AFIDORA - Zionist position on the Arab question in Ottoman Palestine

Zionist position on the Arab question in Ottoman Palestine

09-06-2005

Zionist position on the Arab question in Ottoman Palestine

Part of broader AFIDORA research on: The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism 1517-1917

10 juin 2005

“ A people without a land for a land without people”. This sentence usually sums up the great misunderstanding about the Palestinian reality by the first Zionist movements. However, this preliminary statement did not last for long, and the Jewish immigrants to Palestine were soon aware that they were not welcomed by the local population: since the very first alyah of 1882, the Arabs of Palestine acted suspiciously towards the Jews. This attitude, taken as a natural hostility at the beginning ( ordinary frictions between two alien cultures), proved to be more deeply rooted. The Arab-Jewish incidents in which settlers or labourers were attacked increased in number after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, or more specifically from April 1909. From this moment, mention was made of the Arabs or “Arab problem” at Zionist congresses, and in the Zionist press. Confronting this problem, the Jews tried to re-evaluate their first approach to the Arab problem, to advocate the Zionist cause in Arabic newspaper, and to become necessary to the local population development, their aim was from this point clearly defined: establish friendly links with the Arabs. But as the manifestations of hostility grew against the Jewish settlers, Zionist officials started wondering if they were facing the emergence of an Arab nationalist movement, and therefore, they asked themselves which position they should stand for, between supporting the Ottoman Empire policy, or getting closer to the Arab position.

First, we will see how, at the beginning, the Arab question was perceived by the Zionists, then we will show how their understanding of the Arab question moved from a “natural hostility” towards the fear of an “ideological clash”.

During the first period up to the Young Turks’ revolt, the Jewish-Arab dispute was currently perceived as “natural confrontation” between a local population and new settlers sharing neither culture nor language. The clash was also explained by the confrontation between two different religions that have been hostile to each other for more than a thousand years. The opposition between Jews and Arabs started with the first Zionist waves of immigration. About ten years after the beginning of the Jewish agricultural settlement, a Biluite member, Haim Hissin wrote: “ Like every new colony, Hadera is not yet at peace with its neighbours and from time to time, minor squabbles break out”. The sentence clearly means that the clashes were seen as a continuation, though in a different way, of traditional Arab Muslim persecution over the Jews in Palestine. Tensions between the two religions had preceded the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In Muslim societies, the Jews had a special status of “dhimmi” which means a despised, but protected minority. Though they enjoyed protection from local authorities, the Jews were humiliated and discriminated by Laws and customs. Number of testimonies dating back to the first alyah period and before, show the harassment endured by Jewish merchants and peddlers trading in Muslim villages, or Jewish customers suffering verbal or sometimes physical violence from Arab sellers. About this viewpoint, the memoirs of Eliezer Ben Yehouda are meaningful. During the first ayah’s period, he wrote: “ Muslims Arabs despise them- the Jews- as they despise no other creature in the world”.

On the other hand, Jews often acted with scorn towards Arabs, considering them as “good savages” or Asians without any culture or knowledge. The Jews saw themselves as an incarnation of the West having to face with a mass of non educated, primitive people. However, most of the time, it was not despise but rather a kind of traditional Western paternalism characterizing the Jewish attitude towards Arabs. It is, for instance, the official position also called the integrative outlook that prevailed until the 1908 Revolution. The main assertion of people supporting the integrative theory ( Theodore Herzl, Eliyahu Sappir) is that the Arabs would accept the Jewish settlements if the Jews improved the situation of the country by helping it grow out of poverty and ignorance. This assertion lies on two assumptions: first, they think that the anti-Jewish feeling among Arabs is purely a matter of circumstances, and thereforecan be remedied. Second, this theory often reflects a romantic idealization of the Arab “ great and resolute people” (Yitzhak Epstein), and a strong belief in the decline of the West versus revival of the Orient. Many of the Zionists officials were dreaming of a Semitic revival. This dream was only possible because most of the Zionist leaders were then living in Europe, and were therefore completely disconnected from the Palestinian reality.

