A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel / Edition 1

by Gudrun Krämer, Graham Harman

Overview

It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events—from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century—that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, A History of Palestine offers a richly detailed interpretation of this critical region's evolution.

Starting with the prebiblical and biblical roots of Palestine, noted historian Gudrun Krämer examines the meanings ascribed to the land in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Paying special attention to social and economic factors, she examines the gradual transformation of Palestine, following the history of the region through the Egyptian occupation of the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman reform era, and the British Mandate up to the founding of Israel in 1948. Focusing on the interactions of Arabs and Jews, A History of Palestine tells how these connections affected the cultural and political evolution of each community and Palestine as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691118970
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/03/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	1,022,180
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gudrun Krämer is professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Her books include A History of Islam and The Jews in Modern Egypt.

Read an Excerpt

A History of Palestine

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By Gudrun Krämer Princeton University Press
Copyright © 2008 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-11897-0

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Chapter One NAMES AND BORDERS

There are no innocent terms, especially in geography. For centuries Palestine, as known under the British Mandate in the twentieth century, formed no independent geographical and political unit. Its names and borders changed, and so did its population. As a part of the Fertile Crescent extending from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and from the Taurus and Zagros Mountains in the north to the Arabian desert in the south, Palestine was always a land of passage. For this reason it was also a site of cultural encounter and exchange. As part and parcel of "greater" Syria, Palestine has few natural landmarks, and aside from the Mediterranean it has no "natural borders." The Jordan Valley provides one geographical marker and the Sinai Peninsula another. But neither of them offered any "natural" protection to the inhabitants of the area against hostile incursions. Its borders were largely man-made and hence variable, often determined less by the local population than by powerful neighbors. Still, over time an entity emerged that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley and sometimes beyond, depending on the state of settlement of the Syrian desert. In the north, it included parts of present-day Lebanon as far as the Litani River; in the south, itcontained portions of the Negev, but not the Sinai. In political terms, Palestine in part or in whole was usually a province within a great empire; only rarely, and even then only for short periods, did it form an independent political unit.

In the context of the Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine, places and place- names have acquired great significance to all efforts to legitimize particular historical rights to the land. To be able to establish the names of things serves as one of the most telling indicators of political and cultural power. For this reason the various terms used to designate the land of "Palestine" are instructive, reflecting as they did the dominant perspective and by the same token prevailing power relations. As is well known, the terms "Near" and "Middle East" make sense only when viewed from Europe, but were nonetheless adopted into the political vocabulary of these regions themselves. Regarding Palestine, the dominant perspective has clearly been informed by biblical associations, on the basis of which even the borders of the British Mandate were drawn after World War I. This perspective, however, is distorted and distorting, affecting presentations of the land and its people as well as their history. It places the Jews at the center, pushing all other population groups (even if and when they formed a majority) into the background, if it considers them at all. This holds for ancient ("biblical") as much as for modern times. Remarkably, it also holds for Arab Christians, about whom we know far less than about the Jewish inhabitants of the area, at least for the modern period. Both Muslim and Christian Palestinians have complained about their marginalization in public perception and historical research. Still, the "biblical" approach is the prevalent one, and the most powerful historically. In the following it will be impossible to escape it entirely. The Jewish claim to Palestine as the "Land of Israel" (Eretz Yisrael) bases itself on biblical narratives and asserts the unbroken presence of the Jewish people in this land and their bond to it. The Arab claim, meanwhile, calls into question the uninterrupted presence of Jews, and points to Arab roots dating back over a millennium. Some will refer to the Canaanites, who settled in the land before the Israelites, as their own ancestors.

Both sides, then, claim priority in terms of chronology (the right of the firstborn, so to speak), both make use of archaeology, both draw maps, and both argue by means of place-names. Scarcely any spot on the map-whether it be Jerusalem (Urshalimum/Yerushalayim/al-Quds), the northern plain leading from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley (Esdra(e)lon and Jezreel/Marj Ibn Amir), or the hilly inland terrain (Judaea and Samaria in Hebrew)-is exempt from this contest. Palestine, or Eretz Israel, offers a textbook case of the "territorialization of history," in which political claims are anchored in historical geography. Biblical scholars have spoken of a veritable "geotheology." For this reason we need to clarify not only designations such as "Canaan" or "Palestine" itself, but also "Eretz Israel," "Promised Land," and "Holy Land"-designations that were first used following Israelite settlement in a land previously controlled by the Egyptians, Hittites, or Assyrians, and inhabited by various ethnic groups.

