The Growth of the Western Communities, 1917-1948

From Jerusalem 1948

When the British occupied Jerusalem at the end of 1917, they found a city wasted by the hardships and deprivations of World War I. When they left the city in the spring of 1948, they relinquished what had become a vibrant and cosmopolitan city to be ravaged in divided in the 1948 War over Palestine.
This chapter will address the social, physical, economic and demographic transformations taking place in the intervening thirty years. A realistic and complex assessment of the British role in the growth of the city would consider how the British administration and regulations shaped the development of a city in which there were vastly different interests, desires, goals, wealth, languages and living styles. However, the majority of scholarly work focused on British achievements in providing a stable and substantial water supply to the city, the sanitation network, road work, etc., or alternatively, the changes brought to the city by the European Jewish immigrants. But to focus entirely on how these improvements molded the city is unfortunate. The indigenous members of the Jerusalem community were active and creative participants in the changes in developments going on around them, contributing greatly to their own lives and futures. It is how Arab, Greek, and Armenian Jerusalemites lived their lives and the environments they created in the New City that will be the focus of this chapter.

With this view in mind, this chapter will attempt to elucidate some of the socioeconomic features that characterized life in the twentieth-century Arab Jerusalem-the difference suburbs of the New City, education, and social life, among other things-to try and create a picture of living in this cosmopolitan rapidly growing city. As the vast majority of literature written on this subject deals exclusively with the Jewish sector of the city, this work will focus on the activities of the Arab, Greek, and Armenian Jerusalemites. However, none of the many communities that make up Jerusalem can be looked at in isolation; rather the interdependence and interaction of these communities was what characterized the city�s uniqueness. Although abundant sources are available for administrative and political events in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, as well as Zionist activities in the city, little has been written on everyday life. Therefore, this chapter will rely on autobiographies and oral interviews of Jerusalemites, as well as statistical surveys, British records, and scholarly works. Much of the information has been collected on this period documents the lives of the educated and middle and upper classes. A gap exists in the source material regarding the lives of the urban poor and lower and working classes, a subject that will have to be addressed in another work.

The British administration of Palestine encouraged the continued growth of Jerusalem, both spatially and in terms of systematized infrastructure. The New and Old Cities grew in mutual dependency, particularly in terms of kinship relations and economic and market relations that resulted in specialization�s of labor and in the production delivery of services in each. As the majority of the land outside the city walls was owned by Arab villagers, churches, or urban landowners, those Arabs, Armenians, and Greeks who had the economic means were encouraged by the general growth to build or rent outside the city walls. The spacious new Arab suburbs in the New City were an indicator of social/class mobility, as at least moderate amounts of capital were required to build or rent in the Arab neighborhoods outside the walls. In these two ways the Arab growth of the New City contrasted with the Jewish expansion in the city. Jews, in the twentieth-century, had more difficult time buying land in the city; and, Jews living in the New City represented a variety of different classes, not just the middle and upper classes. These new Arab residential areas differed significantly from those in the Old City as people moved away from shared private spaces and into single-family homes. As will be explored in this chapter, these suburban living areas were part of the expressions of a rising middle class in a new �modern� value system, including an emphasis on education and public life.

The British Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) in Palestine, in place during the first two and half years of the British occupation of Palestine, was headquartered in Jerusalem, as was the Civil Administration of the British Mandate Authority which replaced it. Hosting the headquarters of the political administration of the country, Jerusalem acquired a new position of political importance adding to its position of religious significance. New housing and other services were also required for the British personnel. Class and economic position played a role in where they would live, as most foreigners working in Jerusalem were financially well off and could afford to live where they chose, mostly in the New City. One visitor to Jerusalem in 1921 wrote, "Now, of course there are pleasant suburbs stretching out, especially to the South, North, and West, and hardly anyone of European origin was not obliged to do so lives within the old walled city."

The British saw as central to their role in Jerusalem the preservation of the city�s historic heritage-according to Storrs, the Military Governor of Jerusalem, "�not only to plan [Jerusalem] as much as to draw up regulations to protect its special character." To this end, in April 1918, Storrs issued Public Notice No. 34 in English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew declaring that "No person shall demolished, erect, alter, or repair the structure of any building in the city of Jerusalem or its environs within a radius of 2500 meters from the Damascus Gate (Bab-al-Amud) until he has obtained a written permit from the Military Governor. �" In this period, restrictions were placed on building materials-no plaster or corrugated iron sheeting could be used, as part of "respecting the tradition of stone vaulting, the heritage in Jerusalem of an immemorial and hallowed past." Building was forbidden and for a period of twenty-five years inside the city walls and in the area immediately around it and regulations were enforced as to heights of buildings in order to preserve the skyline.