For the first generation of Zionist officials, the enemy was identified as the Arab Christian intellectual society, rather than the Palestinian Muslims. The anti-Jewish feeling was mainly caused by the fact that they belonged to a religious minority and were discriminated by the Muslim majority. Secular nationalism appeared as the solution to their integration within the Arab society. Therefore, they became the spearhead of the Arab national movement, and perceived the Jewish settlement as an obstacle to the achievement of their goal. One of the most representative of this trend, Nagig Azouri, a Jaffa born Christian, published in 1905 Le réveil de la nation arabe, in which he wrote: “ Two important phenomena of the same type and hence in conflict, which have not yet aroused attention, are strikingly evident today in Asiatic Turkey: the awakening of the Arab nation, and the hidden effort of the Jews to restore on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These two movements are meant to fight each other persistently, until one prevails over the other.” According to a survey of the Palestinian press led by Dr Nissim Malul, out of six newspapers, five were published by Christian families, and were completely hostile to Zionism.

The Zionist officials, aware of the anti-Zionist feeling alive among Christians, made everything possible to appear as peaceful as they could towards the Muslim community of Palestine. They were convinced of being the tool by which the Arabs of Palestine would become enlightened, but did not perceive that there was an “ Arab problem”: they just thought that both Arabs and Jews needed time to get acclimated to each other. In this process of getting closer to the Arabs, the Jews had to show exemplarity: they should open their schools to Arab children, and acquire a basic knowledge on their language and culture. In his book Alteneuland , describing the new Jewish society in Palestine, Herzl devoted only seven pages over three hundreds to the Arab problem, and when he did write about it, he only underlinesd the humanitarian role that the Jewish pioneers hold towards the Arabs. This generalized attitude of the first Zionist leaders ( Herzl, Nordau…) towards the Arabs led to the following assertion made ten years later : “ We must admit the truth. During all the years of our labour in Palestine we completely forgot that there were Arabs in the country.” ( Luria, in the newspaper Haolam, 1911).

About this point of view, and quite unanimously, the official representatives of the Zionist movement agreed to say that their failure to recognize the Arab problem often led to a totally inappropriate attitude towards the Arabs in Palestine. Ahad Aham was the first to realize that part of the settlers “ treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty and trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully without good reason”. If this type of behaviour was not spread over, despising Arab culture and ignoring their attachment to their land were nevertheless widely shared . this encouraged hostility among Arabs. One of the most sensitive topics between the Jews and the local population was that some Zionists (mainly among the Socialist trend) were openly calling for Jewish labour in the settlements, which added to the Arab feeling of being expropriated, and fear of loosing their occupation. This request for a Jewish labour was bad in the eyes of the Zionists leaders advocating for the integration of the Arabs into the Jewish society, the calling for a Jewish labour were damaging the way Zionists leaders presented Jewish settlements as a source of benefits and wealth for all the region.

To sum up, it can be said that contrary to the first declared positions and expectations of the Zionist thinkers who had aspired to reach their goals through peaceful means and cooperation. The Jewish presence in the Land met with fierce Arab opposition. For some time many Zionists found it hard to understand and accept the depth and intensity of the dispute, which became in fact a clash between two peoples both regarding the country as their own - the Jews by virtue of their historical and spiritual connection, and the Arabs because of their long presence (for centuries) in the country.

The need to cope with Arab violence towards the Jewish community and to find the appropriate response to the mounting dispute gave rise to three main approaches to the "Arab problem" within the Zionist movement: minimalism (or integrative), maximalism (or separatist) and realism.

The minimalists held that the land belongs to both peoples; thus Zionism cannot be achieved without prior consent of the other nation. They sought for dialogue with local Arabs and rejected the Zionism establishment's approach based on negotiations with foreign powers and with leaders of the Arab states. To secure a Jewish-Arab agreement, the minimalists were willing to renounce the establishment of a Jewish state and accept in its stead a binational state based on social and political parity of Jews and Arabs.

