British Mandate, Palestine

This article traces the conception, planning, and execution of the 1931 Arab Exhibition in Jerusalem, followed by a Second Exhibition in 1932. The two Jerusalem exhibitions were held during a critical political period, as several Arab countries were at the height of their struggle against British and French colonial rule. In Palestine the timing was all the more acute. Executed between the two major Palestinian revolts of 1929 and1936, the exhibitions were held at a time of direct and violent Arab confrontation with the Zionists and the British, but also at a formative moment when Palestinians were articulating their national identity and making real attempts to establish national institutions.
The two Jerusalem exhibitions were events of profound importance for both Palestine and the Arab region. Drawing on historical Arabic newspapers, memoirs, and photographs, this article shows that the exhibitions were intended to demonstrate that Arab countries were witnessing remarkable innovations in the industrial and agricultural sectors despite, and not because of, European colonization. Further, the pan-Arab nature of the exhibitions facilitated an exceptional opportunity for the exchange of knowledge and expertise among the Arab countries in the face of their geopolitical division following the Great War.

The research discusses the development of the women’s movement in Palestine in the early British Mandate period through a photo that was taken in 1945 in Jerusalem during a meeting of women activists from Palestine with the renowned Egyptian feminist Huda Sha’rawi.
The photo sheds light on the side of Palestinian society that hasn't been well explored or realized by today's Palestinians. It shows women in a different role than a constructed "traditional" or "authentic" one. The photo gives insights into a particular constituency of the Palestinian women’s movement: urban, secular-modernity women activists from the upper echelons of Palestinian society of the time, women without veils, contributing to certain political and social movements that shaped Palestinian life at the time and connected with other Arab women activists. Veiling or unveiling of the women is often analyzed through the frames of ‘modernity' and ‘tradition,' where for modernists unveiling women represents progress and modernity, while the veil becomes the symbolic locus of culture, backwardness and gender discrimination.  A shift in the way women dressed indoors and outdoors, publically or privately might indeed be read as saying something about the margin of freedom women had, and hence the contradictions women encounter in the society, but the veil must not be simplistically equated with tradition or religious conservatism. Modernity and education, often represented as vehicles of empowerment, have in fact also had a regulatory and disciplinary effect on women's lives- they are not a panacea for women’s emancipation. Consequently, analyzing women's movement in Palestine as elsewhere, must be set within a wider frame that analyses the politics of modernity, and the rhetoric of binary discourses  juxtaposing ‘tradition', 'modernity', 'East' and ‘West' by different political actors on the ground engaged in processes of modern state building. 
Palestinians have been doomed to face the challenges of liberation. That time was no exception. This exploration delves into those activities, and the roles women helped to form in that period. 
Women’s roles were part of a collective forgetfulness due to the brutal decades of the end of the Ottoman era—a forgetfulness that resulted in a total amnesia regarding real acts of that era. When people remember stories of forced militarization and collective punishment, massacre, poverty, and illnesses, such negative aspects overshadow the reality of the life of that era.
Hence, the thesis attempts to explore how the political disputes, national consensus affected the development of an effective social feminist agenda.
The thesis will examine the question of whether the rise of women’s movement was part of the rising modernist middle or /and elite class, due to the natural development of the period, including education, political activism, etc. within the mandate period; or it was as well, a collective awareness within the society and its different classes.

Starting in the 1930s, but especially during the Second World War, the intelligence agencies of Britain and the Jewish Agency for Palestine had a complicated relationship. They often worked together to fight common threats, such as Arab rebels and Nazi Germany. Jewish terrorists presented another common threat during the Second World War, when the Jewish Agency cooperated with Britain, in the hopes of political rewards in the postwar settlement. British Intelligence, unable to penetrate the Jewish terrorist organizations, Irgun and Lehi, relied on the cooperation of the Jewish Agency to maintain security. This dependency and the strengthening of the underground Haganah, weakened the grip of British authority in Palestine, and made the Jewish community, the Yishuv, increasingly powerful. By 1945, when Britain did not fulfil the expectations of the Yishuv to lift immigration restrictions on Jews to Palestine, its dominant figure, David Ben-Gurion, launched a secret war against British policy. Intelligence failed to understand and react effectively to this development because it relied on its liaison with the Jewish Agency, now secretly hostile, to interpret the political and security situation in Palestine. In a classic problem of net assessment, British officials overestimated their own strength and resolve, and underestimated that of the Yishuv. British intelligence failed to accurately assess Jewish threats or intentions in Palestine from 1944 to 1946. These mistakes in intelligence contributed to failures of policy, which destroyed British policy in the Palestine Mandate, and opened the door to the creation of the state of Israel.

