Catastrophe
Nakba is a term that symbolizes the mass forced displacement in 1948 of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands. 74 years ago, the Zionist movement – with the support of Britain – succeeded in taking control by force of arms of most of Palestine and declaring the establishment of IsraelLorem Ipsum is not a random text, but has roots in classical Latin literature since 45 BC. From the book “On the Extremes of Good and Evil”
Pre-Nakba Palestine
They say my land is gone, the memories are erased from my mind, they say my house has been demolished, my orchards and my crops have been burned, I say no, the memories have never been erased, the sun of hopes has not gone from my eyes, there is my home, there is my land, there is my Jerusalem, I see it in my waking and sleeping Seventy-five years and the dream is one among my brothers, one in every inch in which we have gathered. One land, Lebanon, Syria, Oman or places where I live as a refugee No, I am not a refugee, I have a homeland, I have a land, my identity will not be erased by the years, no matter how loud the voices of the usurpers, no matter how loud the words of humiliation sound in the trumpets of the traitors, I will return, I will fold all borders, I will break the fences and restrictions, and to you, Jerusalem, believe me, I will return.
The Palestinian Nakba – Introduction
Contrary to all British and Israeli claims and allegations that tried to justify the establishment of the State of Israel on the land of Palestine, which was based on granting a homeland for a people without a land (the Jewish people) to a land without a people (the land of Palestine), figures, facts and historical evidence prove that Palestine was a homeland and a state for the Palestinian people with full political, economic and cultural standards and the establishment of a civilization and civilization that extends for thousands of years.
Before organized migration to the Palestinian territories began at the beginning of the last century and until the Nakba, Palestinians remained the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine. Palestinian society was divided into three groups: cities, peasants and Bedouins, each of which contributed to the creation of a special Palestinian culture that distinguished the Palestinian state from other neighboring countries whose peoples were linked to the Palestinian people by cultural, commercial and artistic relations, as was the case in all countries of the region.
Parties
Political awareness in Palestine began early, and this awareness was noticeable during the period of the Ottoman Empire. Palestine had a role in the Ottoman Empire, as the people of Palestine had representatives in the Envoy Council, which was elected following the promulgation of the constitution, as Ruhi al-Khalidi, Saeed al-Husseini, and Hafez al-Saeed were delegates from the Jerusalem district, Sheikh Ahmad al-Khamash from the Iblis district, and Asaad al-Shukairi from the Acre district.
Palestinian intellectuals had an important role in confronting the policy of Turkification and confronting Jewish immigration to their country. They established about 117 organizations and political parties to express their views and defend their national rights, many of which were linked to the issues of the region and the Arab nation.
Administrative divisions
Britain extended its military authority over the Palestinian territories in late 1918, marking the beginning of the British Mandate for Palestine. During this period, the administrative divisions in Palestine included two phases: –
The first stage: The administrative and geographical division of 1922: the Southern Brigade with four districts, the Jerusalem-Jaffa Brigade with six districts, the Nablus Brigade with four districts, and the Northern Brigade with five districts.
Second stage : In 1939, Britain redrew the administrative division of the Palestinian territories, creating six brigades. The Galilee Brigade includes five districts, the Haifa Brigade includes two districts, the Nablus Brigade includes three districts, the Jerusalem Brigade includes three districts, the Jaffa Brigade includes two districts, and the Gaza Brigade includes two districts.
Industry in Palestine
Industrial activity in Palestine before the Nakba was accompanied by increasing commercial activity in major cities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, and this was supported by a national banking system led by the Arab Bank, and among the most important Palestinian industries before 1948
- Oil and soap.
- Pottery.
- Copper.
- Fishing nets.
- Water laboratories.
- Dairy and cheese factories.
- Cigarette industry.
- Sulfur.
- Weaving.
- Paper.