At the opposite extreme were the maximalists, who believed that the national struggle between the two peoples should be resolved by force. They rejected the presumption of Arab national rights in the Land of Israel, noting that the Arabs had never had a state in Palestine. They saw no need to negotiate with local Arabs, and their hope was to acquire the entire country either through diplomatic contacts with foreign powers or by armed force.

The realists, who comprised the largest Zionist group, were divided into liberal and socialist subgroups. The realists did not believe it possible to avert altogether a conflict with the Arabs, but thought it possible to attenuate the conflict by taking moderate positions. Like the minimalists, they favoured negotiations with local Arabs and supported the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants. However, they were unwilling to compromise on Zionist goals - a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel through unrestricted Alyah, and the establishment of a Jewish state. In contrast to the maximalists, they sought for a dialogue with Arabs in Palestine and abroad, and were willing to consider compromises. The different positions on this problem were related to the degree of importance granted to the Arabs as a factor of hindering the reality of Zionism. Up to the Young Turks Revolution, the attitude towards the Arabs is characterized by a recognition of the problem, coupled with a reflection on the moral aspects involved.

But the true awareness of an Arab problem among the Zionists became effective only after the Young Turks Revolution of July 1908. Before the fall of sultan Abdul Hamid, the nationalist mood had found no expression, since no political activity was permitted within the Ottoman Empire. But with the 1908 Revolution, like Western countries, the Zionists realized that a nationalistic claim was emerging from the Arab people. The 1908 Revolution, whose leaders were young army officers influenced by Western national ideology, replaced the religious authority in the Ottoman Empire by the national authority of the Turkish people. This new principle inspired nationalist sentiment among the peoples of the Empire, including the Arabs. At the same time, the little democratic rules introduced by the new regime allowed the organization of an Arab national claim since the delegates in parliament were elected on a regional basis which had a national meaning. The Arab bloc was the second in size after the one of the Turks. This strong Arab faction in the Ottoman parliament was nationalistic, and thus blatantly anti Zionist. From then, it was impossible for the Zionists to maintain that the most resolute adversaries of Zionism were mostly Christians, i.e. relatively small section of the Arab population. In view of the aggressive discourses of the elected Arab representatives, the Zionists representatives began to organize the defence of their ideology and interests.

The policy of Zionist leadership was firstly orientated towards Istanbul and the Ottoman government, the reasoning for such a choice was that as the party in majority at the Ottoman parliament, Union and progress, was strongly Ottoman nationalist and centralized would support Zionism, against Arab nationalism. Jabotinsky, for instance, suggested that the presence of the Jews in Palestine would serve the interests of the Ottoman Empire whose policy has always been “ divide and rule”. Moreover, the Jewish settlement was altering the homogeneity of the population in Palestine, making the claim for an “Arab nation” harder to express. Then, he added that the growth of Arab power would unit both the Young Turks and the Jews, against the Arabs. This political calculation was justified by the fact that the Arab national movement appeared to be just incipient and not truly organized. In a letter addressed to the Action Committee in Cologne, Dr Thon, one of the active and leading members of the Palestine Office, noticed that: “ Arabs of both higher and lower classes can now be heard discussing the idea of the secession of the Arabs provinces from the Empire, of union of all Arab peoples and the founding of an Arab Caliphate. It is inconceivable that the Arab population which is completely unorganized really rise a political rebellion”.

The strategy is therefore to exploit the Arab disorganization to purchase large tracts of land when it is still possible. In the same time, the Jews of Palestine tried to better their relations with the Arabs as their power, and demands were increasing. They had 75 members in Parliament and the freedom of the press granted by the Ottoman Constitution of 1908 gave them a great influence within the masses; attacks on the Yichuv appeared already that year in the Arabic al-Alsma’i. We shall firstly see the birth and development of the Arab national movement, and then study the Zionist responses to it.