The New City Flourishes:
Buildings in Jerusalem Under the British Mandate

The period of the British Mandate witnessed an impressive building boom in Jerusalem. According to the 1931 Report on Economic Conditions in Palestine, Jerusalem invested 1,836, 740 Palestine Pounds, Haifa about 193,000 Palestinian Pounds, Tel-Aviv 175, 000 Palestinian Pounds and Jaffa 79, 400 Palestinian Pounds in building operations. Not only were new houses and other buildings going up all over the city, but the new architectural styles were also been developed. As during the Ottoman period the investment put into building of homes was significant. People tell of saving money for years to by the plot of land and to build the house, investing their life savings into this property. A grandmother in the Kalouti family, living in Bab Hutta in Old City, saved money until 1927 she and her sons were able to buy a plot of land in Qatamon. The house was built in early 1930s, although the grandmother had died by that time; eventually a second-story was added and her two sons and their families lived there until 1948. George Fasheh�s father said that in order to buy the land for their house in Qatamon, his wife had sold her gold jewelry. These two examples reveal both the upwardly mobile intentions of a rising middle class that aspired to a new and more �modern� lifestyle outside of conventional living and housing patterns. They also exposed the role of the entire family, and not just the husband/father, in contributing to the capital accumulation necessary to express these aspirations.

A material expression of the family�s investment in building a home was often the highly individualized architectural detail, creative stone cutting around doors and windows, stylized facades, and elaborate stonework. This was particularly true of the homes owned and lived in by the Arab, Armenian, and Greek families, in contrast to the houses and buildings that were built to be rented out. Autobiographies, oral histories, and personal and public photographs from the period illuminate some of these trends. The Spiridon home in Upper Baq�a was designed by Spiro Spiridon, an electrical engineer. It was built in 1940-1and had two stories and a fireplace, with an aquarium set into the staircase that could be seen from both inside and outside the house. The Freij family built adjoining houses in Baq�a in 1925, and had their family name written in white tiles on the red carmine tile roof. Placed above the doors of many of these houses were carved lintels or stones inset in the wall with inscriptions and the date of the building.

Much of the gray or beige stone for these homes came from limestone quarries in the Jerusalem area, although in some cases, pink limestone was used to artistic ends to trim window and door frames, balconies, and corners. The stone facing on buildings was cut to the individual tastes, either smooth or rough-hewn. The buildings were decorated with arched windows, columns, and multiple balconies and verandas. Most of the roofs were of red tile or were flat, replacing the domed roofs popular in village in older urban architecture in Palestine. Iron latticework covered the windows and was again a show place for individual designs, and metal shutters outside of the windows were painted a variety of colors. Inside houses, the tiles used to pave the floors were locally manufactured. One Jerusalem tile-making factory, owned by the Qassasiyeh family, had its workshop in the Old City just inside Jaffa Gate, although many in the family live in Qatamon. These brightly covered tiles formed an elaborate pattern on the floor, using repeating geometric and plant motifs.

The New and the Old City

With time, the movement out of the Old City increased, and living in the New City became desirable in terms of providing a healthier environment than the crowded Old City as well as indicating social and class upward mobility. Those who were left behind in Old City were often those who could not afford to buy land and build a home or pay the relatively high rents of the New City villas and apartments. The earthquake of 1927 caused damage to some of the buildings of Jerusalem, particularly in the crowded sections of the Old City where houses shared walls and roofs. The old-style of these buildings and their limited access to running water and sewage systems decreased the desirability of living in the Old City. Because of British Mandate regulations to preserve the historic character of the Old City, it was not usually possible to rebuild homes in the more modern styles. As the New City grew, the historical accounts of its residents reflect an increasing economic and class separation between those who could afford to live in the New City and those who were stuck in the crowded and dirty Old City.

