While everyone speaks about the plight of the Palestinians and Israeli-occupied Palestine, one question never seems to be addressed: Who are the Palestinians? Who really are these people who claim the Holy Land as their own? What is their history? Where did they come from? How did they arrive in the country they call Philistine?
The general impression given in the “free” media is that Palestinians have lived in the Holy Land for hundreds if not thousands of years. No wonder, then, that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believes that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Palestinian state existed in its place. Yet curiously, when it comes to giving the history of this “ancient people,” most news outlets find it harder to go back more than the early 1900’s. The CNN news agency has devoted countless hours of airtime to the “plight” of the Palestinians, detailing the history of the region using maps dated only from 1917 on. The CBS news website has a background section called “A Struggle for Middle East Peace”; its historical timeline dates no earlier than 1897. The NBC news background section called “Searching for Peace” has a timeline starting in 1916 and the BBC’s timeline starts in 1948.
While the modern media may be short on information about the history of the “Palestinian People,” the historical record is totally ignored. According to dozens of visitors to the region, “Palestine,” the land of Israel, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty. Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book Recollections of the East, he writes “Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound.” The famous American author Mark Twain, who visited the land of Israel in 1867, confirms this observation. In his book Innocents Abroad, he writes, “Desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life in action. We reached Tabor safely. We never saw a human being on the whole journey.” Even the British Consul in Palestine reported in 1857, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.”
The term Palestine — which is mentioned for the first time in the writing of the Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E.) — denoted at first the coastal strip inhabited by the Philistines in the biblical period.
However, after Bar Kochba’s revolt was put down by the Romans in 135 C.E., the name Palestine was attached officially to the territory that earlier had been the Kingdom of Judea and the name of Jerusalem was changed to Aelia Capitolina. That was in keeping with the policy of the Roman rulers: to abstruse, even uproot, everything suggestive of a Jewish national existence. From the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. until the establishment of British rule after the First World War, Palestine was not a politically distinct country. Throughout this entire period — with the exception of the relatively short period of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem — Palestine was a geographical unit comprising two districts, which were administrative units, whose boundaries and divisions changed from time to time within the framework of a wider framework. These two districts were, during the days of Roman and Byzantine rule, the provinces Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda, and after the Muslim conquest were called fund Filastin and fund al-Urdunn. Today, they more or less correspond to the territories of Israel and Jordan.
Throughout this long period, which lasted about 1850 years, Palestine was ruled intermittently from various capitals: Rome, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and once again Istanbul (Byzantium, Constantinople), the capital of the Ottoman Empire, which conquered Palestine in 1517 and ruled it for 400 years. Formally, Palestine was ruled from Istanbul, the distant capital of the Empire, but in practice it was run from Damascus, the residence of the governor of Syria, whose territory included the administrative units that comprised Palestine. Palestine was thus considered part of Syria and was called Suriya el-fanubiyya, or “southern Syria,” and there was nothing of a national nature that distinguished its inhabitants from the rest of the Arabs of “Greater Syria.” During the Ottoman rule, the Arabs did not, for the most part, have specific national features. The individual's immediate loyalty was to his family and tribe, and beyond that there was the loyalty to the religious community. For the vast majority of the Arabs, that was the Muslim community. This loyalty was also expressed in identification with the Ottoman Empire, which was a Muslim kingdom. Within the framework of Ottoman rule no real importance was attached to matters of ethnic origin, nor were language differences very important.
The Jerusalem elite was fluent in Turkish, and Arabic was at the core of Islamic education throughout the Empire. In this context, there was no basis for Arab separatist movements. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century a movement of Arab cultural awakening began, which, in the course of time, also led to the establishment of various political associations that began to manifest nationalistic leanings. It is generally acknowledged that the number of those advocating a distinctive Arab identity at that time was very small.
Among the Arabs of the Ottoman Empire there were, on the eve of the First World War, two currents: an Arab national current that advocated Arab independence apart from the Turks, that was supported only by a small number of people; and a second current, supported by most Arabs in the Empire, advocating Arab patriotism, but only within the wider framework of Ottoman patriotism.
Among the Arabs of Palestine the prevailing current in that period was, like in the rest of the region, Ottoman orientation, supported by Jerusalem notables cultivated by the Ottoman regime and enjoying considerable autonomy and influence, as well as by the notables of the north. This pro-Ottoman orientation was also forcefully expressed by the Arab newspaper of that period, Filastin. It should be stressed, however, that even though the national current as a whole was very weak, the rejection of Zionism and the struggle against it — which was a major element in the national current, as became evident later — occupied an important place in it even then.
