Rokan's Journal

Palestine: Roman era

Palestine during the time of Herod the Great and his sons.

Herod, in Rome, was recognized by the Senate, with the approval of Octavian (later the emperor Caesar Augustus) and Mark Antony, as king of Judaea (40 BCE) and returned to Palestine in 39. Shortly afterward Roman troops expelled the Parthians, whose popularity in Palestine had been and subsequently remained considerable. After struggles against Antigonus, the Parthian nominee, in which he was assisted by Roman troops, Herod eventually captured Jerusalem. At about the same time, he married a niece of Antigonus, thus probably consoling those who remained loyal to the memory of the almost defunct Hasmonean house. Antigonus, when he fell into the hands of his enemies, was executed by order of Mark Antony.

The accession of Herod, a Roman protégé and an Edomite, brought to Palestine the peace that in the years of independence it had often lacked. His long reign (37–4 BCE) was marked by general prosperity; his new city of Caesarea (Caesarea Maritima) received lavish praise from Josephus for its spectacular port and extensive water and sewer system. Between 31 and 20, Augustus restored to him the Jewish territories that Pompey had taken away, and in this enlarged kingdom he created a sound administrative system of Hellenistic type. Toward the end of his life the complex demands of a vast family (he had at least nine wives) led him into difficulties regarding the succession, and it was then that he developed into the gruesome and vicious figure that Christian tradition has made so familiar. He had his wife Mariamne and several of his sons put to death to prevent them from succeeding him; and on his death in 4 BCE the country again entered a period of divided rule, which led to the reestablishment of direct Roman government. Augustus decided later that year, in the presence of three surviving sons of Herod, that Herod Archelaus should rule Judaea, Samaria, and Edom (i.e., central and southern Palestine); Herod Antipas should rule Galilee and Peraea (east of the Jordan River); and Philip should rule Trachonitis, Batanaea, and Auranitis (the area between the Decapolis and Damascus).

The fates of these rulers (of whom Philip and Antipas were called tetrarchs, Archelaus ethnarch) and their territories were different. Philip, the most peaceable of the three, ruled the northern area until his death in 34 CE. Antipas reigned in Galilee and Peraea until 39 CE but was then banished by the emperor Caligula on the ground that he had parleyed with Rome’s enemies. Archelaus reigned for 10 years only; he was removed at the request of his subjects in 6 CE. The region under Archelaus’s rule (i.e., Judaea, Samaria, and Edom) became the province of Judaea and passed to a series of undistinguished Roman prefects, the last of whom (Pontius Pilate, 26–36 CE) lost office for the unnecessary massacre of some Samaritans. Palestine finally was united under Caligula’s protégé, Herod Agrippa I, who succeeded Philip in the north in 37 CE. The tetrarchy of Antipas was added soon after his removal in 39, and the territories of Judaea, Samaria, and Edom were added in 41, so that from 41 to his death in 44 Agrippa ruled the kingdom of his grandfather, Herod the Great, from Jerusalem. In 44 the entire kingdom passed under Roman rule and was reconstituted as the procuratorial province of Judaea.

Disturbances in the early years of procuratorial rule were frequent and caused largely by maladministration. Serious trouble arose under Ventidius Cumanus (48–52); and under his successor, the imperial freedman Felix (52–60), rebellion was open though sporadic. The incompetence and anti-Jewish posture of Gessius Florus, procurator 64–66, led in 66 to the decisive and final outbreak, known as the First Jewish Revolt. Florus, the heir to a long tradition of hostility between the large Hellenized populations of Palestine and the Jews (also a problem in the Diaspora, most notably at Alexandria during the reign of Caligula), allowed the Greek population of Caesarea Maritima to massacre the Jews of that city with impunity. Greeks in other towns of Palestine repeated the assault. In turn, the Jews responded by slaughtering Gentiles in Samaria, Galilee, and elsewhere. Soon Florus lost control of the situation. The organization of the Jews was better than it previously had been, and they were successful in an early engagement against the governor of Syria, who had advanced to Palestine with two legions to assist the hard-pressed procurator.

