A Colonial History of Gaza: Part I

By Seraj Assi

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The history of Gaza over the past century reads like a continuous struggle against foreign rule: the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, the Zionist invasion, and the Israeli occupation.

 We know a good deal about the last one, but little about the first two. So today, I will focus on the British occupation of Gaza as told by Palestinian historian Aref al Aref.

Al Aref is an interesting figure. He was made in the image of his people: Moving from one exile to another, his life spanned the late Ottomans, the British Mandate, the Zionists, and the Israelis.

His journey from Ottomanism to Arabism, and from Arabism to Palestinian nationalism, embodies the story of national awakening in Palestine.

In WWI, he served in the Turkish Army on the Russian Front. He was captured by the Russians, and freed by the Bolsheviks. From his exile in Siberia he escaped eastward to China, embarking on a long journey through Japan and India.

He then broke up with the Ottomans, and joined the cause of the Arab Revolt in Hejaz.

Back in Palestine, he supported armed resistance against the British occupation. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by the British. He was later pardoned, and offered government posts in northern and central Palestine, including Jaffa, Nablus and Jenin.

While in service, he conspired with secret nationalist societies to mobilize Palestinians against both the Zionists and the British. As he writes in Diary, "I was compelled to appear in two contradictory guises: by day serving the British, and by night conspiring with Arab nationalists to clip the claws of the colonizers and their tails."

He was transferred to Amman, where he served for three years as Chief Secretary in the Government of Amir Abdullah, which was controlled by the British. He continued his covert activity against the British while serving in the government.

He then returned to Palestine to serve as the District Officer in the southern subdistrict of Beersheba. He stayed there for ten years, where he helped conduct the first population census among the local Bedouin tribes. 

From Beersheba, he moved to Gaza, serving there for four years (from 1939 to 1943). Gaza was closer to his heart. As he writes in his Gaza Diary, "the city was greener, more developed, and more playful, thanks to its closeness to the sea."

He then served in Ramallah until the end of the Mandate in 1948. During the fifties, he served as the mayor of East Jerusalem, and a minister in the Jordanian government.

He died in Al-Bireh on July 30, 1973. 

Aref left a rich legacy that includes books on the history of every city he governed: The History of Beersheba, the History of Gaza, the History of Askalan, and the History of Jerusalem. He also left a seven-volume history of the Nakba.

His historical corpus, which includes more than twenty books, offers an alternative narrative on the history of Palestine to the official Zionist and British narratives.

His History of Gaza, from which I will be reading today, is an epitome of the modern Palestinian odyssey: It is a fascinating tale of conquest and national awakening, hope and disenchantment, promise and betrayal, victory and defeat.

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Gaza has always been a battlefield for foreign conquerors. Its strategic location as a crossroad and trading center for three continents made it a tempting prize for invading armies. The city was coveted by every rising empire along the Mediterranean, from the ancient Philistines to the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Turks, and the British. Alexander the Great led three bloody battles to capture it. The Roman General Pompey made it a Roman polis, a free city. Napoleon called it "the Kings' Tunnel and the Gate between Africa and Asia."

Throughout history, generals and commanders who wished to conquer Palestine were guided by a common military axiom: to conquer Palestine, start with Gaza; if Gaza falls, the rest of Palestine follows.

The strategy proved useful:

- Gaza was the first Palestinian city to be conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century.

- It was the first city to be captured by the Turks in the sixteenth century.

- It was the first city to be conquered by Ibrahim Pasha during his military campaign in Palestine, which lasted for ten years (between 1831 and 1841).

- And it was the first Palestinian city to fall to the British army during WWI.

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Seizing Gaza was not easy. The British made three attempts to capture it. The road to Jerusalem, they believed, rightly so, began in Gaza. For them, Palestine was not only a tempting prize, but a decisive blow to their traditional enemy, the Ottoman Empire.

On December 7, 1916, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent a letter to General Edmund Allenby, the Commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force: "We must have a decisive victory in the East", he wrote, referring to Palestine. In early 1917, the War Cabinet in London approved a military plan to occupy Palestine– a decision which set into motion a series of dramatic fights in southern Palestine, known as the Battles of Gaza.