Olga Tufnell’s ‘Perfect Journey’

By Jack Green and Ros Henry

Blog published on TrowelBlazers, April 26, 2021.

https://trowelblazers.com/olga-tufnells-perfect-journey/

Excerpt:  Olga Tufnell (1905‒1985) was a British archaeologist who mainly worked in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, whose archive of letters and photographs are housed at the Palestine Exploration Fund, London. She is best known for her scholarly publications on the excavations of Tell ed-Duweir (ancient Lachish), as well scarabs and stamp seals from the East Mediterranean. You can read her full TrowelBlazers bio here. Tufnell’s reminiscences and letters provide insights into dig life during the so-called “golden age” of archaeology in the Holy Land, and the wider cultural, political, and gendered context of fieldwork within Mandate Palestine.

In our new open access book entitled Olga Tufnell’s “Perfect Journey.” Letters and Photographs of an Archaeologist in the Levant and Mediterranean (UCL Press), we present her letters from this period for the first time. They provide a personal account of her experiences, shedding light on travel and dig life during extraordinary times.

The letters offer insights into social and professional networks and the history of archaeology. They provide a contemporary view of the role of foreign archaeologists, relationships with local workers and their families, and the colonial frameworks within which they operated. The letters are important because they give Olga Tufnell’s viewpoint as an individual at times and places which saw significant social and political change. The letters reflect the attitudes of the day: some static and resistant to change; others indicating the growing acceptance of women in a man’s world.

Contemporary human rights scholarship largely adopts one of two brands of positivism. In the transnational governance tradition, human rights are understood as constituted by treaties and cooperative transnational arrangements. In the sovereignty tradition, human rights are thought of as heightened values of particular polities. Through a reading of yet-unstudied materials regarding the 1947 Exodus ship that left Europe for colonial Palestine, this Article proposes a different theory of human rights law. The “law of encounter” is a non-positive source of law that bars particular behaviors that may kill or risk the life of humans, regardless of their membership in particular polities. When powerful authorities recognize such limitations on their behavior, certain opportunities for human rights remedies arise when powerless parties address them. As long as human rights are respected, these become avenues for participatory political beyond both domestic and transnational legal institutions.

During the first decades of its existence, Tel Aviv was characterized by rapid urban and demographic development. This growth resulted in a sharp rise of urban by-products, including vast increase in the volume of sewage that was mainly disposed of in the Mediterranean. The constructing of a municipal sewage system, which started at the late 1920s, increased the relative volume of sewage which was poured directly into the sea. In 1949 Tel Aviv's sea shore was declared polluted and bathing was prohibited. This situation lasted alternately for three decades. The deterioration of the beach area from its previous status as "Tel Aviv's Riviera" during the early 1940s into a malodorous urban back yard only a decade later, resulted in a project aiming at sea purification and reuse of the sewage for agriculture purposes. This article examines the ways in which Tel Aviv municipality dealt with the need of sewage disposal, including the environmental influence of the sewage on sea pollution, as well as the spatial development of the city's sewage system.

Educating Palestine, through the story of education and the teaching of history in Mandate Palestine, reframes our understanding of the Palestinian and Zionist national movements. It argues that Palestinian and Hebrew pedagogy could only be truly understood through an analysis of the conscious or unconscious dialogue between them. The conflict over Palestine, the study shows, shaped the way Arabs and Zionists thought, taught, and wrote about their past. British rule over Palestine promised the Jews a national home, but had no viable policy towards the Palestinians and established an education system that lacked a sustainable collective ethos. Nevertheless, Palestinian educators were able to produce a national pedagogy that knew how to work with the British and simultaneously promoted an ideology of progress and independence that challenged colonial rule.

This chapter discusses the rise to prominence of Ahmad Hamad al-Mahmud Abu Jilda, a bandit from Tammun, Palestine, in the early 1930s. It explores the popularity of Abu Jilda as a figure of resistance to British Mandate rule and sees in his actions and the discourse around him a foreshadowing the widespread 1936-1939 Revolt. In so doing, it addresses questions of popular versus elite nationalism in Mandate Palestine.

This paper traces the changes which impacted the town and its surrounding area –or 'Jabal Nablus' – from the closing years of the Ottoman era, through World War I and the subsequent military administration, to the early years of the British mandate. It considers how Nablus, known to many as 'little Damascus' due to its links with the Syrian capital to the North, became progressively more isolated under the British, and was ill-suited to face the developing competition from new commercial enterprises established by Jewish immigrants. The paper goes on to appraise the impact on Nablus of the rapid development of the port of Haifa, which became Palestine's main entrepot with the Eastern Mediterranean. It then concludes with some general observations on the British mandate in Palestine, and highlights the need to evaluate its impact at the local level: although a small territory roughly the size of Wales, there were significant differences between the different towns, between the coastal plain and the interior, and the Northern and Southern parts of the country.