In 67, however, Vespasian, the future emperor, with his son Titus, arrived with a force of about 60,000 men, and the war became increasingly bitter. By the end of 67 Galilee was captured, and Judaea was reduced in three campaigns, which ended with the fall of Jerusalem in 70. The Temple was destroyed, though tradition recorded that Titus gave orders that it was to be spared, and the city became the permanent garrison town of a Roman legion. By 73 all resistance had ceased.Events in Palestine during the first decades of the Christian era were of crucial importance to the development of Christianity as a world religion and to the re-creation of Judaism as a Diaspora community and the eventual establishment of Rabbinic Judaism as the normative expression of Jewish religious and cultural life. For a discussion of the founding of Christianity, see Jesus Christ, Christianity, and biblical literature; for the subsequent history of Judaism following the dispersion, see Judaism and Diaspora.

Roman Palestine

After the destruction of Jerusalem, a legion (X Fretensis) was stationed on the site, and the rank of the provincial governor was raised from procurator to legatus Augusti, signifying a change from equestrian to senatorial rank. Caesarea Maritima, the governor’s residence, became a Roman colony, and, as a reward for the loyalty of the Greeks in the revolt, a new pagan city, Neapolis (modern Nābulus in the West Bank), was founded at Shechem, the religious centre of the Samaritans.

The Jews, deprived of the Temple, founded a new religious centre in the rabbinical school of Jamnia (Jabneh). When a revolt broke out in 115 CE, the Roman emperor Trajan appointed the first consular legate of Judaea, Lucius Quietus, to suppress it. The rank of the legate confirms that two legions were stationed in Judaea, one at Jerusalem, the other at Caparcotna in Galilee, and thenceforth the province must have held consular status.

In 132 the emperor Hadrian decided to build a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the site of Jerusalem. The announcement of his plan, as well as his ban on circumcision (revoked later, but only for the Jews), provoked a much more serious uprising, the Second Jewish Revolt, led by Bar Kokhba. It was ruthlessly repressed by Julius Severus; according to certain accounts, almost 1,000 villages were destroyed and more than half a million people killed. In Judaea proper the Jews seem to have been virtually exterminated, but they survived in Galilee, which, like Samaria, appears to have held aloof from the revolt. Tiberias in Galilee became the seat of the Jewish patriarchs. The province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina (later simply called Palaestina), and, according to Eusebius of Caeseria (Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, chapter 6), no Jew was thenceforth allowed to set foot in Jerusalem or the surrounding district. This prohibition apparently was relaxed sometime later to permit Jews to enter Jerusalem one day a year, on a day of mourning called Tisha be-Ava. Although this ban was officially still in force as late as the 4th century CE, there is some evidence that from the Severan period onward (after 193) Jews

visited the city more frequently, especially at certain festival times, and even that there may have been some Jews in residence. About the time the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed (135), Hadrian proceeded to convert Jerusalem into a Greco-Roman city, with a circus, an amphitheatre, baths, and a theatre and with streets conforming to the Roman grid pattern. He also erected temples dedicated to Jupiter and himself (Aelia was his clan name) on the very site of the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. To repopulate the city, Hadrian apparently brought in Greco-Syrians from the surrounding areas and even perhaps some legionary veterans. The urbanization and Hellenization of Palestine was continued during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus (193–211 CE), except in Galilee, where the Jewish presence remained strong. New pagan cities were founded in Judaea at Eleutheropolis and Diospolis (formerly Lydda) and at Nicopolis (formerly Emmaus) under one of Severus’s successors, Elagabalus (218–222). In addition, Severus issued a specific ban against Jewish proselytism.