These Battles opened a new chapter in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the Middle Eastern Theatre of WWI, which pitted the British Empire against the Turks and their German allies. It started with an Ottoman attempt to occupy the Suez Canal in 1915, and ended with the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, which formally ended the hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies, and de facto placed Palestine under British rule.

The first British attempt to capture Gaza was made in late March 1917:

British forces were led by General Charles Dobell, the commander of the Eastern Force, who was tasked with the capture of the city by Archibald Murray, the commander of British forces in Palestine and the Middle East.

By the time of the campaign, the British had already occupied the surrounding cities of El-Arish, Rafah and Khan Younis. The capture of the Sinai Peninsula brought the British forces within striking distance from Gaza. Dobell led the attack from his central command in Rafah.

The Turkish-German alliance was led by General Enver Pasha on the Turkish side, and Commander Kress von Kressenstein on the German side.

In a prophetic manner, the Turks and their German allies realized that the fall of Gaza would create a domino effect in Palestine. So they built a strong defense line from Gaza to Beersheba, doubled their forces, and fortified the city from all directions.

On March 26, British troops marched towards Gaza. A joint infantry and mounted infantry from the Desert Column, a component of the Eastern Force, attacked the town from the north.

"British forces were met with fierce Turkish resistance," writes Al Aref. "Before sunset, the British were in full retreat. They resumed the fighting the next day, but were dealt a decisive defeat."

Despite the victory, the Turks were alarmed. In the words of Al Aref, "It was a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat".

Fearing a second attack, the Ottoman garrison was backed with new forces from Istanbul. Trenches and ambushes around the city were reinforced against a frontal attack. The defense line was manned with strong redoubts that extended eastwards across the road to Beersheba.

"Gaza," writes the Palestinian historian, "was transformed into a big modern fortress."

The second attempt to capture Gaza began on April 17: The British attacked with three infantry divisions, backed by two mounted divisions. The following day, British troops were only two miles away from Gaza.

"There was a bloody encounter on the ground", recalls Al-Aref. "Cavalry soldiers were forced to dismount their horses and fight on foot. From the sea, the British artillery bombarded the city for a day long, from five in the morning to eight in the evening" (sounds familiar?)

On April 19, however, British forces were pushed out of Gaza. "It was a glorious victory," rejoices Al Aref, "once again, the Turks displayed a heroic defense of the city."

Following the second defeat, Charles Dobell was removed from his post, and General Murray was replaced by Lord Edmund Allenby.

Allenby was given carte blanche in Palestine. He doubled his forces, ordered large amounts of ammunition and supplies, extended the water pipelines from the Nile across the desert, and expanded the railway line all the way to Deir al-Balah.

Allenby was a military mastermind. He understood that it would be impossible to capture Gaza before Beersheba. So in late October, after a hot summer, he led his forces to Beersheba, stormed through the Turkish defense, and captured the city.

On November first, British forces advanced towards Gaza. The Third Battle of Gaza was underway. "Gaza was shelled by day and by night," writes Al-Aref. "British bombs and machine-gun fire rained down for seven days. Houses and mosques were destroyed. The city was deserted and emptied of its inhabitants as thousands fled northwards."

On November 7, the Turks left Gaza, and the city surrendered.

The British forces then broke the Gaza-Beersheba defense and began marching towards Jerusalem, which they captured on December 9, 1917. On December 11, Allenby, dismounted his horse and entered the Old City on foot through the Jaffa Gate.

From Jerusalem, British troops advanced northwards through Palestine. Within a year, the old prophesy fulfilled itself, and the rest of Palestine fell to the British. By September 1918, following the defeat of the Turkish forces at the Battle of Megiddo, the four-century-long Ottoman rule in Palestine was over. Palestine, including Gaza, was placed under British military rule.

Three years later, in 1923, General Allenby returned Gaza to launch the British War Cemetery, built by the British after the war to bury their soldiers. In his opening speech, he hailed the capture of Gaza for paving the way for the British occupation of Palestine. "From the down of history", he said, "Gaza has been the gate of conquerors to Palestine."

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The war had devastating effects on Gaza. Its population declined by more than 30 percent– perhaps the highest in its history. Many fled northwards to the coastal cities of Jaffa and Haifa. Many others fled to Syria. Most of these refugees never returned.

I come from Jaffa. Many people would tell you that Gaza has a large number of refugees who fled Jaffa in 1948. Only few know that there are in fact more Gazan refugees in Jaffa than there are Jaffan refugees in Gaza.

