Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: Influence on the Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870-1948

During the late Ottoman and British Mandatory periods the cultural and environmental landscape of Palestine changed dramatically. This was reflected in both urban development and rural settlement patterns. In the last decades of Ottoman rule much of the newly settled rural low country of Palestine, including the coastal plain and Jordan valley, was strongly influenced by Bedouin tribes, who were living in various states of mobile pastoralism. By the end of the British Mandate the majority of the Bedouin, with the exception of those living in the Negev in Southern Palestine, had become sedentary in one form or another. The Bedouin actively built about 60 new villages and dispersed settlements, comprising several thousand houses. The Mandate authorities estimated the population of these Bedouin villages to be 27,500 in 1945. Our paper examines who the inhabitants of these Bedouin villages were, tracing them from their nomadic and pastoral origins in the late Ottoman period to their final sedentarization under the British Mandate. We examine how Mandatory land policies and Jewish land purchases created legal and demographic pressures for sedentarization. In shedding light on these intertwined topics we illustrate the increasingly limited role the Bedouin played in the rural landscape due to constraints placed upon them and show how, as a result, their settlement was part of a change in the environment in the period

Advancing marine conservation in European and contiguous seas with the MarCons Action

Cumulative human impacts have led to the degradation of marine ecosystems and the decline of biodiversity in the European and contiguous seas. Effective conservation measures are urgently needed to reverse these trends. Conservation must entail societal choices, underpinned by human values and worldviews that differ between the countries bordering these seas. Social, economic and political heterogeneity adds to the challenge of balancing conservation with sustainable use of the seas. Comprehensive macro-regional coordination is needed to ensure effective conservation of marine ecosystems and biodiversity of this region. Under the European Union Horizon 2020 framework programme, the MarCons COST action aims to promote collaborative research to support marine management, conservation planning and policy development. This will be achieved by developing novel methods and tools to close knowledge gaps and advance marine conservation science. This action will provide support for the development of macro-regional and national policies through six key actions: to develop tools to analyse cumulative human impacts; to identify critical scientific and technical gaps in conservation efforts; to improve the resilience of the marine environment to global change and biological invasions; to develop frameworks for integrated conservation planning across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments; to coordinate marine conservation policy across national boundaries; and to identify effective governance approaches for marine protected area management. Achieving the objectives of these actions will facilitate the integration of marine conservation policy into macro-regional maritime spatial planning agendas for the European and contiguous seas, thereby offsetting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in this region

Agricultural land in Palestine : letters to Sir Moses Mpntefiore, 1839.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Jewish Historical Studies, Volume XXIX, 1988

Curriculum Vitae.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : 1995

Mamluk and Ottoman Cadastral Surveys and Early Mapping of Landed Properties in Palestine.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Agricultural History, Vol.71, 1997

Land Purchase and Mapping in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Palestinian Village.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Palestine Exploration Quarterly 130 (1997)

La Suède et la Terre sainte : colonisation piétiste et communautaire

« L’action spirituelle qui sous-tend Jérusalem est le conflit entre l’idéalisme et l’enracinement au foyer et à la terre natale, profondément ancré dans les communautés rurales... Parmi l’aristocratie rurale de Dalacarlia l’attachement à la ferme est la vie elle-même ».Henry Goddard Leach, 29 juin 1915, Introduction à Jérusalem de Selma Lagerlöf (Garden City, 1915), pp. xii-xiii. Des chercheurs appartenant à des disciplines diverses ont décrit de manière extensive le phénomène de la foi relig..

The Effect of the Young Turks Revolution on Religious Power Politics: The Case of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (1908-1910)

The aim of the paper is twofold: a) to critically assess the socio-political crisis within the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem that arose between the Greek hierarchy and the Arab laity concerning the implementation of a new regulatory framework of patriarchal operation, according to the Young Turks Constitution; and b) to examine the subsequent internal conflict within the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and its ideological and political connotations. The first question has deep historical roots. From the nineteenth century onwards the Arab lay community demanded emancipation from Greek religious (and economic) control that was perceived as cultural imperialism. Their claim was rejected by the hierarchical apparatus in the name of the identity between ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Orthodoxy’ which was an expression of a ‘hegemonic’ strategy to maintain its institutional dominance. The restoration of the Constitution (1908), following the Young Turk's Revolution, afforded the opportunity for a more liberal modification of the religious administration with the participation of the laity in the decision-making process. The refusal of the hierarchy, however, which perceived any change as a threat to its absolute power and national composition, led to the Arab orthodox uprising. The effort of patriarch Damianos to proceed to negotiations was repudiated by the hierarchy and led to his dethronement by the Synod. Damianos, however, with the support of the Arab laity and its Russian protector managed to re-establish his authority, assenting to the adoption of the so-called Turkish Order (1910) that stipulated the establishment of a Mixed Council for the management of patriarchal affairs. We provide a contextual historical account of the associated events, sketching out the social considerations, the cultural stakes and the political goals of the key-players involved in these interconnected crises. This conflict was strongly influenced by the issue of administration/ownership of vast patriarchal land and properties, and by the broader process of nation building and secularization within the orthodox commonwealth in the late Ottoman period

The ‘Politicization’ of the ‘Religious’: the British Administration and the Question of the new Regulations of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 1938-1941

This paper critically assesses the conflict within the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem between the Greek hierarchy and the Arab laity concerning the proposals of the Mandatory Government for a new regulatory framework of patriarchal operation. The British presented two draft reform ordinances, neither of which met Arab expectations. Instead of promoting the laity's emancipation from “foreign” Greek administrative and financial control, the ordinances left little room for a true inversion of the power structure between the two opposing camps, retaining the status quo at the expense of the Arab Orthodox laity's rights