|
PALESTINE BEFORE ZIONISTS |
|
|
PALESTINE BEFORE ZIONISTS |
The disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be "settled Arab indigenes, for a thousand years" were in fact a "heterogeneous" community with no "Palestinian" identity, and according to an official British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either:
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica finds the "population" of Palestine composed of so "widely differing" a group of "inhabitants" -- whose "ethnological affinities" create "early in the 20th century a list of no less than fifty languages" that "it is therefore no easy task to write concisely ... on the ethnology of Palestine." In addition to the "Assyrian, Persian and Roman" elements of ancient times, "the short-lived Egyptian government introduced into the population an element from that country which still persists in the villages." There are very large contingents from the Mediterranean countries, especially Armenia, Greece and Italy . . . Turkoman settlements ... a number of Persians and a fairly large Afghan colony . . . Motawila ... long settled immigrants from Persia ... tribes of Kurds ... German "Templar" colonies ... a Bosnian colony ... and the Circassian settlements placed in certain centres ... by the Turkish government in order to keep a restraint on the Bedouin ... a large Algerian element in the population ... still maintain(s) [while] the Sudanese have been reduced in numbers since the beginning of the 20th century.
In the late eighteenth century, 3,000 Albanians recruited by Russians were settled in Acre. The Encyclopaedia Britannica finds "most interesting all the non-Arab communities in the country . . . the Samaritan sect in Nablus (Shechem); a gradually disappearing body" once "settled by the Assyrians to occupy the land left waste by the captivity of the Kingdom of Israel."
At the start of the Zionist colonization of Palestine in the late 19th century, the rural people were mixed race peasants, commonly, but imprecisely, called Arabs. Most of the population were Muslims, but in the urban areas there were sizable groups of Christians (at Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem) and of Jews (at Tsfat, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Jericho, and Hebron). At the same time Arab nationalism was developing in the Middle East in opposition to Turkish rule.
H. Allen Tupper, Jr. wrote in the New York Times in 1896, after having "ridden on horseback more than four hundred miles through Palestine and Syria," that virtually the only local people he encountered were "merchantmen with their long camel trains" and "wild Bedouin tribes" that "reside in one locality not more than two months."
Most of the founders of Zionism knew that Palestine (the Land of Israel) had a small Arab population, though some spoke naively of "a land without a people for a people without a land". Still, only few regarded the Arab presence as a real obstacle to the fulfillment of Zionism. At that time in the late 19th century, Arab nationalism did not yet exist in any form, and the Arab population of Palestine was sparse and apolitical. Many Zionist leaders believed that since the local community was relatively small, friction between it and the returning Jews could be avoided; they were also convinced that the subsequent development of the country would benefit both peoples, thus earning Arab endorsement and cooperation. However, these hopes were not fulfilled.
| MORE ON EARLY HISTORY |