Rule In Palestine Research Articles

Apartheid in the Twenty-first Century: Racial Capitalism and the Struggles in Palestine

Apartheid has become an increasingly important framework for understanding and challenging Israeli rule in Palestine. The Apartheid Convention states apartheid is a crime against humanity. We contend what is missing from this definition of apartheid is an economic and ontological link. Although the current legal definition focuses solely on the political regime, it does not provide a strong basis for critiquing the economic aspects of a settler colonial state embedded in apartheid. To address this concern, we propose a more comprehensive definition of apartheid which grew out of the struggle in South Africa during the 1970s that gained support among revolutionaries due to the limits of decolonisation in South Africa after 1994 — highlighting the reality(ies) that apartheid is intimately connected to capitalism. This conceptualisation was termed racial capitalism. This article argues that racial capitalism provides a more thorough understanding of the destructive dynamics of the Israeli settler colonial project, one that insists that the struggle against Israeli domination must confront both the apartheid state and the racial capitalist system if Palestinians ever hope to achieve liberation.

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

Between the Lion Cub of Judea and the British Lion: cause lawyers, British rule and national struggle in Mandatory Palestine

The tempestuous political environment of the final days of British Mandate rule in Palestine saw intensive activity by cause lawyers. As a test case of this activity, this article examines the conduct of the attorneys who handled the case of Dov Gruner, a member of the Irgun Zionist underground. In April 1946, Gruner was sentenced to death by a British military court. Informed by cause lawyering paradigm, the article examines the tactics used by his lawyers and their relations with players within and outside the court. This examination sheds light on the links between nationality, the law and lawyers at that time in Palestine. In particular, the analysis highlights the key role played by the lawyers in the Gruner affair, similar from that perspective to the dominant role of lawyers in the Irish War of Independence and different from the relatively marginal role played by lawyers in Indian freedom struggle.

1897: The Year of Jewish Revolutions?

1897: The Year of Jewish Revolutions? Derek Jonathan Penslar 1897 marked the beginning of twin Jewish revolutions, one national and one social, that started out separately but took on aspects of each other as they drew closer together over time. The one was embodied in the Zionist Organization, which held its first congress in Basel in August of that year. The other was promoted by the General Jewish Labor Bund in Russia and Poland, which was founded in Vilna in October. Neither revolution appeared out of the blue, unfolding rather over a long arc of time. Across the nineteenth century, Jews had figured in radical politics throughout Europe, particularly in Russia from the late 1870s. Jewish nationalism assumed many forms, some of them oriented toward Palestine, such as the Hovevei Tsion (Lovers of Zion) societies, which sprang up throughout Eastern Europe and Romania after 1882, and which were organized into an international federation in 1884. Just as Jewish radicalism and nationalism preceded 1897, so did they continue to develop outside the framework of the Bund and the Zionist Organization. Why, then, should we look to 1897 as a turning point in the history of both Jewish nationalism and radicalism? In that year, both the Zionist Organization and the Bund formalized and pushed forward previously inchoate revolutionary political projects, and within a few years they would become the most dynamic Jewish political institutions in Eastern Europe, with global influence. Their ideologies were mutually influential: Zionism quickly attracted socialists, and over time the Bund cautiously embraced the goal of Jewish autonomism in a postrevolutionary Russian federation. Many of the competing forms of fin de siècle Jewish political life such as territorialism and middle-class, nonsocialist diaspora nationalism responded to, and in turn influenced, Zionism and Bundism. The word "revolution" is multivalent, and its meaning and consequences for Zionism and Bundism are not identical. The word is commonly associated with upheaval and the attempted supplanting of one [End Page 520] regime (be it political, social, or epistemic) by another. The revolutionary project of the Bund is obvious enough, as it sought to overthrow the Tsarist regime and construct a social democratic Russian federation. The extent to which that project succeeded, however, is debatable. The Tsarist regime fell, but the Bund did not bring about the revolutions of 1905 or 1917. During the early years of the Soviet Union, Jews enjoyed the fruits of emancipation, but in time they fell victim to oppression and persecution. The Bund's legacy was, therefore, ambiguous. Jews in North America still continue to identify more with the left than the right, but "left" almost always means liberalism, not radicalism, which is the province of small but vocal congeries of Jewish intellectuals, often cloistered in colleges and universities. Zionist achievements have been more concrete than those of the Bund. A Jewish state was established in 1948. That state has recently marked its seventieth anniversary, and it has deeply affected Jewish consciousness across the globe. In most accounts of the history of Zionism, and in Jewish popular memory, the 1897 congress and its convener, Theodor Herzl, are accorded pioneering roles in the Zionist project. Herzl himself contributed to that perception, writing in his diary shortly after the conference's conclusion, "In Basel I founded the Jewish state."1 Did he? The congress was indeed a momentous event, but its participants were divided about its goals and cautious in formulating them. Its platform, thenceforth known as the Basel Program, aspired to the "creation of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law."2 This program represented a compromise between those who wanted a clear declaration of aspirations for statehood and those who feared that such boldness would endanger the status of the movement in Tsarist Russia and of those Jews living under Ottoman rule in Palestine. In the debate that preceded the adoption of the platform, some delegates demanded assurance that this "home" would be intended only for those Jews who did not wish to remain in their current lands of residence. Orthodox rabbis demanded that the movement limit itself to the improvement of the Jews' political status and not engage in religious affairs...