After Constantine I converted to Christianity early in the 4th century, a new era of prosperity began for Palestine. The emperor himself built a magnificent church on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, the most

sacred of Christian holy places; his mother, Saint Helena, built two others—at the place of the Nativity at Bethlehem and of the Ascension in Jerusalem—and his mother-in-law, Eutropia, built a church at Mamre. Palestine began to attract floods of pilgrims from all parts of the empire. It also became a great centre of the eremitic life (idiorrhythmic monasticism); men flocked from all quarters to become hermits in the Judaean wilderness, which was soon dotted with monasteries. Constantine added the southern half of Arabia to the province, but in 357–358 (or perhaps as late as the 390s) the addition was made a separate province under the name of Palaestina or Salutaris (later Palaestina Tertia). At the end of the 4th century, an enlarged Palestine was divided into three provinces: Prima, with its capital at Caesarea; Secunda, with its capital at Scythopolis (Bet Sheʾan); and Salutaris, with its capital at Petra or possibly for a time at Elusa. It is clear that the province of Palaestina underwent several territorial changes in the 4th century CE, but the details and the chronology remain obscure. The governor of Prima bore the high rank of proconsul from 382 to 385 and again—as part of East Rome, which came to be known as the Byzantine Empire after 476—from 535 onward. A dux of Palestine commanded the garrison of all three provinces.

The bishop of the civil capital, Caesarea, was, according to the usual rule, metropolitan of the province, but the bishops of Jerusalem were claiming special prerogatives as early as the first Council of Nicaea (325). Eventually, Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem from 421 to 458, achieved his ambition and was recognized by the Council of Chalcedon (451) as patriarch of the three provinces of Palestine.There was a revolt of the Jews in Galilee in 352, which was suppressed by Gallus Caesar. Under Marcian (450–457) and again under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565), the Samaritans revolted. Palestine, like Syria and Egypt, was also troubled by the Monophysite controversy, a debate among Christians who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon’s assertion that the person of Jesus Christ comprised two natures, human and divine. When Juvenal returned from Chalcedon, having signed the Council’s canons, the monks of Palestine rose and elected another bishop of Jerusalem, and military force was required to subdue them. Gradually, however, the Chalcedonian doctrine gained ground, and Palestine became a stronghold of orthodoxy. Apart from these disturbances, the country enjoyed peace and prosperity until 611, when Khosrow II, king of Persia, launched an invasion of Byzantine territory. His troops captured Jerusalem (614), destroyed churches, and carried off the True Cross. In 628 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius recovered Palestine, and he subsequently restored the True Cross to Jerusalem, but 10 years later Arab armies invaded both the Persian and the Byzantine empires.

From the Arab conquest to 1900

The rise of Islam

The successful unification of the Arabian Peninsula under Islam by the first caliph, Abū Bakr (632–634), made it possible to channel the expansion of the Arab Muslims into new directions. Abū Bakr, therefore, summoned the faithful to a holy war (jihad) and quickly amassed a large army. He dispatched three detachments of about 3,000 (later increased to about 7,500) men each to start operations in southern and southeastern Syria. He died, however, before he could witness the results of these undertakings. The conquests he started were carried on by his successor, the caliph ʿUmar I (634–644).

The first battle took place at Wadi Al-ʿArabah, south of the Dead Sea. The Byzantine defenders were defeated and retreated toward Gaza but were overtaken and almost annihilated. In other places,

however, the natural advantages of the defenders were more effective, and the invaders were hard-pressed. Khālid ibn al-Walīd, then operating in southern Iraq, was ordered to the aid of his fellow Arab generals on the Syrian front, and the combined forces won a bloody victory on July 30, 634, at a place in southern Palestine that the sources call Ajnādayn. All of Palestine then lay open to the invaders.

In the meantime, the emperor Heraclius was mustering his own large army and in 636 dispatched it against the Muslims. Khālid concentrated his troops on the Yarmūk River, the eastern tributary of the Jordan River. The decisive battle that delivered Palestine to the Muslims took place on August 20, 636. Only Jerusalem and Caesarea held out, the former until 638, when it surrendered to the Muslims, and the latter until October 640. Palestine, and indeed all of Syria, was then in Muslim hands. After the surrender of Jerusalem, ʿUmar divided Palestine into two administrative districts (jund) similar to the Roman and Byzantine provinces: they were Jordan (Al-ʿUrdūn) and Palestine (Filasṭīn). Jordan included Galilee and Acre (modern ʿAkko, Israel) and extended east to the desert; Palestine, with its capital first at Lydda (modern Lod, Israel) and later at Ramla (after 716), covered the region south of the Plain of Esdraelon.