Historically, more people lived in Gaza than in Jerusalem. But from the mid-nineteenth up the early twentieth century, Gaza's population declined dramatically, thanks to three waves of migration:

The first was in 1840, during the military campaign led by Ibrahim Pasha. Many also fled during the Peasants' Revolt of 1834, which broke out against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies.

The second was in 1905, during the severe drought and famine that hit Palestine.

The third, the most devastating, was during the war. There were two waves of migration here: the first when Turkey declared General Emergency (النفير العام) as it prepared to attack the Sues Canal; the second when the British attacked Gaza.

"Gaza suffered more than any other Palestinian city," writes Al Aref. "Its people were the victim of mutual devastation: The British shelled and destroyed the city to force the Turks out, and the Turks demolished houses and cut down trees to build barricades."

Aref's narrative is confirmed by Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner in Palestine. On September 27, 1920, he sent a letter to Earl Curzon, British Secretary of State. It was entitled (guess what) Rebuilding Gaza. Samuel writes:

"The town of Gaza suffered probably more from Military action during the war than any other town in the theatre of operations. Almost all its buildings have been destroyed, and its present appearance is comparable only to that of the devastated areas in France and Belgium. Gaza was, before the war, in respect of population (40,000), the third largest town in Palestine. The original population has now dwindled to something like one third of its number, and in the present ruinous conditions of the town there is little to attract the remainder of its inhabitants to return or a fresh population to settle there. The town is completely uninhabitable."

This letter could have been written today.  

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Why did Gaza fall to the British?

This is the main question that preoccupies Al Aref. Besides the obvious military reasons, he recognizes one key factor: Arab nationalism.

According to the Palestinian historian, Arab nationalism had already become a rising force by the time of the war. Triggered by the rise of Turkish nationalism, it was seen as the natural outcome of the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, which ended the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Aref describes the Revolution as a period of high hopes for the Arabs, followed by a bitter disillusionment. "Thanks to the spread of Turkification after the Revolution," he writes, "the brief honeymoon between the Arabs and the Turks came to an unhappy end."

As a result, the Arabs began to cultivate a strong desire for independence. Arab secret societies, such as the Young Arab Society Al-Fatat, flourished throughout the 1910s, extending across Istanbul, Paris and the Arab provinces, including branches in Jerusalem. These societies were originally calling for Arab-Turkish unity within the Ottoman Empire.

What followed, however, was a brutal Turkish campaign against the Arab movement in Syria and Palestine. The Turks began to enforce Ottoman uniformity, impose the Turkish language, and suppress the local autonomy in the Arab provinces of the Empire. The campaign was led by Jamal Pasha, known among the Arabs as as-saffah (the Blood Shedder) for his public execution of many Arab personalities in Damascus and Beirut during the war. His repressive policies in the Arab provinces fueled Arab alienation. 

It is within this context, Al Aref reminds us, that the Arabs embraced the Great Arab Revolt in the Hejaz, initiated by Sheriff Hussein of Mecca in 1915– a movement which set into motion a series of dramatic events that hastened the fall of Turkish rule in the Arab provinces.

During the war, the British were already negotiating with Sharif Hussein over the prospect of Arab independence from the Turkish administration after the war. In his famous correspondence with Hussein, Henry McMahon, then the British high commissioner in Egypt, promised a British support for the establishment of an Arab state between Egypt and Persia, in exchange of Arab assistance in the war against Ottomans and their German allies.

Al Aref himself belonged to a generation of Arab and Palestinian intellectuals whose Ottoman loyalty was disrupted by the war. "It was a period of high hopes for the Arabs," he writes. "Ultimately, a sense of Arabism prevailed over that of Ottomanism."

In Palestine, resentment for the Ottoman government was based on other key factors: Palestinians believed that the Ottomans had lax landownership laws against land purchases by the Zionists. In 1890, Muslim and Christian notables from Gaza flocked to Jerusalem to join a group of Palestinian notables: together, they marched into the Sublime Porte and submitted a petition to the Ottoman Grand Vizier demanding a ban on selling lands to Zionists.

During that period, the Sublime Porte was bombarded with telegraphs from Palestine protesting land sales to the Zionists.

