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HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.Indd Iii 20/02/2013 08:42 © Noah Haiduc-Dale, 2013 B Arab Christians in ritish Mandate Palestine Arab Christians Explores the relationship between Arab Christians and the in Palestinian nationalist movement from 1917 to 1948 Recent conflict in the Middle East has caused some observers to ask if Muslims British Mandate and Christians can ever coexist. History suggests that relations between those two groups are not predetermined, but are the product of particular social and political circumstances. This book examines Muslim–Christian relations during an earlier period of political and social upheaval, and explores the process of Palestine establishing new forms of national and religious identification. Palestine’s Arab Christian minority actively engaged with the Palestinian nationalist movement throughout the period of British rule (1917–48). Relations between Muslim and Christian Arabs were sometimes strained, yet in Palestine, as in other parts of the world, communalism became a specific response to political circumstances. While Arab Christians first adopted an Arab nationalist identity, a series of outside pressures – including British policies, the rise of a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims, and an increase in Islamic identification among some Arabs – led Christians to adhere to more politicised religious groupings by the 1940s. Yet despite that shift, Christians remained fully nationalist, insisting that they could be both Arab and Christian. Key Features • Tracks the history of Palestine’s Arab Christians and their relationship to Palestinian nationalism • Challenges the standard historiography of communalism which suggests Noah Haiduc-Dale communal identification is always in opposition to nationalist identification • Refuses to stereotype Arab Christian behaviour and belief based on the actions of a few individuals Noah Haiduc-Dale is Assistant Professor of History at Waynesburg University. COMMUNALISM AND NATIONALISM, 1917–1948 Cover image: The Guards of Beit Jala 1936-1939 © Raneen Al-Arja ISBN 978–0–7486–7603–3 Cover design: Michael Chatfield Noah Haiduc-Dale Message 25 October – wanted in 3/4 weeks (around 15 – 20 November) Colour 5625 / 5615 ARAB CHRISTIANS IN BRITISH MANDATE PALESTINE COMMUNALISM AND NATIONALISM, 1917–1948 2 Noah Haiduc-Dale HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd iii 20/02/2013 08:42 © Noah Haiduc-Dale, 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13 JaghbUni Regular by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRO 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 7603 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 7604 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 7606 4 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 7605 7 (Amazon ebook) The right of Noah Haiduc-Dale to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd iv 20/02/2013 08:42 Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction: Nationalism and Religious Identifi cation 1 1. 1917–1923: Balancing Religion and National Unity 19 2. 1923–1929: Christians and a Divided National Movement 61 3. 1929–1936: Towards Communalism 97 4. 1936–1939: Standing Aloof? Arab Christians and the Great Revolt 130 5. 1940–1948: National Strength through Communal Unity 163 Conclusion: Nationalism and Communal Identifi cation – Confl icting Identities? 196 Bibliography 202 Index 215 HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd v 20/02/2013 08:42 Illustrations Maps I.1 Denominational distribution of Palestine’s Arab Christian population by subdistrict 9 I.2 Christian population distribution: important villages and cities during the Mandate 10 Figures 1.1 Louis Barlassina with Lord Plumer and the Archbishop of Naples, 1926 32 1.2 Melkite Bishop Grigorios Hajjar 34 2.1 Khalil al-Sakakini 75 3.1 Crosses on Christian houses to prevent looting during 1929 violence 102 3.2 Cover of al-Zuhour from 27 October 1930 105 4.1 Arab Higher Committee, 1936 133 4.2 Nuh Ibrahim 145 5.1 The Orthodox Society of Bethlehem, 1948 175 HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd vi 20/02/2013 08:42 Acknowledgements A series of experiences led me to study Middle East history, and without the Revd John Patterson, Elias Jabbour, Larry Penrose and Steve Tamari I would never have become interested in the Palestinian–Israeli confl ict; without Jeff Tyler, I probably would not have become a historian. Thank you. My studies at the University of Arizona and New York University prepared me for the task of writing this book, and a number of professors guided me through those years. Charles D. Smith at the University of Arizona, and Zachary Lockman, Khalid Fahmy and Fred Cooper at NYU deserve special thanks, as well as Ellen Fleischmann. Funding from NYU and the Fulbright–Hayes programme made my travels possible, while the actual research was facilitated by assistance from numerous librarians and archivists. Various scholars in