ʿUmar lost no time in emphasizing Islam’s interest in the holy city of Jerusalem as the first qiblah toward which, until 623, Muslims had turned their faces in prayer and as the third holiest spot in Islam. (The Prophet Muhammad himself had changed the qiblah to Mecca in 623.) On visiting the Temple Mount area—which Muslims came to know as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (Arabic: “The Noble Sanctuary”)—and finding the place suffering from neglect, ʿUmar and his followers cleaned it with their own hands and declared it a sacred place of prayer, erecting there the first structure called Al-Aqṣā Mosque.Under the Umayyads, a Muslim dynasty that gained power in 661 from the Meccans and Medinans who had initially led the Islamic community, Palestine formed, with Syria, one of the main provinces of the empire. Each jund was administered by an emir assisted by a financial officer. This pattern continued, in general, until the time of Ottoman rule.

For various reasons, the Umayyads paid special attention to Palestine. The process of Arabization and Islamization was gaining momentum there. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. The caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (685–705) erected the Dome of the Rock in 691 on the site of the Temple of Solomon, which the Muslims believed had been the halting station of the Prophet on his nocturnal journey to heaven. (See isrāʾ and miʿrāj.) This magnificent structure represents the earliest Muslim monument still extant. Close to the shrine and to the south, ʿAbd al-Malik’s son, al-Walīd I (705–715), rebuilt Al-Aqṣa Mosque on a larger scale. The Umayyad caliph ʿUmar II (717–720) imposed humiliating restrictions on his non-Muslim subjects, particularly the Christians. Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine’s inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to Jerusalem after a 500-year absence.

Abbāsid rule

Umayyad rule ended in 750. Along with Syria, Palestine became subject to ʿAbbāsid authority, based in Baghdad, and, like Syria, it did not readily submit to its new masters. Unlike the Umayyads, who leaned on the Yemeni (South Arabian) tribes, the ʿAbbāsids, in Syria, favoured and indeed used the Qays (North Arabian) tribes. Enmity between the two groups was, therefore, intensified and became an important political factor in Palestine. Pro-Umayyad uprisings were frequent and received Palestinian support. In 840/841 Abū Ḥarb, a Yemenite, unfurled the white banner of the Umayyads and succeeded in recruiting a large number of peasant followers, mainly among the Palestinian population, who regarded him as the saviour whose appearance was to save the land from the hated ʿAbbāsids. Though the insurrection was put down, unrest persisted.

The process of Islamization gained momentum under the ʿAbbāsids. ʿAbbāsid rulers encouraged the settlement and fortification of coastal Palestine so as to secure it against the Byzantine enemy. During the second half of the 9th century, however, signs of internal decay began to appear in the ʿAbbāsid Empire. Petty states, and some indeed not so petty, emerged in different parts of the realm. One of the first to affect Palestine was the Tūlūnid dynasty (868–905) of Egypt, which marked the beginning of the disengagement of Egypt and, with it, of Syria and Palestine from ʿAbbāsid rule. During that period Palestine also experienced the destructive operations of the Qarmaṭians, an Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite sect that launched an insurrection in 903–906. After ʿAbbāsid authority was briefly restored, Palestine came under Ikhshīdid rule (935–969).

The Fāṭimid dynasty

In the meantime, the Shīʿite Fāṭimid dynasty was rising to power in North Africa. It moved eastward to seize not only Egypt but also Palestine and Syria and to threaten Baghdad itself. The Fāṭimids seized Egypt from the Ikhshīdids in 969 and in less than a decade were able to establish a precarious control over Palestine, where they faced Qarmaṭian, Seljuq, Byzantine, and periodic Bedouin opposition. Palestine was thus often reduced to a battlefield. The country suffered even greater hardship, however, under the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim (996–1021), whose behaviour was at times erratic and extremely harsh, particularly toward his non-Muslim subjects. He reactivated earlier discriminatory laws imposed on Christians and Jews and added new ones. In 1009 he ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was severely damaged as a result.In 1071 the Seljuqs captured Jerusalem, which prospered as pilgrimages by Jews, Christians, and Muslims increased despite political instability. The Fāṭimids recaptured the city in 1098 only to relinquish it a year later to a new enemy, the Crusaders of western Europe.

