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The Land of Blood and Honey

The Rise of Modern Israel

St. Martin's Press

FORGED IN FURY (1897–1949)

"A Terrible Land"

During the nineteenth century, the land roughly known as Palestine was a remote and badly neglected province of the Ottoman Empire, of which it was a part of from 1517 on. Reflecting the undeveloped nature of the area, even its borders had not yet been properly defined. In 1917, the year when the London Geographical Journal published an article about its "resources and suitability for colonization," the discussion included considerable parts of what today are Lebanon, Syria, and especially Jordan. The photographs that accompanied the text showed sites as far away as Baalbek and Amman.

The country known since Biblical times as Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel (or simply "the Land," as Jews and Israelis say), was considered part of Greater Syria, an arrangement that goes back to Hellenistic times. As if to deny it any political unity, it was divided into three districts. The northern one reached from Acre in the west to the Jordan River in the east and was governed from Beirut, which itself was ruled from Damascus. Farther south the district of Nablus was also governed from Beirut; however, it reached from the Mediterranean across the Jordan into the area known as Hauran, in southwestern Syria. Finally, Jerusalem was an autonomous province that came directly under Damascus.

Until the last decades before 1900 most cities were walled, gated, and locked at night. Outside them, the Ottoman government was unable to assert itself on anything like a permanent basis. The normal method of governance was to send out a party of troops twice a year, billet them on the fellaheen (peasants), levy the sums that the tax farmer claimed were his due, and withdraw until the next time. Partly because the government could not assert itself, and partly because so many landlords were absentees who lived in places as far away as Beirut, Damascus, and even Tehran, day-to-day affairs were left to the mukhtars (elders) and sheiks of villages and tribes. In the Negev, a desert area that later formed about half the territory of the State of Israel, Ottoman power hardly penetrated at all.

The country's native population is estimated to have been six hundred thousand, although, in truth, nobody knows what it was exactly. In truth, too, strictly speaking, not all of the people were native. One well-informed contemporary source claimed that they were "best described as Syrians, a mixed race in which much Arab blood [i.e., originating in the Arabian Peninsula] has intermingled with that of the descendants of Canaanites, Hebrews, Greeks, Egyptians, and perhaps even the Crusaders"; not to mention a small Circassian community whose members had been driven from their Caucasian home in the nineteenth century and received the Ottoman Porte's permission to settle. Some cities also contained recently arrived immigrants from Syria, Egypt, and Morocco. According to the available guesstimates, about 80 percent of the total were Muslim, mainly Sunnis, though in northern Galilee there were also a few Shiite villages. Christian Arabs, most of whom lived in and around Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jaffa, and Nazareth, formed perhaps 10 percent of the population. The Jewish community may have accounted for 7 or 8 percent, whereas Mount Carmel was home to a small Druze minority.

About 70 percent of the population lived in the countryside, scattered among some seven hundred villages. However, settlement was anything but even. Contrary to the common pattern in "civilized" countries, the most densely inhabited areas were not the plains. Instead they were the mountains of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee as well as the southern and more salubrious part of the coastal plain. By contrast, the northern coastal plain — the Biblical "Valley of Sharon" — was essentially a desert, green in winter, baking hot (many areas were covered with sand dunes) in summer. Although it did not have dunes, the same applied to the equally celebrated Valley of Esdraelon, with its extensions to the west and to the east. In both areas the lack of settlement was due to malaria, which the local populations, without modern science and technology, were unable to eradicate. It made the areas unsuitable for permanent settlement so that they were mostly left to Bedouin tribes. Other common diseases associated with unhygienic living close to stale water were trachoma (which can lead to blindness), cholera, dysentery, and typhus. Worst of all was leprosy, for which there was no known cure and whose victims were treated as outcasts. To be sure, the government did recognize these problems. However, an English doctor described the steps it took to deal with them as "worse than useless."

Still, comparing the country to "civilized" ones, perhaps the factor that would have surprised the visitor most was its primitive system of transportation. There was not a single deep-water port. Ships simply cast anchor at sea, without any protection from the waves, and embarked or disembarked their passengers and cargo by means of open boats. At the quay they were received by porters, either Arab or Jewish, who were famous for their burliness, strong language, and often kind hearts. Wheeled transport, too, was scarce. The absence of paved roads on one hand, and the rapacity of the government on the other, obstructed the use of vehicles; inside the towns, narrow streets, marked by numerous steps, did the same. As a result, the very first one, appropriately nicknamed "Pharaoh's chariot," was not introduced until 1869. Even so, at the end of the century the journey from Jaffa to the Jewish colony of Hadera farther north, a distance of just over forty miles, took nine hours to accomplish by cart. In winter, when rain transformed much of the terrain into a swamp, it might be impossible; as traffic came to a halt rural settlements were cut off, sometimes for days on end.