"Canaan" and "Palestine"

Settlement can be traced back to earliest times. Already in the middle and late periods of the Old Stone Age (70,000-14,000 B.C.), characteristic differences appear between the coastal plain with its river valleys extending inland, and the central hills and mountains, differences that remained important up to the modern era. In the Bronze Age (ca. 3,200-1,200 B.C.) an urban culture emerged among a population that took its name from the land of "Canaan" and became known under the generic name of "Canaanites." Little is known about Canaan and the Canaanites. The etymology of "Canaan" is unclear, and the precise location and extent of the territory so designated appear to have varied considerably over time. Contemporary testimony suggests that in the second millennium B.C., the term served primarily to designate individual population groups centered in and around a number of "city-states" rather than a well-defined territory. Only in the Hellenistic period was Canaan identified more or less consistently with Phoenicia, that is, with the Levantine littoral. The sources do not divulge the identity or origin of its inhabitants; we do know, however, that (like the Israelites) they spoke a western Semitic language or dialect, and we have some information about their material culture, religious life, and art, all of which showed Mesopotamian influence. In the Bible they are described with negative stereotypes, as barbaric idol-worshippers contrasting with the monotheistic Israelites, and portrayed with as much revulsion as the Egyptians and their cult of animals and idols. While this tells us something about the self-image and perceptions of the biblical narrators, we should not take it as a reliable ethnographic description.

The regional powers ruling the area exercised control in varying fashion, and for the most part in a loose manner only. Under Egyptian domination, lasting from the middle of the sixteenth century (when it was at most intermittent and by and large confined to the lowlands) to the twelfth century B.C., "Canaan" appears to have denoted an Egyptian "province" (the term is to be used with caution and not to be conceived along the Roman model) whose area roughly coincided with later Palestine. This at least would seem to follow from the Amarna Letters dating from the mid-fourteenth century B.C., when Pharaoh Akhenaten moved his residence to what is now Tell el-Amarna. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, we find the first mention of "Hebrews," who may have been identical with, or affiliated to, the bands of nomads, bandits, and brigands called "Apiru" or "Habiru" in Egyptian texts (the issue is much debated). The name "Israel" itself is first found on a stele of Pharaoh Merenptah, which according to the so-called middle chronology is dated c. 1210 B.C., and in which "Israel" designates a group of people, or to be more precise, a foreign people, not a given territory. "Israel" as depicted on this stele may well have been part of the population of seminomadic pastoralists described in contemporary Egyptian sources as "Shasu," living in the hilly terrain east and west of the Jordan, and sporadically raiding the lowlands, moving as far as Gaza.

The twelfth century was marked by the arrival of the Philistines, members of the so-called Sea Peoples, an Indo-European group from the Aegean region who, both peacefully and by force, entered the region later known as Palestine. The Philistines settled mostly on the coastal plain from the later Gaza to Mount Karmel, while the Israelites lived in the inland hills and mountains. The "Canaanites" and Philistines contributed greatly to the cultural and economic history of the Ancient Near East. The consonantal script developed by the Phoenicians of present-day Lebanon, which was to spread throughout the Middle East and Europe, is a case in point. Yet it was the Israelites (Hebrews, Jews) who profoundly shaped the subsequent history of Palestine, and with one major exception, also coined the place-names used to designate this land. The only designation recalling the Philistines is the one most widely used today, at least outside of Israel: "Palestine" itself. From the Assyrian "palastu" to the Greek "Palaistine," via the Latin "Palaestina," the term was ultimately adopted not only by the European languages, but also by Arabic, where it appears as "Filastin."

