This thesis investigates how the local Muslim elites and peasant classes of Ottoman-Palestine responded to political centralization and economic changes, from 1856-1908. After 1856, the Ottoman state renewed its authority in this area and granted greater political control to the local Muslim elites to govern the population. The economic changes at this time included Ottoman-Palestine's integration into the world-economy and the expanded markets in the local and regional area. The thesis argues that these two developments afforded the elites more opportunities to appropriate the peasants' agriculture. Moreover, while the Jewish Christian populations traded with Europe, the local Muslim elite concentrated on the local and regional trade.

No description available.

During the Middle Bronze II B-C period (1800-1500 B.C.) Palestine underwent an unprecedented period of urban development. This urban development had several spatial consequences, which may be divided into three categories: (1) Spatial relationships between urban settlements and features of the local and regional environment, (2) Spatial patterns in the internal organization of urban settlements, and (3) Spatial patterns in the distribution of urban and rural settlements across the landscape. These three categories form the basis of this dissertation. With respect to the relationship between urban settlements and environmental features, it is demonstrated that urban settlements are associated with productive agricultural land, ample natural water sources, and natural routes of travel. They are also found only in regions where rainfall is sufficient for successful dry farming. The internal spatial organization of Middle Bronze urban settlements is found to be characterized by both agglomeration and centrality. Zones of land-use related to various urban functions are identified, and the similarity of these cities to other pre-industrial cities is demonstrated. Examination of the distribution of urban settlements across the land-scape suggests that these cities were not integrated into a regional urban system, but rather were independent city-states, each with its own supporting region. An examination of rural settlements within the hypothetical supporting region of each urban center supports this conclusion, although the inadequacies of survey within each of these regions preclude definitive conclusions.

In 1917 the British Government gave its sanction to the establishmentof a Jewish National Home in Palestine. In 1948 the independentState of Israel came into existence as an outgrowth of that sanction.At the end of this thirty-one year period the Jews constituted aboutone-third of the population of Palestine, but their tremendous zeal,backed by a large financial outlay by the Jews of the Diaspora, madethem more than a match for the remainder of the population. During thethree decades of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, they had builta prosperous community in the midst of a conservative society.

This study is an effort to view events in the Ancient Near East, especially Palestine, during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age from a somewhat different angle. In a first instance, it will try to move away from concentrating on the movement of ethnic entities. Emphasis will be on the social groupings involved, bandits and nomads being singled out especially as they behave and evolve in a highland environment. Chapter I assesses whether or not ancient Palestine in particular offers conditions appropriate for the rise of banditry. chapter 2 will analyze behavioral patterns among bandits and stress that they can function as wielders of important political and military power. Chapter 3 introduces nomads especially as they are perceived by the sedentary and urban groups, but also as they stand in relation to bandits. Chapter 4 will use these findings to present a picture of the Palestinian highlands as an autonomous hinterland. Chapter 5 will treat the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition more directly. It will point out how these same highlands became an attractive area of refuge during the time of the late Egyptian takeover, the arrival of the Sea Peoples, and, finally, the collapse of the empire. Chapter 6 will move onto the processes of state-formation after that collapse. It will present the capacities of bandits and nomads to develop stronger polities from a sociological point of view, before the concluding chapter 7 takes a close look at first the written, then the epigraphical and archaeological material relevant to the particular Palestinian highland situation, especially treating the question of the power and size of any polity that would have arisen under the given conditions.

This diploma thesis deals with the withdrawal of Great Britain from Palestine and the reactions of the Zionist movement on her mandatory policy. In 1937, the British planed to divide the mandate between the Arabs and the Jews, terminate the administration and establish an alliance with the successor states. Disapproval of the Arab world, worsened security in Palestine and the threat of a war in Europe led the mandatory power to prolong the administration and restrict the jewish immigration.These meassures caused a deterioration of Anglo-Zionist relations. During the Second World War, the Zionist Organization put forward a request for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. No long after, the British restored their preparations for the termination of the mandate. As before the war, they sought for the pernament teritorial solution for postmandatory Palestine and new allies. Due to unstable geopolitical situation and the loss of her hegemonic position, Great Britain had to consider the attitudes of the Arab world and the United States of America.

