By Dr Simon Smelt
Part Two
Part One of this series showed the depth of attachment and tenacity demonstrated by the Jewish people in clinging to the land of Israel, through numerous empires, slaughters, expulsions and deprivations since Roman times.
Part Two considers the nineteenth and early twentieth century: the beginning of the return and the restoration of Jewish people to the land after a wide scattering and a long drought.
Contention about this period overshadows earlier history; thus Adrian Relandi’s massive illustrated 18th-century Latin book Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata (1714), drawing from various sources, provides a comprehensive survey of settlements and the first accurate topographical maps of the region. Yet this work, highly acclaimed by scholars, is labelled ‘fabrication’ because it contradicts the mainstream narrative. We must penetrate such shenanigans to grasp the history of the Land.
1800 to 1880
The land was in desolation and the Ottoman Empire’s grip weakened during the early part of the nineteenth century. After the sixteenth century highpoint under long reigning Sultan Suleiman I, many villages and towns became deserted. Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar, the Acre-based Ottoman governor, also known as “the butcher,” ignored instructions to reduce crippling taxation. An 1825 uprising in Jerusalem, driven by new taxes, was put down by cannon fire. Egyptian ruler Mehmet (Muhammed) Ali brought his occupying army to the region in the 1830s and left behind Egyptian soldiers who settled.
In 1838 British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston established a British consul in Jerusalem with specific instruction to “afford protection to the Jews generally.” The consul reported that “the Jew in Jerusalem is not estimated in value much above a dog – and scarcely a day passes that I do not hear of some act of Tyranny and oppression against a Jew.”In 1841 Solomon Alexander– a former rabbi – was appointed first Anglican bishop of Jerusalem. Other religious denominations and other European nations followed and Jerusalem benefited from their schools, hospitals, and workhouses. This provoked European Jews to fund new facilities themselves.
With easier travel conditions, such as steamship services, visitor numbers increased. They found desolation. The British consul reported in 1857 “the country is in considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.” Later, he noted continued depopulation and lawless land expropriations as well as frequent cases of violent robbery and other abuses of Jews in Jerusalem. American authors Herbert Melville described “a caked, depopulated hell” and Mark Twain “a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.”
German publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides, Karl Baedeker published the region’s first travel guide in 1876, but visitors descriptions continued in similar vein. Writers noted the decrepit and crowded Jewish Quarter, with a population of thousands, the largest group in Jerusalem. Despite poverty and abuse, still they clung on, still they came to Zion.
Immigration
In 1881 the reformist Czar Alexander II was assassinated, producing a harsh reaction in the Russian Empire. Laws became fiercely antisemitic and pogroms began. Many Jews fled, with some making the arduous journey to the Land.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda emigrated from Russia to Palestine in 1881, devoting his life to reviving Hebrew as the language of his people. In 1882 Russian Rabbi Leon Pinkser set up ‘Lovers of Zion’ to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine. The American Jewish poet Emma Lazarus advocated a return to the Land. Her famous lines (1883) inscribed on the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” speak of her vision for Zion. In 1895 Theodor Herzl, having discovered that even integrated European Jews were subject to hate, published The Jewish State and set up the Zionist Congress.
After centuries of stagnation and depopulation, a turnaround in the Land. From the 1880s to the end of the British Mandate, Palestine’s economy and population growth significantly outpaced surrounding areas. At times, economic growth was the highest in the world; productivity per agricultural worker reached double that of neighbouring countries by the 1930s. What drove this?
In one telling, the high Arab population growth was solely a flourishing of the indigenous people, whilst the Jews were new immigrants who stole Palestinian land and wealth. Such claims are statistically improbable – as surrounding areas showed no such rapid growth – and cannot account for Palestine’s economic transformation. In World War One, troops in Palestine commented on the impoverished and filthy Arab villages compared to the neat Jewish ones. Health and physical security improved throughout the Middle East without equivalent surges in population. The only viable explanation for the exceptional Arab population growth in Palestine is high immigration. However, this is denounced as the “infamous immigration thesis” by guardians of the mainstream narrative of an ancient Palestinian people.
We understand Jewish immigration; why would Arabs come? Worldwide, populations shift towards areas of greater opportunity. Palestine’s economic growth and rising wages inevitably attracted Arab immigration from surrounding areas – largely uncounted due to porous borders and bureaucratic indifference. Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial is criticized for inaccuracies but nonetheless, with more than a thousand footnotes, provides diverse evidence from disparate sources of extensive, Arab immigration throughout the period. Other research corroborates Peters: for example, Ottoman registers show that, for Arabs, half of those born outside their current place of residence came from outside Palestine.