The expansion of Jewish settlements was a source for bitter resentment among Palestinians. Many believed the Ottoman government was weak on the Zionists. Palestinians were also alarmed by Ottoman relaxed laws against Jewish mass immigration in Palestine, which began in the first decade of the century.

The Ottoman also imposed heavy taxes on the local population. They forced mandatory conscription on adult males, depriving many families of their breadwinners. They confiscated food supplies and means of living, and destroyed trees to build railroads. Local populations were constantly displaced as the Turks prepared for the war.

The Ottomans also restricted freedoms in Palestine. Local newspapers like Filistin, which mobilized Palestinians against the Zionists, were closed.

Writing twenty years after the fall of Gaza, Al Aref reflects: "The Turks wouldn't have been defeated in Gaza if the Arabs' hearts were with them. By the end of Ottoman rule, Arab aspirations had been fixed on independence. During the war, a large number of Arab officers and soldiers deserted the Turkish Army, either to join Allenby's forces, or the Arab Northern Army led by Emir Feisal bin Hussein, who was fighting the Turks alongside Allenby's forces."

Aref backs his conclusion with a host of firsthand testimonies.

One is given by Otto Liman von Sanders, the German general who served as an adviser and military commander to the Turkish Army during War. In his memoirs Five Years in Turkey, Sanders speaks of hundreds of Arab soldiers who deserted the Turkish army during the Gaza campaign, and who joined the Great Arab Revolt led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca."

Besides discontent with the Ottomans, there was a great deal of British propaganda.

On October 3, 1917, Allenby wrote to his wife from Gaza: "The Arab rebellion is spreading well, and the Turkish communications will be difficult to guard against their raids. The enclosed photograph of the Shereef of Mecca, and the proclamation by him, is one of the means we have of inducing the Arabs to desert the Turks. We drop these papers and packets of cigarettes over the Turkish lines from airplanes. The proclamation is an appeal from the Shereef to the Arabs to leave the Turks and join in the war against them for the freedom and independence of Arabia. A good many come in, as a result of our propaganda."

Of course, this is not to suggest that Palestinians or Gazans were looking for some kind of British protectorate. In fact, Palestinians never truly trusted the British. They feared that a British victory in Palestine would pave the way for Zionist takeover of the country. And it won't be too long before they realize that their fear was justified. They even have a name for it: the Balfour Declaration.

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The British Mandate for Palestine began in 1917, before a civil administration, headed by Herbert Samuel, replaced a military rule in 1920.

Under the Mandate, Palestine was divided into four administrative districts and eighteen sub-districts. These were the Southern District, which included the Beersheba and Gaza sub-districts; the Jerusalem-Jaffa District; the Samaria District, and the Northern District.

The Mandate, which was formally granted to Britain by the League of Nations in 1922, was based on the paternalistic assumption that Palestinians were unable to govern themselves, and hence must be ruled by a more "advanced" and "civilized" nation like Great Britain. 

The Mandate was yet another blow to Arab dreams of independence as envisioned in the Hussein–McMahon correspondence of 1915-16. By the time it was founded, it had become clear to many Arabs that an independent Arab state between Egypt and Iran was now a distant mirage.

Even during the secret correspondence, the British were secretly negotiating with the French over a postwar division of the Ottoman Empire into imperial "spheres of influence", which led to the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916. The agreement was to grant the Britain a control over Iraq and the region surrounding the Persian Gulf, while the French were to rule over Syria and Lebanon, leaving part of Palestine under a joint Allied government.

This was followed by the revelation of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised to establish in Palestine a "national home for the Jewish people." In the words of historian Tom Segev, "The Promised Land had, by the stroke of a pen, become twice-promised."

The Arabs felt betrayed. A series of popular uprisings against the British and the Zionists broke out in Palestine. These included the Nebi Musa or the Jerusalem riots of 1920, the Buraq Uprising of 1929, and the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-9.

Gazans never spared effort rise against what they viewed as the twin enemy: the British and the Zionists. They never trusted Herbert Samuel, whom they viewed as a devout Zionist.

In 1920, they welcomed his arrival in Palestine with the establishment of a Muslim-Christian Association. These forms of association were founded in all major Palestinian cities, such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Nablus. They later formed the Palestine Arab Congress, which served as a nationalist body and a platform for Palestinian resistance to both Zionism and British rule. It called for Palestinian independence, and opposition to the Balfour Declaration, the idea of Jewish National Home in Palestine, and to mass Jewish immigration.

