The Effect of Socioeconomic Change on Arab Societal Collapse in Mandate Palestine

Abstract

Between December 1947 and the first four months of 1948, the fabric of a centuries-old Palestinian Arab society unraveled with astounding rapidity, producing 750,000 refugees. The collapse occurred within the context of widespread socioeconomic disruption and dislocation among peasants and migrant and urban workers. The eroding socioeconomic foundation severely weakened this lower stratum's defense against Zionist settlement, colonial state policies, and military pressures. Beginning in late Ottoman times and throughout the British Mandate period (1918–48), the agrarian social economy had been slowly undermined by the urban landowning class and oppressive tax and land-tenure systems. Peasant dispossession, begun in the 19th century and aggravated by Zionist land-buying in the 20th, created a significant landless rural population that was increasingly dependent on wage labor in scattered rural locations and in the cities. During the British Mandate, as Palestine was rapidly incorporated into the world market, communal harmony and social integration were further strained by urban–rural and peasant–landowner tensions, disjointed urban–working–class development, unemployment, and overcrowding. As a result, by the late 1940s Palestinian Arab society was on the brink of disintegration.