Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (46 page)

On the other hand, it was impossible to ignore the growing tension between Ottomanism and Arabism. A published letter from one of the local youth, Darwish Sakijha, reiterated in many ways the strong emotional attachment to the revolution that was nurtured among the populace. While praising the “beautiful” and “joyous” holiday of the constitution (“a date that should be carved into the breast of every loyal Ottoman”), Sakijha closed with the requisite cries “long live freedom, long live the homeland, long live the people,” and then added, “long live the Arabs.”
³⁶
Two years earlier, the ending instinctively would have been “long live the Ottoman nation.” Even more explicitly, the standard poem included to commemorate the revolution's anniversary opened and closed with articulations of difference and separation between Arab and Turk, again avoiding the previously unanimous appeal to “Ottomans”: “To the East on the holiday, oh, what a holiday of joy, on the stage of the two peoples, the Turk and the Arab.”
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And yet, despite the complex ambivalence toward the empire's current path that found expression in the pages of his newspaper,
Palestine's
editor Yusuf al-'Issa sought to remind his readers of the proper balance between Ottomanism and criticism. In a stinging article entitled “The Liberals/Freemen of July (Tammuz),” al-'Issa sharply criticized the shortcomings of the revolution. Al-'Issa also, however, lashed out at the indifference and ignorance of the masses and at the self-serving and hypocritical political Arabists in the press who proclaimed themselves to be the inheritors of the revolutionary mandate yet were, according to al-'Issa, complicit in the counterrevolutionary movements. (“Those who call from their high roofs that they are liberals are far from this virtue, as far as the wolf from the blood of the son of Jacob, and I leave it to their [account with] God and their consciences.”)
³⁸

Then what do we mean by “liberals/freemen of July”? We mean the thousands of students who were set free in the annual [summer] holiday [from school]. We say to them: O new generation, tomorrow you will see your city decorated in flags and your rulers dressed in elaborate clothing—ask your fathers or whoever is older than you the reason and they will respond that this day is the 24th of July upon which the constitution was proclaimed…. If you want to know the history of liberty and the constitution then beware of the Arabic newspapers. I am afraid you will understand from them that the constitution is based on [opposition leader] al-'Asali, member of parliament from Damascus, and that its foundations are the officials of Nablus and the notables of Jerusalem and the heroes of Harat al-Maydan in Syria. As we read yesterday: “The homeland will not grow great men until their dust is gathered as one mass to drink from the delicious blood of the martyrs in the cause of justice.”

If you ask what they are talking about and who the martyrs in the cause of justice are, they will answer that he is a journalist, the martyr whose blood Istanbul
spilled. If you investigate that martyr you will find that he was a writer who with his writings as a sword caused the destruction of the homeland [
khirāb al-wafan
] in the days of Abdulhamid and took part in the betrayal of the [constitution].
³⁹

The critique of an Ottomanism that had fallen far short of expectations as well as of the specific path of centralization chosen by the CUP which held power were at the core of two important movements that emerged in the Arab provinces in 1912-13. The first, the Beirut Reform Committee (al-jamiʻa al-ʻumūmiyya al-islāhiyya), sought to promote increased rights for the provinces. Soon after the BRC was outlawed by the government, the Decentralization Party (hizb al-lāmarkaziyya) was established in Cairo to promote federalism in the Ottoman Empire. They both linked their cultural demands on behalf of the Arabic language with political demands of provincial reform.
⁴⁰

