British Rule In Palestine Research Articles

The role of the labor movements in the colonial spaces: trade unionism in Palestine and Lebanon in the colonial era (1920-1948)

ABSTRACT This article aims to demonstrate how the working class evolved and was organised in Palestine and Lebanon between 1920 and 1948. Palestine and Lebanon, which share characteristics such as being a part of the Ottoman Empire and being governed by mandates, also share similar experiences in combating sectarianism based on nationality or religion. The establishment of British rule in Palestine and French administration in Lebanon after World War I also influenced the trade union movement in these two countries: Nationalism flourished, trade unions became tools of politics, and the divide and rule policy of the colonial administration made organization difficult. Although these administrations were referred to as ‘mandates’ of the League of Nations, they actually experienced a colonization process and its effects similar to those in Africa. In this study, particularly the concept of colonization will be used, and the activities of trade unions in colonial regions will be examined through two Middle Eastern countries. While the Palestinian trade unions, which struggled against both British colonization and settler colonialism, were effective in preserving Palestinian identity, the Lebanese trade unions, dealing with French colonization as well as sectarianism, also managed to significantly preserve working-class unity.

Jerusalem urban landscape fragmentation: from a city of peace into a city of pieces

During the past century, the city of Jerusalem expanded from 1 km2 (the walled city) to reach more than 126 km2 in 2005 and 164 km2 recently. The city presents an open book in urban planning practice, starting with the Ottoman time through the British Mandate (i.e. British rule in Palestine from 1917 to 1948, starting after the defeat of Ottoman rule in the area) and ending with the Israeli occupation. Planners during different regimes added several layers to the original fabric in attempts to transform the city into a ‘modern’ mosaic/collage. In this study, historical plans were analysed and sequential plans were gathered and stratified in order to show how the urban context was deformed and fragmented through unilateral planning.

The Impact of United States of America Intervention On Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Israeli occupation of Palestine became a prolonged conflict; this conflict was caused by the seizure of the Jerusalem area. Jerusalem itself is a holy city for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The conflict began in 1917-1947 when during British rule in Palestine with Jerusalem as the center of government, the Balfour Declaration stated that Britain handed over the mandate of Palestine to the United Nations. During the ongoing conflict to date, not only two countries, namely Israel and Palestine, are involved, but there is also the intervention of the United States which has a fairly dominant role. For example, Donald Trump as President of the United States of America unilaterally announced that he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017, thus triggering a greater struggle than ever in the Middle East. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview, description, and understanding of the occurrence of conflict events in the Palestinian territories, by looking at the origins of the conflict, the role of the United States in it, and the impact of the dominant role of the United States in this prolonged conflict.

The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

This article reconstructs how Arab doctors, medical missionaries, British counterinsurgents, and Palestinian rebels negotiated and contested the legitimate role of medical workers and healthcare in times of colonial conflict. Drawing insight from a medical anthropological literature which challenges the notion of medical neutrality as normative, and setting mandate Palestine alongside other case studies of medicine in times of conflict from the interwar Middle East and North Africa, this article argues that while healthcare and medical authority could be put to work to support the colonial status quo, they could serve other, more radical ends too. To highlight the complexity of the political positioning of medical workers and healthcare, this article focuses on the town of Hebron during the great revolt which rocked the foundations of British rule in Palestine between 1936 and 1939, and relies on a range of colonial and missionary archival sources. The first part of the article uses the case study of an Egyptian medical doctor who took up political office in the town in moments of crisis to show how medical authority could be consciously transmuted into a force to uphold a besieged political order. The second part draws on the diary of a British mission doctor to reconstruct his efforts to assert medical neutrality during the great revolt, and—more strikingly still—how Palestinian insurgents participated actively in this attempt to transplant international legal protections to Hebron. The final part traces the incorporation of healthcare into the strategies of both British counterinsurgents and Palestinian rebels, with the British policy of collective punishment indirectly but appreciably degrading access to healthcare for Palestinians, and Palestinian counterstate ambitions extending to the establishment of insurgent medical services in the hills.

Steven B. Wagner. Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine.

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Before the Mandate: British Rule in Palestine, 1920–1922

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.