Biblical and Ancient Studies / M.Th. (Old Testament)

My dissertation examines Muslim-Christian relations in Palestine during the British mandate period, specifically, around the question of what constituted Palestinian-Arab identity. More broadly speaking, the dissertation addresses the topic within the context of the larger debate concerning the role of material factors (those related to specific historical developments and circumstances) versus that of ideological ones. in determining national identities. At the beginning of the twentieth, century, two models of Arab nationalism were proposed-a more secular one emphasising a shared language and culture (and thus, relatively inclusive of non-Muslims) and one wherein Arab identity was seen as essentially an extension of the Islamic religious community, or umma. While many historians dealing with Arab nationalism have tended to focus on the role of language (likewise, the role of Christian Arab intellectuals), I would maintain that it is the latter model that proved determinative of how most Muslim Arabs came to conceive of their identity as Arabs. Both models were essentially intellectual constructs; that the latter prevailed in the end reflects the predominance of material factors over ideological ones. Specifically, I consider the impact of social, political and economic changes related to the Tanzimat reforms and European economic penetration of the nineteenth century; the role of proto-nationalist models of communal identification-particularly those related to religion; and finally, the role played by political actors seeking to gain or consolidate authority through the manipulation of proto-nationalist symbols.

The Israel/Palestine question, and its resonance for international peace and security, has turned into a central interest of the modern world. It also raises much controversy in the academic community. The Western support for Israel, a key factor in Israel's survival, is a significant feature of this issue. It has been revealed, through preceding studies, that Western policies towards Israel, foreign human rights policy for instance, are biased. The West appears biased, also, in what it produces about the question. Western products in the cinema and the mass media examined in this regard. How knowledge produced in the West is influenced by the pro-Israeli environment has been an academic concern. No empirical investigation, at the same time, has been made into how academic knowledge at university level treats the Israel/Palestine question. The popular belief about the scientific and impartial characteristics of Western knowledge has probably contributed to such a state of affairs. A sample of the most popular college level textbooks on the history of the Israel/Palestine question has been selected, through an extensive survey, to represent relevant Western knowledge. The selected textbooks have been analysed through a method of 'Historical Narrative Analysis' against a Zionist/pro-Israeli structure of Israel's history. The immediate context of the histories produced, the relevant historians and their background, are analysed to answer the second part of the key question of the research: ‘How the knowledge of history of the Israel/Palestine question is presented in Western academia, and why it has been presented in that particular way. The results of the first analysis, a textbook analysis, support the claim that textbook knowledge on the question is mainly pro-Israeli in bias. In relation to the question 'why', the analysis offers the 'Jewish pro-Israeli producer' as the main factor that can explain that bias in the products. Another factor is identified in this analysis as well; the relevant knowledge has been produced in a certain, American or Israeli, national and educational environment.

This research grows out of an interest in what scholars commonly call the wisdom tradition of the ancient near east. This tradition or movement involved groups of thinkers and writers, known collectively as scribes, who were concerned in a philosophical way with the problems of living, and with principles of living well. Such communities are known to have flourished in Egypt, the various kingdoms of Mesopotamia, and western Asia, from at least the middle of the third millennium B.C. These scribal communities are also known to have sponsored schools, intended primarily for training in statecraft and the professions, but also for training in the scribal profession per se. The documentary and historical record indicates that such schools provided education from the most rudimentary level of literacy and writing to the most advanced levels of scribal scholarship. These advanced levels of training were functionally equivalent to what is nowadays known as higher education; and the ideals, the philosophy, which guided this enterprise found expression in a corpus of literature bearing the name "wisdom." The problem for this dissertation is whether or not there was in ancient Israel, specifically in the Solomonic era (10th century, B.C.), such an advanced scribal school associated with a Hebrew wisdom tradition. This is a research problem precisely because the evidence for such a school in Israel is both less abundant and less accessible than for the rest of the ancient near east.