WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #178 II. 10 - The anarchist communists, the Jewish and Palestinian questions - section II.: The people of Palestine (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

As is known, the First World War marked the end of the great
multi-ethnic empires and saw the definitive affirmation of national
states. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires disappeared. Although
these states were defined as the sick states of Europe, in reality it
was the Ottoman one that was particularly weak and characterized by an
economic development that lagged significantly behind that of the
countries of the European continent: the collapse became evident in the
face of the defeats of the Turkish army , suffered at the hands of the
Greeks, who managed to occupy part of Anatolia and who were repelled
only thanks to the initiative of Mustafà Kemal Pasha. later became
Ataturk. His military and political skills were not sufficient to keep
most of the territory of the immense empire under Turkish control, which
therefore became prey to the victorious powers of the war who proceeded
to divide up the spoils, becoming agents.

France was assigned Lebanon and Syria, while Britain opted for Jordan,
Palestine and Iraq. Palestine was chosen by the English because its
territory was contiguous to Egypt, a country over which England
exercised the protectorate and which sought to free itself from its
tutelage in order to become totally independent. For some time, a
reflection on the possible end of the protectorate had begun within the
English government and therefore Great Britain needed to acquire a new
base of operations to exercise its control over the Suez Canal, of great
strategic value for the control of the trade and the seas, owning the
majority of the shares of the Canal Company which owned it. The
Palestinian territory, due to its proximity to the canal, would have
constituted a valid base in which to deploy its forces to guard the
entire area.

Already in 1916 the French and British governments stipulated the
Sykes-Picot agreement[12]to divide the spheres

[12]Secret agreement (1916) between England, represented by M. Sykes
(1879-1918), and France, represented by F. Georges-Picot (1870-1951),
with the consent of Tsarist Russia, for decide their respective spheres
of influence and control in the Middle East, after the supposedly
imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

of influence in the Middle East. In fact the partition took place in
1920, on the occasion of the Sanremo conference and with the signing of
the Treaty of Sévres; in those places the mandates were decided and
Palestine fell back under the control of the British Empire which had
already expressed its interest in the matter at the time. Great Britain
considered control of the Suez Canal indispensable; the Mandate of
Palestine played well with British interests, as this coincided with the
aspirations of the Zionist movement to move to Palestine and therefore
an expression of interest was drawn up in the form of a letter.

This position was made public on 2 November 1917 by Arthur James
Balfour, Foreign Secretary of His Majesty's Government of the United
Kingdom. The official document, on behalf of the English executive, was
then delivered to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, second baron of the
house and, above all, major exponent of the

leadership of the English Jewish community, to in turn pass it on to the
Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland:

"Dear Lord Rothschild, It gives me great pleasure to deliver to you, on
behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of
sympathy with the aspirations of Jewish Zionism, which has been
submitted, and therefore approved, by the Government." "His Majesty's
Government looks favorably upon the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will endeavor actively to
facilitate the attainment of this object."

In other words, the English considering their presence in Egypt to be
precarious, deemed it appropriate to settle in Palestine and, to make
control of the territory easier, they worried about their allies,
preparing an environment favorable to them; in exchange the Jewish
nationalist movement obtained political recognition essential for the

realization of his project, consolidating the first emigrations that had
already occurred in Ottoman Palestine.

This territory was part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516 and has always
been inhabited by a melting pot of populations, belonging to the three
faiths of the book, Jews, Christians and Muslims. After the Ottoman
occupation the region had been divided into several administrative units
and a part of its historical territory had been annexed to the Eyalet of
Damascus until 1660, and then to that of Sidon, while the rest was part
of the Sanjak of Jerusalem, which, as the seat of the Holy Places,
became an independent mutasarriflik whose mitasarrif was directly
responsible to the

central government of Constantinople, its ministries and departments of
State.

This factual situation pushes supporters of the legitimacy of Jewish
resettlement in Palestine to argue that at the time there did not exist
in those territories a people capable of self-determination with their
own self-aware institutions, united by cultural and political bonds and
that therefore the Jews they had every right to resettle there.

Certainly Palestine at the time was a land without a state where
cohesion between the different components of the population was
guaranteed by the existence of capitulations - unilateral concessions
that the Sultan granted to a foreign power, obtaining economic and
commercial benefits. The existence of these actual legal contracts which
recognized rights and privileges in favor of the subjects of the
contracting states present in various capacities on Ottoman territory,
were guaranteed by the Sultan. Jerusalem as a city receiving pilgrimages
was subject to capitulations with France for the protection of
Catholics, England for that of Protestants and Russia as protector of
Orthodox pilgrims.

As regards the majority of the native population "...almost 80% of the
inhabitants lived in rural areas, dedicating themselves to agriculture
and residing, mostly, in small villages, preferably located in the large
hilly areas of the hinterland. Settling in the coastal plain or the
eastern lowlands would instead have put farmers at the mercy of
predatory Bedouins. Furthermore, the mortality rate was high, mainly due
to the precarious hygienic and housing conditions. Already since the
beginning of the nineteenth century the entire area had been affected by
migratory flows of considerable importance, motivated by the objective
of making it the location in which to carry out projects variously
inspired by religious or political reasons, very often one combined with
the other." (Claudio Vercelli, Stories and counterstories).

