Jordan CONFLICTING NATIONALISMS: ARAB NATIONALISM AND ZIONISM
The street of columns at Jarash
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, two separate
movements developed that were to have continuing effects for all of
the Middle East--the Arab revival and Zionism. Both movements aimed
at uniting their peoples in a national homeland. They were to
converge and confront each other in Palestine where, it was
initially thought by some, they could each achieve their
aspirations in an atmosphere of mutual accommodation. The two
movements would, in fact, prove incompatible.
By 1875 a small group of Western-oriented Muslim and Christian
Arab intellectuals in Beirut were urging the study of Arab history,
literature, and language to revive Arab identity. By means of
secretly printed and circulated publications they attempted to
expose the harsh nature of Ottoman rule and to arouse an Arab
consciousness in order to achieve greater autonomy or even
independence. The idea of independence always was expressed in the
context of a unified entity--"the Arab nation" as a whole. After
only a few years, however, Ottoman security operations had stifled
the group's activities.
At about the same time, a Jewish revival was finding expression
in Europe that called for the return of the Jews in the Diaspora to
their historic homeland. The impulse and development of Zionism
were almost exclusively the work of European Jews. In 1897 Theodor
Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland,
where the Zionist Organization was founded with the stated aim of
creating "for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by
public law." As a result of Zionist efforts, the number of Jews in
Palestine rose dramatically to about 85,000, or 12 percent of the
total population, by the start of World War I.
The increased Jewish presence and the different customs of the
new settlers aroused Arab hostility. The rising tension between
Jewish settler and Arab peasant did not, however, lead to the
establishment of Arab nationalist organizations. In the Ottomancontrolled Arab lands the Arab masses were bound by family, tribal,
and Islamic ties; the concepts of nationalism and nation-state were
viewed as alien Western categories. Thus, a political imbalance
evolved between the highly organized and nationalistic Jewish
settlers and the relatively unorganized indigenous Arab population.
A few Western-educated Arab intellectuals and military officers
did form small nationalist organizations demanding greater local
autonomy. The primary moving force behind this nascent Arab
nationalist movement was opposition to the policies of Sultan Abdul
Hamid II.
In 1908 a group of reform-minded nationalist army officers in
Constantinople, known as the Young Turks, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid
II to restore the 1876 Ottoman constitution. The next year the
Young Turks deposed Hamid in favor of his malleable brother, Mehmed
V. Under the constitution, Ottoman provinces were represented by
delegates elected to an imperial parliament. The restoration of the
constitution and installation of Mehmed V initially generated a
wave of good feeling among the empire's non-Turkish subjects and
stimulated expectations of greater self-government.
It soon became clear, however, that the Young Turks, led by
Enver Pasha, were bent instead on further centralizing the Ottoman
administration and intensifying the "Turkification" of the Ottoman
domains. Arab opposition to the Turkish nationalist policies
asserted itself in two separate arenas: among urban intellectuals
and in the countryside. One source of opposition developed among
Arab intellectuals in Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus, who formulated
the ideas of a new Arab nationalism. The primary moving force
behind this nascent Arab nationalist movement was opposition to the
policies of Sultan Abdul Hamid. The removal of Sultan Abdul Hamid
by the Committee of Union and Progress (the umbrella organization
of which the Young Turks was the major element) was widely
supported by Arab nationalists. The committee's program of
institutional reform and promised autonomy raised Arab nationalist
hopes.
After 1908, however, it quickly became clear that the
nationalism of Abdul Hamid's successors was Turkish nationalism
bent on Turkification of the Ottoman domain rather than on granting
local autonomy. In response, Arab urban intellectuals formed
clandestine political societies such as the Ottoman
Decentralization Party, based in Cairo; Al Ahd (The Covenant
Society), formed primarily by army officers in 1914; and Jamiat al
Arabiyah al Fatat (The Young Arab Society), known as Al Fatat (The
Young Arabs), formed by students in 1911. The Arab nationalism
espoused by these groups, however, lacked support among the Arab
masses.
A more traditional form of opposition emerged among the remote
desert tribes of Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula, which were
politically inarticulate but resentful of foreign control. The link
between the urban political committees and the desert tribesmen was
Hussein ibn Ali Al Hashimi, the grand sharif and amir of Mecca and
hereditary custodian of the Muslim holy places. Hussein, head of
the Hashimite branch of the Quraysh tribe, claimed descent from the
Prophet. Hussein and his sons Abdullah and Faisal (who had been
educated as members of the Ottoman elite as well as trained for
their roles as Arab chieftains) had spent the years 1893 to 1908
under enforced restraint in Constantinople. In 1908 Abdul Hamid II
appointed Hussein amir of Mecca and allowed him and his sons to
return to the Hijaz, the western part of present-day Saudi Arabia.
Some sources contend that Hussein's nomination was suggested by the
Young Turks, who believed that he would be a stabilizing influence
there, particularly if he were indebted to them for his position.
In his memoirs, however, Abdullah stated that Abdul Hamid II named
his father in preference to a candidate proposed by the Young
Turks. Hussein reportedly asked for the appointment on the ground
that he had an hereditary right to it. From the outset, Abdullah
wrote, his father was at odds with the attempts of the Young Turk
regime to bring the Hijaz under the centralized and increasingly
secularized administration in Constantinople. Once in office,
Hussein proved less tractable than either the sultan or the Turkish
nationalists had expected.
Abdullah and Faisal established contact with the Arab
nationalists in Syria. Faisal delivered to his father the so-called
Damascus Protocol in which the nationalists, who appealed to
Hussein as "Father of the Arabs" to deliver them from the Turks,
set out the demands for Arab independence that were used by Faisal
in his subsequent negotiations with the British. In return, the
nationalists accepted the Hashimites as spokesmen for the Arab
cause.
Data as of December 1989
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