The poverty of the Old City contrasted sharply with the palatial homes being built in parts of the New City. Talbiya, al-Namamreh, Qatamon, and Baq�a were seen as the fashionable Arab quarters. "Together they formed a garden City, as they consisted mainly of villas surrounded by gardens. All houses, almost without exception, were built of stone, and the largest were two-story, four-apartment buildings." Common sites in these neighborhoods were beautiful gardens, full of flowers and fruit trees. Hala Sakakini remembers how neighbor George Khamis, living with his family in Qatamon,
�Would take us around proudly showing us the different flower-beds and pointing out to us his prize carnations, or his huge adalias with the pointed petals, or his velvety wind colored roses� From the main gate a wide walk paved with flagstones led between long lines of lavender bushes up to a large porch with smooth round columns. In one part of the garden stood a few fig trees from which we were invited to pick the fruit.

An essential and yet often unmentioned aspect of the stories of these well off and middle-class families is the men and women who worked for them that made such comfortable and elegant living possible. Most families employed women to clean and cook for them and men to do the gardening and other odd jobs, including raising chickens, pigeons, and rabbits for private consumption of eggs and meat. The labor pool was drawn from the urban lower middle class and poor in Jerusalem as well as the residents of the surrounding villages. Again, through family histories and testimonies the nature of these relations can be better understood. The Spiridon family living in Baq�a had close relations with the nearby village of Malha. The expansive Spiridon property was bought at the turn of the century from the villagers who continued to farm it until 1948. The villagers were also hired to household chores and gardening. One woman, Jamila, had worked for the Spiridon family since age twelve and eventually made enough money to build homes in the village for each of her husband�s five children. The Rose family Gardner was from the Old City and grew herbs, vegetables, stocks and sweet peas for the family in their garden in the Greek Colony.

The relationship between the Old City and the New City remained a complex one throughout the period of the British Mandate. Most of the Arab inhabitants who moved to more spacious homes outside the walls continued to have relatives living in the Old City. In early part of the twentieth century, some of those who lived outside the walls often still had jobs or owned stores in the Old City. For example, following their return from studying in Beirut, Izzat and Sulayman Tannous lived with family and friends in the Musrara quarter, outside Damascus Gate, but in 1919 they opened their pharmacy and clinic inside the walls near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Some who lived in the Old City went to school outside the walls, while others who lived in the New City attended schools in Old City.

Trade and employment passed back and forth between the old and New Cities. Even with the creation of numerous markets and a large commercial district in the New City, people continued to do their shopping in the Old City. Fresh fish arrived on the train from Jaffa on Friday mornings and was available in a shop just inside Jaffa Gate. Certain services and products were only available in the Old City, such as the mbayedeen, or tinsmiths, who were located in a special suq inside the Old City where they tin-plated the copper pots and trays there were used for cooking and serving. The Old City residents, as mentioned earlier, also worked in the homes and gardens of the New City residents. The New City also had specific role in Jerusalem, and certain products were only available there, as were the newer social attractions such as cinemas, European cafes, and places to dance. Large multi-story buildings were erected in the commercial areas and were rented out as offices and stores.

The ties to the Old City remained strong, and for those families who moved out into the New City usually one part of the family remained within the walls, often the older generation. Hala Sakakini tells of her paternal aunt who after the earthquake in 1927 "came to live with us [in the New City] as the room which used occupy in my grandfather�s house in Old City had been badly damaged �" people commonly visited each other according to social norms and went to the Old City for the Christian and Muslim religious occasions, keeping New and Old City people in close contact. These relations were to remain essential in people�s lives, and in 1948 many families who fled the fighting in the New City, took refuge with relations living in Old City under Jordanian control. The Kalouti family, for example, left their homes in Qatamon in April of 1948 and stayed briefly in the Sa�adiyyah Quarter in Old City at the home of a maternal aunt, before moving to Jordan. During the holidays, the Old City was the center of celebrations. Hala Sakakini vividly recalls being taken with her sister Dumiain by their mother and aunt on Easter Sundays to the Old City to watch the Greek Orthodox procession, where, she says, "we were always sure to meet many of our relatives and friends." The Old City during Ramadan was an especially celebratory place:

"It was in Old City more than anywhere else in Jerusalem that Ramadan made itself felt. During that month the Old City was worth seeing by night. Everywhere the festive air was manifest. Even the smallest shop was lit up and decorated� But the greatest attraction was the sweetshops. These were stacked with large, round trays of delicious Arabic sweets�karabeej halab, burma, baklawa, knafeh, bughaja, zunoud-es-sit, asabe� zeinab, kol wushkor, mutabbaq, and, of course, atayef."