Haderech lekaf-tet b'November: Parashat UNSCOP vereshit meoravuto shel ha'um basichsuch ha'Aravi-Israeli (The road to partition: UNSCOP and the beginning of United Nations involvement in the Israel-Arab conflict)

Haderech lekaf-tet b'November: Parashat UNSCOP vereshit meoravuto shel ha'um basichsuch ha'Aravi-Israeli (The road to partition: UNSCOP and the beginning of United Nations involvement in the Israel-Arab conflict)

Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine. Steven B. Wagner, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). Pp. 333. $39.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781501736476

Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine. Steven B. Wagner, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). Pp. 333. $39.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781501736476

Ottoman Ruins Captured: Antiquities, Preservation, and Waqf in Mandatory Palestine

The British Department of Antiquities (DOA) in Palestine intentionally constructed historical discontinuities to distance British rule from its Ottoman predecessor and tie it instead to earlier periods in the history of the land. To do this, however, the DOA had to unwittingly rely upon, and revalidate, political and cultural patterns laid by the Ottomans in the age of reforms. The article exposes this dynamic by delving into the written and visual record of the DOA in one of its first preservation projects in the "Tower of Ramleh." The case of the tower as a multifaceted ruin shows that the "post-Ottoman" historical framing for the twentieth-century Middle East is not merely a matter of analytic investigation in hindsight, but a reality acknowledged and shaped by historical actors. It reveals thus far hidden agendas of the British rule in Palestine and enables the re-introduction of the history erased by it.

State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine

The Great Revolt (1936–39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to British and Zionist colonialisms during the thirty years of British rule in Palestine. Although its ultimate defeat has led to negative appraisals of its historical significance, the uprising was in its day the largest mass mobilization in Palestinian history and, at its apex, threatened to overturn the British regime. The rebellion was characterized by considerable organizational ingenuity as Palestinians created novel institutions that embodied their drive for popular sovereignty and an end to colonial domination. This article principally examines two such sets of institutions, the national and popular committees of 1936, and the rebel court system from 1937–39. In doing so, it argues that much like revolutionary peasant-based movements elsewhere in the colonial world, insurgent forces in Palestine embarked on a process of state formation from below. This process aimed to sap the colonial regime of its authority and weaken its capacities while augmenting those of the rebels by integrating broad segments of the population into insurgent frameworks. It further contends that it is the dynamic of state formation from below, and the popular character and leadership of the rebel movement, that lent the revolt its resilience and enabled it to push the colonial state to the wall.

The Revisionist Union and Britain: From declarations of “loyalty” to the employment of “methods of bullying”

The nature of British rule in Palestine, as it settled down after the approval of the Mandate in 1922, had its critics among the Zionist ranks. Using original sources, this paper examines the attitudes of the leadership of the Revisionist Union (RU) towards the British from the first quarter of the 1920s till the mid-1930s. Unlike the later paramilitary organizations, the Revisionist founders, convinced, in their own words, of the common interests shared with the British Empire, had no intention of terminating the British presence, but sought to transform it in order to serve Zionism’s objectives. While official Zionism preferred backstage diplomacy, the RU pursued a different strategy – appealing directly to the masses and making its cause as public and vocal as possible. Eventually, the RU’s strategy combined the principle of pro-British orientation with merciless criticism of Palestine policies on the ground. As far as the British were concerned, the Colonial Office was at best willing to tolerate a set of proposals they saw as unrealistic. Once these started to actively erode the integrity of British policy in the region, unsolicited “enthusiasm” was reclassified as dangerous “extremism.”

Intelligence and the Origins of the British Middle East

This article examines how intelligence services and officers laid the groundwork for British rule in Palestine during 1918–23. The patterns for British rule in the Middle East were established by officers who, during the First World War, were responsible for the implementation of Britain's Arab and Zionist policies. It was not until mid-1919 that the inherent conflict between the Arab and Zionist policies became apparent to these officers, who had worked with Zionist intelligence and Arab nationalists during the war. This article examines the roots of British rule during 1919–21 as intelligence cooperation with Zionists helped guarantee a British Mandate, but could not secure the country from violence forever. The zero-sum conflict between Arab nationalist and Zionists emerged as British policy options narrowed.

