Elliott A Green
Review-article on the notion of a "Palestinian people," specifically referring to the book published in English and Hebrew editions: Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, The Palestinians: Making of a People (New York: Free Press, 1993). Barukh Kimmerling & Yoel Shmuel Migdal, HaPalestinim: `Am b'Hivatsruto (Yerushalayim: Keter, 1999). AIt is curious that so often those who purport to scorn old myths go on to make up and promote new myths. Referring to Israeli national traditions, Barukh Kimmerling not long ago wrote (Cathedra no. 80, 1996 [Hebrew]): "Every society needs a past of some sort. This past is interpreted, and sometimes partly invented, in accord with the current needs of the society and of building its collective identity." In his book on the so-called "Palestinian people," Kimmerling and his associate Joel Migdal seek to provide a suitable, useful past for the "Palestinians." In line with Kimmerling's own words, they promote the relatively new myth of a Palestinian people --which never existed in history. The book covers sociological and historical aspects of the so-called Palestinians, while neglecting the conceptual problem of a "Palestinian people" almost totally. The history presented in the book is rather superficial and often wrong, while the questions of when the notion of a "Palestinian people" first emerged and who conceived it and who promoted it and why and how it developed are neglected. This is curious since the sub-title of the book, Making of a People, would lead the reader to think that these questions would be answered in the book. After all, the formation of a people has to do with, among other things, when (and if!) it became aware of itself as in some way a people, a distinct people, different from others, and when (and if) others came to think of it as a distinct, separate people, and whom do the "Palestinians" see as being part of their collectivity and who is left out. The authors do not prove that a "Palestinian people" exists, rather they assume it, consistently using the term. At the same time they neglect the political impact of the new notion, the new label, in contrast with the earlier notion of "Palestinian Arabs" or possible alternative notions, such as "Arab Muslims of Palestine," etc. The usefulness of a separate "Palestinian" identity as a weapon of psychological warfare against Israel does not seem to occur to them.
The sociology in the book, an account of the society and social changes among the Arabs in the Land of Israel since the 1830s, may be the only mainly helpful part of it, although most of the sociological material seems to have been published elsewhere earlier.
However, the historical presentation is often wrong or misleading, superficial and simplistic, such as the silly notions that the British opposed the Arab struggle against Zionism (or were neutral), that the British were hostile to the main Arab leader, the Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, or that the British gave up the mandate out of fear of a renewed Arab revolt (in the English edition). Hence, our review will discuss some of the historical misconceptions of the book. We will also try to shed some light on the conceptual problem of a "Palestinian people" which the authors neglect. Nevertheless, the book is not pure Arab-PLO propaganda. There are various points on which the authors reject the standard Arab argument. For example, they show, albeit reluctantly it seems, that the Arab side began the war of 1947-49, and that it began with attacks on Jewish civilians and neighborhoods. At the same time, they strive for a certain moral equivalence between the Arab and Jewish forces at the time.
The book begins with a narrative of the Arab revolt of 1834. The whole prior history of the country is neglected, in particular the Jewish history of the Land, and the repeated Jewish revolts against Rome. The chronology at the back of the book supplies some additional information, yet it begins only with the year 635, which is presented in this manner: "635-637 The Arab tribes conquer Jerusalem from the Byzantines." Actually, the Arab invasion of the country began in 634 and was not completed until 640 with the fall of Caesarea (The taking of Jerusalem is usually dated to 638). In other words, it took the Arabs six years to conquer the country. One can imagine the destruction that took place in six years of warfare. According to Moshe Gil, Christians likely outnumbered Arab Muslims in the Land before the Crusader conquest (1099). In any case, Jerusalem had a Christian majority through the whole Early Period of Muslim rule (638-1099), despite some monumental building in the city by the Muslim rulers. Hence, it was only after the Crusades that the majority of the country's population was clearly Muslim. The Crusaders had massacred much of the country's Jewish population.
Now if the authors meant to use the revolt of 1834 to prove or suggest the onset of formation of a new people, "Palestinians," then there are a few more problems. The rebels did not see themselves as "Palestinians" and probably did not even know the name "Palestine" for the country which Arab Muslims traditionally saw as an undifferentiated part of Bilad al-Sham (usually translated as Syria or Greater Syria) which comprised the Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan of today, roughly speaking. Administrative divisions (vilayets, sanjaqs) were mainly unrelated to today's borders. At the time, Palestine only existed in the vocabulary of the West and in the Western historical memory. The rebellion broke out against the regime of Muhammad Ali of Egypt (himself a Balkan native) who had conquered Bilad al-Sham from his Ottoman suzerains in 1831. The motive for revolt was opposition to Muhammad Ali's policy of drafting the sons of ordinary Muslims into his army, whereas traditionally soldiers were loot-seekers, mercenaries, slaves or members of a military caste. Conscription of ordinary subjects was an innovation, and Muhammad Ali was himself a usurper. The revolt took place among the Arab-Muslims of the Judea-Samaria mountain ridge, not throughout the country. The rebels also attacked and looted the Jews --and then the Christians-- in Jerusalem (which the authors admit to their credit) and elsewhere. Similar revolts took place with the same motive around the same time in other parts of Muhammad Ali's holdings in Bilad al-Sham. However, in Lebanon, by way of contrast, various ethnic-religious communities, such as Maronites, Shiites, Greek Orthodox and Druze, joined together in revolt with a common program drawn up in writing (Antelias, 1840). Some of the population of the Galilee joined the Lebanese rebels (to be sure, the communal harmony in Lebanon did not last long). Now what made the revolt on the Judea-Samaria ridge specifically "Palestinian" or "national"? It did not embrace the whole country which the West then and the Arabs now call Palestine (the Arabs are following recent Western usage, since the West most often called the country the Holy Land through the nineteenth century). The revolt did not embrace the whole population or all communities of the population in the area where it did take place, since it involved attacks on the Christians and Jews. The motive was not national but social (the end of the new policy of conscription). And the conduct of the revolt displayed the traditional sense of Muslim superiority and the recurrent Muslim urge to despoil the dhimmis, the non-Muslims. Nor is it clear how much has changed since then when we see how on Easter Sunday, 1999, Muslims in Nazareth attacked their Christian neighbors, supposedly Arabs like themselves, on their way home from church. Just 40 years earlier (1794) in America, the Whiskey Rebellion had broken out in Pennsylvania because farmers did not want to pay a federal tax on whiskey making. They too were put down by state armed force. Did that rebellion initiate "Pennsylvanian nationalism"?
