Chapter I
According to archaeological findings, there were traces of human activity in Palestine as early as 1 million years ago.
In ancient times, because the region was located between the two political and economic centers of developed Egypt and Mesopotamia, the coast and some valleys parallel to the Mediterranean Sea became trade routes between the north and the south.
By 3,300 BC, the local population had begun extensive agricultural production and handicrafts, making the region an exporter of olive oil, wine and dried figs.
After the Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century, it became the forefront of confrontation between Arabs, Romans and Greeks, coastal trade and viticulture declined, and nomadism and agriculture became the main economic activities of the region.
After the Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine in 1517 AD, it ruled for 400 years, but the Palestinian economy did not change much during these four centuries until 1917, when it was occupied by British troops at the end of World War I.
The First World War marked an important turning point in the history of contemporary Palestine. After the outbreak of war, the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Palestine, joined the German-Austrian Allies and fought against the Entente such as Britain, France and Russia.
For most of the war, Palestine remained largely under the control of the Ottoman army, serving as the front line for the Ottoman army to attack the British army in Egypt.
Palestine, which was integrated into the war system, had a great impact on economic and social development, a large number of people were forced to participate in the war, land, food and livestock were expropriated, production was stopped, famine spread, disease was endemic, and the population was drastically reduced and withered.
By the end of the war, the Allies were losing ground on all fronts, and the Ottoman armies in Palestine were also defeated by the British. In December 191, British forces led by General Allenby invaded Palestine from Egypt and occupied Jerusalem.
In April 1918, the Ottoman Empire surrendered to the Allies, and Palestine came under complete British military occupation. In April 1920, the Allies decided to impose a British mandate on Palestine.
In July 1922, the League of Nations formally approved the British Mandate for Palestine and issued the Mandate to the British government. Since then, Palestine has entered a new historical period.
Since the 16th century, Palestine has been part of the Ottoman Empire and is an administrative region of the empire.
According to the administrative organization system divided between 1887 and 1888, Palestine was divided into three administrative units: Akre County, Nablus County and Jerusalem County.
The counties of Akre and Nablus are under the jurisdiction of the province of Beirut, and the county of Jerusalem (including southern Palestine) enjoys self-government and is directly subordinate to Constantinople.
The Palestinian areas are predominantly inhabited by Muslims and Christian Arabs, while there are smaller religious communities, including some Jews engaged in religious studies and dependent on charitable funds.
By 1882, it was estimated that Palestine had about 300,000 Arabs and a Jewish population of about 24,000.
The vast majority of the Arab population were peasants, who cultivated their own small plots of land or worked as tenant farmers for the nobility, and lived a difficult life.
Palestinian land is divided into three categories: official land ("mili"), private land ("mulk") and religious monastic land ("waqf"). Official land was the dominant form of land ownership, on which it was mainly tax-paying peasants ("rayas").
They receive a share of the land from the landlord and can only transfer it with the landlord's consent. The actual peasants were fixed on the land, paying a wide variety of taxes and servitude, and the Christian laya also paid a per-capita tax.
Murk land was owned by private landowners, and farmers cultivated on a share-sharing basis. Generally, the owner provides the land and enjoys 2/5 of the harvest; Cultivators provide tools, seeds, fertilizer and labor, sharing 3/5 of the share.
In addition to farming, farmers working on Murk land had to provide additional services to landowners. The religious estate of Wakov is cultivated in a form similar to the sharing system of Murk land.
This combination of large feudal land ownership and small-scale peasant economy was a common feature of agriculture in Palestine.
In this economic form, society can only carry out simple reproduction, but cannot create any reserves to meet social needs or resist natural disasters, and farmers are in a miserable situation as objects of exploitation.
It can be said that hunger and poverty, hard labor, hard labor, excessive taxes and powerlessness are the fate of the Palestinian peasants.
But it is worth pointing out here that the peasants, despite the deterioration of their living conditions, retained the land as their main means of subsistence throughout the Ottoman period.
By the time of the British Mandate, the situation began to change dramatically. The British Mandate began after World War I.
The destruction of the Palestinian economy by World War I exacerbated the already backward Palestinian agriculture, and in this context a new Jewish economy emerged in Palestine.
This will have a decisive impact on the Palestinian economy and the fate of the people. The emergence of the economy of the Palestinian Jewish community is a product of modern Zionism.
At the end of the 19th century, Jews were persecuted due to a massive wave of anti-Semitism in European countries. The Jewish intellectuals represented by Herzl put forward the modern Zionist idea of establishing a Jewish homeland on the basis of examining the situation of the Jews at that time.
At his initiative and efforts, the first World Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland, on August 29, 1897, and the Basel Declaration adopted by the Congress stated.
The aim of Zionism is to establish a nationally guaranteed and publicly recognized national home for the Jews in Palestine".
