Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (34 page)

Together with Nissim Malul, the Moyals established the Society for Arabic Publishing (
evrat hadpasa he-‘aravit) in Jaffa, selling shares in order to establish a printing press to “disseminate the news of how the Jews have worked for the good of the homeland” and to “[defend] against our enemies.”
¹¹⁹
The society published numerous telegrams and articles as flyers, but its role was controversial within the Jewish community. For example, on December 27, 1912,
Liberty
published a notice about a meeting between the leaders of the Zionist colonies and the Ottoman government to determine their taxes due.
Palestine
issued an article that argued the colonies should be taxed for the income of the ha-Carmel ha-Mizrahi wine company. According to
Liberty
, the society “immediately mobilized and issued a flyer that said it was unfair [to tax them] because there was no connection between the private company and the colony farmers.” This article was printed and distributed in the city about an hour after the emergence of the
Palestine
article and the two were practically sold side by side. According to the correspondent, however, “the absurd thing is that the owners of the newspaper
Palestine
say…that they write their poisonous articles only because Dr. Moyal and Dr. Malul answer them, and they are angry because those two Jewish writers purport to being deputies of the Jewish people in its entirety!…It’s a shame we did not disappoint them.”
¹²⁰

Around the same time, the Moyals, Malul, and a dozen other Sephardi men and women organized themselves in a group called The Shield (Ha-Magen), in order to consolidate efforts to defend the Jews from press attacks as well as to foster understanding between Arabs
and Jews. Other known members of the group included sons of the most prominent Sephardi families—David Moyal, Yoshu‘a Elkayam, Yosef Amzalek, David Hivan, Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche and Ya‘kov Chelouche, Avraham Elmaliach, Moshe Matalon, and Nissim Malul, as well as two women, Esther Moyal and Farha (Simha) Chelouche (a Moyal cousin).
¹²¹
Many of these men and women had been educated in Arab schools and universities in Beirut and Cairo, and their weekly meetings at the home office of David Moyal were conducted in Arabic.

In the sole surviving copy of The Shield’s founding manifesto, entitled “To the Hebrew Nation in the Lands of Its Dispersion,” Secretary Avraham Elmaliach laid out the organization’s aims and tactics.
¹²²
Although the text begins with a traditional laudatory summary of Zionist pioneer accomplishments in Palestine, what emerges is a fascinating document that clearly links their activities with a distinct Ottomanist and Palestinianist shared civic vision. When Elmaliach wrote of the Zionists as “bringing industry and culture and commerce” to Palestine, he meant that they did so for the “betterment of the
shared homeland [ha-moledet ha-meshutefet
], materially and spiritually.” “Here, finally,” Elmaliach wrote, “we have arrived at the moment when we can work together with our brothers…for the development of their land and our land [
ar
am ve-ar
enu].”
Most explicitly, Elmaliach pressed the Arabs and Jews to work together for
moledetam u-moledetenu
—their homeland and ours. The Shield’s vision was not one of exclusive ownership or rights to Palestine. Rather, it used the very evocative Hebrew of the Zionist movement to declare joint ownership and responsibility between Jews and Arabs, a fact that would earn them the opprobrium of a wide segment of the local Ashkenazi Zionist community.
¹²³

Elmaliach outlined the aims of the association—mainly, “to defend through all legal and kosher means our status in the land.” The Shield, according to its manifesto, was to concern itself with both internal and external concerns. Internally, The Shield “would endeavor to strengthen the bond between the Jews and the rest of the residents of the land and the government.” To this end, it intended to launch a press campaign that would translate the Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and foreign-language publications that appeared in the Ottoman Empire and send them to every major Jewish and Hebrew publication “so that the sons of our people will know what is written about them, between the good and the bad.” The association also called on “the guardians of Israel” to respond to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic articles with their own submissions to the non-Jewish press. Furthermore, The Shield intended to influence the existing Arabic and Ottoman Turkish press, to increase their subscribers and readers and to improve their content
and style. Finally, The Shield vowed that it “would not let pass quietly any hateful article, big or small, in order that such a silence would be considered a message from our side.” All of these activities, of course, reflect a very defensive program of public relations, and also reflect the degree to which the press, far from its Ottomanist origins, had become a battlefield in an emerging sectarian-nationalist struggle in Palestine.

