. This article examines this and other documents from the 1920s to argue that Britain did not have the legal grounding to alter its status as belligerent occupant, and that the League of Nations never took a position on Jewish territorial rights or on the legality of Britain's governance of Palestine. It argues further that the United Nations misread this history in 1947 when it took the Mandate for Palestine as a commitment of its predecessor to Jewish territorial rights in Palestine, and thus, as a basis for recommending the partition of Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece presents an interview conducted by Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri with Salim Tamari and Yair Wallach about the Frank Scholten photographic collection (now available with Creative Commons access), discussing the archive's significance and use for researchers of the history of Mandate Palestine.During the turbulence of the period after the First World War, Dutch photographer Frank Scholten (1881-1942) travelled to Palestine with the aim of producing an 'illustrated Bible'. He arrived in Palestine in 1921, where he stayed for two years. While the bulk of his photo collection consists of images of Palestine, his camera lens gives a snapshot into modernity in the Eastern Mediterranean more broadly. The entire Frank Scholten collection, consisting of 12,000 negatives and 14,000 prints, represents a work in progress towards a 16-volume set of books on the 'Holy Land', only two volumes of which were ever published.One of the hallmarks of Scholten's collected work is the thoroughness with which he imaged Palestine. His images of people cut across religious and confessional lines, ethnic backgrounds, and class and urban-rural divides. He imaged people at work as well as in their leisure time, but most of all, he imaged people in the context of their daily life, rather than divorced from the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matthew Glozier, Ian Howie-Willis, and John Pearn’s book, A Beacon of Hope: 140 Years of Eye Care in the Holy Land, provides a fascinating insight into the history of the St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital, highlighting the challenges caregivers face operating against a backdrop of political change and evershifting restrictions of Israeli occupation that impact patients and staff alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research investigated the case of the British military occupation of Palestine during the end of World War I. Palestine entered a new historical phase under the British Mandate until May 1948. As such, the article investigates the role of the press in stimulating Palestinian resistance to the British occupation. Its case study highlights the role of the "Filastin" and "Mirror Al-Sharq" newspapers in exposing the mandate plans in Palestine. These newspapers investigated its role in stimulating public opinion resistance to these plans . The topic of the Palestinian press during the British Mandate period raises a fundamental problem centered around the role of this press in forming resistant public opinion. It provides an introduction to the reality of the Palestinian press after World War I. Moreover, it uncovers the challenges it faced during the British occupation and its dealings with the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, Lord Balfour's visit to occupied Palestine, the Buraq uprising in 1929, the Al-Qassam Battle in 1935, and the great revolution in 1936. The research concluded that the two newspapers agreed in opposing the idea of the "Jewish national homeland" and anti-Zionism. They differed on the Mandate government; they highlighted the internal Palestinian contradictions between the various parties, and they had significant influence in shaping Palestinian consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'A God-Given Problem' This article analyses the views of the Old Testament scholar and orientalist Johannes de Groot on the relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. De Groot (1886-1942) visited the Holy Land five times in the period before World War II: in 1912, 1926, 1929, 1931 and 1937. Much more than fellow travelers and scholars he was interested in the situation and future of Arabs and Jews living within the same borders. He gave testimony of the growing tensions and showed comprehension to both sides. How to deal with their rights and ideals? De Groot considered the complicated relationships in Palestine as a God-given problem to mankind wearying itself. At this early stage, he already judged the Israeli-Palestine conflict as insolvable. The future was only safe in the hands of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to study the legal nature of the British mandate over Palestine after World War I, in addition to studying the claims of the Zionist movement regarding its connection to the land of Palestine, thus determining the correct legal concept of the Question of Palestine in accordance with international law. The methodology of the study is the legal analytical and critical method and the Statute approach. In it, the author used Zionist, Jewish, Arab and foreign references. The results showed that the Zionist movement was established to unite the efforts of the Jews in Europe with the aim of establishing a national home for them in Palestine with the help of the colonial European countries under historical and religious