Now, it is true that what makes a community a nation is the awareness of
the existence of a reciprocity of ties, but this does not occur only in
the face of the existence of the institutional element and therefore
with the exercise of a single sovereignty, exercised by a State, in the
name and on behalf of every individual who is part of it. We must
consider the unifying element of language, customs and traditions,
religious affiliation, which in this specific case has undergone changes
over time conditioned by the political events that that territory has
gone through which was composite and

segmented but guaranteed by the personal statutes of the individual
components of the population.

Due to the particular characteristics of the territory in Palestine, the
onset of the consciousness of being a nation has matured in its own
time, as has happened in many parts of the planet and this is because
historical processes do not everywhere have the times of the West which
provides the clock of history, but the acquisition of this awareness
occurred at a deferred time and in parallel for the Israeli component
and for the native populations. The population of the Palestinian
territories led an autonomous existence, unrelated to the official
political activity of the Sanjak, which constituted exclusively an
administrative superstructure of the Ottoman Empire which did not allow
the participation and political involvement of the population.

Resistance to occupation and expropriation: the responsibilities of the
mandate countries

The proof of what we affirm is offered by the ways in which immigrant
populations have acquired ownership of the land, establishing their own
jurisdiction over the territory. At the time, due to the combined effect
of the application of the law of the Ottoman Empire and in particular of
the civil code, the Mejelle, which came into force towards the middle of
the 19th century, based on the shari'a, and the coexistence of this with
the capitulations that guaranteed to whom the integrity of the person
and property was subject, Muslims and those belonging to other faiths
were subject to different rules of law. The aforementioned code was
applied to Muslims, consisting of 16 volumes and 1,851 articles, drawn
up between 1869 and 1876, which came into force in 1877. The result of
the elaborations of the Hanafi legal school, integrated with elements of
law from Sunni madhahib, its structure and its structure had been
influenced by the most recent and contemporary European experiences in
the field of codification and it also dealt with property, obviously
excluding family law reserved to the jurisdiction of religious law. This
legislation was supplemented by individual laws issued by the
mandate-holding authority and remained in force in Israel formally until
1984.

Given that under Islamic law all goods are given to men by Allah, so the
use of property must always respect nature and others, no one can be
deprived of the goods necessary to live. There are therefore goods in
common such as water, which belongs to God, and therefore to the
community, as well as minerals and fire and what produces it. Not only
that, but it is the family in the person of its head who manages the
property through the regulation of succession and the use of the waqf,
an institution that contributes to increasing the community's properties
managed for charitable purposes

for the benefit of religion and community. This meant that the Arab
component enjoyed property protection that was overall weaker than the
protection offered by Western systems.

 From this complex structure of the ownership structure comes a
propensity to expand public ownership which needed to be demobilized and
placed on the market to facilitate the development of a capitalist
economy. Therefore, as in other countries subject to mandate or colonial
administration, the dismantling of waqfs was also launched in Palestine
to place the land on the real estate market and what was public was put
up for sale at the disposal of private individuals. The migrants took
advantage of this situation and, having access to capital, purchased the
land

not only by private individuals, but by the public administration which
owned more than 45% of the total surface area, thus removing it from
community use. Expropriation for reasons of public utility did the rest.

The population tried in vain to oppose this policy but the colonists
were able to continually acquire new lands, also because they had more
advanced knowledge of technological equipment, capital and knowledge to
cultivate arid lands, privatizing the use of water. and using it with
rationality and more advanced technologies and to propose the
implementation of new crops.

The propulsive role, from an economic point of view, played by the
community structure of the social organization of the settlers, based on
solidarity and strengthened by the community of intent deriving from the
sharing of a political and ideal project, strengthened by common
religious belonging, should not be underestimated. The use of kibbutzim

to proceed with planning of the exploitation of the territory was
precious and allowed the creation of an advanced economy which
enormously increased the standard of living of the settlers compared to
that of the native population who, moreover, was excluded from the
experience of the kibbutzim because of their religion She's not Jewish.
And yet the new cultures planted on the land recovered for agriculture
required labor in addition to that which the migrant community could
make available and it was therefore necessary to hire a large number of
non-Jews as wage workers, with the result of reintroducing into the
structure of the kibbutz precisely that wage relationship typical of
subordinate work that they wanted to exclude.

Thus the Palestinian Arab population found itself excluded from the
process of economic growth generated by the insertion of the settlers
into the social fabric and the conditions were laid for that fracture
between two opposing societies which over time would become armies
against each other, not only because divided by religious diversity,
ethical values, different traditions and customs, but also and above all
by their economic and class conditions. As time passed, and even more
so, due to the progressive decrease in land owned and used by the Arab
community of Palestine, the aggressiveness of this part of the
population towards the settlers grew and armed defense was structured by
the settlers who opted to a widespread defense of their settlements,
through the construction of volunteer militias, in the absence of one

state authority capable of resolving disputes, while the mandatary
authorities limited themselves to observing or even supporting the
settlers on whom they relied to maintain military control of the area.

The clashes, including armed ones, and the mutual reprisals began to sow
resentment and hatred ever since, which stratified over time until it
led to the war of the Jewish settlers against the mandatory authorities
first and then against the Arab populations, to give rise to the
formation of the State of Israel.

https://www.ucadi.org/2023/11/05/i-comunisti-anarchici-la-questione-ebraica-e-quella-palestinese/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca