Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (47 page)

Despite the harsh criticism they faced by Arslan and the CUP, neither the Beirut Reform Committee nor the Decentralization Party openly sought Arab independence or autonomy from the empire, and even the Arab congress held in Paris in June 1913 upheld the integrity of the empire despite some of the harsh language used there. Attendees at the Arab congress did speak openly on behalf of the “Arab nation” and the “Syrian homeland,” but they did so in the context of Arab rights in the Ottoman Empire and decentralization as the basis of political reform.
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As the general invitation read, “We will explain to the Ottoman state that decentralization is the rule of our life and our life is the holiest right of all our rights, and the Arabs are partners in this empire, partners in war,
partners in administration, partners in politics, but inside their lands they are partners [only] to themselves.”
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At virtually every opportunity, the attendees at the Paris Congress underscored the active participation of Arabs in the life and administration of the Ottoman Empire along the lines of decentralization. The congress also resolved that Arabic should be recognized by the Ottoman parliament as an official language of the empire, that Arab soldiers should fulfill military service locally, and it supported the special privileges secured by Mount Lebanon and Beirut. In addition, the congress expressed its sympathy with the decentralizing demands of Armenian Ottomans. In the words of the president of the congress, former MP from Hama ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi, “The situation of our Armenian brothers is like our situation: they emigrate like we do, they think like we do, they demand like we do. And we want our victories to be their victories and want to be equal in our demands of decentralization.”
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The Paris Congress received numerous telegrams of support from the Arab diaspora in the Americas as well as some telegrams from within the Middle East. The seven telegrams that came from Palestine are notable for what they do and do not show us about Palestinian support for the Arab reform movement. Three of the telegrams were from the north of the country, including one from the Jenin region, which supported the “noble cause of progress of the Arab element and the struggle for its rights within the Ottoman Empire.” It was signed by twenty village
mukhtars
, a neighborhood
mukhtar
in Jenin city, three Christian notables, and four Muslim notables (two of whom belonged to the ‘Abd al-Hadi family—it would not be surprising to learn that the villages listed were all under ‘Abd al-Hadi patronage). Another telegram, this time from Nablus, was signed by three ‘Abd al-Hadi's as well as three other men. The third telegram from the north was from Haifa and supported the struggle for “Arab public good specifically and Ottoman public good generally”; of the fifty-six signatories, thirty-two were identifiably Christian (including the editor of
The Carmel
, Nejuib Nassar).

The other Palestinian telegrams all came from Jaffa, including one from the Muslim Charitable Association, another from the cultural club “Jaffa Youth,” and two more signed by groups of individuals (one of which included several Masons from the Barkai lodge, including the lodge Venerable, Cesar ‘Araktinji and failed parliamentary candidate Saʻid Abu Khadra'). In other words, while there was a strong representation of supporters among the ‘Abd al-Hadi extended family as well as among Christians in Haifa, the records of the Paris Congress hardly suggest massive or widespread support from Palestine for the Arab reform
movement, nor do they suggest that supporters were demanding anything other than imperial reforms.

In the months following the Paris Congress, the central committee of the Decentralization Party based in Cairo, which included many familiar faces among the Syro-Lebanese exile community long resident in Egypt, sought to build up its support and issued a public call to the “Arab nation” in which it clearly laid out its attitude toward demands of the Ottoman government. The call declared: “It is well known that the Arab nation which lives under the flag of the Ottoman crescent is the most devoted of the Ottoman peoples to the high state and is the strongest in loyalty to the bond of Ottoman society,” despite the long centuries of suffering under the poor administration of the former authoritarian government. The call requested fairer participation and oversight in local administrative and educational affairs: “a form of self-government which is present in all the advanced states today in Europe and America, which is known as administrative decentralization.”
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According to the committee, demands for reform would benefit not only the Arab people but the state as a whole. Broad-ranging administrative reforms would also renew the covenant between the Ottoman government and the Arab people and improve trust and relations with their “dear Turkish brothers” in the empire. Underscoring its commitment to the integrity of the empire as well as its appeal for reform, the committee emphasized that it was requesting these reforms in a legal manner congruent to that which is accorded any political party in a constitutional state. Finally, in the era of increased competition and rivalry between the remaining Ottoman peoples, administrative reform was depicted as necessary to saving the empire as well as to continuing its path of advancement and progress.

The practical demands of the committee were based on existing provincial institutions such as the general council, the administrative council, the education council, and the religious endowments council (art. 4), but sought to beef up the autonomy and binding nature of the councils' decisions (art. 5), to standardize election and appointment to the committees (art. 7, 10, and 11), and to enshrine the right of oversight and transparency in provincial administration (art. 6, 8, and 9). In addition, the committee's program called for reforming the land tenure system and ensuring the participation of Bedouin tribes (art. 13), demanded that every province would have two official languages, Ottoman Turkish and the language of the majority of the province's inhabitants (art. 14), insisted that education must be in the language of the province (art. 15), and requested that compulsory military service during peacetime be fulfilled within the home province.

In its principled demand that education and the curriculum be left in the hands of the local education council, as well as in its demand that every province have two official languages, the Decentralization Party reiterated the cultural Arabist resolutions of the Paris Congress. The Paris Congress also had insisted on quotas for Arab representation in all government councils and ministries and demanded that government officials posted in Arab provinces know Arabic. Both groups, however, preserved the role of security and foreign affairs for the central government and did not raise any issue that could be considered separatist nationalist.
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At first, the CUP government agreed to several of the Arabs' demands, even making a number of conciliatory gestures toward them. Within months, however, the CUP backpedaled and a sultanic edict was issued that ignored virtually all of their demands for reform. The Decentralization Party sent one more telegram-appeal to the grand vizier in the hopes that their demands would fall on sympathetic ears. Should the reasonable demands of the Arabs not be met, however, the Decentralization Party also issued a veiled threat.