arguments that completely contradict the facts and discoveries in Palestine. On the other hand, Britain's goal from the Balfour Declaration was to support the Zionist project in Palestine, thus helping to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and colonize the Arabian Peninsula with the participation of France. In addition, the British Mandate Deed for Palestine was only ratified by the Principal Allied Powers in World War I. Therefore, it did not reflect a real international will and thus was a violation of the provisions of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative discusses the use of architecture as a mechanism of control over territories, resources, and peoples in the Jordanian desert during the period of interwar British Mandatory rule. The text presents and compares varying modes of imperial and Indigenous architectural control in the desert through a case study of Qal'at al-Jafr, a building constructed after World War I by the Bedouin leader Auda abu Tayeh, and coopted a decade later into the British Mandate's scheme for "desert control." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awad Halabi's monograph breaks new ground in uncovering the societal changes contained within Palestine's most popular Muslim festival. Focused mainly on the Mandate period, the book charts the festival's reinvention in the early twentieth century as a major vehicle for Palestinian social and political protest. Far from constituting a platform for purely elite concerns, Halabi demonstrates the multiple ways that subaltern actors expressed their concerns and priorities through the festival's rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartography played a crucial role during the partitioning of Africa. Territorial boundaries were marked on maps by the colonial powers. However, in some cases, maps were not precise regarding the sites they referred to. Some colonial powers changed original maps by shifting their territorial limits, thus staking a claim to other powers' territories. In areas where territorial questions from maps had not been sufficiently addressed during the colonial period, the distorted maps became a primary source of border disputes in the post-colonial period. The paper is built on the premise that the cartographic foundation of the Malawi-Tanzania border is knotty. Consequently, Malawi and Tanzania inherited contradictory cartography, each state selecting maps that suits her interests to defend her sovereign limits. Indeed, this has stoked the dispute that has dawdled for decades since independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research aims to explain the vital components and elements of the Palesttinian, as well as the seriousness of the colonial influences on the elements of the Arab-Palestinian identity, geographical, historical, social, cultural, and moral values, past and present. To achieve this, the researchers used the descriptive analytical methodology and the histotrical methodology. This study aims to figure out the impact of the Zionist European occupation on the elements of the Palestinian geographical, historical, political, economic, cultural and civilizational identity. This is to be highlighted by examining the events related to the direct and indirect European activities in Palestine. The study also aims to figure out the Zionist activities aimed at obliterating the Palestinian identity and Judaizing the land of Palestine and making it the home of Jews as per the global Zionist project. It also aims to highlight the Palestinian and Arab role in confronting and resisting that project, preserving the Palestinian identity, and developing the factors of sustaining its existence and continuity. The research came up with the following results: -The Palestinian national identity was formed according to three growing components of identity: the national, the Palestinian, the Arab and the Islamic. Whoever thinks that he is able to shape the Palestinian national identity in isolation from the other components, his efforts will inevitably be doomed to failure inadvance. -It falls on Palestinian and Arab theoretical and field studies to redefine the Palestinian national identity according to a three-dimensional space. The first dimensional is the one that dedicates the national Palestinian identity as one whole unit socially, geographically and politically in a way that ensures the inseparability of Palestinian people in 1948 occupied lands and Gaza Strip, or the citizens who were forcibly displaced as a result of the Zionist occupation, whom some studies call diaspora, as an analogy with the Jews. This analogy should not be there as it enforces the occupational goals of the Zionists. This ultimately leads to further fragmentation of the Palestinian identity. -The decline of the Arab and Islamic efforts in supporting the Palestinian identity at the expense of the increasing opportunities of the Zionist Entity for normalization with many Arab regimes in light of the successive crises of the Arab regimes that had witnessed drastic decline of Arab Nationalism. -The Zionist entity will not stop robbing the elements of the Palestinian national identity and Judaizing Palestine unless it finds a neverstopping Palestinian resistance. -The study showed that cultural pluralism in the components of the Palestinian national identity played a prominent role in its stability and preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the