The Crusades of Palestine

A year after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was established (Christmas Day, 1100). Thereafter there was no effective check to the expansion of the Crusaders’ power until the capture of their stronghold at Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa, Turkey) by the atabeg (governor) of Mosul, ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī ibn Aq Sonqur, in 1144. Zangī’s anti-Crusader campaign was carried on after his death by his son Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd (Nureddin) and, more effectively, by the sultan Ṣalāh al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (commonly known in the West as Saladin), a protégé of the atabeg’s family. After consolidating his position in Egypt and Syria, Saladin waged relentless war against the “infidel” Franks (Western Christians). On July 4, 1187, six days after the capture of Tiberias, he dealt the Crusaders a crushing blow at the decisive Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn (Ḥiṭṭīn). Most of Palestine was once again Muslim. Further attempts by the Crusaders to regain control of Palestine proved ineffective, primarily because of incessant quarrels among the Crusaders themselves. Ironically, it was left to an emperor of dubious Christian standing, Frederick II, to negotiate in 1229, while under excommunication, a 10-year treaty that temporarily restored Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem to the Christians. In 1244, however, the Ayyūbid sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb definitively restored Jerusalem to Islam.

While the Ayyūbids of Saladin’s house were losing ground to the Turkish-speaking Mamlūks in Egypt, the Mongol sweep westward continued, placing the Crusaders, as it were, between two fires. To make matters worse, the Crusaders themselves were hopelessly riddled with dissension. In 1260 the Mamlūk leader Baybars I emerged as a champion of Muslim resurgence. After taking part in the defeat of the Mongols at the Battle of ʿAyn Jālūt in Palestine, he murdered the incumbent sultan and seized the throne; in the years 1263 to 1271 he carried out annual raids against the harassed Franks. His efforts were continued by the sultan al-Ashraf Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl, during whose reign the last of the Crusaders were driven out of Acre (May 18, 1291). A chapter in the history of Palestine thus came to an end. The Mamlūks and subsequent Muslim regimes ruled the area with only brief interruptions for the next 600 years.

Palestine under the Mamlūks in the 14th century saw a period of prosperity for some; this was especially notable in Jerusalem, where the government sponsored an elaborate program to construct schools, establish lodgings for travelers and Muslim pilgrims, and renovate mosques. Tax revenues, collected mainly from the villages, were spent largely on support of religious institutions. Palestine formed a part of the district of Damascus, second only to Egypt in the Mamlūk domains. The region suffered the ravages of several epidemics, including the great pestilence, the same Black Death that in 1347–51 devastated Europe. The fall of the Baḥrī Mamlūks and the rise of the Burjī Mamlūks (1382–1517) contributed to a gradual economic deterioration and a decrease in security. During the reigns of the second Burjī sultan, Faraj (1399–1405 and 1405–12), the last onslaught of the Mongols, which made the name of Timur (Tamerlane) a synonym of destruction and plunder, took place. Although Palestine was spared the pillage of his hordes, it could not escape its disastrous repercussions as the Mamlūks moved through in a vain attempt to defend Damascus against the invader. The death of Timur in 1405, and the weakness of Iran in the ensuing century, pitted the Mamlūks against the rising power of the Ottoman Empire for the control of western Asia. Hostilities broke out in 1486 when Sultan Qāʾit Bāy contested with Bayezid II the possession of some border towns. The climax came three decades later on August 24, 1516, when the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, routed the Mamlūk armies at the Battle of Marj Dābiq. Palestine began its four centuries under Ottoman domination.

Ottoman rule

Under the Ottoman Turks, Palestine continued to be linked administratively to Damascus until 1830, when it was placed under Sidon, then under Acre, then once again under Damascus until 1887–88, at which time the administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire were settled for the last time. Palestine was divided into the districts of Nablus and Acre, both of which were linked with the province of Beirut and the autonomous district of Jerusalem, which dealt directly with Istanbul. With varying fortunes often accompanied by revolts, massacres, and wars, the first three centuries of Ottoman rule isolated Palestine from most outside influences. The prosperity of 16th-century Ottoman Palestine was followed by an economic and political decline in the 17th century. Ottoman control in the 18th century was indirect. Ḍāhir al-ʿUmar (c. 1737–75) dominated the political life of northern Palestine for nearly 40 years. Aḥmad al-Jazzār, the Ottoman governor of Acre, had control of most of Palestine, and in 1799, with English and Ottoman help, he successfully defended Acre against Napoleon I.