After taking the country back from Muhammad Ali, the authors then show us, the Ottoman Empire was able to effectively integrate the Arab notables into the state's governing structure. But they do not show just how far that went. Perhaps their moderation in presenting this topic is meant not to disturb too much the picture of a "Palestinian people" in formation. Kimmerling and Migdal write that Arabs got official positions in their own areas. For instance, they describe Jerusalem notables as getting posts in the Jerusalem sanjaq (district). They later write about Musa Kazem Husseini (Faisal Husseini's grandfather) that he "nurtured his career in the Ottoman bureaucracy" (p82). This statement is general and not specific. One might infer from it that he was a middle-level clerk working in Jerusalem. The authors do not tell us that Husseini attended the Ottoman School of Administration and served as governor of various districts in the empire, including in Anatolia, far from his home in Jerusalem. Another Jerusalem Arab notable (not mentioned in the book) who served in a highly responsible post on behalf of the Empire was a member of the Jerusalem Khalidi family who served as Ottoman consul in Vienna. Now the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its capital at Vienna, bordered the Ottoman Empire and coveted Ottoman territories in Europe. Relations between the two empires were correct but tense, based on long-standing hostility. Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi must have been well trusted and highly regarded in Constantinople to have obtained not only this sensitive post, but the prestigious post of speaker of the Ottoman parliament as well. In other words, Husseinis and Khalidis formed part of the governing class of the Empire. How does this fit in with their belonging to an incipient "Palestinian people"?
Furthermore, the Ottoman Empire was known to be oppressive, especially to the Christian subject peoples, although by the end of the nineteenth century much had been done to make non-Muslims legally equal to Muslims. Yet the new laws were not always carried out and many Muslims resented the legal equality given to dhimmis. So Khalidi and Husseini were officials in an oppressive state where legally or in practice Muslims enjoyed a status far superior to non-Muslims, like the status of Whites in the United States before the 1960s (although US Blacks did not suffer anything like the Armenian or Bulgarian massacres after Emancipation from slavery in 1865), a status that made a poor Muslim in important ways superior to even a wealthy dhimmi. This status allowed Muslim notables to be positively rapacious toward the dhimmi communities. To take an example from Jerusalem before 1800, the notables habitually extorted from the local Jewish community all sorts of irregular taxes, levies, fines, and bribes. These were in addition to the standard taxes, jizya and kharaj, imposed on non-Muslims (dhimmis) throughout the Islamic domain. This picture emerges from a study by Jacob Barnai of account ledgers of the Jewish community in Jerusalem from the second half of the eighteenth century. This kind of extra-legal exploitation (that is, beyond the prescription of Islamic law) seems to have ended by the late nineteenth century, yet descendants of some of the same Jerusalem notable families are still active in the leadership of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. Of course the Muslim peasants were exploited too, but so were Russian peasants at that time. Did that make Russian peasants a separate nation from the Russian land-owners? Or make Russia less oppressive to minorities, such as Jews? And who exploited the Muslim-Arab fallahin if not their own notables? As to a separate Arab nationalism (let alone "Palestinian" nationalism) before the First World War, the scholars Zeine Zeine, an Arab, and Ziya Gokalp, a Turk, agree that the Ottoman Empire was a joint enterprise of Turks and Arabs. Zeine wrote, "The Arabs as Muslims were proud of Turkish power and prestige. The Ottoman Empire was their Empire as much as it was the Turks'... the Arabs did not consider the Turkish rule as 'foreign' rule..." Gokalp wrote, "the Ottoman state might even be called a Turkish-Arab state." Thus it is not surprising that Jerusalem notables held senior positions in the imperial government. However, presenting certain "Palestinians" as imperialists would not befit the useful past that our authors intend to bestow on "the Palestinian people."
Kimmerling and Migdal do show that, although there was some Arab anti-Zionism before the First World War, there was little sense of "Palestine" as a separate country or of a "Palestinian people." And that little was mainly Christian, and thus was hardly representative. Further, the authors show that after the war, with the Ottoman Empire defeated, politically aware and active Palestinian Arabs took part in the general Arab nationalist movement. In particular, many supported Faisal, the British-sponsored king of Syria, and expected the Land of Israel to be part of a Syrian kingdom. One of these was Muhammad Amin el-Husseini, who later became Mufti of Jerusalem, courtesy of British appointment. It was after Faisal's kingdom had been overthrown by the French (July 1920) that the Arab leadership in the country saw the expedient need to focus on the newly created "Palestine" entity (juridically constituted at the San Remo Conference in April 1920), since there was no Greater Syria to be part of. At the Third Arab Congress held at Haifa in December 1920, five months after Faisal's overthrow, Musa Kazem Husseini supplied a pragmatic reason for focussing on Eretz-Israel (no longer "Southern Syria" but "Palestine" in his words). "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine" (Kimmerling and Migdal, p81). (In fact, a less important notable had proposed Arab autonomy in the country under British aegis in January 1919, before Faisal's downfall made the proposal seem necessary to most of the notables).
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