changing cultural, social, and ideological characteristics of the central Sephardi Rabban Yochanan Ben-Zakai synagogue in Jerusalem, as a lens reflecting social and ideological processes of the local Sephardi community during the first half of the twentieth century. These included the community's attempts to consolidate its cultural uniqueness and civic identity vis-à-vis the surrounding and evolving spirits—within the Jewish community and outside it; its struggles with the local Ashkenazi community over historical and legal hegemony; its changing and evolving attitude toward the Ottoman and British Empires; and its gradual yet distinct adoption of the Jewish national framework. The article is based on an in-depth study of the archives of the Sephardi Commission (Va'ad Ha'eda HaSepharadit) in Jerusalem, as well as literary and scholarly sources and the local Jewish press of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks, why was there no Arab university in Mandatory Palestine (while there were two Jewish universities). Apparently, the colonial mentality of the British authorities who deemed the Palestinians yet another colonized people who had to be oppressed, while regarding the Zionist settlers as fellow colonialists, feared that such a university would enhance the Palestinian national movement. At the same time, Zionist pressure, British anti-Arab racism, and lack of resources also combined to undermine the emergence of a proper Palestinian higher education system. Nonetheless, educators, intellectuals and some politicians of the Palestinian community did not give up on the idea. They used several teachers’ colleges to provide high quality university-level studies, the most notable being the Arab College (al-Kulliyya al-‘Arabiyya) whose graduates went on to pursue careers in universities in the region and abroad. There was also an attempt by the mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, with the help of donations from abroad, to build an Islamic, but open to all, university throughout the 1930s. This initiative was foiled by the British Mandate government despite the willingness both in the Arab and Muslim worlds to support it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the Arab Fair that took place in Jerusalem in 1933 and in 1934 from the economic and political perspectives. It foregrounds the reasons and results of the absence of a continuously held international trade fair by Arabs in Palestine within the schema of Mandatory Palestine in particular and of the post-Ottoman Balkans and Middle East in general. Although it was successful in bringing businesspeople from various parts of the Arab World together, the lack of official support, broad participation, international recognition, and promotional efforts abroad, as well as strong Zionist propaganda campaigns against it, adversely affected the progress of the Arab Fair, and it did not take place after 1934. Unlike most other post-Ottoman states where collaboration between business groups and political elites gave rise to international fairs in the interwar period, Palestinian Arabs could not enjoy any official endorsement from the British to organize and sustain such a business gathering. In contrast with the Arab Fair, the Levant Fair in Tel Aviv in the same period grew in size and popularity and evolved into an international spectacle thanks to the contribution of Zionist leaders, enterprises, business associations, and journalists in and outside Palestine and the considerable support of the British and other colonial governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Palestine Studies / Filistin Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of Bulletin of Palestine Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

During the Mandate period, Palestinian rural communities often shared their water sources proportionally in time-based rotations. Water use functioned as a temporal marker, embedded in the tempo of daily life. This article contrasts this way of distributing water with that of Zionist settlers and the British Mandatory administration, which typically measured water use in terms of volume. Volume-based measures, used by the British and by Zionist settlers, facilitated the commodification of water, transforming it into an object of investment for the development of colonial infrastructure, most notably irrigation and electricity. Time-based rotations, in contrast, were anchored in the movement of the sun and planets, seasonality (dry vs. wet season), and the needs of the community as a whole. The two approaches reflect different ways of relating to the environment and the natural world. Therefore, Zionist dispossession of water resources was not merely material, but it disrupted communal practices and obscured their associated temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lea Goldberg played a pivotal role in the children literature arena during the Yishuv period. Beginning in 1936, only a year after her immigration to Mandatory Palestine, Goldberg served as associate-editor for Davar Leyeladim , the leading Hebrew children's weekly, published by the official newspaper of the Histadrut (the General Federation of Labor). Additionally, over 500 hundred of her works for children, including poems, stories, translations, essays, literary criticism for young readers, and even comic strips were published in the magazine. It was a tumultuous era. The Arab Revolt (1936–1939), the outbreak of WWII and the publication of the MacDonald White Paper of 1939 all exerted a direct impact on the Jewish communities in Palestine and abroad. These political and national crises of the day also greatly affected the educational and literary fields. Though most pieces in Davar Leyeladim touched on current events, Goldberg declared her unflagging commitment to aesthetic and humanistic universal values even in those anguished times. The poets' role, she claimed, is to remind their readers what is important and beautiful in the world. Her writings for children epitomized this approach at first, but gradually changed as the war in Europe intensified. The article explores Goldberg's unique treatment of current events in her writings for children, and her efforts to reconcile Labor Zionist ideals and aspirations with her own aesthetic convictions. The conflicts and contradictions between local and universal ideals engendered some of her most fascinating works for children that have not as yet assumed center stage in scholarly research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaging and Imagining Palestine takes us to the archive of early Palestinian photography. The book offers a selection of essays on the photographic collection during the British Mandate period in Palestine. The contributors reveal a world known to Palestinians outside the photographic frame. Through unearthing the Palestinian photographic archive, the book curates and visualizes Palestinian life and resistance during the British Mandate and before Israeli colonization. Imaging and Imagining Palestine demands the viewers of the photographic archive to read these visuals through an Indigenous framework that insists on seeing the agency of Palestinians in these photographic encounters. Indigenizing photography allows us to take risks in adopting a radical imagination that invites us to think about the liberatory aspect of documenting, archiving, and worldmaking for Palestinians that could have been realized had history taken another turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The judicial system in Palestine arose and developed under the rule of the colonial countries, starting with the Ottoman rule, passing through the British Mandate period, then the Arab rule of Gaza Strip and West Bank, and ending with the Israeli occupation, and the return of the national authority as the beginning of the establishment of an independent state. In comparison to other nations, the legal situation in Palestine is both complicated and unique, owing to the fact that a number of authorities throughout history have ruled Palestine. In Palestine, many legal systems have existed. As a result, numerous legal systems have impacted Palestine's political and legal institutions. The division of Palestine has also resulted in the development of complicated and disparate legal systems in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and portions of Palestinian areas captured in 1948. This research provides a series of findings and recommendations for strengthening Palestine's legal and judicial systems by reducing uncertainty by harmonising and modernising laws throughout Palestinian regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palestinian peasant families had to adapt and survive under political and economic conditions dictated by European occupation and Zionist settler colonialism. Women had a major role in contributing to the efforts for survival and acquiring their status in the rural economy and the wider national struggle against British policies. Rural Arab families constituted the vast majority of the Palestinian population before the Nakba, or those displaced from their villages during the war on Palestine in 1948, and the formation of the State of Israel. The agricultural knowledge Palestinian women had and passed from one generation to the other was an important element for the survival of the peasant families under the different periods in which colonial countries and Zionist settlement shook the base of their economic existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine-making estates in the late Ottoman and Mandatory period shed light on the relations between land, know-how and nationalism which have shaped up alongside the Arab-Zionist, then Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The dynamics explaining the growth of the estates were grounded primarily in the changing commercial settings of Palestine between the Ottoman and the British mandate periods, with a shift from more quality-oriented production to everyday, low end or mid-range production. In the process, indigenous taste was discarded as of low market value, due to the domination of the increasingly globalized wine market by European wineries. As a result, pressure to adopt European standards of vinification and quality came from various quarters. The article examines to what extent this is due to the anticipation of estate founders, global commercial dynamics, the support government and public debt administrations for the main wineries of the country, and the influence of the nascent international sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that most of the contentious issues which flared up during Britain's Mandate for Palestine, including Jewish immigration, ineffective policing, inadequate funding, ethno-religious violence, conflicting sympathies among British officials, and Arab displeasure over the Balfour Declaration, were already visible to Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill and other British officials in the eighteen months before the Mandate officially began, and that the seeds of Britain's administrative failure in Palestine had already taken root. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honor, freedom of expression, and judicial independence are core values in modern societies. The latter two are associated with democracy and liberalism, while the roots of honor lie in the need for recognition. The British in Mandate era Palestine came from a democratic tradition, but it is unclear whether, and to what degree they intended the locals to enjoy these values. The article analyzes a series of defamation cases which shed light on the way the British Mandate courts balanced these concepts when plaintiffs sued after being accused of loyalty to the British. Such cases were unique in requiring judges to exert independence in their balancing of the plaintiff's honor, the defendant's freedom of expression, and the courts' willingness to accept loyalty to the Crown as negative and offensive. This was a three-dimensional test case of British attitudes towards the three values. We show that at least some of British judges in the lower courts perceived themselves as independent and were willing to set aside the honor of the British government in order to allow the local inhabitants to defend their own honor. This adds to our understanding of the roots of judicial-independence and honor in (pre)-State Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the end of the British Mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel, the Yishuv's intelligence services assessed that King Abdullah would be willing to accept the existence of a Jewish state and that the other Arab countries, for internal and external reasons, would not be interested in getting involved in war. They concluded that an invasion by regular Arab armies in response to a declaration of a Jewish state would be a 'low probability' and that Arab propaganda calling for the destruction of Israel only amounted to a war of nerves. Today it is abundantly clear that the intelligence agencies failed to weigh these factors correctly. In fact, what primarily motivated the Arab regimes to launch an all-out war was indeed their internal and external situation, since by so doing they could divert public attention away from their internal problems and ameliorate their external status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition period from the Ottoman withdrawal from Jerusalem to the establishment of British rule was critical for the Orthodox Church. On the one hand, the rule of Patriarch Damianos was contested by a powerful opposition within the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, which was supported by the government in Athens. On the other hand, the Arab laity sided with Damianos, putting at the same time pressure on the new administration to upgrade its status both at a political and religious level. This paper attempts to contextually sketch out the historical course of events, paying special attention on the religious policy agenda of the new authorities, as well as the diplomatic and cultural factors influencing the decision-making process. Overall, the paper suggests that the internal church crisis under examination was determined by the historical reformulation caused by WWI, the development of Arab nationalism, national ambitions in Athens, and British local and diplomatic policy objectives. Moreover, it argues that this period of crisis should probably be viewed as the starting point of the modern history of the institution (This article extends and updates the analysis of my previous paper, Papastathis 2009 (in Greek). In particular, it employs and contextually analyses new archival sources from the Historic and Diplomatic Archive of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The new archival material is related to the intra-religious background and institutional framework, and to the diplomatic and political aspects of the question under examination). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rafiq Farah, archdeacon of the Anglican Church and the author's father, chaired the Society for the Defense of Arab Minority Rights in Israel from 1951 to 1965. This article draws on oral history recorded by the author, on personal documents, and on archival material to chronicle the events that led to the Society's formation, and to examine more closely the effects of the 1948 Nakba on the Palestinian Arab community in Haifa. In August 1949, Rafiq Farah wrote a letter published in the Israeli Communist Party newspaper al-Ittihad in which he proposed the formation of a league for the defense of universal human rights. Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher, wrote a letter to Farah supporting the idea. The al-Ittihad article acted as a catalyst that provoked debate among Arabs and Jews and that in turn led to the Society's formation. After its establishment and until 1966, during a period of a "reign of terror" imposed on Palestinian Arabs, the Society waged a courageous legal battle against Israel's Emergency Regulations, which included fighting against Israeli confiscation of Arab lands and properties; it was no small feat, and their struggles were not always in vain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]