Thousands of British citizens lived in mandate Palestine, contending with the various implications and ambiguities inherent in their position as representatives of colonial rule, Britain, and empire. Their consolidation into a community of colonial expatriates shared common patterns with colonial communities around the globe while being characterized by a distinctive evolution due to local circumstances.
The article portrays, for the first time, Britons in Palestine as a particular case of a colonial community in the British Empire. Through a reconstruction of its composition and various aspects of everyday lives, it explores distinctions and hierarchies among its members based on class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and religion.
The historiography of the British presence in Palestine often concentrates on aspects of politics and governance, highlighting the role played by senior British officials. Moreover, it usually depicts Britons as a monolithic group of formal imperial agents, characteristically male. By recapturing the social and cultural history of the British colonial community, the article depicts the much more complex and dynamic fabric of British lives. Furthermore, it considers their interactions with the mechanism of imperial power and mandatory rule in Palestine.

The paper follows the history of interwar Poland's longest air connection between Warsaw and Tel Aviv in Palestine. It posits that while the connection did fit long-term development goals of Polskie Linie Lotnicze "Lot", its creation was nonetheless primarily informed by political considerations, and the Polish government support for Jewish migration to Palestine. It looks at the line's financial results and traces plans for further development.

The chronology of the period between the Wailing Wall Yom Kippur incident of 1928 and the August 23, 1929 outbreak of hostilities between Jews and Arabs throughout mandatory Palestine have been studied repeatedly through the prism of the concerned parties. Yet, almost a century after the 1929 confrontation it is evident that its impact has extended even into our generation by setting several precedents that have since established the context of the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian relations up until the present. This article attempts to map the implications of the 1929 wave of violence for the contemporary conflict and verify which elements of the current stage of the conflict can be dated back to 1929.
The Zionist settlement and rehabilitation efforts in the wake of the violence is an example of the dissonance in the political language between the two local communities in Palestine: Jews and Arabs. It is quite reasonable to trace the yishuv position to two main sources: Ben Gurion's realism in foreign policy – realizing that the British inclined towards partial adoption of the Mufti’s positions he was ready, probably unwillingly, to sacrifice the most remote Zionist outposts for the sake of keeping a resemblance of uninterrupted Jewish territory within defensible borders. The map envisioned by Ben Gurion was very close to the one depicting the borders of Jewish land purchases in Palestine. This de-facto settlement map represents a rather compromising policy intended to manifest to the British that there was no need to change the Mandatory Charter considering that the Zionist territorial aspirations were minimal. It is also a strong appeal to the Arab movement to realize that the small Zionist presence in Palestine did not constitute any menace to their religious and political aspirations in the land. However, even the cautious attempts at re-building the remnants of the 1929 destroyed villages were too much for the Arab side led by the Mufti. That it turn led the Arab side very soon after the end of major hostilities in 1929 to resume their use of terror against the Jewish yishuv.

Over the past 20 years, historians have been engaged in a critical reappraisal of the history of Israel and Palestine. Spurred on by the work of Israeli 'New Historians' and Palestinian revisionists, the field has seen a sustained challenge to the crude narratives of conventional nationalist historiogra-phy. This article investigates the impact of this reappraisal on the study of British rule in Palestine (1917–1948), arguing that while the work of the new historians has been useful in opening up debate about the nature of Zionist development, Israeli revisionist history has done a poor job of considering how Jews and Arabs lived and worked together under British rule. To get away from the distorted idea that Jews and Arabs developed in communities that were closed-off from each other, we need to adopt an approach that treats them as participants in the same narrative, a perspective adopted by historians who use a 'relational history' approach to understanding the Mandate. The paper concludes that the most promising development in the field has been the integration of new voices and primary sources into scholarship, but cautions that, in our quest to understand the lives of the colonized, we may be missing opportunities to reconsider the nature of British colonial rule.

This paper researches where Sir John Bagot Glubb’s life matches with Kathryn Tidrick’s ideas of a Englishman beguiled by the Arabs. She pushes the idea forth, that especially the “Englishmen had been mesmerized” to believe that knowing the Arabs would create a special and intensive relationship that would help “to make it psychologically possible for the British” to keep the Arabs in a relationship – call it dependency – to “maintain a commanding position” over them. The overall question asked is thus:
“Where does Sir John Bagot Glubb’s Live in the Middle East (1920 – 1956) Confirm Kathryn Tidrick’s View of the Englishman Mesmerized by the Arabs?”