- Cement
Agriculture :
Contrary to Zionist propaganda, it was the Palestinians who were the mainstay of agricultural production in the country, plowing and cultivating the land to extract its bounty. At the end of the British Mandate, the total land that the Palestinian farmer subjected to agriculture – excluding citrus plantations – was about (5,484,700 dunams), while the 300 Jewish colonies were unable to cultivate more than 425,450 dunams, and the figures confirm that it was the Palestinians who built the desert and not the Jews, as the total area of land in the Negev Desert that was in the possession of Jews did not exceed 11,000 dunams, while the Palestinians grew cereals (wheat and barley).
In the desert itself, more than 2.11 million dunams.
Livestock :
| Type | Property of the Palestinians | Property of the Jews |
| Livestock | 219,400 | 28,400 |
| Sheep | 224,900 | 19,100 |
| Goat | 214,600 | 10,800 |
| Camels | 23,200 | —– |
| Horses | 16,900 | 2,300 |
| Mules | ||
Cinema :
The beginnings of Palestinian cinema date back to the 1930s. The beginnings were an individual initiative of some people who acquired cinematic equipment and shot films.
Among the pioneers was Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan, who in 1935 made a 20-minute movie about Abdul Aziz Al Saud’s visit to Palestine and his travels between Lod and Jaffa.
He also made a feature film titled Dreams Achieved (with Jamal Al-Asfar) and a documentary film about a member of the Supreme Arab Authority, Ahmed Helmy Abdel Baqi. After these beginnings, Ibrahim Sarhan founded the Palestine Studio and produced a feature film titled Storm in a House. He also produced some short advertising films until he was displaced to Jordan in 1948.
In 1945, three Palestinians, including Ahmad al-Kilani, who had studied film directing and photography in Cairo, founded the Arab Film Production Company. In 1946, Salah al-Din Badrakhan directed the first Palestinian feature film, Night Dreams, which was screened in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Amman and other countries.
Mohammed Kayyali, who studied cinema in Italy, worked on producing short films in the 1940s. After his return, he collaborated with the Arab League office, which commissioned him to produce a film about the Palestinian cause, but it was not completed due to the Nakba, and in 1969 he produced a feature film titled Three Operations in Palestine.
Education :
Before the Nakba, Palestine’s schools were divided into three types: public, private Arab, and private foreign schools, and public schools were more numerous than other schools.
Press :
The number of daily and weekly newspapers in Palestine between the two world wars amounted to 48 newspapers, including 12 daily newspapers.
Most of these newspapers were published in Jaffa (17 newspapers), followed by Jerusalem (15 newspapers) and Haifa (9 newspapers), where the oldest local newspapers, Carmel and Al-Nafir, were published in 1908.
Palestinian newspapers combined cultural, commercial and political goals, and sometimes they embodied a family economic project, as in the case of the Palestine newspaper, which employed several members of the al-Issa family.
The number of daily and weekly newspapers in Palestine between the two world wars reached 48 newspapers, including 12 daily newspapers. Most of these newspapers were published in the city of Jaffa (17 newspapers), followed by Jerusalem (15 newspapers) and Haifa (9 newspapers), where the oldest local newspapers, Carmel and Al-Nafir, were published in 1908.
Palestinian newspapers are divided into three main groups according to the period of their publication, which were established since the late Ottoman period and continued later, most notably the Haifa Carmel weekly, the Jaffa Palestine daily, and the half-weekly Marat al-Sharq al-Maqdisiya and al-Zuhur al-Haifa.
The second group was established in the mid-1920s against the backdrop of the escalation of political activity with the imposition of the English Mandate on the country and the emergence of Haj Amin al-Husseini as Mufti and head of the Supreme Islamic Authority, the most prominent of which were the opposition daily Al-Sirat al-Mustaqeem and the Arab League Journal, which is close to the Mufti.
The third group is those created by Arab journalists who immigrated to Palestine and Arab countries, such as Al-Aqdam Week and Al-Yarmouk.
Palestinian newspapers that combined political, cultural and commercial goals and sometimes embodied a family economic project, as in the case of the Palestine newspaper, which employed several members of the al-Issa family.
