Palestine: A Modern History (ص 10)

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Palestine: A Modern History (ص 10)

المحتوى

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? CRYSTALLISATION 1908-1914
By 1908 resentment against the incoming Jews backed by foreign
protection, endowed with the privileges and advantages of the Capitula-
tions, ‘began to assume riew dimensions. Following the Ottoman
Revolution of 1908, a Palestinian newspaper, Al-Asyna’i, seized the
occasion of parliamentary election, and drew a comparison between the
conditions of the Palestinian Arab peasant and his Jewish counterpart,
then went on to point out the harm done by Jewish immigration:
They harm and do evil to the indigenous population, by relying on
the special rights enjoyed by foreign powers in Turkey and on the
corruption and treachery of the local administration. In addition
they are free from most of the taxes and hedvy impositions on
Ottoman subjects; they compete with the native population with
their labour, and create their own means of sustenance and the
(native) population cannot stand up to their competition.
As a remedy the paper proposed that its readers buy local rather
than foreign products and called upon wealthy Arabs to support the
development of native commerce and industry.
The Palestinian peasants resented the Jewish colonists and were
hostile from the moment of the settler’s arrival in some cases.” ‘In
December, 1908, villagers from Kafr Kama tried to seize~somé land
belonging to J.C.A. in the Caza of Tiberias.
The Land-sellers
Hand in hand with this resentment went the indignation at feudal
landowners profiting from land sales to Jews at high prices:
In November, 1908, it was reported that the peasants in the region
of Haifa.and Tiberias were adopting an aggressive attitude towards
Arab landowners with large estates (Mustafa Pasha, Fu’ad Sa’d and
the Sursug family) and also towards Jewish colonies.*
This raises the issue as to the exact identity of the landowners who
profited at the expense of obvious harm done to Arab tenants with
utter disregard for the pressure of public opinion against the sale of
22
Crystallisation 1908-1914 23
land to the colonists. he
A hitherto unpublished manuscript written by a prominent membér
of the Khalidi family’ and completed in 1911, -sheds light on the
general state of political information in Palestine at that time, as well as
providing valuable information on Jewish colonies. This manuscript,
entitled al-Mas’ala al-Sahyuniyya (The Zionist Question), left its
imprint on a number of individuals ‘Who‘later played’key roles in the
national movement in Palestine, like Haj Amin al-Husseini.© The author
started by defining Zionism, its: origins, history and aims; the establish-
ment of a Jewish State in Palestine being the most important of all
aims. With some detail and considerable knowledge, the author
described Herzl’s efforts, the Zionist Congresses and the institutions
designed to serve and achieve Zionist aims. Furthermore, he drew a
subtle and definite distinction between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews.
After a short account of Jewish history, the author dealt ima careful
and informative fashion with the activities of Jewish immigrants and
their colonies. The author provided his readers with a list of all the
Jewish colonies, the area of each colony, its original name in Arabic,
and from whom the land was bought.
In the overwhelming majority of cases the:'lands were sold by one or
the other of the following three categories:
(1) Absentee landlords, mostly Lebanese families — Sursuq,
Tayyan, Twainy, Mpdawar and others.
(2) The Ottoman Government, apparently ,through auctions
owing to the inability of the Arab peasants to pay their taxes.
(3) The Palestinian landlords, mostly Christian families, — Kassar,
Rock, Khoury, Hanna and others.? Some lands were sold by Muslim
notables, but the author did not always disclose their names. In two
cases, he wrote, ‘one of the effendis of Safad or Ramleh’. Only
three villages were reported to have, been sold by the peasants and
represented less than 7% of the total land ‘bought by the Jews.
In all, the Jews at that time owned 28 villages and a total area of
279,491 dunum; a fraction of Palestine’s cultivable area. In a letter
published in al-Ahram on 4 August 1909, a Palestinian studying at
al-Azhar accused the Jews of employing devious means; namely, bribing
the Ottoman governors of the ancien régime as a means of obtaining
land in Palestine. There were other attempts by Palestinians to make
Capital out of associating the previous regime with concessions made to
the Zionists, including laxity in the application of laws regarding Jewish

هو جزء من

Palestine: A Modern History

تاريخ

1978

المنشئ

Abdul-Wahhab Kayyali

مجموعات العناصر

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