The first anti Zionist demonstrations from the Arabs occurred very soon, but they were dispersed, not organized, and did not reflect a national claim, they were just showing hostility to the land purchase by the Jews. In the first place, the Arabs expressed their fear of Zionism within the Ottoman frame, it was a shared policy of hostility towards Zionism. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress in Switzerland issued the Basle Program and called for the establishment of a "home for the Jewish people in Palestine". It also established the World Zionist Organization (WZO) to work to that end. In response to the First Zionist Congress, Abdul Hamid II initiated a policy of sending members of his own Palace staff to govern province of Jerusalem. A Commission headed by Muhammad Tahir al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed to scrutinize Zionist land acquisition methods. This Commission is an illustration of the associate work of Ottomans and local Arabs to stop the progress of Zionism. The Ottoman Empire under the rule of sultan Abdul Hamid, as under the rule of the Young Turks showed no objection to a Jewish immigration in Ottoman territories as long as it was not to Palestine where this took a political character.

In 1898, the Arab press reacted as follows to the first Zionist Congress: Cairo journal al-Manar warned that Zionism aimed at taking possession of Palestine. In 1899, Albert Antébi, (Jewish Committee for Action representative in Jerusalem), observed that the program of First Zionist Congress had adversely affected the relationships between Palestinians and Jewish immigrants. In 1901, Palestinian farmers in Tiberias region expressed fear at the extention of Zionist land acquisition. In 1903, the second wave of Zionist mass immigration to Palestine started. As a consequence tensions developed in 1904 between Zionist settlers and Palestinian farmers in Tiberias region. The tensions were particularly aggravated by the fact that the Zionist labour leaders of the second alyah were openly speaking against giving jobs to the Arabs, and were promoting an exclusively Jewish labour. From the beginning, relationships between the Jewish settlers and their Arab neighbours had had an unfriendly tone. The land of the early Jewish settlements had formerly belonged to Arab villagers who had been heavily in debt and had been forced to sell. There was bitterness against the new comers, and sporadic armed attacks, the situation was aggravated by the refusal of the Jewish settlers to share the territory with the Arabs as it had been the custom before. In Galilee the problem was even more acute because the Arab peasants were poorer than in southern Palestine. So were the Jewish settlers who could not provide employment to the Arabs who had lost their land. even before 1908, the relationship between Arabs and Jews were obviously far from perfect , but from 1908 on, the opposition to Zionism increased and became better organized.

Since 1908, the Arabs used their power in the Ottoman Parliament to denounce Zionism. They asked for the end of Jewish immigration and land purchase. They accused Turkish ministers and the ruling party in general to deliberately ignore the separatist activities of the Zionists who had established paramilitary organisations, openly displayed their national flag, were singing their national anthem, and even maintain their own courts. As a result of their complains, a number of anti Zionist measures were promulgated by the Ottoman Empire. But, the problem became even sharper when the Arabs founded their own political organisations, such as the Decentralization Party. In the winter of 1912-1913, two nationalist Arab groups were formed the Decentralization Party and he Beirut Reform Committee. Still, it was an incipient national claim that emerged from the Arabs: they were not well structured: the activities of the Beirut Reform Committee were soon prohibited by the Ottoman Empire, and according to the Palestine Office, the Decentralization party was quite weak. Dr Thon, returning from Egypt claimed “the committee has neither connection with masses nor an organisation throughout the Empire”. Before the British mandate it seems impossible to talk of a strictly Palestinian nationalism. The Palestinian nationalists were mainly Arab nationalists, they might have been more concerned with the Zionist problem, which affectsed them in a more direct way, but this was the only difference between them and other Arab nationalists. Anti Zionism was not actually the specific cause of Palestinian Arabs, it was also a way used by a lot of Arab nationalists to criticize the Young Turks regime. For instance, at the end of 1910 the Syrian press, as well as the Arab politician Shukri Al Asali, made of Zionism the main reason for denouncing the new Ottoman regime that had sold the Arab land to sinful people.