In many ways, these movements were rearticulations of earlier calls for decentralization that were issued before the revolution as well as immediately after. However, when two Lebanese Christian brothers residing in Paris, Rashid and Nakhla Mutran, had called for Syrian autonomy soon after the revolution, they had been roundly denounced by the head of the Paris Ottoman Commercial Committee, Syrian exiles resident in Cairo in
Al-Ahram
newspaper, and even their own brother Nadra in the pages of
Istanbul.
When their manifestos surfaced in Damascus and Baghdad, hundreds of notables had signed telegrams to the grand vizier and the Ottoman parliament condemning the pamphlets and reiterating their loyalty to the empire.
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By 1911-12, in contrast, the imperial landscape had changed dramatically, and ideas not so far off from the Mutran brothers' earlier proposals for “administrative independence [
istiqlal idari]”
were bandied about. It is clear that proposals for administrative reform in the Arab provinces of the empire were rooted in mounting complaints about incomplete Ottomanism and a critique of the CUP, on the one hand, but importantly, they also stemmed from observing ethnic politics in the empire more broadly. Arabs looked to the citizenship claims of other groups in the empire and followed suit. For example, the Haifa-based newspaper
The Carmel
framed the Arab reform movement in the context of the recent gains by Albanians in the empire for decentralization and cultural autonomy. Nejuib Nassar saw the Albanians' demands for local military service, government officials who knew the Albanian language, and primary education in Albanian, as entirely natural. As Nassar saw it, despite the fact that the ethnic Turkish element was a pillar of the empire due to their political and military contributions, the other ethnic groups also had a role to play in the empire and should have complete freedom to live out their national customs, a fact the CUP failed to recognize.
⁴²

If the Albanians were a positive model for Nassar of a loyal and patriotic ethnic group demanding their rights within the empire, the Balkan nationalists earned his opprobrium. Rather than demanding reform, they had turned to foreign powers and engendered the breakup of the empire. At the same time, however, Nassar also blamed the CUP government for pushing the empire to the brink, and linked a resolution of the Balkan conflict to imperial reform. According to Nassar, the current Ottoman government saw Arab and other lands as mere possessions, and the empire had gone from an “Ottoman nation”
(“al-umma al-'Uthmāniyya”)
to its erasure due to the CUP's twin policies of colonization and ethnic nationalism. A recent article in the pro-CUP paper
Tanin
that had called Minister of Interior Talat Pasha the “conqueror of Yemen” (“
fātih al-Yaman”)
was evidence of this tendency. As Nassar rhetorically asked his readers, “Do they not realize that Yemen is Ottoman?”
⁴³

And yet,
The Carmel
remained a deeply patriotic Ottoman newspaper until the very end. Nassar published numerous patriotic poems and letters from readers, such as that by Mikha'il Jirjis Wehbe from Nazareth, whose poem praised Ottoman heroes, denounced foreign occupation, and lauded the empire's various ethnic groups as “brothers walking hand in hand” for the “beloved homeland.” In another article
The Carmel
praised the efforts of Labib Effendi, a military officer who taught at an elementary school in ‘Akka, drilling students in sports and military education; according to the paper, if every officer volunteered to do this in the schools, “we would be a strong nation.” Nassar also took care to emphasize the patriotism of the various opposition figures traveling to and through Palestine, and denounced members of the ‘Abd al-Hadi family in Nablus who were rumored to have approached British officials in neighboring Egypt in order to push for the British occupation of Palestine.
⁴⁴

In other words, to state the obvious, cultural Arabism and calls for reform in the Arab provinces are not the same thing as Arab nationalism.
⁴⁵
Instead, Palestinians and other Arabs saw themselves as loyal—even if critical—Ottomans who took on those few Arabs voices who advocated separation from the empire. The fate of one such figure, Neguib Azoury, who is often cited as the “first” Arab nationalist, proves instructive. Azoury was a Lebanese Christian who had worked in the Ottoman provincial government in Jerusalem; after fleeing government employment under shady circumstances, he published a pamphlet in 1905 from Paris calling for the peoples of the Ottoman Empire to abandon the empire and establish independent states. After the revolution, Azoury made his way back to Jerusalem and stood as a candidate for the Ottoman parliament, but he received virtually no public support and disappeared from the historical record shortly thereafter.