The Author  has analysed hundreds of Mandate-period documents and revenue stamps to get a good overview of how the British mandatory government of Palestine assessed and collected revenue to support its administration.from 1919 to 1948.
An outline follows.
Part One.  Palestine Court Fees, History, Dates of Issue and Use
Part Two.  Monetary Changes in Mandate Palestine & Trans-Jordan
Part Three.  Other revenue stamps: HJZ, OPDA, and Devair.
A. Explanation of  the Inscriptions
EEF, = Egyptian Expeditionary Force.  OPDA = Ottoman Public Debt Administration.  , HJZ = Hejaz Railway Fee. , Devair = Customs Duty.
B. Dates of use of the Devair, HJZ, and OPDA stamps
C. Applications of the Devair, HJZ, and OPDA stamps
1. Combination of Court Fee and other revenue stamps
2. Use of Devair stamps
3. Application of the HJZ and OPDA stamps

The aim of this module is to provide students with good understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its roots and complexities. This module explores the Arab-Israeli conflict both for its intrinsic importance and as a case study in contemporary world politics. The module is designed to equip students with sufficient knowledge to be able to analyse current events and decision-making processes, comprehending the best interests of each stake-holder in this protracted conflict. The module starts with an overview of the historical beginnings of the conflict when Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. It explains the significance of the Zionist Revolution, through World War 1, The British Mandate over Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war (1947-1949). The module analyses processes that led to major wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours -- 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and the birth of the Palestinian problem. The module explores the Israeli occupation and the 1987-2002 Intifada. Finally, it discusses different proposals as to how the conflict can be resolved.

أعادت حديثاً مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية إصدار مذكرات المحامي حنّا نقارة تحت عنوان "مذكرات محام فلسطيني حنّا ديب نقارة محامي الأرض والشعب"، في طبعة جديدة تقع في 386 صفحة، من تحرير عطا الله قبطي، وقد جاء الكتاب في ثلاثة أقسام: أولها، متن المذكرات، ويغطي مذكرات نقارة حتى 2 تشرين الثاني 1948؛ والثاني، "خطابات ومواقف"؛ والثالث، "في تكريم محامي الأرض"؛ ويختتم الكتاب بفهرس تفصيلي

The research discusses the development of the women’s movement in Palestine in the early British Mandate period through a photo that was taken in 1945 in Jerusalem during a meeting of women activists from Palestine with the renowned Egyptian feminist Huda Sha’rawi.
The photo sheds light on a side of Palestinian society that hasn’t been well explored or realized by today’s Palestinians. It shows women in a different role than what today, by some is constructed as the “traditional” or “authentic” one.
The photo gives insights into a particular constituency of the Palestinian women’s movement : urban, secular-modernity women activists from the upper echelons of Palestinian society of the time, women without veils, contributing to certain political and social movements that shaped Palestinian life at the time, and connected with other Arab women activists. Veiling or unveiling of the women, is often analyzed through the frames of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, where for modernists unveiling women represents progress and modernity, while the veil becomes the symbolic locus of tradition, ba​ckwardness and gender discrimination . A shift in the way women dressed indoors and outdoors, publically or privately might indeed be read as telling something about the margin of freedom women had, and hence the contradictions women encounter in the society, but the veil must not be simplistically equated with tradition or religious conservatism. Modernity and education, often represented as vehicles of empowerment, have in fact also had a regulatory and disciplinary effect on women’s lives- they are not a panacea for women’s emancipation.  Consequently, analyzing women’s movement in Palestine as elsewhere, must be set within a wider frame that analyses the politics of modernity, and the rhetoric of binary discourses juxtaposing ‘tradition’, ’modernity’, ’East’ and ‘West’ by different political actors on the ground engaged in processes of modern-state building.
Palestinians have been doomed to face the challenges of liberation. That time was no exception. This exploration delves into those activities and the roles women helped to form in that period.
Women’s roles were part of a collective forgetfulness due to the brutal decades of the end of the Ottoman era—a forgetfulness that resulted in a total amnesia regarding positive acts of that era. When people remember stories of forced militarization and collective punishment, massacre, poverty, and illnesses, such negative aspects overshadow the reality of the life of that era.
Hence, the thesis attempts to explore how the political disputes, national consensus effected the development of an effective social feminist agenda.
The thesis will examine the question of whether the rise of women’s movement was part of the rising modernist middle or /and elite class, due to the natural development of the period, including education, political activism, etc. within the mandate period; or it was as well, a collective awareness within the society and its different classes.