Though the distance was similar, the journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem took even longer. There were five different post-coach systems, one operated by the Ottomans and the rest by foreign concession holders as part of the so-called capitulations, the arrangement by which foreign residents were not subject to Ottoman law and were judged by their own consuls. Having made their choice, people would leave in the early afternoon. Like many other parts of the country, the foothills of the Judean Mountains were still inhabited by roving Bedouin, who made it unsafe to travel at night. It was therefore necessary to halt at a caravansary at Shaar Hagai (The Gate of the Valley) some thirty miles away. The next morning the travelers would proceed. They would struggle up and down the winding road, repair a broken wheel if need be, defend themselves against robbers (usually they were accompanied by at least one armed guard), or bribe those they could not fend off before finally reaching their destination, Jaffa Gate, around noon. Even after French engineers in 1892 built a railroad linking the two towns, the journey still took four hours. This was because the curves only allowed the train to travel slowly, so that there were stretches where it could be overtaken by a galloping horse.

As late as 1913, there was only a single motor vehicle in the entire country — this at a time when Ford in Detroit was turning them out by the thousands each day. Communications, too, were few and far between. Influenced by the Koranic experts, or ulema, the Ottomans had been notoriously slow to adopt the art of printing. Only in 1727, almost three centuries after Gutenberg, was the first press established at Constantinople. Still, widespread illiteracy meant that the written word was slow to penetrate, so that the first regular mail service was only established in 1840. As the Ottoman Empire joined the international Post and Telegraph Union, the first telegraph line, which linked Constantinople with Beirut and from there on with Jaffa via Haifa, was inaugurated in 1865. A year later, it was extended to Jerusalem. Just which other towns were hooked up is not completely known, though it has been documented that in 1919, the occupying British military operated a network that included, besides the above, Ramle, Afula (which at that time consisted of houses made of mud, but was the site of a German air base they had taken over), Hebron, Gaza, Tul Karem, Acre, Nazareth, and Tiberias. As for telephones, at the outbreak of World War I there were none.

Then, as today, Palestine was hardly one of the world's great breadbaskets. The climate is semiarid. For seven months a year it practically does not rain at all; "hot and dry" is all the weatherman has to say. The average annual rainfall is about twenty inches, somewhat more in the north, much less in the south. Generally the farther south one goes, the more limited the water supply, until, in the Negev, year-round sources are limited to a few wells hidden in otherwise dry riverbeds. To the north of Beer Sheba, provided that the supply is carefully conserved and systematically managed, there is enough water to permit a fair level of agricultural activity. The climate is excellent for subtropical crops such as wheat, melons, olives, figs, grapes, dates, almonds, pomegranates, apricots, and the like, all of which have grown since time immemorial.

During the second half of the nineteenth century citrus trees were introduced. Oranges, grapefruit, and lemons soon turned into the country's main export commodities, joining older products such as olive oil and soap. Draft and pack animals such as asses, mules, and camels were available, but horses, which require artificial fodder, tended to be expensive and few and far between. Livestock consisted of rather poor-quality cattle such as was able to survive more or less on its own without need for permanent shelter. In addition, there were a few pigs (raised exclusively by the Arab Christian population), poultry, sheep, and goats. All these were popular because they could feed almost anywhere.

Concerning the goats, another word needs to be said. Most modern scholars agree that, once upon a time, the land was more heavily wooded, was richer in resources, and supported a larger population than was the case around 1900, let alone 1800, when the population only stood at two hundred thousand or so. The arrival of black goats, that came along with the Arabs during the seventh century A.D., changed this situation. The goats, which in some areas may be seen even today, are astonishing animals. Not only do they graze at ground level but they also climb many of the small trees characteristic of much of Palestine. Once they do so they eat and eat, leaving nothing in their way. Visitors to the area were surprised to learn that, in the entire country, there was not a single forest. Especially in the mountains of Judea and Samaria, whole districts that were once cultivated — as is proved by the presence of ancient, half-ruined terraces — were turned into bare limestone rocks capable of supporting almost nothing. With the cultivated areas went the human settlement. Probably no other country has so many place names starting with Hirbet, Arabic for "ruins of"; their number is said to be 457. Conversely, the first prerequisite for making an area fruitful again was, and is even today, to fence it so as to keep the goats out.