Both Ḍāhir and al-Jazzār presided over a tightly controlled Palestine, where trade with Europe as well as taxation were growing. They used their new wealth from these sources to gain influence in Istanbul, which allowed them to gain local autonomy and even intermittent control of many areas outside Palestine.

This period came to an end with Napoleon’s abortive attempt (1798–1801) to carve for himself a Middle Eastern empire. Egypt, always a determining factor in the fortunes of Palestine, was placed, after the French withdrawal, under the rule of the viceroy Muḥammad (Meḥmet) ʿAlī, who soon embarked on a program of expansion at the expense of his Ottoman overlord. In 1831 his armies occupied Palestine, and for nine years he and his son Ibrāhīm gave it a centralizing and modernizing administration. Their rule increasingly opened the country to Western influences and enabled Christian missionaries to establish many schools; at the same time, however, taxes were increased, and urban rebellions broke out against the harshness of the regime. When in 1840 the British, the Austrians, and the Russians came to the aid of the Ottomans, the Egyptians were forced to withdraw, and Palestine reverted to the Ottoman Empire. Increased European interest, however, led the powers to establish consulates in Jerusalem and in Palestine’s port cities.

After 1840 the reforms the sultan promulgated gradually took effect in Palestine. Increased security in the countryside and the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 encouraged the development of private property, agricultural production for the world market, the decline of tribal social organization, growth of the population, and the enrichment of the notable families. As the Ottomans extended the central government’s new military, municipal, judicial, and educational systems to Palestine, the country also witnessed a marked increase in foreign settlements and colonies—French, Russian, and German. By far the most important, in spite of their initial numerical insignificance, were the Jewish agricultural settlements, which foreshadowed later Zionist endeavours to establish a Jewish national home and still later a Jewish state (Israel) in Palestine. The earliest of these settlements was founded by Russian Jews in 1882. In 1896 Theodor Herzl issued a pamphlet entitled Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and advocated an autonomous Jewish state, preferably in Palestine. Two years later he himself went to Palestine to investigate its possibilities and, possibly, to seek the help of the German emperor William II, who was then making a spectacular pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

From 1900 to 1948

In the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, the Palestinian Arabs shared in a general Arab renaissance. Palestinians found opportunities in the service of the Ottoman Empire, and Palestinian deputies sat in the Ottoman parliaments of 1877, 1908, 1912, and 1914. Several Arabic newspapers appeared in the country before 1914. Their pages reveal that Arab nationalism and opposition to Zionism were strong among some sections of the intelligentsia even before World War I. The Arabs sought an end to Jewish immigration and to land purchases by Zionists. The number of Zionist colonies, however, mostly subsidized by the French philanthropist Edmond, baron de Rothschild, rose from 19 in 1900 to 47 in 1918, even though the majority of the Jews were town dwellers. The population of Palestine, predominantly agricultural, was about 690,000 in 1914 (535,000 Muslims; 70,000 Christians, most of whom were Arabs; and 85,000 Jews).