In the fall of 1908, an extraordinary public exchange took place between Yitzhak Levi, a private Jewish citizen and then-candidate for Ottoman parliament, and the new governor of Jerusalem Subhi Bey. In an open letter published in the Hebrew press, Levi challenged the new governor, raising questions about the role of a “constitutional pasha” and the contours of projected progress for the provincial corners of the empire.
¹
Levi's letter began by emphasizing a sharp break between the new constitutional regime and the old Hamidian state; previous governors had been more interested in their own financial gain and in stunting local progress, Levi claimed, while at the same time being praised in the official state press as “servants of the nation.” In contrast, the constitutional era demanded a new relationship between the state's functionaries and its citizenry. In this new era, according to Levi, the chief utility of the imperial government would be in advancing local development and progress. “Your Honor is the chief functionary of the Jerusalem district but also its chief servant, and it is incumbent upon Your Honor before everything else…not to place any obstacle in the way of this movement in propelling the country towards the path of progress and civilization.”

Levi proposed a series of economic and political reforms for Jerusalem which would result in a complete overhaul of administration in the province, and placed it on the governor's shoulders.

We are thirsty for progress and ameliorations since we have been deprived for thirty-two years from this pleasure, and we have lost the most beautiful years of our youth under the pressure of that tyrannous government…You do not have to take a glance around you to see what you have to do. The cities and the rural areas are in the saddest state. With the exception of a very few areas, agriculture and animal husbandry are almost abandoned everywhere. Industry and trade are hardly developed. The urban and rural administration leaves much to be desired. The legislation is full of obstacles. The courts system and justice are far too blind in this
country. Your sphere of activity is thus immense; there is enough to fill the most beautiful career of a civil servant, if you want to devote yourself to it seriously.

Most important, Levi demanded an increased role for the local population in provincial administration: “Before anything, Excellency, remember this well: it is clear that if the people were nothing to date, it is decided [they will] be everything in the future.” Levi was speaking as a former Ottoman government employee, but also as a newly empowered imperial citizen.

Subhi Bey's response, which was published separately as a trilingual French-Arabic-Ottoman Turkish pamphlet, was an unprecedented public act of incorporating the city's leading citizens into the discussion and indeed, of forging a partnership between the expanding citizenry and the local government.
²
While consultative bodies had been established in the provinces following the 1867 Vilayets Law, the reality was more of tolerance of local involvement rather than real partnership, and the locals saw political-administrative involvement more as a “privilege” rather than a “right.” Given the changing revolutionary mandate as well as the hostile circumstances under which Ekrem Bey, Subhi Bey's predecessor, had left Jerusalem, it was all the more critical for the new governor to propose partnership rather than conflict.

He clearly saw his role as central to the modernization of the province, including its adherence to the revolutionary, constitutional regime. In addition to outlining the various broader issues of local development and reform, the governor also listed the meetings he had held in his first week on the job, and he informed his readers of the various investigative and consultative commissions he had established with local bureaucrats and civic leaders. Among other things, Subhi Bey had received complaints and requests from the population, created a commission to examine the agricultural needs of the province, initiated the establishment of a chamber of commerce for the city, commissioned a research study for routing water to Jerusalem from the Arroube spring, met with the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad company about transportation issues, and asked the municipality to study the construction of sewers in the city.

Subhi Bey had a busy first week indeed. More noteworthy than his schedule, however, was that, by translating, publishing, and disseminating the exchange between himself and Citizen Levi, Subhi Bey committed himself to the principles of transparency and accountability. This was implicit in the pamphlet's preface addressed to the reader, wherein the anonymous, pro-government publisher wrote:

This letter program is of the utmost importance for all the inhabitants of our province because it develops in a concise way all the reforms and improvements
which His Excellency Subhi Bey will apply in the course of his administration. This letter is a
precious guarantee
for all of us, because it allows us to expect that henceforth the government understands the gravity of [the situation]….

In addition, we urgently ask of all our fellow citizens [
muwā
inaynā
] to facilitate the difficult task of our governor while providing him with all the…forces available to this country—then, one will see marvelous results emerging from all sides.
The collaboration of the people and the government
is the path of the future.

By appealing to his fellow citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity, the publisher of the pamphlet privileged the civic identification of the people of Jerusalem, casting it as a source of legitimacy and incorporation. This chapter further explores the city as an important site for revolutionary discourses and practices of imperial citizenship. After the 1908 revolution, throughout the empire middle-class citizens began to take on a new, public role, no longer content to defer to the central or local governments, or to the traditional urban notables of the provinces. Active in institutions such as local chambers of commerce and Freemasonry lodges, the urban residents of Jerusalem shared interests and values—local development and infrastructure, “modernization and progress,” and good government. These institutions aided in the Ottomanization of the city in several ways: as sites of interconfessional sociability and cooperation, through their commitment to the revolutionary ideals of reform, democratization, and a modern vision of progress, and under the banner of Ottoman imperial patriotism. At the same time, however, they reflected and confronted the extant and budding cultural and political conflicts of the time.