Some of these newspapers appeared in eight pages of large size while others appeared in 16 pages of small size and were determined by financial conditions and paper quantities.
Currency:
The Palestinian pound was the currency in circulation in Palestine before the Israeli occupation in 1948, as the Palestinians knew in the years between 1917 and 1927 during the British Mandate the Egyptian pound, and therefore since then they call the money Masari in their colloquial language, but after 1948, the Israeli pound became the currency used within the Green Line areas, and the Jordanian dinar was the main currency in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, while the Egyptian pound was the main currency circulating in the Gaza Strip, and in 1980 the Menachen Begin government issued instructions to cancel the use of the Israeli lira and approve the check.
This continued until 1967, when Israel continued its occupation of the rest of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians in the West Bank were forced to trade the Israeli lira alongside the Jordanian dinar, while Palestinians in the Gaza Strip traded alongside the Egyptian pound
In 1969, the Israeli Knesset passed a law differentiating the use of the shekel from the lira. The use of the lira remained adopted in the financial and banking circles until February 24, 1980, when Finance Minister Simcha Ehrlich in the government of Menachem Begin issued instructions to cancel the use of the Israeli lira and approve the shekel as the official currency, but the reason for abandoning the lira was strange, as they discovered that the currency did not have a Hebrew name, and so it turned into the shekel currency.
The shekel remained in use in Israel between 1980 and 1985, when it was replaced by a new monetary unit called the new shekel. Since May 1998, the shekel has been an internationally traded currency with an annual inflation rate of 2-3%.
Land ownership in Palestine before the Nakba
The Palestinian territories were exposed to the ambitions of Western countries in recent centuries, especially at the end of the Ottoman rule, as weakness began to spread in this state. On the other hand, the Zionist movement began to emerge, and its activists rushed to launch a campaign to buy land in Palestine for the benefit of Jews coming from Europe, and among the most prominent of these activists was Moshe Montefiore, who was able to obtain the approval of Sultan Abdul Majid to buy an area of land in Palestine that formed the nucleus of the Zionist settlement in Palestine.
The Ottoman state sensed the danger of Western and Jewish ambitions in the lands of Palestine and issued a set of laws aimed at regulating land ownership in Palestine, but it was forced in its last years of weakness to issue laws imposed on it by a group of European countries and came (i.e. laws) to suit the secret European plans for the region in that period.
Land distribution
In the year 1943 the country’s land area amounted to 1,542,680 dunams distributed as follows
| Number | Description | Area in dunams |
| 1 | Land that is used for public purposes such as roads, railroads, and forests. | 839,553 |
| 2 | Land occupied by Arab farmers since Ottoman law. | 172, 691 |
| 3 | Land leased to Jews for a long time | 175,088 |
| 4 | Land leased to Jews for less than 3 years | 2,433 |
| 5 | Land leased to Arabs for a long time | 1,222 |
| 6 | Land leased to Arabs for less than 3 years | 26, 522 |
| 7 | Land not in Arab or Jewish hands | 3,249 |
| 8 | Land for short-term rentals | 20,082 |
| 9 | Arai for public use | 4,713 |
| 10 | Uncultivated land such as sand, rocks and swamps | 167, 429 |
| 11 | Unoccupied land | 84,699 |
Percentage of land owned by Arabs and Jews as of 1945 1945
| Judiciary | Arab property | Jewish property | State land and other property |
| Safed | 68 | 18 | 14 |
| Acre | 87 | 3 | 10 |
| Tiberias | 51 | 38 | 20 |
| Nazareth | 52 | 28 | 20 |
| Nablus | 76 | Less than 11% | 13 |
| Jenin | 84 | Less than 11% | 16 |
| Tulkarm | 78 | 17 | 5 |
| Ramallah | 99 | Less than 1% | Less than 1% |
| Jerusalem | 84 | 2 | 14 |
| Hebron | 96 | Less than 1% | 4 |
| Jaffa | 47 | 39 | 14 |
| Ramle and Lod | 77 | 14 | 9 |
| Gaza | 75 | 4 | 21 |
| Beersheba | 14 | Less than 1% | 58 |
Land that was in Jewish possession until 1948 1948The area of these lands amounted to 2,075,000 dunums as follows:
| Area in dunams | Details |
