A dangerous legacy: Welfare in British Palestine, 1930–1939

Abstract

Introduction The study of welfare in British Palestine adds a new dimension to the history of the political and social divisions which marked the Zionist path to statehood and the formation of Arab national identity. The analysis of the populations' social conditions, their cultural approach to their own improvement and their capability to create the structures for their self-renovation offers a privileged perspective on patterns of economic,1 social and political development and differentiation. Welfare as such encompasses a whole series of other issues related to labor organization,2 colonization practices, political activities, treatment of prisoners, the (in)famous question of the status quo, periodical rioting, immigration, land sales,3 etc. Welfare is also related to a discourse on hygiene and to the role of gender in the process of national identity formation, placing it at the base of both the Zionist and the Arab idea of nation-building. However, these themes fall outside the realm assigned to this paper. Instead we will limit our understanding of welfare to the social and cultural organisation behind the two pillar problems of health and education. Welfare has been used here as a broad cultural and social category to investigate internal political relationships, the sustaining of authority, power and identity through the creation of political and cultural hierarchies, and the means of asserting social and cultural distinctions and of implementing ethnic, social and cultural divisions among the population. Our instruments for this analysis have been schools, hospitals, voluntary associations, religious and missionary bodies, and the state institutions devoted to the organization and transmission of welfare itself. Education and health policies are also fundamental to investigating the