Other factors, such as periodic droughts, the sudden appearance of swarms of locusts, and the incapacity and rapacity of government, also helped keep agricultural activity — and with it the standard of living — at a very low level. Yet another problem was the ancient system of communal land ownership. Under its terms, each cultivator received a different plot to work each year, and in any given year one-third of the total area was left fallow. Consequently there was little incentive for investment; even dung, though in plentiful supply, was not often used. The great mass of fellaheen dressed in tatters and went barefooted. Their horizons were limited to their own villages or districts, which they hardly ever left. Come a solar or lunar eclipse, the entire ragged community would form a procession and use whatever primitive musical instruments they could muster to drive the demons away; their children were happy if, by begging, they could obtain a slice of bread smeared with jam. Town dwellers were slightly better off. One contemporary Jewish source describes them as

proud, wicked, and sly rascals. They feel no mercy for their brothers and co-religionists, skinning them as much as they can. There is no believing in them even if they swear to God, since they readily take false oaths, not considering doing so a great sin. Those who are better to do engage in trade. Either they lend money to the fellaheen at horrific rates of interest ... or else they lease out their estates and chicane and oppress their tenants who have nobody to defend them.

That these sad circumstances were by no means due exclusively to the nature of the country, but rather to the prevailing social conditions among the Muslim population in particular, is proved by the sharply different experience of two groups, the Christian "Syrians" and the German Templers. Following the end of the Crimean War, foreign activity in the Land of Israel, motivated partly by religious impulses and partly by the hopes of the various powers to take over parts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, increased very sharply; the opening of the Suez Canal further increased its geopolitical importance. This foreign presence benefited local Christians who saw the prohibitions on the open exercise of their religion lifted. They were granted — at least on paper — equal rights as citizens. Some were even given foreign "protection"; with it came far-reaching immunity from the corrupt system of Ottoman law and government. This in turn made possible the erection of numerous new churches, hospitals, inns where pilgrims could stay, and the like. Considered as prestige objects, they tended to be large and very well constructed. During the 1948 War of Independence they were often used as fortresses; those that escaped destruction grace the cities and the landscape to the present day.

Thus assisted, the Christians, hitherto an oppressed minority, began drawing ahead. According to the same contemporary Jewish source, by the early years of the twentieth century

Galilee in particular has some villages whose inhabitants engage in agriculture. Their labor is better ordered than that of their Muslim brethren, and their way of life and education are also superior. And this is because they are subject to constant spiritual guidance from abroad and come under the supervision of their numerous and well organized priests. The latter well understand what they are about and do what they can to inspire their flocks with feelings of unity, love of work, and unity, and good government.... They have good schools in each town and village ... and specially designed textbooks for teaching in them ... in brief, they are completely different from us [Jews].

The Templer movement provided even more convincing proof that good government, good social organization, and good education were capable of rapidly improving the condition of the country. The movement originated in Württemberg, Germany, in 1858. A Lutheran priest by the name of Christoph Hoffman, citing certain passages in the Bible, persuaded his followers that they should settle in Palestine so as to hasten the coming of the Day of Judgment. The first five pioneers arrived in 1860. Nine years later, the earliest settlement was established outside the walls of Haifa. Following this, additional ones were established in Bethlehem and Waldheim (near Nazareth), Sarona and Beer Salem (around Jaffa), Refaim (near Jerusalem) and Wilhelma (near Lydda).

As the inscription above the entrance of their first schoolhouse — "If I forget thee Jerusalem, let me forget my right arm" — showed, the Templers were deeply religious in outlook. Professionally, though, most of them were either farmers or craftsmen. They brought with them modern technology, including not only agricultural tools and methods but steam engines for pumps, olive oil and wine presses, and the like. Another important innovation was indoor plumbing; previously water had been carried either in jars on the heads of women (in the countryside) or in leather bags on the backs of donkeys (in the towns). One result was that, as late as the 1970s, Jewish plumbers used German terminology when talking about their profession even though many of them, being of Oriental — Asian or African — origin, had no idea where the words came from or what their real meanings were.

Though the number of German settlers never exceeded two thousand, their colonies prospered. They served as examples of what hard work, thrift, and proper communal organization could achieve even in an out-of-the-way, poor, and fairly inhospitable country; as time went on, their economic success tended to overshadow their religious fervor. A small amount of German diplomatic support, as well as an occasional visit by a German warship, helped. In the words of one German naval officer, the visits "impressed the Turks and Arabs who, like all Orientals, only understand the kind of power they can see with their own eyes." This situation lasted until the beginning of World War II, when the British authorities evacuated the Templers; many eventually settled in Australia.

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Excerpted from The Land of Blood and Honey by Martin van Creveld. Copyright © 2010 Martin van Creveld. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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