Neighborhoods that Neighbors: The Rising Middle Class

Despite the de-sectarian trend of urban growth in general, the New City of Jerusalem�the area outside walls�was roughly divided into two groups of neighborhoods: 1) Jewish and 2) Palestinian Arab, Greek and Armenian. However, in these new Palestinian neighborhoods, Christian Muslim Arabs, Greeks and Armenians lived together in the same neighborhoods, sharing public resources, workspaces, and social occasions. These new neighborhoods became indicators of social class, and the growing middle- and upper-classes of Palestinian Jerusalemite society invested and found prestige in these new neighborhoods, leaving behind the Old City as a place for the poor and the elderly. Rashid Khalidi describes the general de-sectarian nature of Palestinian society in the first half of the twentieth century, as Arab and Palestinian nationalism became the new poles around which people focused their identity, rather than older religious or ethnic allegiances. Despite this broad trend, sectarian divisions a certain neighborhoods�Talbiya, for example, was almost entirely Christian.

As the new city expanded, the suburbs formed a bloc around the North and Western walls of the Old City and continued South and West from there. The largely Arab, Greek, and Armenian neighborhoods included Bab al-Zahira, Sheika Jarrah, Wadi al-Joz, Musrara, Mamillah, Shamma�, al-Nabi Dawoud, Deir Abu Tor, Wadi al-Nabah, Baq�a (Upper and Lower), Talbiya, al-Wa�riya, al-Nammriya (al-Namamreh), Qatamon, the Greek Colony, the German Colony, and Sheikh Badr. Romeima and Ratisbone were mixed neighborhoods.

Not all of the residents of the New City had moved there from homes within the Old City walls. During the first half of the Twentieth century in Palestine, migration to the cities from the towns and villages of the countryside had increased. Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem all enjoyed a share of aspiring Palestinians looking for work and increased educational opportunities in urban centers. Again, family cases provide as with a glimpse into the composition of the neighborhoods and migration. Ghada al-Karmi writes, "I was born in Jerusalem to a comfortably off, middle class family. We were not natives of Jerusalem, for my father originated from the town of Tulkarm (hence our name of Karmi), and had come to live and work there as a young man. At the time of my birth, we lived in house in Qatamon, in which we stayed until the time of our flight in 1948." Sami Khouri was born in Nablus, but studied at St. George�s school, graduating in 1940. After finishing his medical degree he returned to Jerusalem to work in the Moscobiya Government Hospital. Jalal Hashim was from Nablus working as a civil servant for the British. He rented house from the Karkashian family in Qatamon. What can be deduced from these examples is that not only did Jerusalem attract persons from all over Palestine in search of employment opportunities, but it provided an atmosphere in which these people could successfully make a living and be part of the diverse social fabric that make up the city.

As the neighborhoods grew and developed, so too did the small groceries, bakeries, fruit and vegetable markets, and butchers in the different areas. These small-scale merchants relied on connections to the villages and the Old City for their supplies, as well as receiving stocks from larger traders. The Kalouti butcher�s shop in Qatamon purchased its meats from the Suq al-Juma� [�Friday Market�] held next to the Montefiori, where villagers would bring their animals to this market to sell. Occasionally, the shop would buy already slaughtered meat in Khan al-Zeit in the Old City. In addition to providing meat for the well-to-do neighborhood, the butcher would exchange meat for the agricultural produced brought into the city by the village men and women. Freij�s liquor store "bought arak from Bethlehem and Ramallah, but wine and spirits from Jews in Rishon (south of Tel Aviv) and sold them to Arabs."

The New City suburbs were a market for numerous tradespeople and merchants who brought their products and skills to the streets. This practice allowed for those without enough capital to invest in setting up a shop, to participate as small-time merchants and tradespeople in the economy and still remain independent of contracting their works out to shops or selling their products at a lower profit to merchants. As earlier periods, it was common for villagers to bring their fruits and vegetables to peddle in the city. "The Greek and German Colonies, the Baq�a and Qatamon were saved by the Arab villages to the South�Beit Safafa, Malha, Walajeh, Battir and Sur Bahir. Tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, broad beans, (fool in Arabic) as well as a large variety of fruit�apricots, sugar apples, quince, grapes and figs�were brought to the door." Vendors also came around selling sweets, cold drinks of licorice, tamarind and carob, sesame bread (ka�ek), ice cream, roasted green chickpeas, green almonds, and other seasonal treats. Wood was brought around on camel back for heating, and kerosene vendors came with a horse-drawn tank to fill stoves. Roving craftsmen included knife-sharpeners and shoe repairmen. Other people who passed through the streets were Gypsy fortune-tellers, people with performing animals, and the sanduq al-�ajab, a storyteller with a box of highly colored moving pictures.