| 650,000 | The area of land acquired by Jews during the Ottoman Empire and registered in their names until 1918. |
| 500,000 | The princely lands granted by the Mandate government to the Jewish Agency. |
| 652,000 | The Jews bought them from non-Palestinian feudal families in Beirut, Damascus, and others, and included the lands of Marj Ibn Amer, Houla, Wadi al-Hawarth, Wadi al-Qabbani, and some areas in the Acre and Besan plains. |
| 300,000 | Purchased by Jews from Palestinian Arabs |
Mandatory laws:
Land Laws issued by the Mandate Government
At the end of World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, and then the end of the empire that lasted several centuries, Palestine fell under a British mandate, and a military administration was formed in the country, and Palestine was divided in the period between 1917 / 1920 into several brigades and at the head of each brigade is a British military governor linked to the military government in Jerusalem, which in turn was linked to the British Army General Command in Cairo, and in 1922 AD, Palestine was divided into three regions, namely the Northern Brigade, the Southern Brigade and the Jerusalem Province.
On May 8, 1918, General Moni issued a decision to stop all transactions of ownership of private princely lands and closed the land registration departments (Tabu) because the Turkish authorities took all the Tabu books with them during their retreat to Damascus.
During the tenure of British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, new laws were passed and he worked to change Ottoman laws to facilitate the transfer of land to Jews, and the High Commissioners who followed him followed suit:
Land ownership:
Land Ownership in the Ottoman Era
The system of land ownership in the Ottoman era was based on Islamic principles. If the conquest took place without war, the land remains in the hands of its original owners, provided that the Kharaj is paid, while if the conquest took place through war, the land becomes a booty in the hands of the conquerors, and the fifth remains for the House of Mal.
It has been divided into two parts: The Ottomans applied the obligation system in order to ensure that the state receives a fixed and specific amount from the House of Money for the benefit of its treasury, and this system remained until the beginning of the Ottoman organizations in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Under the obligation system, land ownership was based on two main pillars:
State – feudal lords – civilians – military – peasants. The state considered itself the real owner of the land and had the right to collect taxes, fees and tithes, while the feudal lords had varying land holdings according to their military and administrative positions, and these feudal holdings were divided into three types:
- Fruits.
- The leader.
- own.
Each fief differed from the other according to its annual income. The thimar, whose owner is known as Thimarji, was granted to the Sepahiya, and his annual income was about 20,000 aqaja, which is one of the most common fiefs.
The zamat, which is received by a leader and has an income of between 20,000 and 100,000 akgeh, is mostly given to army commanders.
Thimar and chieftaincy were more or less hereditary, and sometimes a single chieftaincy consisted of lands located in several brigades, not necessarily limited to a single region or brigade.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Palestine included the provinces of Nablus, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Safed, with 28 provinces with the degree of Za’imat and 436 provinces with the degree of Thamar, as follows:
| The brigade | Zaamat | Themar |
| Jerusalem | 9 | 161 |
| Nablus | 7 | 47 |
| Gaza | 7 | 105 |
| Safed | 5 | 123 |
In Nablus, the number of fiefdoms in 1833 AD was 57 fiefdoms, including 5 chiefs and 52 fruits, while the peasants had to cultivate the land and raise livestock in exchange for certain obligations they paid to the landowner, such as paying royalties and taxes, and the peasants’ exploitation of the land was known as disposal. As long as the peasants work the land and pay taxes, the right of disposal is hereditary and passed from father to son, but if the peasant has no heirs, the right of disposal returns to the House of Money or the feudal lord grants it to other farmers in exchange for a certain amount of money.