World War I and after

Sykes-Picot Agreement

During World War I the great powers made a number of decisions concerning the future of Palestine without much regard to the wishes of the indigenous inhabitants. Palestinian Arabs, however, believed that Great Britain had promised them independence in the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence, an exchange of letters from July 1915 to March 1916 between Sir Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Egypt, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then emir of Mecca, in which the British made certain commitments to the Arabs in return for their support against the Ottomans during the war. Yet by May 1916 Great Britain, France, and Russia had reached an agreement (the Sykes-Picot Agreement) according to which, inter alia, the bulk of Palestine was to be internationalized. Further complicating the situation, in November 1917 Arthur Balfour, the British secretary of state for foreign affairs, addressed a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild (the Balfour Declaration) expressing sympathy for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people on the understanding that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” This declaration did not come about through an act of generosity or stirrings of conscience over the bitter fate of the Jewish people. It was meant, in part, to prompt American Jews to exercise their influence in moving the United States to support British postwar policies as well as to encourage Russian Jews to keep their nation fighting.Palestine was hard-hit by the war. In addition to the destruction caused by the fighting, the population was devastated by famine, epidemics, and Ottoman punitive measures against Arab nationalists. Major battles took place at Gaza before Jerusalem was captured by British and Allied forces under the command of General Sir Edmund (later 1st Viscount) Allenby in December 1917. The remaining area was occupied by the British by October 1918.

At the war’s end, the future of Palestine was problematic. Great Britain, which had set up a military administration in Palestine after capturing Jerusalem, was faced with the problem of having to secure international sanction for the continued occupation of the country in a manner consistent with its ambiguous, seemingly conflicting wartime commitments. On March 20, 1920, delegates from Palestine attended a general Syrian congress at Damascus, which passed a resolution rejecting the Balfour Declaration and elected Fayṣal I—son of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, who ruled the Hejaz—king of a united Syria (including Palestine). This resolution echoed one passed earlier in Jerusalem, in February 1919, by the first Palestinian Arab conference of Muslim-Christian associations, which had been founded by leading Palestinian Arab notables to oppose Zionist activities. In April 1920, however, at a peace conference held in San Remo, Italy, the Allies divided the former territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Of the Ottoman provinces in the Syrian region, the northern portion (Syria and Lebanon) was mandated to France, and the southern portion (Palestine) was mandated to Great Britain. By July 1920 the French had forced Fayṣal to give up his newly founded kingdom of Syria. The hope of founding an Arab Palestine within a federated Syrian state collapsed and with it any prospect of independence. Palestinian Arabs spoke of 1920 as ʿām al-nakbah, the “year of catastrophe.”

Uncertainty over the disposition of Palestine affected all its inhabitants and increased political tensions. In April 1920 anti-Zionist riots broke out in the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem, killing several and injuring scores. British authorities attributed the riots to Arab disappointment at not having the promises of independence fulfilled and to fears, played on by some Muslim and Christian leaders, of a massive influx of Jews. Following the confirmation of the mandate at San Remo, the British replaced the military administration with a civilian administration in July 1920, and Sir Herbert (later Viscount) Samuel, a Zionist, was appointed the first high commissioner. The new administration proceeded to implement the Balfour Declaration, announcing in August a quota of 16,500 Jewish immigrants for the first year.

In December 1920, Palestinian Arabs at a congress in Haifa established an executive committee (known as the Arab Executive) to act as the representative of the Arabs. It was never formally recognized by the British and was dissolved in 1934. However, the platform of the Haifa congress, which set out the position that Palestine was an autonomous Arab entity and totally rejected any rights of the Jews to Palestine, remained the basic policy of the Palestinian Arabs until 1948. The arrival of more than 18,000 Jewish immigrants between 1919 and 1921 and land purchases in 1921 by the Jewish National Fund (established in 1901), which led to the eviction of Arab peasants (fellahin), further aroused Arab opposition that was expressed throughout the region through the Christian-Muslim associations. On May 1, 1921, more serious anti-Zionist riots broke out in Jaffa, spreading to Petaḥ Tiqwa and other Jewish communities, in which nearly 100 were killed. An Arab delegation of notables visited London in August–November 1921, demanding that the Balfour Declaration be repudiated and proposing the creation of a national government with a parliament democratically elected by the country’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Alarmed by the extent of Arab opposition, the British government issued a White Paper in June 1922 declaring that Great Britain did “not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded in Palestine.” Immigration would not exceed the economic absorptive capacity of the country, and steps would be taken to set up a legislative council. These proposals were rejected by the Arabs, both because they constituted a large majority of the total mandate population and therefore wished to dominate the instruments of government and rapidly gain independence and because, they argued, the proposals allowed Jewish immigration, which had a political objective, to be regulated by an economic criterion.

(To be continued next in part- 4)