Economic Growth
In a moribund economy, new capital or freeing up of land will produce rapid economic growth when matched by available labour. What was the trigger for Palestine?
Modernization of Ottoman laws in the mid-1800s gave non-Muslims better status and facilitated private purchase of land. An effendi class of land owners and large estates emerged, whilst communal land ownership diminished and landless families increased. These legal changes, plus other measures, also pressured the nomadic Bedouin to settle – reducing their devastating raids and expanding lands safe to settle.
These changes, along with improvements in transport infrastructure, occurred across the Ottoman Empire. The distinctive for Palestine was the Jews. From the 1880s, Jewish organisations purchased land extensively to attract immigration and establish the new Yishuv (new settlements.) For the Arab effendi, here were fresh buyers – particularly for their plentiful wastelands or where ownership was disputed. Their Jewish clients braved poor official records, vague property boundaries, and dubious legal procedures. Some settlements required armed defence; others lived in peace. The diaries of the Jewish Agency’s Arthur Ruppin chronicle new farming methods and imported technology utilised for drilling and irrigation. Alongside struggling with hard soils, land disputes and displacement of Arab labour, he describes hiring of Arab labour and the greening of barren land.
Some Arab labour was displaced by Jewish immigrants but economic development had a much stronger effect. The Arab population increased far more in urban areas with Jewish development than in Arab towns; New Arab villages predominantly emerged in areas of new Jewish settlement. Thus, Petah Tikvah (founded 1878) and Rishon LeTzion (1882) quickly gathered Arab families around a Jewish nucleus. Nonetheless, contemporary accounts illustrate significant tensions between some Arab and Jewish communities.
The evidence identifies Jewish immigration as the key driver of both economic growth and Arab immigration. Jewish capital investment vastly exceeded Arab investment. By contrast, the effendi drew rents from, rather than invested in, their land. Along with labour and capital, the Jews brought technology, organisation, and enthusiasm. They created wealth and jobs and reclaimed wasteland. Take the Galilee: here, the once fertile Hula Valley had deteriorated into malaria infested swampland after the Romans depopulated it during the Jewish rebellions. Only after Jewish purchase in 1934 did recovery begin with sediment removal and drainage. Today, the Hula is rich farmland and haven for millions of migrating birds.
Jewish immigration does not remotely fit a ‘colonization’ model. Jews fleeing hostile regimes were scarcely their colonial agents. They did not seize land but purchased it, even though it was often barren and even at the risk of it being seized from them. Neither plantation supervisors nor rent collectors, they worked that land themselves. Any surplus was reinvested. They came to join the old Yishuv of existing Jewish settlements, restore Eretz Israel, and build a new life together based on Jewish culture and religion.
Part 3 of this study proceeds to the mid-twentieth century.
Key reading list
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946) A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December, 1945 and January, 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 2 Vols. HMSO, NY. Available at: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/A-Survey-of-Palestine/
Frantzman, Seth (2010) The Arab settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: New Village Formation and Settlement Fixation, 1871-1948, Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/2267938/The_Arab_Settlement_of_Late_Ottoman_and_Mandatory_Palestine_New_Village_Formation_and_Settlement_Fixation_1871_1948
Galvin, James (2007) The Israel-Palestine conflict: one hundred years of war, 2nd Ed, CUP, Cambridge, NY. Available at: https://archive.org/details/israelpalestinec0000gelv_k1z6
Glass, Joseph (1999) “The Jews in Eretz‐Israel/Palestine: from traditional peripherality to modern centrality,” Israel Affairs. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/48156320/The_Jews_in_Eretz_Israel_Palestine_From_traditional_peripherality_to_modern_centrality
Gottheil , Fred (2003) “The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931,” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003, pp. 53-64. Available at: https://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine
Hughes, Matthew (2019) Britain’s Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936–1939, New York: CUP
Jaski B et al (eds.) (2021) The Orient in Utrecht : Adriaan Reland (1676–1718); Brill: Leiden,Boston. Available at: https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-50786
Palestine Royal Commission, (1937) Report. Presented to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Parliament by Command of his Majesty, London: HMSO. Available at: https://archive.org/details/palestine-royal-commission-report
Peters, Joan (2001) From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, JKAP: Chicago
Ruppin, Arthur (1971) Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs, Diaries, Letters. (Ed: Alex Bein; Trans: Karen Gershon), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
Schein, Andrew (2012) “Institutional reversals and economic growth: Palestine 1516-1948,” J of Institutional Economics, 8, 1, 119-141; available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137411000385
