The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 243)

غرض

عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 243)

المحتوى

227
The trade status of Palestine, as stipulated by the terms of the Mandate, in
spite of the government’s contraventions, but also the government’s tariff and trade
policies, often contradictory, nonetheless, had negative consequences on Arab
agriculture and the majority of Palestinian Arab peasants. Thus, for those peasants
primarily involved in extensive cereal cultivation, the area sown remained the same
with no increase in output, reflecting, besides the obvious lack of intensification,
the continued need for these crops as the primary source of subsistence, and the
inability to shift to more valuable ones. The increase in price, during WWII, of
cereal crops could not have benefited those peasants with no or appreciable surplus
beyond their needs. There were those who did benefit from the price increase. In
other words, the benefits of the price increase cannot be generalized and their
differential impact has been recognized in dealing with the WWII period, an impact
that the “dualists” do not address.
The inadequacy of the dual approach has to be sought not only in
acknowledging the level of interaction between European settlers and Arab
agriculture, which some variants of this approach deny or ignore, but in the overall
impact of the former on the latter. It is the impact of an implanted settler capitalist
community (including its agricultural undertakings) imbued with ultimate
exclusivist goals and having the benefits of an accommodating government policy
on a primarily agricultural society.
In addition, the growth in cash crops in Arab agriculture, including the use
of more intensive methods, however limited, undermines the argument of some
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هو جزء من

The Dispossession of the Peasantry

تاريخ

٢٠٠٦

المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

مجموعات العناصر

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Theses رسائل ماجستير ودكتوراه