Regional cooperation among the rural population of Palestine's southern coast as reflected in joint petitions to İstanbul at the end of the nineteenth century

What is it about?

Based on rarely used documents from archives in Israel and Turkey, this article offers a new approach for the study of proto-Zionist–Arab relationships in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century. It foregrounds the regional and sociological dimensions of the encounters between the two populations through focus on the Judean colonies southeast of Jaffa. These colonies, located relatively close together, maintained a close-knit network of mutual exchanges and gradually crystallized into a “bloc.” Using a bottom-up approach, the article explores the developing coordination between the colonies and its impact on their relationships with their Arab neighbors. By the early twentieth century, the author argues, a distinct sociocultural identity had developed in the colonies and the close cooperation had begun to take on a nationalist coloration.

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Why is it important?

RELATIVELY LITTLE has been written about the daily relationships between Jewish colonists and the Arab rural population in Palestine during the early years of proto-Zionist colonization. Existing research focuses mainly on the ideological and political aspects of the encounter, with less attention paid to the actual interactions between the two populations in this formative period, designated in Zionist historiography as the “first ‘aliyah” (1882–1903). Using a bottom-up sociohistorical approach, this article addresses these daily relations while focusing on the six “Judean colonies” (moshvot Yehudah) established southeast of Jaffa at the end of the nineteenth century.