Whispers from Below: Zionist Secret Diplomacy, Terrorism and British Security Inside and Out of Palestine, 1944–47

This article discusses the global aspect of Zionist terrorism against Britain during 1944–47, relying on recently declassified documents and Hebrew records. Britain struggled against a global terrorist campaign which attacked British targets in Palestine, Egypt and the wider Middle East, continental Europe and the United Kingdom. This article refutes claims by other authors that British rule in Palestine failed because of intelligence failure. Intelligence failure was limited, but so were successes. British intelligence produced reasonable assessments on Zionist politics, but could do little to prevent violence without the cooperation of the Jewish Agency. Success was driven by a combination of signals intelligence, secret agents, one key defector, interrogations and intelligence shared by the Jewish Agency. Failure resulted from a weak understanding of the Zionist underground and from lack of cooperation by Agency authorities. Normally Britain's junior partner, the Jewish Agency was, by 1945, struggling against British restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Its militia, Haganah, turned to cooperation with terrorists. British intelligence predicted that such developments could occur, but failed to identify them as they unfolded. Britain's dependence on Zionist security intelligence was a key vulnerability that never was addressed by policy-makers. The Jewish Agency leveraged its cooperation, applying it to prevent terrorism in Egypt and the United Kingdom, where violent incidents would harm the Zionist cause. It had little reason to prevent terrorism in the key battlegrounds of Palestine or Europe, and so terrorism harmed Britain's will to continue fighting. The root cause of Britain's failure was at the policy level. Despite known weaknesses, government never assessed its own will and ability to uphold restrictions on Zionist immigration, or to fight terrorism, as against the Yishuv's will and ability to struggle against Britain.

Mandate Palestine in Perspective

The Arab Revolt in Palestine was an important event that ultimately convinceed the British that they were unable to reconcile the two local national movements. Yet the British soldiered on, for years, before Ernest Bevin’s declaration in February 1947 that Britain had decided to stop shouldering the burden, handing the Palestine Mandate back to the international community, that is the United Nations, for resolution. This review essay addresses two new books that shed light on important aspects of the Arab Revolt and the end of the British rule in Palestine.

Liminal Loyalties: Ottomanism and Palestinian Responses to the Turkish War of Independence, 1919-22

The imposition of British rule in Palestine following World War I did not immediately supplant one imperial system with another or Ottoman identities with national ones. Examining Palestinian responses to the Turkish war of independence, this article argues that the 1917-22 period should be seen as a “liminal” era suspended between imperial systems. Both Kemalists and Palestinians employed a discourse of loyalty to the Ottoman dynasty, Muslim identity, and resistance to European rule to frame their goals. It was only after the creation of the Turkish Republic and the promulgation of the British Mandate, the author argues, that nationalist identities displaced Ottoman ones for both Turks and Palestinians.

Gender, Nationalism and Colonial Policy: prostitution in the Jewish settlement of Mandate Palestine, 1918–1948

The aim of this article is to discuss the way prostitution was perceived during the British rule in Palestine (1918–48), analyzing the differing perspectives of the British colonial authorities and the Jewish national community. The major concerns of the civil and military colonial authorities were focused on issues of ‘social hygiene’ and the trafficking in women and children. This often involved the transfer of both legislation and discourse from the metropolis. The Jewish community, on the other hand, was concerned mainly with the evolving national project. Prostitution was seen as a ‘mixing ground’ of Jewish women and British and Arab men, thus threatening the boundaries of the national collective. Whilst the article is attentive to the importance of studying prostitution in its historical specificity, it also considers the many ways in which this case study illuminates the complex series of relationships between both colonialism and prostitution, and gender and nationalism. Women were important to the imagining of the nation not only for their symbolic power—as ‘mothers of the nation’, for example; the construction of nationalist discourses also involved focusing on ‘negative’ gendered phenomena, such as prostitution. In these ways, the article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the multiple significance of gendered categories in the process of nation-building.

Re-Remembering the Mandate: Historiographical Debates and Revisionist History in the Study of British Palestine

Over the past 20 years, historians have been engaged in a critical reappraisal of the history of Israel and Palestine. Spurred on by the work of Israeli ‘New Historians’ and Palestinian revisionists, the field has seen a sustained challenge to the crude narratives of conventional nationalist historiography. This article investigates the impact of this reappraisal on the study of British rule in Palestine (1917–1948), arguing that while the work of the new historians has been useful in opening up debate about the nature of Zionist development, Israeli revisionist history has done a poor job of considering how Jews and Arabs lived and worked together under British rule. To get away from the distorted idea that Jews and Arabs developed in communities that were closed-off from each other, we need to adopt an approach that treats them as participants in the same narrative, a perspective adopted by historians who use a ‘relational history’ approach to understanding the Mandate. The paper concludes that the most promising development in the field has been the integration of new voices and primary sources into scholarship, but cautions that, in our quest to understand the lives of the colonized, we may be missing opportunities to reconsider the nature of British colonial rule.

