Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

Branch from Palestine Tell me the Palestine branch:

Where you grew up, where are you blooming?

What kind of hills, some valleys Your decoration was?

You were the pure waters of the Jordan East beam caressed you, Night is the wind in the mountains of Lebanon … You stand, the branch of Jerusalem, Shrine of the correct time! Transparent dusk beam lamps, And the ark of the cross, the symbol of the holy ...

(Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov 1837)2

Palm Sunday is a Christian feast before Easter which commemorates Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The 1837 poem Vetka Palestiny (The Palm Branch of Palestine) by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814–1841), a highly influential Russian Romantic poet also called ‘the poet of the Caucasus’ and the most important figure of Russian poetry after Alexander Pushkin’s death in 1837, encapsulated Russian Orientalism and late Ottoman Palestine. With strong echoes of European Romanticism (1800‒1850), the 1803 romantic poem by Reginald Heber, Lermontov’s romantic-evangelical poem evokes the stories both of the Gospels and of Russian pilgrimage to Palestine in the 19th century, three-quarters of which pilgrimage took place at Easter (Hummel and Hummel 1995). This evangelising poetry was inspired by the religious imagination of the country the poet called ‘Palestine’, although Lermontov had never visited it (Merlo 2013). In the 19th century Russian Orientalist Orthodox representations of Palestine went hand in hand. Crucially, Russian writings on, and political activities in the country had a major impact on the perception, conception and actual events of late Ottoman Palestine.

Earlier in 1820 Dmitrij Daškov, a diplomat and the second counsellor of the Russian Embassy in Istanbul, was the first Russian writer who went to Palestine as a pilgrim. He also wrote an essay entitled on his travels (Merlo 2013). In fact, many of the Russian historical and literary representations of Palestine in the 19th century were actual descriptions and narrations of Russian pilgrims (Hopwood 1969: 10; Merlo 20133). In 1848

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), the leading figure of Russian literary realism, went on a pilgrimage to Palestine. The romantic Orientalist representations of Palestine by Lermontov and other Russian Romantics of the 19th century also harked back to the history of early Christianity and of Palaestina under the Byzantines, a period in which, as we have seen in chapter four, the Palestine Orthodox Church became self-governing and emerged as one of the top five churches governing Christendom.

Lermontov’s poem had also anticipated Russia’s significantly increasing presence in Palestine, which began in 1844 with the arrival of the first Russian Orthodox Archimandrite in Palestine. Also in the 1840s, the Russians obtained permission to build a huge compound in Jerusalem.

This was constructed after the Crimean War, in 1860‒1864. Russian efforts culminated in the founding of the Russian Orthodox Palestine Society in St Petersburg in 1882. In 1889 the word ‘Imperial’ was added to the name and the Society became known as the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society (Russian: Императорское православное палестинское общество; Turkish: Rus İmparatorluğu Ortodoks Filistin Cemiyeti; Arabic:

الجمعية الإمبراطورية الأرثوذكسية الفلسطينية ) (Hopwood 1969: 150‒154) and to the Palestinian Orthodox community in Arabic as the Palestinian Orthodox Imperial Society ( الجمعية الإمبراطورية الأرثوذكسية الفلسطينية ). Spurred by the establishment of the British Palestine Exploration Fund in 1865, and its imperial, quasi-military, scientific expeditions to Palestine in the 1870s (see below), the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society was founded by politician and writer Vasili Nikolaevich Khitrovo (1834‒1903), author of Palestina i Sina (2011), and chaired by the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich who had visited Palestine in 1881. The Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society was a scholarly, educational and social organisation. In addition to promoting and organising Russian pilgrimage to the Holy Land, it built schools and hospitals in Palestine and acted as a public body defending Russian interests (Stavrou 1961). The Society published its own research in two journals: Soobsheniya Imperatorskovo Pravoslavnovo Palestinskovo Obshestva (Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society Reports) and the Palestinskij Sbornik (Palestinian Collections). It also established a translation and publishing house in Jerusalem partly in support of its extensive Arabic-language schools and secular teacher training seminaries in late Ottoman Palestine, the first of their kind in modern Palestine. These pioneering teacher training colleges paved the way for modern secular higher education in Palestine and for the Arab College (also known as the Government Arab College), a Jerusalem-based university college which existed throughout the Mandatory period from 1918 until 1948.

Following the 1905 Russian Revolution there was some decline in the budgets of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 the Society was renamed the Russian Palestine Society (Russian: Российское Палестинское Общество; Arabic:

الجمعية الروسية الفلسطينية ) and was attached to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During the Mandatory period, severe restrictions were imposed on the activities of the Society in Palestine by the British and after 1948

Israel confiscated much of its land and property. However, the original 19th century name of the Society, Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society, was restored in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the creation of the Russian Federation. Furthermore, today the Society operates and runs projects in Palestine under its original ‘Palestinian’ Arabic name coined in the late 19th century: the Palestinian Orthodox Imperial Society.