To that end, the Congress identified a series of measures to "encourage farmers, farmers and artisans to migrate to Palestine" as the main means.
To achieve this aim, the modern Zionist movement has created two very important institutions, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency.
In order to support the Jews in establishing a national homeland in Palestine, the World Zionist Organization has successively established three foundations: the Reclamation Fund, the National Fund and the Venture Fund.
The three foundations pooled large donations from Zionist supporters in the United States and other countries to finance Jewish immigration to Palestine.
The purchase of land, the construction of housing, the construction of infrastructure, the establishment of education and health services, and the establishment of farms were decisive for the birth of the Jewish community economy in Palestine.
For example, between 1921 and 1939, the Reclamation Foundation and the National Foundation alone purchased 840,000 dunums of land from Palestinian Arabs, not including land granted and leased to Jews by the Trusteeship Authority.
In addition, certain wealthy Jews financed the acquisition of land by Jewish immigrants in their personal capacity.
Palestinian industry developed rapidly during the Mandate, with enterprises rising from 1,240 in 1913 to 1927, and only 16 with more than 100 workers in 1937.
Undoubtedly, the main impetus for industrialization during this period came from Jewish immigration.
In particular, in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, Palestine attracted not only a group of Jewish entrepreneurs, but many of whom also brought large sums of money, equipment and technology.
At the same time, the Jewish community itself provided a growing market for local manufacturers, especially in the construction sector experienced an unprecedented boom in 1925-1935.
Stimulated massive foreign trade in cement, metal and wood products such as pipes, windows, doors, bathtubs and other equipment, bordering the Mediterranean and Red Seas, bordered by important ports such as Haifa, Jaffa and Gaza.
Palestine, in ancient and modern times, was therefore a bridge between East and West. Caravans from the Persian Gulf or the southern Arabian Peninsula, laden with condiments.
Ivory and spices passed through here, and then ships transported the goods to Egypt and other cities along the Mediterranean coast. Citrus was Palestine's main export commodity, followed by soap, almonds, maize, sesame, barley, watermelon and wool.
Imports are mainly food, tobacco, machinery and textiles. During the British Mandate, Palestinian foreign trade developed rapidly.
Foreign trade during this period had several main characteristics: imports increased faster than exports. This is because after 1918 the population increased much faster than agricultural production.
The growth of local industry became increasingly dependent on imported raw materials, especially the Jewish community's demand for increased imports to support its own survival and development.
Jewish immigrants had a great influence on the structure of foreign trade. As shown in Table 1.10, manufactured goods accounted for more than half of imports in the 1930s.
Food, beverages and tobacco accounted for another 14/, led by wheat and bread, which are used to make bread. Regarding exports, although the manufacturing sector has grown steadily.
But almost all of the products were consumed locally, and very little was exported, under 5 per cent in 1935.
This is mainly due to the shift in citrus sales to the European market and the increasing protectionism in Arab countries such as Egypt, which has severely reduced the market for Palestinian goods in the Middle East.
After the outbreak of World War II, the Middle East became an important battlefield, and Palestinian trade was greatly affected, not only imports and exports increased significantly, but also the composition and direction of exports changed greatly, and the Middle East returned to being the main market and source of supply for Palestine.
Under these circumstances, in order to ensure that the strategically located Middle East did not fall to the Axis powers in the impending outbreak of World War II, Britain issued a pro-Arab White Paper on May 17, 1939, restricting Jewish immigration into Palestine.
It promised to establish an independent, predominantly Arab Palestinian state ten years later. The White Paper angered the Jewish community in Palestine, stormy demonstrations broke out in all Palestinian cities, and Zionist relations with Britain broke down.
After the end of World War II, Britain declared that Palestine would not be able to solve the problem of Jewish refugees and that opening the door to them would turn Arabs against the British government.
It was therefore proposed that a joint Anglo-American commission be established to investigate Jews who had fled their countries of origin as a result of persecution and war, and on the other hand, to investigate the situation in Palestine, and then make recommendations accordingly.
The Committee visited Palestine and refugee camps and recommended that 100,000 migrants should be released into Palestine. Britain rejected the proposal, which resulted in fanatical terrorism and illegal immigration.
Submission to United Nations Arbitration.
In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the question of Palestine and adopted Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine. The resolution provides.
Area: 11.59 million square kilometers; 15,260 square kilometers of the Jewish State; The Jerusalem International Condominium is 176.12 km². This resolution is clearly unjust to the Arabs.
Because Jews were less than 13/of the total Palestinian population at that time, occupying 6% of the land area of Palestine, while the area assigned to the Jewish state by the General Assembly resolution accounted for 52.47% of the total area of Palestine.
As soon as the resolution was passed, the Jews accepted it, and the Arabs responded with protests. On May 14, 1948, Britain announced the early end of the Mandate, and the Jews, who had actively prepared, immediately proclaimed the state.