The population of Jerusalem continued to increase rapidly during the British Mandate. The Census of 1931 showed population at 90,503, with 19,894 Muslims, 51,222 Jews, and 19,335 Christians. The 1944 population of Jerusalem, based on estimates of the 1931 Census, was divided as follows: of a total population of 157,080, the Muslim community had 30,630, the Jews were 97,000, and the Christians counted for 29,350.

Table 1: Population of Jerusalem (within the municipal boundaries) During the British Mandate

One source citing a British official in 1947 put the number of Muslim and Christians in the New City at 31,500 with around 33,600 living in the Old City. The Jewish population in the Old City was 2,400 with 97,000 residing in the city. Equally relevant to the lives and income of the residents was the distribution of land ownership in Jerusalem. Of a total area of 19,331 dunums, 11,191 were owned by Arabs, 4,830 owned by Jews, and the remaining 3,305 were public land (roads, squares, etc.). While the majority of the population of the city was Jewish, Arabs owned almost three times as much land within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.

Table 2: Population of Jerusalem According to Residence and Property Ownership, 1947

A Cosmopolitan and Modern City:
Modernity and the Rising Arab Middle Class

With the end of the Ottoman rule, major changes came about in terms of employment and work possibilities. In 1912 the Young Turk regime abolished the guild system, a feature of many of the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire, and one which had placed restrictions on people entering certain fields of work. More importantly, the destitution and poverty which it characterized the war years found considerable relief in the end of the war and the immediate humanitarian assistance provided by the British administration, the Red Cross, and other charitable organizations. As the city and the British administrative presence grew over the next thirty years, they became a source of white-collar office jobs for the literate and educated, contracted labor out from individuals and firms for services and work, and required blue-collar labor in the building and service sectors.

This new period in Jerusalem�s history caused a change in the class divisions of Jerusalem society of�the increasing wealth of people who were artisans, housekeepers, or day laborers allowed them to help the next generation of their relatives receive an education that they themselves did not have. For example, a young Armenian, Hagop, was apprenticed to a Muslim shoe-shop in the Old City. "On completing his training he moved to Beirut to learn new techniques and become familiar with the fashionable shoe-styles for which the city was famous throughout the Middle East." He and his family eventually bought land in upper Baq�a way built house, and he sent his girls to Jerusalem Girls� College and the boys to St. George�s School and the College des Fr�res. This change within the class structure did not necessarily imply a weakening of the structures of power and leadership�Jerusalem�s elite families retained their positions of authority both in the religious hierarchies and the political spectrum. Rather, the changes that occurred were indicative of rising educational levels and economic standards of living for the general population as a whole and the rise of a middle class in particular.

Economic statistics reveal the shape of Jewish-Arab relations in some sectors. Romann states that "[I]n 1935, a record year for Jewish construction in Jerusalem, the number of Arabs rose to 40 percent of those employed in the Jewish sector. �According to figures in the 1937 Jewish trade census, roughly one-third of Jewish shops had Arab customers, and about 10 percent derived more than half their turnover from such clientele." As no such statistics exist for the non-Jewish sector (whether Arab, Greek, Armenian, etc.), it is difficult to assess the Jewish patronage of non-Jewish businesses. However, it to was most likely not of equal proportion has the Zionist policy of supporting Jewish labor and buying Jewish products (�Avoda �Ivrit and Tozat �Ivrit), certainly exerted an influence discouraging Jewish patronage of non-Jewish businesses.

As in the proceeding period, the Jerusalem economy relied heavily on foreign contributions to the various communities and tourism to the Holy Land. Most economic projects that were established in the city were small-scale, although it seems to have remained the primary economic market for the towns and villages of Trans-Jordan. Economic growth in the cities of Jaffa/Tel Aviv and Haifa was much higher per capita. By 1939, for example Jerusalem constituted 8.75 percent of the population of Palestine, yet it�s industrial consumption of electricity accounted for only 1.9 percent. Furthermore, "[t]he first census of industry taken by the Government of Palestine revealed that in 1928, in the 658 �industrial�establishments in the city, only 3316 persons were employed, including owners. Only eighty workshops possessed some kind of power driven machinery."