There is no Arab as far as we know who is devoted to the protection of the flag of the Ottoman crescent who does not want the continuation of the state and life with his brothers the Turks under one flag…just as there is no Arab who understands the meaning of life and existence who wishes that his place in this state will be the position of a slave owned by the king…nor that of a foreigner among the colonizing occupier. Nay, every thinking Arab who understands the meaning of life demands that his place will be side by side with the Turk in this empire, a position of brother and comrade next to his brother and comrade, where neither of them takes advantage of the other, either in Islamic law or in imperial law, but rather where individuals from each of the two peoples will be preferred according to their knowledge and works…. But if our brothers do not want to understand this fact…then the Arab people want life and will struggle for it.
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FROM WAR TO WAR

If in 1913 the language was still of reform and decentralization, within two years everything would change. The outbreak of the Balkan war in the fall of 1912 was an opportunity for the Arab provinces to show their patriotism and commitment to remaining within the Ottoman Empire.
The Carmel
covered the war extensively as well as the local Palestinian response to it. With the reading of the sultanic declaration of war, large crowds gathered in Haifa and ‘Akka, where patriotic poems were read and exhortative speeches were given. Over the coming weeks, numerous patriotic editorials and poems were published in the paper; notices about
volunteers heading to the front (including forty-five from Haifa) were welcomed enthusiastically and praised with superlatives; and fundraising performances and donations were duly noted and honored.
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However, by the end of the fighting in the Balkans, the demographics of the empire had shifted dramatically as large numbers of Christians were no longer included in the empire's territorial boundaries, leaving the empire the most demographically homogeneous (and the most Muslim) it had ever been in its more than six-hundred-year existence. The impact of the Balkan wars was profound: the trauma of losing Salonica, home to the revolution as well as of many of its leaders, coupled with the temporary loss of Edirne, the capital of the empire until the conquest of Constantinople, was unbearable. At the same time, for many who saw the Christians as a Fifth Column enabling the defeat of the empire to Greece and Bulgaria, Ottomanism as a union of Muslims and Christians was proven to be a delusion.
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As a result of this development, the CUP and others in the empire turned to Islamic discourse more openly as a source of Ottoman imperial identity and solidarity. This was apparent in the 1913-14 parliamentary elections, where the
sharīf
of Mecca, the custodian of the holy sites, was paraded throughout the Arab provinces to rally votes for the CUP.
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The decision of the CUP to enter World War I on the German and Austro-Hungarian side transformed the war effort into a jihad, or holy war. Finally, under the cover of war, the Ottoman government abrogated the Capitulations, which had long been a source of inequality between Europe and the empire, as well as between foreign proteges and Ottoman citizens within.

While the initial entry of the Ottoman Empire into the world war led to a surge in patriotic activity and mobilization, over the course of the war several factors stretched the remaining elements of the Ottoman nation to the breaking point. First, massive conscription from the Arab provinces provided the Ottoman army with up to three hundred thousand recruits, about one-third of the empire's total military forces, but left many homes without breadwinners and workers. The privations of war—famine, disease, locust plagues, poverty—led to great suffering throughout the empire, suffering that would remain seared in the collective memory of the Arab provinces long after the empire ceased to exist. Under the rule of Cemal Pasha, the iron fist of martial law, which included wartime expulsions and imprisonment, further alienated the local population.
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Two Palestinians left their impressions of the war years that give the sense of an increased feeling of colonization and subjugation under Ottoman rule. Khalil al-Sakakini, the Christian educator discussed earlier, complained about the labor battalions that conscripted local Christians
to work on building roads, cleaning trash, and performing other menial tasks for the local government and army. Al-Sakakini recorded:

Today a large number of Christians were recruited as garbage collectors to Bethlehem and Bayt Jala. Each was given a broom, a shovel, and a bucket, and they were distributed in the alleys of the town. Conscripts would shout at each home they passed, “send us your garbage.” The women of Bethlehem looked out from their windows and wept. No doubt this is the ultimate humiliation. We have gone back to the days of bondage in the Roman and Assyrian days.
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A similar sentiment was expressed by al-Sakakini's former student, Ihsan Turjeman, a young Muslim private serving in army headquarters in Jerusalem. According to Turjeman, “We have entered into a compact with this state that can only work if we are treated on equal footing with the Turkish [subjects]. Now, however, the state has chosen to treat us as a colonized possession, and the time has come to break up the partnership.”
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Only a few months later, dozens of Arab intellectuals were sentenced to death in an Ottoman army court-martial in Aley, north of Beirut. The charge against them was “high treason,” and the evidence included a group of papers confiscated from the French Consulate in Beirut, where the men had reportedly asked for French help in securing independence from the Ottomans.
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Most of those sentenced to death managed to escape or were already out of the country, but eleven were hanged in downtown Beirut; the following year twenty-one additional men went to the gallows in Beirut and Damascus. Among those hanged were several prominent journalists who had been active in the decentralist movement: Shaykh Ahmad Tabbara, editor of
Ottoman Union
; ‘Abd al-Ghani al-ʻUraisi, editor of
Al-Mufīd;
along with Shukri al-ʻAsali, the Damascene member of parliament. In addition, four Palestinian men were executed.