American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (review)

Reviewed by: American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise Donna Robinson Divine (bio) Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider, editors, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 2005, 373 pp. Two Large, Seemingly Antagonistic Missions, the first regarding the American dream for all 'the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' and the second embodied in Zionism's vision of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, emerged from the bloodshed and suffering of World War I to foster a remarkable set of opportunities for Jewish women living in the United States. Through a paradox that seems incomprehensible, Zionism, itself, helped convince most Americans that the central reason for its existence—the insecurity of life for Jews living in the Diaspora—did not apply to the United States. While helping Jews in Palestine, American Zionists seemed to forfeit their own condition of exile. Much of the compelling force of the Zionist vision comes from its rejection of other alternatives for Jewish survival. The Balfour Declaration and its subsequent incorporation into the League of Nations Mandate that set the terms for British rule in Palestine appeared, to Zionists, to render the national home as the climatic fulfillment of Jewish history. American Jews, however, could not help but see in their own homeland so many promises, so many opportunities, and so many rewards for energy that they could not conceive of having to seek liberation beyond their own shores. Shulamit Reinharz and Mark Raider's magnificent study, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise challenges us to understand how faith in Zionism and in the American dream nourished and changed the meaning of both projects. This is a story not of ideologies or for the most part, of ideologues, but rather of the creators of a new tradition. The essays in this collection bring some of the leaders of Hadassah, Pioneer Women, and of Mizrachi beautifully to life and show how a dedication to the Zionist cause deepened a commitment to American values, and enlarged the Zionist perspective, to preserve a set of liberal principles reaching across [End Page 204] the ethnic and national divide in Palestine even in the worst of times and raging communal violence. Reinharz and Raider are as qualified as anyone today to put together this history. Both have written as knowledgeably about American Zionism as about the lives of Jewish women. In this book, Reinharz and Raider assemble essays that chart the rich profusion of movements, institutions, and activities—including Aliyah—that Zionism inspired in Jewish women living in the United States. "Although the number of American Zionists who actually immigrated to Palestine was never large, the number of Jewish women who subscribed to the Zionist cause was significant." (p. XXII) So much of the Zionist enterprise encouraged collective action that we forget how often and surprisingly it also created the context for individuality, where the particular deeds of ordinary women could affect the course of history. Many of the women described in the pages of this collection lived more dangerously, made themselves at home under more political volcanoes, and looked deeper into more social abysses, than most American women of their class and age. This book helps us to see the complexities and ironies in the lives of Jewish women who developed the Zionist movement in America and to think about them in radically new ways. An incomparable body of research by historians in recent years is beginning to show how the very existence of women's Zionist organizations served to forge a distinctive consciousness among their members that became one important source of the movement's historic potency. In 1925, for example, both the centrist Organization of America (ZOA) and Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, had countrywide memberships of approximately 27,000. A decade later the ZOA membership had dropped to less than 17,000 while Hadassah (which declined somewhat during the Depression) rose to approximately 33,000. Thereafter Hadassah's membership trajectory stayed well ahead of the ZOA except for a brief period on the eve of statehood when the ZOA attained parity with Hadassah and reached its peak strength of 250,000. (p. XX...

MANDATE DAZE: STORIES OF BRITISH RULE IN PALESTINE, 1917–48

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in British rule in Palestine. Although invariably selective, recent scholarship has nevertheless attempted to deal with the administration of the Palestinian Mandate over its entire time span. These studies provide an opportunity to reconsider more generally some of the methodological problems posed by the writing of Mandatory history. There already exists for Palestine a large body of literature, one that has prompted several historiographic reviews identifying particular assumptions, preoccupations, and conceptual frameworks.1 They include the extent to which histories of Mandatory Palestine invariably reflect current thinking and are thus not solely concerned with the past; the reliance on official archives, particularly British and Israeli; and the tendency to concentrate on Zionism as the moving force behind developments during the Mandate period (thus committing a conspicuous act of retroactive determinism).

'She Loves Books & Ideas, & Strides along in Low Shoes Like an Englishwoman': British models and graduates from the Anglican girls' secondary schools in Palestine, 1918-48

During the mandate period of British rule in Palestine, urban middle- and upper-class Arab women challenged the traditions that had secluded them from public life. The influence of missionary secondary education was the first and crucial step to the changing social roles of these women. Despite the general historical interpretation that Western missionary education merely modernized the domestic dimension of the indigenous women's identity, the Anglican mission schools in Palestine provided women with a liberal education in addition to offering a professional life and gainful employment as a legitimate option for young women. This paper calls for further research to be done on the topic.