Gazans also took a leading part in the six-month general strike of 1936, which inaugurated the Revolt of 1936-1939. The strike broke out in the northern city of Nablus, and expanded into the rest of Palestine, all the way to Gaza in the south.

British patrols were attacked in Gaza. The railway was destroyed to halt military supplies. Gazans declared mass strike and raised black flags over their houses. They attacked the British military airport in the eastern part of the city.

The British responded with excessive force. They imposed a martial law. New troops were brought in from England. Special Night Squads of Zionist and British soldiers were formed to attack villages.

Thousands of Palestinians were imprisoned. Hundreds were executed. Over 5000 houses were dynamited and demolished. It was a collective punishment [sounds familiar?]

Palestinians paid a heavy price for the uprising. By the time it ended, five thousands were dead and thousands more injured. 10 percent of adult males were imprisoned. Causalities per capita were higher than the two intifadas combined (1987 and 2000).

That is when Palestinians, including Gazans, realized that the British and the Zionists were two sides of the same coin. And for good reasons:

They saw Arab activists being hanged, while Zionist militants, who operated against the British, were spared;

They saw the Zionists win concessions that would have been unthinkable under Ottoman rule;

They saw Jewish population increase over tenfold as a result of massive waves of immigration:

Before the Mandate, Jews in Palestine represented 7 percent of the population (mostly not Zionists), and 2 percent of the privately owned land. By the end of the Mandate, the Jews had become one third of the population, and owners of more than 7 percent of the land.

Due to the expansion of the Jewish settlements, many Palestinian peasants were displaced. Arab workers were expelled to accommodate Jewish newcomers. The dispossession of Palestinian villagers and peasants from their land became a rallying call for Arab nationalism in Palestine.

The 1936-9 uprising was therefore a struggle against two colonial powers: the British occupation and Zionist colonization. It was crushed by a global superpower who, by the time of the uprising, controlled over one-fifth of the world population and a quarter of its total land area.

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To be sure, Gazans' resistance to the British and the Zionists did not begin with the 1936 Revolt. It is older than the formal Mandate itself.

In the words of Al Aref, "the British were never welcome in Gaza".

Here I would like to conclude with a revealing story told by Al Aref, which was originally told by Major Jarvis, the British Governor of Sinai.

In 1921, Winston Churchill, who was then the Colonial Secretary, visited Jerusalem. He was accompanied by a large number of representatives and officials, and their families.

On his way up by train from Kantara, Churchill expressed his desire to see a battlefield of Gaza. The train was stopped at Gaza, and due to the distance from the battlefield, the whole party had to get off and walk up the sandy lane leading from the station to the town.

Jarvis writes: "The inhabitants of Gaza, a somewhat turbulent community in ordinary times, were most hostile to the Zionist party in Palestine, although so far it had not affected them in the slightest degree, for there were no Jewish immigrants or settlers at that time in any part of this old Philistine area."

This is a failure of imagination on the British Governor's part: he failed to see that Gazans– like Nabluses and Jaffans and Jerusalemites– were also Palestinians, not only Gazans.

"The Gazawis," he continues, "like their relations in Nablus, farther north, are always grateful for an excuse for a demonstration [In a sense, he was right. Gazans gave the British a hard time in Palestine]. So that day, they lined the road as their leaders walked by, and together, they began shouting hostile remarks against the British".

Their pugnacious attitude was quite lost on one lady of the party, for she remarked to Churchill: "Isn't delightful to be met with such an enthusiastic gathering and to have such a warm welcome as this with gratitude to us on every smiling face?"

Churchill, however, had a very shrewd idea that the smiles of welcome on the faces of the crowd were in reality gains of rage and he turned to Lawrence (the famous Lawrence of Arabia), who was walking just behind.

"I say, Lawrence," he asked, " are these people dangerous"? They don't seem to be pleased to see us. What are they shouting?"

Lawrence said he did not think they were actually dangerous, but the words they were shouting were not exactly expressions of welcome as being translated. They were: "Down with the British, down with the Zionists, and down with the Balfour Declaration."

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Part II: The Israeli occupation of Gaza ...