In Tel Aviv/Jaffa, there were fewer craft and industrial establishments (543), but they employed workers (4,323), at an average of eight per establishment verses five in Jerusalem, and had almost three times the capital invested in them. And, in Jerusalem, "[t]he average monthly wage then amounted to 3.33 Palestinian pounds, as compared with 5.95 Palestinian pounds earned at that time in Tel Aviv�" The Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce was for all merchants in the city, whereas Chambers of Commerce of the coastal cities (Jaffa-Tel Aviv and Haifa) were "divided according to the nationality of the traders�a feature which does not promote cooperation within the merchant class." In 1936 and Arab Chamber of Commerce was also founded in Jerusalem. By 1930s, Jewish retailers and wholesalers in Jerusalem and the other cities were beginning to form associations to grant credit, cut competition and improve relations. No such institutions existed among the Arab merchants.

Trading fairs were popular during this period including ones exclusively related to the Arab world. One such exhibition was the Arab fair in Jerusalem for "traditional Oriental goods." According to the British department of overseas trade, "[t]he exhibits were mainly the products of Arab manufactures in Palestine and neighboring countries. About 150 firms participated and a large variety of products was shown. The promoters were the Arab Fair Co., Ltd.., who seek to establish regular market organizations for Arab manufacturers and to foster trade between Arab countries." Hala Sakakini recalls going to the second Arab Exhibition in the summer of 1934, which was "held in the white, palatial Awqaf building at the bottom of St. Julian�s Way, across the street from the Mamillah Cemetery." Fireworks were set off every night, and the exhibition had food and handicrafts from Palestine and other parts of the Arab world, a caf� serving Arabic ice cream, music, acrobats and a circus. On sale were leather goods from Egypt, woolen blankets and clothes from Iraq, a myriad of sweets and fruit preserves from Damascus, brocades and silks from Syria, perfumes and confectionery from Lebanon, brass and copper objects from the countries of Levant, soap from Nablus, mother-of-pearl from Bethlehem, wool rugs from Beersheba and Gaza, hand-woven towels from Majdal, furniture made in Jaffa, and the carved olive wood products from Jerusalem.

Jerusalem schools enjoyed this same cosmopolitan and regional character. Numerous students came from Palestine and the Near East to study in the city, an indicator of the quality of education and the reputation of these programs. Some autobiographical accounts illustrate the role of Jerusalem education played in various people�s lives Shafeeq al-Khalili, whose father was from Khalil and mother from Damascus, was born in 1916 in Jerash (Jordan) and was sent to the Rashidiyya School for his secondary education. Shawqi �Ameera study in Salt, Jordan were he was born and raised, but his older sister was sent to Jerusalem to study at Schmidt�s Girls School for her secondary education. A different type of studies was pursued by Aneesa Shqeir, who at age twenty in 1925 and already married with children, left her home in Nablus to study midwifery in Jerusalem for six months at the Moscobiya Hospital Jerusalem. She continued practicing her profession throughout Palestine and Jordan until retiring in 1975.

By 1945 there were 155 schools in Jerusalem. The eleven governmental Arab schools had 1,900 male students and 1,861 female students; seven other schools were private Muslim schools for boys (1101 students) and girls (280 students); Christian organizations had opened another thirty-eight with 4,311 male students and 3,553 female students; thirty governmental schools for Jewish students had 4,043 males and 5,188 females; and sixty nine private Jewish schools contained 6,630 male students and 5,390 female students. These schools employed 946 male teachers and 850 female teachers. This rise in the number of schools and pupils was concomitant with a high priority on education with families. As was taking place in other countries throughout the world, educated men and women were needed in this rapidly changing society to take on new types of administrative, technical and industrial jobs and family responsibilities.

Table 3: Number of educational institutions (private and public) and Students by gender in 1945

Jerusalem also offered some opportunities for higher education. Teachers� training colleges were available locally at both the Rashidiyya College and the Arab College, where students could take two-year training courses in both theoretical and practical education. Dar al-Mu�allimat in Jerusalem offered teaching credentials to women who stayed one year beyond the secondary school level. There was also a law school for Arabs and Jews requiring five years of study. Lectures were in Arabic, Hebrew and English. Edward Keith-Roach, a District Commissioner, remembers that "�although there was far more need for mechanics, skilled workmen of all kinds and practicing engineers, a law school was opened in November 1921. By 1943 we had a certain number of Palestinian-trained Jewish engineers, but still Arabs, yet there were nearly 1000 Jewish and Arab advocates." The only University in the country was the Hebrew University, which catered exclusively to the Jewish population. Plans to establish an Arab University in Jerusalem were never realized, much to the frustration of the many involved in planning it. Thus, Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians who wished to receive university degrees or become doctors, dentists, or nurses had to go abroad, has during the Ottoman period. The majority of these students went to the numerous colleges and universities in Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Alexandria, or Baghdad. According to statistics in 1948, from all of Palestine in that year there were 416 Palestinian students studying in Lebanon, and 631 in Egypt, three students in Syria, and fifteen in Iraq.