Still, all the Arabs were not following the Union and Progress party, which was strongly Turkish and centralized. During an inner Action Committee meeting on October 1911, the dubiousness of the Arabs’ patriotism was brought up, a circular letter sent to the members of the Greater Action Committee in March 1912 explained that most of the Arabs inclined to the opposition party, Entente Libérale, or to their own organizations. Many Arabs were hostile to “secularism” that the Young Turks were supposedly promoting ( the Parliament included some non Muslims, which was seen as sinful, the restraint of Arabic in the judiciary courts and at school was perceived as an assault to Allah language, and the revival of Sheriff of Mecca as the leader of all Muslims was often mentioned). Furthermore, to add to this religious discontent, an ethnic split emerged: a large part of the civil servants fired by the Youngs Turks were Arabs, and a lot of their successors were from a Turkish origin. As a consequence of the Arabs growing hostility towards the Young Turks, the Jews in Palestine had to stay clear of opposing the Arab population of Palestine in the parliamentary elections. Contrary to what Jabotinsky thought at the beginning of the 1908 Revolution, it appeared that the Arabs had to be taken into account in the Zionist policy, and not only the Ottoman Empire. In 1912, the President of the Zionist Organization wrote: “ The governing majority in Constantinople comes and goes but the Arab population of Palestine stays where it is and it must be our first axiom to live in peace with the population”. When the elections of 1912 arrived, the representatives of the Zionist executive in the Turkish capital recommended the Jewish electors to abstain from voting. Palestinian Jewish leaders, on the other hand, argued that such abdication was dangerous, and suggested instead a collaboration with the Turkish party Union and Progress. Similar views of Jewish Turkish collaboration cooperation were voted by Max Nordau in his speech at the eleventh Zionist congress.

When the Arabs realized that they may have gone too far in antagonism to Zionism they tried to suggest the possibility of an Arab Jewish alliance against the Turks. Sami Hoechberg, who was active in promoting the Zionist cause in Constantinople ( he was one if the writer of the newspaper Jeunes Turcs), reported that many Arab nationalists, while uneasy about Jewish immigration, were disposed to enter into some form of alliance with the Zionists. According to Hoechberg’s report, the Cairo Committee for of the Decentralization Party was the most likely to accept in principle Jewish immigration in Palestine and an Arab Zionist entente. It was agreed between Hoechberg and the Decentralization party that the Arabs would weaken their attacks on Zionism, while the Zionists would publish sympathetic accounts of the Arab national movement in their own newspapers and in the European press. In June 1913, at the first Arab Congress held in Paris, Hoechberg started negotiating with Arabs leaders, trying to find an agreement. The Arabs asked for financial help for schools as well as guarantees against the departure of the fellaheen. They would in turn cease the anti Zionist campaign in the Arab press and the petitions against land purchase and immigration. But the Arab leaders in Cairo and Beirut had a limited freedom of action, for the Arab Palestinian leaders wanted a clearer and firmer stand against the Jewish immigration. Although the Palestinian leaders were not in favour of an agreement with the Jews, the Zionist leaders promoted various programs to encourage the Jewish-Arab peaceful coexistence. Their first decision was to make efforts in communicating with the Arabs. Yitzhak Ben Zvi, one of the Poalei Zion leaders, promoted the idea of a Zionist paper in Arabic, in order to demystify the Arab vision of Zionism. The Palestine Office decided to take action steps by trying to influence the Arab press by answering the anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish articles in particular. From January 1912 until the outbreak of World War I, a special press office was accountable for monitoring systematically the Arab press, including translations in German, and Hebrew, they also summarized articles dealing with Zionism. Of course, it aimed at issuing replies to the attacks on Zionism, in the Arab press. Jewish leaders tried to advocate Zionism in Arabic newspapers. For instance, Solokow, in an interview published in the Cairo daily Al Muqattam, explained that the Jewish immigrants to Palestine were coming not as a foreign colonizing power, but as people returning to their own homeland. There were only two possibilities for Palestine in the future: “Either it remains barren, in which case there will be as little for the Arabs as for the Jews, or the Jews remain, in which case the Arabs will also remain”.

In the same will of mutual understanding, the Palestine Office initiated and encouraged the immigration of Yemenite Jews to Palestine, as they were already used to Arabic and Arab way of life, it was though that frictions would be less frequent. Dr Ruppin also underlined the need for “ labourers who know Arabic, the Arabs’ way of life and traits, and how to live peacefully with their neighbours”.

An Arab Jewish conference was planned. It had been postponed and was eventually cancelled because of external factors such as the burst out of World War I. The conference was also postponed because it became clear that there were no common ground for negotiations. The Zionists were not strong and wealthy enough to be able to help the Arabs, as the Arabs leaders demanded it. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, the vociferous voices of Arab nationalists had popular appeal. The voices of those who searched for cooperation with Zionism were in turn lowered. The weakness and remoteness of the European Zionist leadership became obvious. Whereas the Zionist Office in Istanbul, and the Palestine Office came reluctantly to the conclusion that there were no practical ground for any long term agreement between the two national movements, Ruppin, and Thon continued to believe in the possibility of ignoring the extremist nationalists while promoting a mutual understanding with the moderate nationalists ( by means of an oral and written propaganda).

Two trends co-existed among Zionist organizations: the European Zionist leadership tried until 1914 to encourage a better understanding of the two people and to minimize the depth of the conflict. Whereas Palestinian and Jewish leaders warned against the danger of Arab opposition, in 1914 they were sure, that the conflict could not be avoided, and that the most that could be hope for was to delay the struggle as long as possible. Examples of such a discussion can be found in the newspaper Ha Herut, or in the summaries of Lischteim, a Zionist leader who worked in Istanbul, and witnessed the growth of Arab opposition, both in form of outspoken attacks, and in forming the more indirect way of Turkish obstructionism that came from the fear of increasing the Arab discontent. Given the basic demands of the Zionist movement ( land acquisition and settlement), and given the natural fears of the Arabs, he thought it was pointless to think that another policy could prevent the conflict. Contrary to what had thought the first Zionists who were basically pacifists, their aspiration for a country could not be peaceful. In the eve of the World War I, confronting the incipient national movement, the Jews of Palestine were questioning the basic ideal of Herzl…As one of his opponents, Gumplowicz expressed it as follows: “You want to found a state without bloodshed? Where did you ever see that? Without violence and without guile, simply by selling and buying shares?”

The emergence of Arab nationalist groups and Arab aspirations that grew increasingly since the 1908 Revolution, introduced a new element into the Zionist Arab relationship. The Arab nationalist movement was not structured within a single framework, supporting a recognized leader or common policy. The active members of the various groups proved this was too small. Yet, it gradually became clear in the five years preceding World War I, that the Zionists had no longer to deal with the Arabs in Palestine alone but they had to deal with a global Arab national movement dreaming of an extensive Arab unity. In this context, the Jewish settlement in Palestine was perceived as a direct threat to the dream of Arab unity. Anti Zionism was a cause that unified the Arab nationalists and contributed to the creation of Arab solidarity. The Zionist response to it could not deeply modify the hostility at heart and defiance from the Arabs.

Emanuelle Girsowicz

BIBLIOGRAPHY

La question de Palestine Henry Laurens

A history of Zionism Walter Laqueur

Zionism and the Arabs, Shmuel Almog, 1983

Zionism and the Arabs 1882 1948, Yosef Gorni, 1987

Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, Kedourie Elie, 1982

1 commentaire.