The "Land of Israel": Promised and Taken

It may be bold, if not presumptuous, to attempt a brief sketch of the Jewish tradition concerning such central concepts as the "Promised Land," or the "land of the patriarchs." The Bible, on which this tradition is primarily based, does not provide us with a straightforward narrative stretching from Moses, Joshua, and the Judges to the minor prophets, beginning with the creation and ending with the expulsion of the people of Israel from the land of Israel, and their yearning for a return and redemption in this land. Instead, it offers a complex narrative fabric reflecting rival traditions. Their redaction and exegesis were of political relevance, especially with regard to the issue of land. Given the controversies over the nature of the divine promise, over God-given rights and their political consequences, it is worth considering more closely the biblical evidence cited in modern times. Here it is clearly not a question of exploring the intricacies of literary form, historical embeddedness, and shifting interpretation of individual terms, concepts, and textual passages, all of them subject to heated dispute in biblical scholarship. The aim can only be to briefly present the repertory to which later generations have had recourse, often without sufficient consideration for either text or context.

In the first instance we must distinguish between (1) Canaan or the "promised land," as described in the biblical stories of Abraham and Moses; (2) the area actually settled by the Israelites; and finally (3) the land of Israel as defined by Jewish law, the Halakha. All three (and this contributes considerably to the confusion) can be rendered in Hebrew as "Eretz Israel," or the land of Israel. The land that according to Jewish tradition Abra(ha)m and his children were promised through a covenant with God, that was later renewed with Moses and is known in the Jewish tradition as "the borders of the patriarchs" and in the Christian tradition as terra promissionis, appears in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) in various forms, some of them quite vague, if not outright contradictory. As much as they differ in detail, they include not just the territory of later Palestine, but also Lebanon as well as most of Syria. What the exegetes differ about is whether the Transjordanian lands south of Lake Tiberias ("Gilead," "Moab," and "Edom") should be viewed as part and parcel of the Promised Land or Eretz Israel. This is not the case in those parts of the Bible attributed to the so-called Priestly writer, and the rabbinical commentaries based upon them. They exclude the Transjordanian region from Eretz Israel, in both its promised ("ideal") and settled ("real") borders. The boundaries of Canaan as sketched in Numbers 34:1- 12, describing the inheritance promised to the descendants of Moses, seem to reflect the borders of the Egyptian province of the same name, as established by Ramses II around 1270 B.C. after the battle of Kadesh, in his peace treaty with the Hittites. Its eastern border is formed by the Jordan River, whose crossing by the Israelites under Joshua is so vividly described in the Bible; the Euphrates is not even mentioned.

The broader conception of the "ideal borders" of Eretz Israel, in which the land east of the Jordan is included as part of the promise, appears to have arisen later, but was eventually to gain wide acceptance. We find it in Genesis 15:18-21, where the borders reach far beyond the land of the Canaanites:

On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

Here we already find the famous "from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates," or even more succinctly, "from the Nile to the Euphrates," which plays such a prominent role in modern disputes over the aims of the Zionists and their alleged expansionist intentions. Modern scholars as well as rabbinical sources have identified the "river of Egypt" (nahal mitzrayim in Hebrew) not with the Nile or one of its branches in the eastern delta, but rather with the Wadi al-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, which enters the Mediterranean about forty-five kilometers southwest of Rafah. Still, there remains the daring presumption concerning the Euphrates-even if the "Euphratic hubris" (in Lothar Perlitt's phrase) was to remain wishful thinking. Canaan, where God led Abraham's father Terah according to Genesis 11:31, formed only one part of the Promised Land as described in Genesis 15:18?1 quoted above. Two things are significant here: First, the land promised to Abraham was neither settled nor occupied by him or his kin, not even in part. Second, even if God's "eternal covenant" was made only with Isaac and his sons (Gen. 17:19 and 21; Deut. 1:7-8), the descendants of Abraham that Genesis 15:18-1 refers to also included the sons of Ishmael, whom the Bible names as the ancestor of the "Ishmaelites" (commonly identified as an Arab tribal confederacy), and whom the Muslims recognize as one of their prophets.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A History of Palestine by Gudrun Krämer
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

