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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
190010
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| Summary/Abstract |
Although Lord Plumer’s tenure as high commissioner for Palestine (1925–28) is sometimes characterized by mainstream Euro-American histories as a period of comparative peace, the year 1927 saw two major disruptions: the Jericho earthquake in July, which caused serious damage to towns and cities including Jerusalem, Nablus, and Lydda; and unrest among Jewish immigrants who found that the local economy had no jobs to offer them—or at least not ones at the European rates of pay to which they were accustomed. This article explores the ways in which each of these crises intersected with Palestine’s infrastructure—in particular its railways, roads, and housing stock. I argue that the disparate ways in which the British administration approached earthquake victims versus the unemployed, the help it offered (or failed to offer), and the policies it implemented are telling about the nature of British governance in Palestine in the mid-1920s and British administrative priorities and concerns. The Mandate authorities’ responses to the quake—characterized by selective negligence—reveal the colonial administration’s weakness, the contested ways in which colonial structures were shaped and operated in the early Mandate period, and the extent to which maintaining a facade before other colonial powers and the League of Nations outweighed substantive action.
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| 2 |
ID:
179897
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| Summary/Abstract |
In 1947, a shepherd in the hills north of the Dead Sea visited a contact in Bethlehem, a dealer of antiquities to foreign visitors, offering fragments of written material. The dealer, from the Syriac community, was unsure of the items’ value and began enquiries which followed Syriac Orthodox religious and intellectual networks. Despite initial scepticism, the fragments were the first of the now globally famous Dead Sea Scrolls, and ever since have been surrounded by rumours and controversy. Inextricably entwined in these has been the Palestinian Syriac Orthodox church, in a pattern of involvements which link this small Christian community with the creation of knowledge in and about Mandate Palestine, the fate of its members during the Nakba, and internal competition for ownership of valuable resources in a community fragmented by the 1947–1949 conflict. In this paper, I reconstruct the role of Syriac Orthodox community members in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, examining how the parts they played were informed by their status in late Mandate Palestine. As a counterpoint to this, the case also highlights how the needs of the community – particularly in the wake of the Nakba – were tied to a kind of cultural diplomacy as the head of the church in Jerusalem, Mar Samuel, sought to frame his community as refugees, as Christian Palestinians, and as owners and valid beneficiaries of Palestinian archaeological heritage.
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| 3 |
ID:
165587
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| Summary/Abstract |
Tourist guides to colonised territories are usually understood as instruments of the coloniser, imposing ideas of native inferiority through orientalism and convictions of primitiveness. This article, however, shows how Palestinian Arabs and Zionist Jews in the later period of British Mandate rule used guidebooks, written in English and particularly aimed at a readership of Commonwealth soldiers on leave, as a means of asserting and conveying their rival claims to Palestine to popular Anglophone audiences. In particular, they combined the more conventional coverage of historical and religious sites with insistence on the modernity and technological progress to be found amongst their respective cultures and histories. I understand this as both a tactical usage of the concept of modernity to intervene in image-making about the Middle East, and as a conscious effort by Palestinian Arabs and Jews to insist that modern values, associated in the language of the Mandate and notions of progress, were inherent in their cultures and social practices.
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