The effect of socioeconomic change on Arab societal collapse in Mandate Palestine

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• Since Ottoman times the agrarian social social economy slowly undermined by the urban landowning class and oppressive tax and land-tenure systems

• Peasent disposition in the 19th century and zionist land purchasing in the 20th century created a significant landless rural population that was increasingly dependent upon wage labour in cities and scattered rural locations

• During the British mandate, Palestine was rapidly incorporated into the world economy

• None distinguish the socioeconomic conditions that helped cause the societal collapse and exodus

• Kenneth Stein is a rare exception

• Undeniably a link between societies fragmnetation or lack of internal cohesion and its ability to withstand external pressures

• The process by which migrant peasents become agricultural wage labourers or proletarians in the second half of the mandate had a destablising effect on Palestinian society

• Delatirious impact upon the lowest stratum of Palestinians of which were almost all rural and made up 70 per cent of the population

• Efforts to achieve security and stability amid disintegration of rural life were impeded by weak Arab industrial economy, Jewish settlement and an indifferent colonial policy

• Pre-1948 Palestinian Arabs social and political history was shaped by three factors;

• Imposition of an administratively assertive state

• Since Ottoman times, attempts to centralise had led to opprseeive tax collecting procedures and land tenure systems that benifitied large landowners- most of which lived in urban centres

• Though whilst legally indisposed, those landowners would rent back the land to the peaents in terms of rent- they were not landless, just ownerless

• Under Brtish rule however, landowners sold a great deal of land at inflated prices to Zionist organisations and in these cases peasents were phyiscally displaced

• This was exacerbated by rapid population growth

• The landless population turned to selling their wage labour

• This process led to loosened ties between the peasent and the landowner, increased tensions between peasent and land brokers- many of whom were village heads, and contributed to overall communal disharmony

• The new rise of urban labour unions found it difficult to absorb the rural peasent into their ranks as an orngaised policital force and as a result they were forced to float between the rural and urban economies

• Palestinian societies encounter with a. competing Jewish presence

• And the expansion of the world market into Palestine under the aegis of the British