List of Tables ix

Preface xi

Abbreviations xiii

CHAPTER ONE: Names and Borders 1

CHAPTER TWO: The Holiness of the "Holy Land" 18

CHAPTER THREE: Contrasts: Palestine, 1750-1840 37

CHAPTER FOUR: The Age of Reform, 1840-1914 71

CHAPTER FIVE: Evolving Nationalisms: Zionism and Arabism, 1880-1914 101

CHAPTER SIX: "A Land without a People for a People without a Land"? Population, Settlement, and Cultivation, 1800-1914 128

CHAPTER SEVEN: World War I and the British Mandate 139

CHAPTER EIGHT: Double Standard, or Dual Obligation 164

CHAPTER NINE: "Two Peoples in One Land" 188

CHAPTER TEN: The Mufti and the Wailing Wall 216

CHAPTER ELEVEN: From Unrest to Uprising 238

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Arab Uprising, 1936-39 264

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Triumph and Catastrophe: From World War II to the State of Israel 296

Bibliography 325

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

Gudrun Krämer, Winner of the 2010 Gerda Henkel Prize, Gerda Henkel Foundation

From the Publisher

[T]his is a comprehensive and readable account which should be useful to both students and scholars. Krämer's insistence on confronting the historiographical dominance of 1882 is a valuable intervention, and her long view of the past gives today's conflict the wider historical context that too many commentators choose to overlook.

Modernism/modernity - Anna Bernard

For anyone seriously interested in the century-old Arab/Jewish struggle for the land they both call holy, you must get acquainted with Gudrun Krämer's A History of Palestine. A professor of Islamic studies at Free University of Berlin, she presents an exhaustive overview of the country's past from the Ottoman conquest to the creation of Israel, albeit with a subtle Arabist slant.

15 Minutes Magazine - Tim Boxer

Gudrun Kramer's book, although its name is not attractive, is a very interesting, well written book, which can enrich even those who know the history of Palestine. For those who will use it as a first book on Palestine, it is a good starting place.

Shofar - Gideon Biger

[T]his is the first serious biography of the mufti to appear in 14 years and only the fourth ever to appear in English. The authors should be encouraged to greatly expand their research for a much larger second edition. The first edition is already valuable for the dark tale it tells.

Sunday Times - Marin Sieff

Krämer's is a well-researched and thoroughly referenced work of synthesis offered by a cautious and reflective historian. . . . A History of Palestine is a respectable addition to the synthetic literature in the field. For the non-specialist reader, the book offers a good introduction to the social, political, cultural, and economic history of Palestine and a wealth of statistical information. For specialists, the book is a further reminder of the challenges posed by colonial history and to the importance, in the twenty-first century, of including the voices of the indigenous peoples as well as the colonists.

English Historical Review - Abdel Razzaq Takriti

[Krämer] brilliantly contextualizes Arab anti-Semitism by investigating how, for the Palestinian population, the borders between Jew and Zionist gradually became blurred. By making a series of similar investigations, tracing all the defining points of the conflict, she has been able to write a book that stands out as necessary background reading for all scholars intent on investigating the current situation in Palestine.

Journal of Peace Research - Jorgen Jensehaugen

An excellent source for those desiring an understanding of the background to the present-day unrest in the region.

Dallas Morning News - L. Edward Sizemore

We tend not to notice that Palestine existed as a territory before there was an Israel, and before there was a Palestinian national movement. Krämer, professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin, goes back to early 19th-century Egyptian rule, and then to the modernization undertaken by the Ottoman Empire, to situate the present in its historical context.

The Globe and Mail - Martin Levin

For anyone seriously interested in the century-old Arab/Jewish struggle for the land they both call holy, you must get acquainted with Gudrun Krämer's A History of Palestine. A professor of Islamic studies at Free University of Berlin, she presents an exhaustive overview of the country's past from the Ottoman conquest to the creation of Israel, albeit with a subtle Arabist slant.
— Tim Boxer

15 Minutes Magazine

[T]his is a comprehensive and readable account which should be useful to both students and scholars. Krämer's insistence on confronting the historiographical dominance of 1882 is a valuable intervention, and her long view of the past gives today's conflict the wider historical context that too many commentators choose to overlook.
— Anna Bernard