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.

Some Dated Greek Inscriptions from Maresha

The paper discusses two pairs of dated Greek inscriptions painted on the walls of Tomb I in Maresha, originally published by John Peters and Hermann Thiersch. A critical look at their findings is afforded by the 2007 publication of the photographs taken by Chalil Raad for the Peters and Thiersch expedition of 1902. It is argued that the inscription considered by Thiersch to be the earliest inscription in Tomb I, and dated by him to 196 BCE, should be dated more than half a century later, to 141 BCE. This inscription was painted over a section of the northern wall of the Animal Frieze, and should be considered together with another inscription painted over the southern wall of the frieze, which was written a few months earlier. Both these inscriptions furnish a later terminus ante quem for the famous Maresha murals in Tomb I, and raise new possibilities for the dating of the famous Maresha wall paintings. While the first pair of inscriptions were dated by the Seleucid era, another pair of dated Greek inscriptions also painted over the Animal Frieze employ an unknown era. It has been suggested that they were painted in the very last years of Ptolemaic rule in Palestine. However, Raad's photographs show these inscriptions to be comparatively late, and it is suggested that they were painted towards the middle of the first century BCE, when a new era was inaugurated in Maresha under the auspices of a Roman governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius.

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.”

Britain in Palestine (1917-1948) - Occupation, the Palestine Mandate, and International Law

At a time when there are not even negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in order to resolve their longstanding dispute, this article seeks to explain the origins of the conflict by examining Britain’s conduct in Palestine from 1917-1948, first as an occupier, then as the responsible mandatory, under international law. Although at first sight dealing with a purely historical issue, a discussion of British conduct in Palestine is relevant at a time when the realization of a viable two-State-solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is becoming ever more urgent and concurrently less likely. This article analyses the developments in Palestine as of 1917 and the legality, in international law, of (mainly) British actions. It will be argued that British attempts at implementing the Balfour Declaration -which, as will be shown, had no standing in international law- while being occupiers of enemy territory were contrary to the Hague Regulations as acknowledged by leading British officials at the time. It will then be explained that the Palestine Mandate, as confirmed by the League of Nations’ Council, contravened Article 22 (4) of the League of Nations Covenant, and that British efforts to implement it as of 1920 -and thus four years before the peace treaty with Turkey came into force- were similarly inconsistent with the Hague Regulations. Far from believing in the legality of their actions, leading British officials and politicians were, as will be documented, well aware of their conduct’s “legal imperfections”. It will be concluded that British conduct in Palestine could rarely, if at all, claim to be accordance with the new international legal order the UK had helped to create following WWI. Repeatedly ignoring international law did not benefit the British: their rule in Palestine was to end in humiliating defeat in 1948. Almost seventy years later the world is still trying to resolve a conflict the British set in motion in 1917 with the issuance of the Balfour Declaration.

Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British

Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British

Cartographical evidence of efforts to develop Acre during the last decades of Ottoman rule: did the Ottomans neglect the city?

Using dozens of Ottoman maps from the Central Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, the article challenges the prevailing standpoint regarding the historical-geographic process that took place on both sides of the Bay of Acre/haifa during the last decades of the Ottoman period, and led to Haifa’s emergence as one of the most important port towns in the eastern Mediterranean, and concomitantly to Acre’s demise and negligence. To date, the few researchers who have dealt with this process, especially from the viewpoint of Haifa’s local history, have viewed the Ottoman regime as a passive force that did not act to preserve the status or economic strength of Acre, the regional headquarters, the province’s capital city and the region’s most important town for many years. We argue that the central Ottoman government in Istanbul did not perceive the process of Acre’s demise and Haifa’s rise as a deterministic process. Official Ottoman maps drawn at the request of the imperial centre as early as the 1880s show that plans existed to develop Acre and its region. These plans, even if only partially implemented, would have clearly contributed to preserving Acre’s status over Haifa. The Ottomans attempted to preserve the geo-strategic status of Acre and its importance and made plans to upgrade various infrastructures in the town’s vicinity, which might have changed processes related to physical conditions and powerful technological advances. This approach, which is based on the belief in the human ability to confront and deal with deterministic geographic and physical conditions, seems to have been the foundation of Ottoman planning in the case of Acre. The Ottomans’ capacity to implement these plans was very limited, however, and they eventually had to acknowledge this reality. Thus, Acre was reduced to its formal status as the capital of an Ottoman administrative district until the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine. In a way, its fate was not very different from that of other traditional centres of Ottoman rule along the eastern Mediterranean coast, whose importance diminished at that time, while new centres that were more cosmopolitan and connected to developments overseas came to power.

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.