URBAN CITIZENSHIP IN JERUSALEM

Jerusalemites were not entirely unfamiliar with the idea that members of the local population had a role to play in local governance. In fact, this had been a feature of the nineteenth-century Ottoman reform project, the Tanzimat, and from the issuance of the 1864 and 1871 Vilayets Laws, local councils had been established in Palestine—the administrative council, general council, and municipal councils.
³
Of the three, the administrative council was the most important for the province as a whole. It was authorized to deliberate and decide on public works, agriculture, finance, tax collection, police, land registry, and extraregional matters. It also could approve municipal budgets and had quasi-judicial powers over issues of landholding, such as overseeing the legality of land transfers and issuing land title deeds.
⁴
The general council met twice
every year for forty-day sessions in which it deliberated on budget matters. Members of the administrative and general councils were appointed by the governor, who normally tapped members of prominent families as well as representatives from the various religious communities.
⁵
In the Jerusalem province, there was a history of regular, though by no means equal, Christian and Jewish representation on these provincial councils.

Beyond these provincial councils that implemented imperial policies, it was the municipal council which oversaw the day-to-day needs of the empire's residents. The first municipal government in Palestine was established in the 1860s in Jerusalem; half a century later at the end of Ottoman rule, there were twenty-two city councils active throughout the country.
⁶
Taxpaying city dwellers voted for the ten members of the city council, who also had to be property owners themselves, establishing an important precedent for urban citizenship practices.
⁷

Little is known about the activities of the other municipalities, but the Jerusalem municipality's responsibilities were extensive: administration (budget, population registration, supervision of markets and cafés, monitoring currency use in the markets); law and order (overseeing the police force); health and sanitation (establishing a municipal hospital and pharmacy; cleaning streets and sewage on a regular basis); and construction, building planning and supervision (issuing permits; land expropriation for municipal use).
⁸
The municipal government also carried out social welfare programs such as supporting the poor and homeless, as well as supporting families unexpectedly blessed (and challenged) with the birth of twins.
⁹

Out of all of the municipality's concerns, health and sanitation seemed to provide the greatest source of worry for the city council at the turn of the twentieth century. Cleanliness in public spaces was imperative for maintaining public health and preventing the spread of disease. This was particularly true for the Old City of Jerusalem, with its close quarters, mixed commercial and residential spaces, and narrow, winding alleys, but this concern for public health also led to the city council expanding its jurisdiction to the new extramural neighborhoods in 1902.
¹⁰
A few years later, in February 1905, the municipality more than doubled its cleaning budget, hiring al-Hajj Muhammad Khalaf, from the village of ‘Ayn Karam, to bring twenty beasts of burden and the necessary tools for street cleanup. The city also planned to purchase sixty-six additional brooms, twenty-two baskets, and to hire an additional twenty workers for the job.
¹¹
In addition to its cleanup efforts, the Jerusalem municipality, like other cities in the Ottoman Empire, employed a doctor and staffed a medical clinic; in 1912, the municipality opened a municipal hospital in the city to compete with the various private (usually European and Christian) hospitals in town.

The municipality did not run the city on its own, but relied on recruiting residents in the city. In fact, members of the urban republic were tapped to serve on a variety of city committees, such as the city's military reserve, guard duty and security, police reform, and elections committees, as well as to help supervise the above-mentioned cleanup project on the neighborhood level.
¹²
Furthermore, neighborhood and confessional “headmen” (known as
mukhtars)
fulfilled important functions in mediating between the provincial government, the municipality, the
shari‘a
court, and town residents. It also seems that there were elected councils in various neighborhoods, with ex officio religious leaders as well as four to five elected residents.
¹³

With the 1908 revolution, an important new tool emerged in the practice of urban citizenship: the newspaper. As we saw in the last chapter, the Ottoman revolutionary press far surpassed its predecessors in scope and aims, and played a central role in outlining and debating the shape and content of Ottoman imperial citizenship. At the same time, by legitimating the city as a shared unit and in exhorting readers to participate in urban life in a responsible manner, the press was vital in shaping a conscious and engaged urban citizenry.

In addition to reporting on the work of municipal authorities or publishing municipal announcements, among the various subjects for press coverage were security, reports on the government's new urban anti-vagrancy measures, and public health measures.
¹⁴
For example, the municipality reminded the town's residents that throwing trash in the street was a public health risk and a traffic hazard, not to mention being illegal; it urged them to make use of “special containers” which would be picked up by the municipality. On other occasions, readers were warned to take precautions against cholera by purifying and washing their wells; informed of an outbreak of spinal meningitis and other epidemics; warned about rabid dogs; and cautioned against the sale of bad meat and dead fish.
¹⁵
At times and for good measure, appeals from the religious authorities would be published to strengthen the authority of the municipality and press.
¹⁶