Modernism/Modernity

[T]his is a comprehensive and readable account which should be useful to both students and scholars. Krämer's insistence on confronting the historiographical dominance of 1882 is a valuable intervention, and her long view of the past gives today's conflict the wider historical context that too many commentators choose to overlook.
— Anna Bernard

Modernism/modernity

This is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies on this increasingly popular field, and the book will be of much use to those teaching classes on Middle Eastern history, the history of the Ottoman Empire and Israel Studies. It will also prove useful in seminars on the construction of historical narratives, the connection between religion and nationalism, and processes of decolonialization.

Religious Studies Review - Scott Ury

[Krämer] brilliantly contextualizes Arab anti-Semitism by investigating how, for the Palestinian population, the borders between Jew and Zionist gradually became blurred. By making a series of similar investigations, tracing all the defining points of the conflict, she has been able to write a book that stands out as necessary background reading for all scholars intent on investigating the current situation in Palestine.
— Jørgen Jensehaugen

Journal of Peace Research

This is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies on this increasingly popular field, and the book will be of much use to those teaching classes on Middle Eastern history, the history of the Ottoman Empire and Israel Studies. It will also prove useful in seminars on the construction of historical narratives, the connection between religion and nationalism, and processes of decolonialization.
— Scott Ury

Religious Studies Review

Krämer's is a well-researched and thoroughly referenced work of synthesis offered by a cautious and reflective historian. . . . A History of Palestine is a respectable addition to the synthetic literature in the field. For the non-specialist reader, the book offers a good introduction to the social, political, cultural, and economic history of Palestine and a wealth of statistical information. For specialists, the book is a further reminder of the challenges posed by colonial history and to the importance, in the twenty-first century, of including the voices of the indigenous peoples as well as the colonists.
— Abdel Razzaq Takriti

English Historical Review

We tend not to notice that Palestine existed as a territory before there was an Israel, and before there was a Palestinian national movement. Krämer, professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin, goes back to early 19th-century Egyptian rule, and then to the modernization undertaken by the Ottoman Empire, to situate the present in its historical context.
— Martin Levin

The Globe and Mail

Gudrun Kramer's book, although its name is not attractive, is a very interesting, well written book, which can enrich even those who know the history of Palestine. For those who will use it as a first book on Palestine, it is a good starting place.
— Gideon Biger

Shofar

[T]his is the first serious biography of the mufti to appear in 14 years and only the fourth ever to appear in English. The authors should be encouraged to greatly expand their research for a much larger second edition. The first edition is already valuable for the dark tale it tells.
— Marin Sieff

Sunday Times

An excellent source for those desiring an understanding of the background to the present-day unrest in the region.
— L. Edward Sizemore

Dallas Morning News

[Krämer] brilliantly contextualizes Arab anti-Semitism by investigating how, for the Palestinian population, the borders between Jew and Zionist gradually became blurred. By making a series of similar investigations, tracing all the defining points of the conflict, she has been able to write a book that stands out as necessary background reading for all scholars intent on investigating the current situation in Palestine.

Journal of Peace Research - Jørgen Jensehaugen

The 400 years before the founding of the Jewish state is a historiographical minefield, but Krämer (The Jews in Modern Egypt), a professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin, manages to produce an illuminating survey of the terrain. She insists that modern Palestine had a history before large-scale Jewish immigration began in the late 19th century, along with a substantial, rooted Arab population and society, and a growing economy. The author pays full due to the dynamism of the Zionist nation-building project and the development it brought to Palestine, often to the benefit of Arabs, but also accords weight and legitimacy to the Arab nationalist reaction-while observing that, even as the two communities remained socially segregated, they were economically interdependent and spatially intertwined. The author's restrained account of Israel's war of independence notes atrocities on all sides as it depicts a sometimes incidental, sometimes deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing of Arabs by the Israeli military. Krämer's fluent narrative pairs a much-needed focus on facts-including useful data on contentious issues of population growth and land ownership-with an evenhanded avoidance of partisanship. 14 b&w photos, maps. (Mar.)

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