Palestine helped me to ask the right questions and guided me towards the best sources, among them Hillel Cohen, Adnan Musallam, Bernard Sabella and Salim Tamari. Thanks to the participants in the scholarship group at Waynesburg for keeping me motivated, Jill Sunday for polishing my writing, and Cori Schiplani for assisting with images and creating the wonderful maps. Other colleagues helped indirectly at various stages: without Jonathan Gribetz and On Barak, my research would have been far less enjoyable. Nicola Ramsey, Rebecca Mackenzie and Michelle Houston at Edinburgh University Press have been both patient and helpful answering my many questions along the way. My family has been wonderfully supportive. Thank you to my parents, Steve and Wendy Dale, and my in-laws, George and Violet Haiduc, for their love and encouragement. Most important has been the patience and support of my wife, Michelle, who accompanied me across the world and back and has supported me in so many ways. She and our children, Maia, Asher and Ethan, who arrived at various points along the way, have kept me motivated through long days of research and writing. vii HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd vii 20/02/2013 08:42 Introduction: Nationalism and Religious Identification I am not Christian, nor Buddhist, nor Muslim, nor Jewish. I am not Arab, or English, or French, or German, or Russian, or Turkish, but I am one of the human race.1 Khalil al-Sakakini, 26 March 1915 If I enjoy any position in this land, if the people love me and respect me, it is because they think that I am nearer to Islam than to Christianity, because I am wealthy in the Arabic language, because they fancy that I am a conservative and will not depart from Oriental customs under any circumstances.2 Khalil al-Sakakini, 12 December 1932 My fi rst exposure to the Palestinian–Israeli confl ict came in high school when I travelled with a group of American teenagers for a month-long stay with Elias Jabbour, founder of the House of Hope in Shefaʿamr, an Arab–Israeli village near Haifa. Jabbour, a Melkite Christian, framed his approach to the confl ict through his religious beliefs, describing himself as ‘a Christian, Palestinian, Arab, Israeli’.3 Two years later, while living and studying the confl ict in Jerusalem as a college student, I was confused when the programme director insisted that the confl ict was not about reli- gion at all, but about land, economics and politics. This academic argu- ment did not match up with the explanation I had been given while living in Shefaʿamr. How could religion not be integral to the confl ict, when those who were living in it insisted it was essential? The academic explanation has a lot to offer, since a religious explana- tion often hides more than it illuminates. In its simplest formulation, the Palestinian–Israeli confl ict is a confl ict between two groups of people, Palestinians and Israelis, who claim nationhood and collective owner- ship over the same piece of land. Many commentators, as well as many Palestinians and Israelis themselves, couch this nationalistic confl ict in religious terms, as a clash between Jews and Muslims. But like all people, individual Israelis and Palestinians fall along a broad spectrum between secular and religious. Both sides utilise nationalist reasoning in their 1 HAIDUC-DALE 9780748676033 PRINT.indd 1 20/02/2013 08:42 Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine political struggles, though the relationship between religious and national- ist ideology is complex. A third issue is that minorities are often pushed out of the conversation by this polarising approach. Arab Jews, Palestinians in Israel, Messianic Jews and other groups fail to fi t the narrow categories often ascribed to the confl ict. A question emerged between these historiographical poles: where did Arab Christians fi t in Palestinian history, since they were so often left out of the standard narrative? Though their relative population has shrunk to under 2 per cent in recent years, Christians constituted a sizeable 10 per cent minority in the early decades of the twentieth century when the Palestinian national movement was in its formative stage. The disjuncture between nationalist and religious explanations demands a closer examina- tion of Arab Christians’ place in society during the period of British rule (1917–48) in an effort to understand the meaning of religious identifi ca- tion and relationship of Christians to the nationalist movement. Such an examination also uncovers sharp disagreements between Christians, exposes debates about communal identifi cation and illuminates reasons for Christians’ divergent views. The Palestinian Arab community was fundamentally reshaped by political developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fall of the Ottoman Empire reverberated throughout the Middle East, perhaps more so in Palestine than elsewhere due to the British occupation and support for a Jewish homeland there.
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