Palestinian Nationalism
There is no ignoring the fact that a certain group of people had a notion of Palestinian national distinctiveness and were striving to establish a separate independent Palestinian political entity apart from all other Arab political entities as well as destroying any Zionist activity in the region. These people, whatever their number, believed in their cause and were prepared to give up their lives for it. In order to achieve this goal, they used murderous terror against defenseless people including Arab Muslims and Christians, Jews and British soldiers of the mandate. They had no qualms about killing women and children in their pursuit.
Following the Allies' victories which concluded World War I, support gradually grew for the Arab revolt. After the conquest of Damascus in October 1918 and the establishment of the ‘Sharifian authority’ under the supreme authority of General Allenby, commander of the British expeditionary force, the idea of unifying Palestine and Syria, or as it was then presented, of joining “Southern Syria” to the framework of “Greater Syria,” became widespread. To implement this idea, two clubs were established: the Literary Club (al-Muntada' al-Adabi) and the Arab Club (al-Nadi al-Arabi) whose declared objectives were: Arab independence within the framework of Palestine's unification with Syria, war against Zionism, the prevention of Jewish immigration and the rescinding of foreign capitulations. These clubs were comprised of young educated Muslims from elite families: members of the Nashashibi family in the Literary Club and the Husseinis in the Arab Club. Two additional clubs, less important and somewhat secretive, were set up to assist the activity of the former clubs by providing protection for its meetings, organizing demonstrations, etc. They were the Association of Brotherhood and Purity (al-Ikha wa-al-'Afaf) and the Association of Self-Sacrificers (al-Fidaiyya).
In January 1919, the first congress of the Arabs of Palestine convened in Jerusalem and, stating that the only way to counter the Zionist threat was by unification with Syria, resolved that Palestine (Suriya el-Janubiyya) was part of Greater Syria. The Jerusalem leadership, behind which stood the British Authority, did not embrace this decision and preferred a separation from Syria, but the enthusiasm and extremism of the younger elements upped the scale in favor of unification with Syria, which at that time was the prevailing orientation in the Arab national movement in Palestine.
It is important to note that only after the disturbances of 1929 did the political star of the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseni, begin to ascend.
The Islamic Congress, which convened in Jerusalem at the end of 1931 on his initiative and with him presiding, was the first expression and the beginning of Arab and Muslim involvement in affairs of Palestine, although not yet on a governmental level. The Mufti’s first break from the principle of general Arab non-involvement; widened in the 1930s, causing a rift with Emir Abdulla of Trans-Jordan.
The 1936 Arab revolt against the loathed British rule which allowed limited Jewish immigration started a process in which leaders of neighboring Arab countries became partners with local leadership in influencing regional political conduct and in determining the future and fate of the Palestinians.
At the end of the process they had become the exclusive deciders, with the Palestinians themselves not having much of a say. This process was the result of a conscious policy on the part of the local leadership to involve the Arab governments in the Palestine issue. The factors leading up to this policy were the weakness of the official Palestine leadership, and its knowledge that it did not have control over the situation, but rather that the gangs and advocates of “armed struggle” did not obey any outside authority and continued to do as they pleased. All these factors impelled the Jerusalem leadership to obtain the help of the surrounding Arab countries and their rulers in order to get backing for their position. The assessment of the Jerusalem leadership was that as a result of rising tension in the world and the growing importance of Middle East oil, Great Britain would need the support of the Arab governments. This need could be exploited for the benefit of the Arabs of Palestine; therefore, the rulers of the Arab countries should be enlisted for the Palestinian cause, a move receiving the full support of the British government, who would have no business with the local leadership under their sworn enemy the Jerusalem Mufti.
This policy did in fact bear fruit. The Arab rulers were brought in to mediate and, as a result of their scheming with the British, the first part of the revolt came to an end in October 1936. General Arab involvement continued and even received formal recognition when the Arab states were invited (as an official partner) to the round-table held at Saint James Palace in London, a conference which led to the anti-Zionist policy stipulated in the 1939 “White Paper.” It is contended by some that it was the British who first pressed the Arab countries to get involved in the Palestine issue. Nevertheless, credit for the first initiative goes to Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and to the Arab Palestinian leadership. Even after the establishment of the State of Israel, the situation did not change. Arab countries had become the exclusive decision-makers regarding the Palestine issue, with the Palestinians themselves having no significant say.
Examining the roots of the movement for Palestinian distinctiveness, we discover that it crystallized only during and after the 1936 Arab revolt.
Years later the PLO, led by Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat, and several of its radical organizations professing to represent the “Palestinian people,” had been strongly protesting the general Arab trusteeship over the region, trying to free themselves of it. Eventually, it became more accepted among the Arab countries that the Palestinian Arabs would be allowed to play a limited part in the determination of their own future while the neighboring countries continue to serve as a surrogate in the “Interest” of the Palestinian people.
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