From the Caliphate to Balfour
Part 3 of the series “The Palestine Question” · Section Two, Chapter One

From the Caliphate
to the Balfour Declaration

For four centuries the Ottomans kept Palestine. At the end of that era a strange idea was born: that a land could be taken from its people and given to another. How was it born? Who made it? And how did Britain promise a land it had not yet occupied?

For high-school & university students4 themes · 30-minute readQuiz at the end

Timeline (1516–1917) · tap any point

Earliest on the left.

One

The Ottomans in Palestine

A state the people of Palestine saw as their own, so none of them thought of breaking away from it.

The caliphate: strength, then weakness1516–1517 onward

The Ottomans annexed Palestine in 1516–1517, when their state was among the strongest in the world: from eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece) to Iraq, Syria, the Hijaz, Egypt, Sudan and most of North Africa. Decline set in from the 18th century: lost territory, failure to keep up with Western science, debt, European influence, and intellectual and legal stagnation.

4 centuriesduring which the Ottomans preserved Palestine’s Islamic identity
5 sanjaksJerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus and Lajjun, under the province of Damascus
1873the district of Jerusalem was separated and linked directly to Istanbul because of its importance

Were the Arabs “occupied” by the Ottomans?Testimony from within

Some people repeat that Ottoman rule was a “Turkish occupation.” The book cites the opposite testimony from Palestinian figures themselves:

“The Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular, were sincere in their feelings toward the state and the Sultan, and fully ready for war and struggle.”
Aref al-Aref, one of Palestine’s leading historians

Hajj Amin al-Husseini testified before the British Royal Commission (1937) that the Arabs enjoyed all the rights of the Turks and shared high office with them: ministers, prime ministers, corps commanders, ambassadors and governors, with deputies in the Ottoman parliament in proportion to their numbers.

Milestones of the Ottoman era in PalestineChoose a stage

Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909)

The last sultan for whom religion was the first principle of rule. Like thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, he believed Muslim strength lay in unity under the caliphate, so he revived the idea of “Pan-Islamism” and strengthened the caliph’s standing.

“Islam is the only force that makes us strong. We are a living, strong nation, but only on condition that we are true to our great religion.”
Sultan Abdulhamid II
1908the Hijaz Railway was completed from Istanbul to Medina
One thirdof its cost was raised from donations by Muslims around the world

The Arabs did not think of secession throughout his reign. The main cause of the later Arab Revolt was the Turkification policy pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress after he was deposed.

Two

The Roots of the Zionist Project

For 1,800 years Jews made no attempt to “return.” So what changed?

The first surpriseThe traditional rabbinic position

For centuries, Jewish religious authorities refused to turn religious longing for Palestine into a political programme.

They believed the destruction of their state and their dispersal were deserved for their sins, and that they must wait for the Mashiach (their awaited Messiah); only then would settling in Palestine be permitted. Coming to the land meant visiting the holy places or living near them, not a political project.

5,000Jews in Palestine in 1799
13,920Jews in Palestine in 1876

Four roots that made the projectTap each root

The “buffer state” ideaWhy Palestine in particular?

African wing Egypt · Sudan · North Africa Asian wing Levant · Iraq · Arabia Entity Palestine, east of the Suez Canal

In the late 19th century the idea emerged of planting a foreign entity east of the Suez Canal that would separate the two wings of the Muslim world, prevent their union, and keep the community busy with a long, draining problem. Such an entity would need the West to survive, and the West would need it to keep the Muslim world weak and divided, creating an unbreakable alliance between them.

The author’s conclusion: this project is aimed at every Muslim and his hopes for unity, revival and progress, not at the Palestinians alone.

For group discussion

  1. Many early supporters of Zionism were not Jewish. What does “non-Jewish Zionism” mean? Does it still have influence today?
  2. Why is the distinction between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political project important in this discussion?
Three

Early Settlement and Jewish Immigration

From “not a house, not a plot of land” to neighbourhoods and colonies. How did the land slip away?

The register of 1562Ottoman archives in Istanbul, register 342

It records no endowment or property registered in the name of any Jew, neither in Jerusalem and its villages nor in Hebron and its surroundings: not a house they owned, nor a hall, nor a garden, nor an orchard, nor a plot of land, nor farms, villages or shops. Even the Jewish cemetery at Ras al-Amud near Silwan was Islamic endowment land leased to them, part of Saladin’s endowment, leased to them in 1559. Jews in Jerusalem rented houses from Muslim owners on long leases.

How did the land slip away?Follow the chain step by step

Did the Ottomans manage to stop immigration?1881–1914

Organized Jewish immigration rose from 1882. The Ottoman state responded with restrictions, and in 1887 placed the sanjak of Jerusalem directly under the Sublime Porte. The numbers speak:

Jews who left their countries (mainly Russia and eastern Europe)2,367,000
Of these, reached Palestineabout 55,000 (2.32%)

The overwhelming majority went to the United States, western Europe and South America. Other sources estimate arrivals in Palestine at 55,000–70,000.

Herzl and the SultanThe offer that was refused

In August 1897 the First Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, led by Theodor Herzl, launching organized political work for a Jewish state in Palestine. Herzl tried in vain to persuade the Ottoman state, which was in desperate need of money:

The author notes that the Zionist movement had influence within the Young Turks and their arm, the Committee of Union and Progress, which deposed the Sultan in 1909, and that Emmanuel Carasso, whom the Sultan had earlier expelled for trying to settle Jews in Palestine, was in the delegation that informed him of his deposition.

The first resistance… 31 years before the occupationPalestinians noticed early

For group discussion

  1. “Let the Jews keep their billions.” What makes a ruler refuse huge sums when his state is drowning in debt?
  2. How did the land law and absentee owners allow land to slip away without the farmer who worked it ever selling?
Four

Palestine in World War I (1914–1918)

Three contradictory British promises, and only one land.

Three promises for one landTap each promise to see what it said about Palestine

“The strangest promise in history”The Balfour Declaration · 2 November 1917

A promise in which one who did not own gave a land he had not yet occupied to those who had no right to it, ignoring the wishes of its rightful inhabitants.As the author describes it
92%Arab share of Palestine’s population when the occupation began (about 610,000)
55,000Jews at the end of the war (80,000 in 1914; the Ottomans restricted them for siding with Britain)
Under a weekfor the text of the declaration to reach the Egyptian press

The deception exposed1917–1918

For group discussion

  1. Britain made promises to Sharif Hussein, to the French and to the Zionists at the same time. What does that teach us about relying on great-power promises?
  2. Allenby entered Jerusalem and is reported to have said, “Now the Crusades have ended.” How does that line connect to the previous part of this series?
Wrap-up

Test Yourself

12 questions on the Ottoman era and the beginnings of the Zionist project.