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The Effect of Socioeconomic Change on Arab Societal Collapse in Mandate Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Issa Khalaf
Issa Khalaf
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa 52001, U.S.A.
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Extract

Between December 1947 and the first four months of 1948, the fabric of a centuries-old Palestinian Arab society unraveled with astounding rapidity, producing 750,000 refugees. The collapse occurred within the context of widespread socioeconomic disruption and dislocation among peasants and migrant and urban workers. The eroding socioeconomic foundation severely weakened this lower stratum's defense against Zionist settlement, colonial state policies, and military pressures. Beginning in late Ottoman times and throughout the British Mandate period (1918–48), the agrarian social economy had been slowly undermined by the urban landowning class and oppressive tax and land-tenure systems. Peasant dispossession, begun in the 19th century and aggravated by Zionist land-buying in the 20th, created a significant landless rural population that was increasingly dependent on wage labor in scattered rural locations and in the cities. During the British Mandate, as Palestine was rapidly incorporated into the world market, communal harmony and social integration were further strained by urban–rural and peasant–landowner tensions, disjointed urban–working–class development, unemployment, and overcrowding. As a result, by the late 1940s Palestinian Arab society was on the brink of disintegration.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1997 , pp. 93 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

1 Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (New York: Cambridge University Press,1987);Google ScholarShlaim, Avi, Collusion Across the Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

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4 The much smaller, principally urban elite has receivedvirtually all the attention in the standard studies of Palestinian Arab society during the Mandateperiod.

5 Before the early 1880s, the tithe was fixed at 10 percent; Stein, , Land Question, 16.Google Scholar

6 Khalaf, , Politics in Palestine, 13–18Google Scholar; Stein, , “One Hundred Years of Social Change,” 61.Google Scholar

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14 Graham-Brown, , “Political Economy,“ 121.Google Scholar See 113–37 for a detailed discussion of the issues relating to land tenure and agricultural production.

15 al-Kayyālī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ed., Wathāʾ al-muqāwama al-Filasṭīniyya al-ʿArabiyya ḍidd al-iḥtilāl al-Baritani wa al-Ṣahyūniyya, 1918–1939 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968), 357–58.Google Scholar

16 Although controversy surrounds Jewish ownership, Stein's, Land Question is the most recent and best researched on the issue (see app. 2, 226).Google Scholar The figures are based on registered purchases and exclude government concessions.

17 Shaw Commission (1930), Johnson-Crosbie (1930), Hope-Simpson (1930), Lewis French (1931–33), and the Peel Commission (1937).

18 See Stein, , Land Question, 83, 105–8, noting land scarcity as early as 1930.Google Scholar

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22 Stein argues that the final tally of 899 landless (or about 5,000 earners and dependents) made by French, Lewis and the Development Department in the 1930s was not “demonstrative of anything except a Jewish Agency political victory”; Land Question, 157.Google Scholar The department, which was formed to deal with the landless problem, relied heavily on the Jewish Agency for documentation and opinions. All claims before the department were sent to the Jewish Agency before a final decision. Though Stein ventures no estimate of Arab landlessness caused by Jewish land purchases, he notes that the 1929 purchase of Wadi Hawarith lands, about 30 miles south of Haifa, alone caused the eviction of 900 of the 1,200 tenants at Wadi Hawarith (see Stein, , Land Question, 76–79).Google Scholar

23 Calculated from ibid., 182 (table 13).

24 Lesch, , Arab Politics, 69.Google Scholar

25 Porath, , The Palestinian Arab, 129.Google Scholar The word is Porath's. Jewish labor policy originated in the 1920s. In the 1931–35 period, the Jewish population increased from 175,000 to 355,000.

26 Palestine Government, Department of Statistics, “Survey of Social and Economic Conditions in Arab Villages, 1944,” General Monthly Bulletin of Current Statistics (12 1945): 756.Google Scholar

27 Nathan, Robert R., Gass, Oscar, and Creamer, Daniel, Palestine: Problems and Promise(Washington, D.C.: American Council of Public Affairs, 1946), 196.Google Scholar The figure is useful only as a rough indicator, because no clarification is given as to how it was arrived at.

28 Palestine Government, Census of Palestine, 1931, 2 vols. (Alexandria: Whitehead Morris, 1933), 1:282.Google Scholar

29 An assumption borne out by the table on ownership size, based on Rural Property Tax records, in Stein, , Land Question, 28.Google Scholar In the Safad subdistrict, a mere 1.6 percent of the landowners (76 of 4,657) held more than 500 dunums. Scarcity of large landholders was even more apparent in the subdistricts of Acre (0.06%, or 57 out of 9,308) and Haifa (0.08%, or 25 out of 3,276).

30 SeeTaqqu, Rachelle L., “Arab Labor in Mandatory Palestine, 1920–1948” (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1977), 54–56Google Scholar. There are no dependable figures on wage labor for the 1920s.

31 Ibid., 58.

32 Government of Palestine, A Survey of Palestine, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Government Printers, 12 1945 and 01 1946), 1:336–42.Google Scholar According to Jewish sources, the number of Arabs who worked on Jewish-owned groves at the peak of the season was as high as 8,000, clearly an exaggerated figure. See Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 59.Google Scholar

33 Colonial Office (Economic Affairs section, no specific author), note on Arabs employed in Jewish and mixed undertakings, 27 May 1941, PRO, File CO 852/499/1941.

34 See Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 84–98, 106–12Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of these and related points.

35 First Interim Report of Employment Committee, 27 October 1944, PRO, File CO 733/469/76284/45.

36 Ibid.

37 Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 182.Google Scholar

38 This paragraph is based on ibid., 172–73, 177–82. Also see Taqqu, Rachelle L., “Peasants into Workmen: Internal Labor Migration and the Arab Village Community Under the Mandate,” in Palestinian Society and Politics, ed. Migdal, Joel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 272–81.Google Scholar

39 Nathan, , Gass, , Creamer, , Problems and Promise, 213.Google Scholar

40 Survey, 1:364–68. The Survey listed data for only seven of the eight subdistricts.Google Scholar

41 Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 182Google Scholar; idem, “Peasants into Workmen,” 279–80.

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43 Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 189–92.Google Scholar

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47 Annual Report of the Department of Labor, 13 December 1942, PRO, File CO 733/441/75430/42–43. The Labor League, affiliated with the Histadrut, claimed 500 members.

48 For an account of PAWS's and the Arab labor movement's history and its political interaction with the established leadership, see ʿYāsīn, Abd al-Qādir, “al-Ṭabaqa al-ʿummāliyya wa al-ḥaraka al-siyāsiyya fī Filasṭīn,” Shuʾūn Filasṭīniyya 33 (1976);Google Scholar and al-Hindī, Ḥanī, “Mulāḥaẓāt ḥawl awḍāʿ al-ṭabaqa al-ʿArabiyya al-ʿāmila fī Filasṭīn fī ʿ ahd al-intidāb,” Shuʾūn Filasṭīniyya 32 (1974).Google Scholar

49 Inspector General of Labor, Jerusalem Region, note to HC, 13 09 1943, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42.Google Scholar

50 Survey, 2:764.Google Scholar

51 Confidential note from CS Stanley to HC Macmichael, 14 August 1942, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42.

52 Labor Department Director's Report on Labor Exchanges, 8 July 1944, PRO, File CO 733/459/ 754302/44.

53 On government patronage of Arab trade unionism, see Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 194–212.Google Scholar Also, Annual Report of the Department of Labor, 13 December 1942, File CO 733/441/75430/42–43.

54 Memo from the Central Committee of PAWS, meeting at Nazareth, to HC, 14 January 1946, ISA, R.G. 2, File G/41/45, 1945/46. (“G” is for Local Government section.)

55 Khattar, I., Assistant Inspector of Labor, Haifa, to Inspector, Northern Region, 19 05 1945, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42.Google Scholar For activities and conferences of PAWS and other unions, see ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42; ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/1/45; also, al-Hindī, “Mulāḥaẓāt.”

56 Jamal Hamid, Safad Arab Labor Society Secretary, to Safad District Commissioner (DC), 24 February 1937, ISA, R.G. 27 (District Commissioner's Office, Galilee), File S225:27–2681.Google Scholar

57 Regarding the formation of numerous PAWS branches, see DC reports (under “Societies”), Galilee District, ISA, R.G. 27. The government and CO were suspicious of, but did not try to stop, these developments. The CS wrote to the HC that “it is difficult to see the object of trade unions in villages, and it will be recalled that other prima facie harmless organizations (e.g., the Boy Scouts) have been turned in the past to illicit purposes.” CS (Stanley) to HC (Macmichael), forwarded to Galilee DC, 28 September 1943, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42.

58 Miller, , Government and Society, 147–48.Google ScholarMukhtārs included a wide range of individuals, from men of little status to large landowners, from those representing narrow kinship or religious groups to those representing a whole village or villages (see 146).

59 Miller, , “Administrative Policy in Rural Palestine,” in Palestinian Society, 140.Google Scholar

60 E. M. Chudleigh, Inspector General, Jerusalem Region, note on FATU, 15 July 1943, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/31/42.

61 Ibid.

62 Regional Inspector of Labor, Jerusalem, to Director of Labor, 3 November 1945, ISA, R.G. 2, File I/LAB/1/45. See also Palestine Government report on the development of Communism in Palestine, 27 April 1946. PRO, File FO 371/52621.

63 Graves report in HC (Macmichael) to CS (Stanley), 19 June 1941, PRO, File CO 733/75430/ 21941.

64 Part of the following discussion is based on Taqqu, , “Arab Labor,” 212–21.Google Scholar