A 'National Place' in a 'mixed' environment: designing national landscape in mixed cities in Mandatory Palestine – the case of Haifa


This article deals with the process of constructing the urban landscape of the Hebrew environments in the mixed city of Haifa during the British Mandate. This process relates to the choice made by the new settlers of the city to establish a Hebrew community within the city, rather than distinguish themselves from it by establishing a new municipality on Mt. Carmel. The public leaders of the new Hebrew community strived to achieve demographic, organizational and ideological dominance in the city, both in relation to the Arab population and with respect to the veteran Jewish settlers of the city. They did, however, also establish separate administrative, educational, social and healthcare organizations. Distinct neighborhoods were built, each with their own specific character, architecture and life-style.
The urban landscape of the new Hebrew neighborhoods reflects the will of the immigrants to set themselves apart from the eastern city, while strengthening the Jewish community's national awareness and reinforcing the city's attractiveness for new immigrants. One way to achieve this was to define modern European values of developments as national ones.
On one hand, Jews and Palestinian-Arabs worked side by side at the city hall, at governmental and private businesses, bought at local markets, lived together in the poor neighborhoods downtown, and shared the long beaches and so on. On the other hand, as time passed, the division became obvious in Haifa and a clear scenic distinction was created between the "Hebrew city" and the "Mixed city".

The following PhD project deals with the Arab settlement processes in the Sharon Plain and Western Samaria during the Late Ottoman and British Mandate Periods. Following two hundred years of demographic decline, in the eighteenth century, these regions experienced a prolonged period of settlement expansion, involving multiple population movements from diverse origins, village formation and abandonment. The precise causes of these transformations have yet to be satisfactorily explained. The state of current research: Traditionalist Israeli scholarship has portrayed the Sharon prior to Zionist colonization as a barren land, dotted here and there by Bedouin tents and a few scattered hamlets. The Zionist project is regarded as the principal source of progress, technological development, and socioeconomic modernization. More recently, other conceptualizations have emerged, describing the region as having significant native populations, or as the prime destination for external migrations from the mountainous hinterland or from other coastal and steppe peripheries. Due to the perceived paucity of accessible native sources, researchers have long relied on Western Travelers' Literature and other foreign sources as a staple for their craft. Over the last decades, however, increased corpora of native evidence became recognized or accessible. These sources contain rich cartographic, archaeological, archival and ethnographic evidence, which still awaits scholarly attention.

British administrators employed urban planning broadly in British colonies around the world, and British Mandate Palestine was no exception. This article shows how with a unique purpose and based on the promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, British urban planning in Jerusalem was executed with a particular colonial logic that left a lasting impact on the city. Both the discourse and physical implementation of the planning was meant to privilege the colonial power's Zionist partner over the indigenous Arab community. ON 9 DECEMBER 1 91 7 , the city of Jerusalem surrendered to the British Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, ''liberating the city,'' in the words of its conquerors, from the heavy hand of Ottoman rule. But according to its new rulers, Jerusalem's salvation had only just begun. Covered by a ''thick pall'' from four hundred years of Turkish rule, this ''Oriental'' space needed to be remade if it was to once again become a universal city under British control. 1 If Britain intended to ''fulfill in yet another sphere her historic part of civilizer of the backward countries,'' 2 its mission would have to begin with the redemption of Jerusalem. This article explores one of the most visible methods used to ''redeem'' Jerusalem: urban planning. Urban planning projects began within months of the British occupation and continued throughout the Mandate, leading to the promulgation of six town-planning schemes and scores of planning ordinances and bylaws. Like many ''benefits'' of British rule in Palestine, planning was heralded for bringing modernity to all of the city's inhabitants. However, it turned out to be a conservative exercise that held back the development of the Arab community in order to promote the interests of the colonial power and its Zionist partner. While scholars have written about the physical transformation of Jerusalem's urban landscape, 3 the aesthetic concerns of British planners, 4 and the growth of modern Jewish neighborhoods during the Mandate, 5 the question of how urban planning fit into the colonial project NICHOLAS E. ROBERTS is an assistant professor of history at Sewanee: University of the South. He is currently working on a book about the origins and rise to power of the Supreme Muslim Council in British Mandate Palestine. This article is based on dissertation research conducted under a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel and a Lady Davis Fellowship to Hebrew University.

פרק ייעודי המתאר את תולדות ההתיישבות הערבית החדשה באזור רעננה במאות התשע עשרה והעשרים, תוך שימוש במקורות חדשים.  בפרק נדונות ההתפתחויות הדמוגרפיות וההתיישבותיות הערביות בהקשר הרחב של תנועות אוכלוסין במרחב, שההתיישבות היהודית הייתה אחת מהן, בשבטי הנוודים הערבים שחיו בסביבות רעננה, בכפר טבסור (תֻּבְּצֻר, היא חִ'רְבֶּת עַזּוּן; היום בתחומי אזור התעשייה)  שמצפונה (היום בתחומי אזור התעשייה), וכן במערכת היחסים ששררה בינם לבין תושבי רעננה בתקופת המנדט. הפרק ממחיש, כי במובנים רבים הייתה ההתיישבות היהודית רק שלב נוסף בשורה של מעברי אוכלוסים לאזור השרון במאה האחרונה. המורשת הדמוגרפית והגאוגרפית המורכבת של האוכלוסייה הערבית הניחה את המסד לחיכוך בין היישוב היהודי לשכניו הערביים, כפי שהיה בכפר ח'רבת-עזון.

בתוך: שטייגמן, יצחק, משממה למושבה פורחת – רעננה – דגם להתיישבות פרטית בארץ ישראל (1981-1922), בהוצאת יד בן-צבי (2017), עמ' 448-435.

This is a study of the historical works produced by the Arabs of Palestine during the period of British Mandatory rule. First I trace the perception of late Ottoman rule in Palestine, suggesting that, at first, the vicious war years left a profoundly bitter impression of Ottoman rule for most writers. In the 1920s, the Ottomans were, for the most part, deemed tyrannical and backward usurpers who failed to bring civilization to the Arabs. As the war years faded in the mid-late 1930s and 1940s, we find a much more positive portrayal of late Ottoman rule over Palestine. Second, I trace attitudes towards British rule. It may be surprising, for many scholars bent on demonizing the colonial powers, that the British were, at first, embraced with white flags and flying colors. For many Arabs in Palestine, they continued to be considered liberators rather than colonizers for the first few years after their arrival in Palestine—notwithstanding their support for Zionism and their broader colonial ambitions in the Near East. By the mid-late 1920s and 1930s, to be sure, this attitude had all but vanished and a strong anti-British feeling came to dominate Arab historiography in Palestine until the very end of the Mandate. Third, I trace loyalties and identities during the Mandate period. I argue that, in the 1920s, local loyalties to cities and towns were the most significant identity markers, followed by Arab and religious loyalties, both of which were also very important. In the 1920s, a territorial identification with
Bilad al-Sham or Suriyya rivaled if not trumped a territorial identification with
Filastin. Even in the 1920s, though, it would be a mistake to consider either of these broader territorial identifications loyalties insofar as they did not trigger a sense of self-sacrifice nor did they carry with them much emotive power. Not until the late 1920s and early 1930s did Palestine triumph over broader territorial identifications such as Syria and not until the mid-late 1930s and 1940s did this territorial identification with Palestine emerge as a key source of loyalty for many of the region’s inhabitants. All the while, the historical works suggest the growing importance of an Arab identity and the declining importance of religious loyalties.

In this Article, I will analyze the reasons behind the interest of Abraham Elmaleh (1885–1967), an accomplished Jerusalemite public figure, journalist, philologist and ethnographer, in Sabbateanism and the Sabbatean Ma'aminim in Salonica. The discussion will focus on Elmaleh's most important study of Sabbateanism: his booklet Sabbetay Ṣevi, his Sects, and the Remnants of his Messianic Movement in These Times (Jerusalem 1926). I will also identify the scholars and the sources that influenced over Elmaleh's interest in these fields.
I found that Elmaleh considered the Ma'aminim to be an integral part – though peripheral – of the Sephardic sub-diaspora he constituted in his studies and enterprises, and therefore found them to be of great interest. In a dialectic process, relating to the Jewish interest in the "Remote Jews" (Nidhe Israel), Elmaleh considered the Ma'aminim to be a sort of "Sephardic Remote Jews". To prove his arguments, he used some of the writings of two Sephardic scholars, Abraham Danon and Joseph Néhama, published from 1887 to 1902, and assigned their findings to his needs.
It seems that for Elmaleh, the Ma'aminim could have been counted among the Sephardic sub-diaspora even if they were not necessarily part of the Jewish diaspora. This leads to a certain tension between the definition of the Sephardic sub-diaspora and the definition of its parent-diaspora, the Jewish one – a tension that accompanied Elmaleh's studies and figure for many years.