The coat of arms of the Russian Empire, with its double-headed eagle, was formerly associated with the Byzantine Empire. The rulers of Russia had long held themselves to be the main protectors of Christian Orthodoxy, especially after most of the membership of the Greek Orthodox churches from 1460 until Greek rebellion of 1821 fell under the control of the Ottomans. In the 19th century imperial Russia continued to view itself as the ‘Third Rome’ and the successor to the Byzantine Empire. It continued to pose a serious geo-political threat to the Ottoman state. The latter sought alliances with other European powers, notably the British and French, to keep Russian ambitions in check. This led to the Crimean War of 1853‒1856, whose immediate cause involved the European competition over Jerusalem and the rights of Orthodox Christian minorities in Palestine.

The Orthodox Christians were the largest group among the Christian Palestinians. The Russians not only saw themselves as heirs to Orthodox Christianity and the Byzantine Empire in the East and protectors of the Orthodox community in Palestine, they were also concerned about the sharp decline in the proportion of the Orthodox among Palestinian Christians from 90 per cent in 1840 to about two-thirds in 1880 as a result of the proselyting activities of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.

In the second half of the 19th century Russia, competing for influence in Palestine with other European powers, took practical steps aimed at consolidating the Russian presence. The Russian Consulate was established in Jerusalem in 1858. This was followed by the setting up of the Committee for Palestine ( 1858 ) (اللجنة الفلسطينية ‒1864), a body supported by the Russian Foreign Ministry, and in 1860 the Russian Palestine Society (RPS) was also founded. The RPS guided Russian pilgrims to Palestine, bought property and built hospices, churches and schools in Jerusalem and Nazareth.

This led to the establishment of a Russian colony (‘compound’) in Jerusalem in the 1860s. In 1864 the Committee for Palestine was created in the Department for Asia of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1864‒1889) (Merlo 2013). In 1890 the imperial Russian government supported and approved the establishment of Hovevei Tzion, a registered Russian charity officially known as the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine (Общество по поддержке еврейских фермеров и ремесленников в Сирию и Палестину).

Subsidised by the Russian government, and passing through Jaffa, by 1910 about 8000 Russian (predominately peasant) pilgrims visited Palestine every year,4 and by the First World War the average annual number rose to about 14,000. Organised by the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society, this influx of Russian pilgrims had an impact on Ottoman administrative reorganisation of Palestine in the early 20th century. Russian writings on, and mass pilgrimage to, late Ottoman Palestine were very important for a variety of political reasons and had (intended and unintended)

consequences:

• Russian writings on Palestine inspired early Zionist colonial-settlers:

Hovevei Tzion (‘Lovers of Zion’) who began to arrive from the territories of the Russian Empire in the 1880s. In 1890 the establishment of Hovevei Tzion as a registered Russian charity was officially approved by the imperial Russian government as the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine (Общество по поддержке еврейских фермеров и ремесленников в Сирию и Палестину), which came to be popularly known among Zionist settlers as the Odessa Committee. Arabic and French were the two key languages of the educated classes of late 19th century Palestine and the Russian Society soon came to be known as ‘Société pour le soutien des agriculteurs et les artisans juifs en Syrie et en Palestine’. It was dedicated to the practical aspects of establishing agricultural colonies and its projects included help in the founding of the early Zionist colonies (moshavot) of Rehovot and Hadera.

• The Russian Zionists dominated the World Zionist Organisation created by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century.5

• The ambitions of the Russian Empire posed the greatest threat to the Ottoman Empire throughout much of the 19th century.

• As we shall see below, the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Palestine, although technically in communion with the Greekdominated Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, openly championed the local Palestinian Arab Orthodox community. Backed by the Russian authorities, the social and educational activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Palestine and, more crucially, the Russian Orthodox Palestine Society founded in 1882 – after 1889

known to Palestinians as the Palestinian Orthodox Imperial Society (see below) – attracted sympathy from local Palestinian Orthodox Christians as it championed the radical idea that local Arab clergy should have cultural autonomy and should be promoted to be bishops and leaders of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, instead of the latter importing senior clergy from Greece.6 In late Ottoman Palestine this idea had a galvanising effect on educated local Palestinian Orthodox Christians, many of whom were to become leading cultural figures, and in the forefront of the Palestinian nationalist struggle.

• The flourishing cultural and public spaces of late Ottoman Jerusalem and the reimagining of Palestinian territorial identity and growth of territorial patriotism and proto-nationalism, promoted by Palestinian Orthodox Arab intellectuals such Khalil Beidas in the late 19th century (see below), encouraged Palestinian Arab Orthodox journalists ‘Issa al-ʿIssa (1878‒1950) and his cousin Yousef Hanna al-ʿIssa to set up the daily newspaper Falastin (‘Palestine’) in Jaffa in January 1911; with its distinctly vernacular name, it was based on modern perceptions of Palestine. In late Ottoman Palestine the construction of a two-tier, Palestinian Arab/Ottoman, identity based on Ottoman citizenship and equality for all inhabitants was attempted. As we shall see, the newspaper Falastin (1911‒1967) would also become not only one of the most influential voices of modern indigenous Palestinian national identity; it would also fiercely oppose Zionist settler-colonisation. For decades Falastin would remain dedicated to the cause of Palestine, to Palestinian territorial nationalism and pan-Arab solidarity, and to the Arab Orthodox community in its struggle with the Greek-dominated Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.