MINORITY GROUPS IN PALESTINE DURINGTHE BRITISH MANDATE

Yu. Hazran

doi:10.15407/orientw2019.03.015

MINORITY GROUPS IN PALESTINE DURINGTHE BRITISH MANDATE

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https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2019.03.015

Yu. Hazran

Shalem College

Abstract

Palestinian society during the Mandate period, like other societies in this region, was pluralistic from a religious point of view. This pluralism was not an obstacle to the formation of a national movement. At the same time, Christian and certainly Druze participation in the Palestinian national struggle diminished, especially since the early 1930s. This trend coincided with the intensification of the Islamization process of the national struggle. This process increased during the years of the revolt, deepening trends of alienation among these two groups. Poor participation of Christians and Druze in the active struggle was not the result of their religious differences, but mainly because of the failure of the Palestinian national movement to bridge the social, political, and religious gaps within the Palestinian society and to turn the rebellion of 1936–1939 into a formative event for creating a coherent and board-based national movement.
The present paper explores the sources and processes that led to segregation, isolation and alienation among these groups during the British mandate. The paper will argue that low participation was a consequence of structural weakness that accompanied the Palestinian national movement because of the Mufti’s factional approach, internal schisms, and the absence of a cohesive national program. It was also a result of the inability of the Palestinian national movement to channel local loyalties into a common national denominator.
Sectarianism has never been the essence or root of the crisis that accompanied the Palestinian national movement under the British mandate. Regression that hindered the activity of Christians, and more evidently the Druze, was a mark of the crisis of the Palestinian national movement. That crisis originated as the expected result of the failure of the political elite and was nothing if not the result of their failure to create a coherent national community in Palestine.

How to Cite

Hazran, Y. (2019). MINORITY GROUPS IN PALESTINE DURINGTHE BRITISH MANDATE. The World of the Orient, (3 (104), 15-30. https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2019.03.015

Article views: 91 | PDF Downloads: 54

Keywords

British mandate, Christians, Druze, Palestine, Palestinian national movement

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