The final chapter draws together some overarching themes that emerge throughout the volume, while investigating a series of contemporary events vis-à-vis the Palestine-Israel conflict and their implications. At the time of writing in June 2019: it has been over a year since The Great March of Return and weekly ongoing Return Marches; the 2019 Israeli elections, during which Netanyahu explicitly committed to the annexation of parts of the West Bank, and which seemed to point to his return to office, turned out be to inconclusive given his inability to form a majority coalition government, meaning a new election has been scheduled for September 2019; and the Trump administration has upended decades of established protocol vis-à-vis the conflict by displaying a marked contempt for Palestinians, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognising Israel’s annexation of Golan Heights, as well as attempting to depoliticise the conflict through its “Deal of the Century” touting extensive investment in Palestinian areas. Meanwhile, Hamas and Israel have been engaged in intermittent but regular bouts of conflict amid an environmental crisis casting doubt on Gaza’s ability to support human habitation, while the West Bank PA faces ongoing crises, inter alia, regarding finance, legitimacy, and its ability to exercise authority. In brief, the Palestinian national movement, at present, is at a very precarious point in its history.

Review
"This excellent study is [...] recommended for academic libraries."
Daniel Scheide, Florida Atlantic University, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews, Volume VII, No. 2
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Abstract
It is difficult to ignore the diversity of the kabbalah or both its modest and coarse manifestations over the course of the twentieth-century – phenomena that have latterly garnered considerable attention in both the lay and research literature alike. That said, it appears that the historical background for these current developments, namely the world of the kabbalists in the late 1800s and early 1900s, has yet to merit an in-depth study. The dozens of hagiographies that are now being written by the progeny and admirers of the said kabbalists paint a romantic picture of a “glorious past.” In these books, the early twentieth century is described as a kabbalistic renaissance that is on equal footing with the days of Isaac Luria in Safad. Surprising as it may be, the Hebrew and Yiddish belles-lettres and, following in their footsteps, the research literature from Gershom Scholem onwards has left the impression that kabbalah deteriorated in the beginning of the twentieth century to the point of nearly vanishing of the world stage. According to this same narrative, only the efforts of a few surviving kabbalists—a sort of dying elite—kept the flame from expiring. On those rare occasions in which scholars bring up these practitioners, they are referred to as “the remnants of the kabbalists” or similar epithets. This characterization was painted in even louder colors upon describing the era’s Jerusalem-based kabbalists. At one and the same time, then, there are descriptions of both a great awakening and steep decline. The author’s attempt to make sense of this contradiction is one of the catalysts behind the present study. Its origins aside, the book focuses on the kabbalah seminaries (Yeshivot or academies) in Jerusalem from 1896 to 1948 as well as the various manifestations of kabbalah within traditional Jewish society.
Kabbalistic Circles in Jerusalem breaks new ground on the robust activities of Jerusalem’s kabbalistic yeshivot, foremost among them Beit el, Rehovot haNahar, and Sha'ar haShamayim. By virtue of these institutions’ publications and the unearthing of tens of documents and manuscripts that were deposited in sundry archives, the book surveys the daily schedule and methodology of these yeshivot; their methods for disseminating kabbalah books; the dynamics between revelation and concealment that undergirded all the kabbalists’ endeavors; the arrangement of the RaShaSh Siddur’s first print run; the messianic outlooks that were espoused in this community regarding the attempts to discover the Sambatyon River and the lost tribes; and the content and assorted roles of the Tikkunim literature. What is more, the author explores the disagreements between competing groups—most notably, the feud over the extent to which occult wisdom should be exposed to the general public—and the various gradients of Jewish mysticism within these seminaries.
Against this backdrop, shedding light on Jerusalem’s kabbalist circles between the years 1896 and 1948 opens a door to the wider world of the myriad kabbalistic streams in East Europe and Arab lands, the Maghreb included. The foundations that were laid by these yeshivas in the early twentieth century also paved the way for the contemporary blossoming of kabbalah in many and manifold circles. In this sense, retracing the pertinent developments in the Land of Israel at the outset of the twentieth century is imperative not only for repairing the distorted picture of the past, but for understanding the ongoing surge in kabbalah study
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This book endeavors to fill a lacuna in the literature on early twentieth-century kabbalah, namely the lack of a comprehensive account of the traditional kabbalah seminaries (Yeshivot) in Jerusalem from 1896 to 1948 as well as the various manifestations of kabbalah within traditional Jewish society. The foundations that were laid in the early twentieth century also paved the way for the contemporary blossoming of kabbalah in many and manifold circles. In this sense, retracing the pertinent developments in Palestine at the outset of the twentieth century is imperative not only for repairing the distorted picture of the past, but for understanding the ongoing surge in kabbalah study.

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With the establishment of Israel in 1948, military government was imposed on regions inhabited by the Palestinian-Arab majority, including the Palestinian Arab-Bedouin tribes of the Naqab (Negev). The justification was that the Arab population who remained in Palestine, and became citizenry of the newly established state, perceived to pose a threat to Israel's security. The article examines the establishment and dissolution of the tribal courts in the Naqab during the military government period by means of a critical analysis of official archival documents and newspaper reports published at the time. These sources reveal the power structure and the security considerations for the establishment of the tribal courts in the Naqab. Additionally, the article shows how the case of the tribal courts sheds light on patterns of action employed by the military government and the Israeli political system from 1948 to 1966, and the policies implemented towards the Arab-Bedouin population in the Naqab.