The campaign of another parliamentary candidate, Saʻid Abu Khadraʼ, better illustrates the ways in which loyalty and criticism shaped Arab Ottomanism at empire's end. In the spring of 1912, Abu Khadra', a young member of a notable Muslim family from Gaza, published what was likely the first election pamphlet in Palestinian history, attempting to convince his fellow Palestinians to elect him to the Ottoman parliament. Only one of the three standing MPs representing Jerusalem, Ruhi al-Khalidi, was still running as a Unionist; the other two MPs, Saʻid al-Husayni and Hafiz al-Saʻid, were running with the opposition, the Entente Liberale. In response, the CUP endorsed two other candidates: ‘Uthman al-Nashashibi, a Jerusalem notable, and Ahmed ‘Arif al-Husayni, the mufti of Gaza. The 1912 election season corresponded with the height of Arabist publications and mobilization in the press, a dimension about which other scholars have written. Instead, we will turn to the language of imperial citizenship that Abu Khadra''s campaign revealed.
⁴⁶

In his pamphlet, Abu Khadra' outlined his vision of modern politics and an active imperial citizenship. For one, citizenship demanded a dialogue between elected official and constituent, a dialogue based on transparency of aims, means, and results. That is, it was incumbent upon candidates to come to an understanding with the people in order to learn their demands and to prevent misunderstanding between them. Abu Khadra''s pamphlet was therefore the draft of a social contract of mutual understanding between would-be elected official and ostensible constituents.

He addressed his voters: “'What do you promise us?' I'm sure you, dear voter, are thinking of this: ‘What do you promise us the people of Palestine [ahālī Filastīn] and the residents of the province of Jerusalem?'” With that, Abu Khadra' outlined his ten-point plan for pushing through both imperial reform and local say in that process. Tax reform, much-needed public works like a port for Jaffa and a tramway in Jerusalem, preserving the rights of the religious endowments according to the constitutional proof-text (clause 111), arguing for the modification of the recently enacted censorship laws, all demanded Abu Khadra''s attention, and were all issues that had preoccupied the Palestinian press for months and years beforehand. Abu Khadra' also criticized the elections system and argued for direct elections, argued that land reform would benefit both peasants and the homeland as a whole, and sought a compromise on the language question that would respect the civic mission of Ottoman Turkish while preserving the nobility of Arabic.

Although Abu Khadra' was ultimately unsuccessful in his parliamentary bid, his candidacy was endorsed by
Palestine
and
The Crier
, the most important Arabic newspapers in Jaffa and Jerusalem, respectively.
In his adoption of the language and rationale of the Ottoman reforming classes and in his engagement with the institutions and promises of constitutional liberalism set in place by the 1908 revolution, Abu Khadra' proved himself loyal to the Ottoman imperial project. At the same time, he took issue with the direction of imperial decision making and explicitly demanded more involvement in provincial governance for Palestine and Palestinians on such pressing issues as freedom of the press, public works, and land tenure. In short, Abu Khadra' was neither reflexively loyal to a stagnant empire nor a separatist nationalist, but rather an engaged and empowered imperial citizen. In his words:

Let me inform you, O brother, that your homeland Palestine is part of great lands claimed by the Ottoman Empire, and as long as the existence of this empire is preserved, if you send me as a deputy on your behalf its stability and its prestige and the preservation of its possessions will be the first order of importance for me…. I will not delay in crying out in the face of the Unionists “You are traitors” if they deviate from the law and aim at the Turkification of the elements [tatrik al-'anasir] of the empire, and [likewise] I will not flinch from calling out the baseness of the Liberals if I discern in them the inclination for independence of the elements of the empire [istiqlāl ‘anāsir al-mamlaka], whether Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, or Arabs. I will entreat the rest of my colleagues in the parliament in the name of religion, honor, and patriotism to be as one mass uniting this Ottoman Empire either—God forbid—to disappear all together or—God willing—to perpetuate its existence forever and ever.
⁴⁷

This loyal-critic role, as we have seen, was also played by others.
Palestine's
editor, Yusuf al-'Issa, for example, was so against the “Arabist reformers” that he refused to cover the 1913 Paris Congress in his newspaper. That same year the newspaper
Public Opinion (Al-Rayy al-'Amm)
published a series of anti-autonomy articles by the Druze emir Shakib Arslan, where he took the decentralists and nationalists to task: “Decentralization means passing an eternity in hell; the [Liberals'] party thinks it is building a palace, but in reality it is digging its own grave.”
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