Contents

Preface pp. ix-xii

Introduction: The Imagined Decline of Kabbalah pp. 1-17

Chapter One: The Kabbalistic Yeshivot of Jerusalem  pp. 19-73

Chapter Two: Searching for the Lost Tribes  pp. 74-108

Chapter Three: The Renaissance of Print  pp. 109-140

Chapter Four: Prayers and Ritual Literature pp. 141-166

Chapter Five: Critique, Parody and Controversy pp. 167-175

Concluding Remarks p. 176

Appendix: List of Proclamations pp. 177-184

Bibliography pp. 185-230

Index pp. 231-243


"Reviews:
(1) Tomer Persiko, 2012, הרחובות ממריאים ‘The streets of Kabbalah’, Beit Avichai Journal, (Hebrew)
(2) Tomer Persiko, 2012, הרחובות ממריאים ‘The streets of Kabbalah’, Lula’at ha-El: The Varieties of Religious Experience, Blog (Hebrew)
(3) Avishai Elboim, 2011, חיפוש עשרת השבטים ‘Searching for the lost Tribes’, Shabat be-Shabato, no. 1405, p. 6 (Hebrew)
(4) Yaniv Mezuman, 2012, רחובות הנהר ‘Rehovot ha-Nahar’, Makor Rishon, Shabat, pp. 12-13 (Hebrew)
(5) Yehudah Mirsky, 2012, ‘Gershom Scholem, 30 Years On’, Jewish Ideas Daily.
(6) Eliezer Baumgarten, 2013,נהר שלום  ‘Nahar Shalom’, Pa'amim 133-134, 7 pages (Hebrew) http://www.ybz.org.il/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/Pea133_134eyunim.pdf


1) Evening book at the Ben Tsvi Jerusalem, with the guests: Moshe Idel, Ronit Maroz, Yoram Bilu Hanan Gafni, Zeev Griss, 10 March 2012
http://www.ybz.org.il/?CategoryID=141&ArticleID=849

2) Evening book at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, with the guests: Haim Beer, Elhanan Reiner, Zeev Griss, Boaz Huss 12 June 2012
http://in.bgu.ac.il/Pages/events/Streets-of-the-river.aspx





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This is an electronic version of an article published
in Middle Eastern Studies, 46, no. 3 (2010), pp. 331-47.

The air raids against civilian and military targets during the Second World War have been a relatively unexplored chapter in Palestine's tumultuous history. This article examines the circumstances that led the air forces of Italy, Germany and Vichy France to launch attacks against Palestine. It surveys the damage these raids caused and assesses their effect on the country's population. The article raises three central arguments: although the attacks caused considerable damage in Haifa and in Tel Aviv, they failed to alter the course of the war in the Middle East; despite the hostility between Arabs and Jews before and after the war, the period of the air raids saw displays of solidarity between the two communities; and the experiences of the Second World War, including the air raids, played a part in the state-building process of the Yishuv (Jewish community).

This study is based on quantitative immigration into Palestine during the first decade of British occupation in Palestine. Demographic characteristics of migrations to Palestine; It will answer some questions about the nature of Jewish immigration in the light Jerusalem of the American Consulate reports in Jerusalem, with emphasis on categories such as labor and employment. As the Jewish community began to grow in Palestine numerically from the 1840s onwards, with certain exceptions, they lived in the Four Holy Cities, of Jerusalem, Al-Khalil (Hebron), Safed, Tiberias (Tiberias) and neighborhoods with generally Arab indigenous populations. Developing political conditions, new immigration from Europe and long-standing belief policies have emerged as major factors affecting the growth of Jewish society. At the end of the 19th century, the population of the Jewish community in Jerusalem was around 2000, but increased by 15 times with the First World War. Between 1905 and 1910, 12,965 people, 30% of whom were under 30 years of age, emigrated to Palestine. Jewish immigration began intensively following the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Over the next thirty years (1917-47), about half a million Jews emigrated to Palestine. Politically and economically, each of these migration waves reflected their own periods. The British Mandate, which dominated the mass migration process of Jews in Palestine, played an important role in the economic, social and political dimension of Jewish migration. Because of without the Balfour Declaration under the British shadow, most likely these migrations would have taken place. The focus of this study, which will also cover the political dynamics of the migration process, is to centralize various political and economic initiatives within Jewish immigration. This study aims to fill the current gap in the said period by providing statistical information and contributing to the production of migration information.