Many of those who studied abroad returned to practice their trades in Palestine. Students who studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo returned to take up posts of importance with the Muslim religious establishment. Positions in teaching humanities or languages were offered in the numerous schools, while in the private and public sector there was work in translation and journalism. In this autobiography, Al-Bi�r al-Ula [�The First Well�], Jabra Ibrahim Jabra described his new teachers when his family from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and he began attending the Rashidiyya School during the 1930s:

I was happy when my teachers in the fifth-grade were of a kind I had not seen before. Wasfi al-�Anabtawi taught us geography and during the lesson would tell us of his experiences in England, France, Egypt and other places. He didn't look at the book he was teaching us from, but would dictate to us pages of knowledge that seemed to spring spontaneously from his well-learned mind. He was a graduate of Oxford University, of tall stature, extremely elegant, and kept a handkerchief in his sleeve� He spoke in language that mixed Classical Arabic with the Nablus dialect, emphasizing the letter "qaf" which was rarely pronounced by the Jerusalemites. He was able to capture our minds and imaginations, and I don�t think any of this ever strayed for one instant from what he said.

Wasfi al-�Anabtawi serves as an example of how Jerusalem attracted people to it through a variety of job opportunities and relatively high standards of living. Al-�Anabtawi was born and raised in Nablus, but completed his secondary education Jerusalem. After this he taught English in a secondary school in Nablus and eventually went to study at the American University of Beirut. He returned to teaching again, but then was chosen to study geographically in England. Upon returning to Palestine he was appointed to teach at the Arab college and the Rashidiyya School in Jerusalem.

Without a doubt, the educational experiences of students in Jerusalem expanded their opportunities for employment. However, these educational efforts were not only offered for the betterment of students but also to inculcate in them values and ways of thinking and behavior that could benefit the colonial authority and/or the missionary institutions. "In retrospect, it seems that the underlying purpose of the educational system throughout Palestine was to create a cadre of well-educated Palestinians to serve the colonial power and to protect Western heritage and its interest in the region� Educated Arabs became the agents of change not only of and themselves." A critical look at the types of education being offered at this time reveals the confounding situation that students were placed in-knowledgeable in Western history and culture, while at the same time, adverse to both British and Zionist activity in Palestine. Jamil Toubbeh, writing about the upbringing of his elder brother Michael, comments on Michael�s love of classical Western literature and European languages that he acquired while a student at Terra Sancta. This Western education occurred at the expense of learning about Arab history and heritage. People who graduated from these schools were left to reconcile their admiration for their schooling in their knowledge of Western history and literature, with their experiences of the oppressive colonial forces in the Middle East that denied them their political independence. At the same time, they were trained in foreign languages to be able to communicate and work with Westerners and others, and yet their social norms remained within the domain of their Arab families.

Bourgeois Modernity Transforms Jerusalem

The cultural and social life of Jerusalem in the first half of the twentieth century reflected the cosmopolitan nature of the inhabitants, and included numerous educational opportunities, a varied social life, an active press and media, and different kinds of activities in clubs. While to certain extent life was divided along Jewish-Arab communal lines, there was something missing particularly in educational and social arenas. Within the Palestinian Arab communities, especially among elite and educated, there were fewer sectarian divisions. Christians and Muslims socialized and studied together, but because of the importance of familial relations, people often remained closely linked with their confessional communities. Sources on Jerusalem society as a topic of study vary�official and semi-official accounts and documents reflect an overly statistical preoccupation with progress. Oral accounts and autobiographical accounts on the other hand, discuss life from the perspective of those living and working in the city. They, however, also present numerous problems about the reliability of memory and reconstruction of events, in particular here given the trauma of loss and relocation. In an effort to enliven the official accounts and to make sure the oral counts and recollections are historically consistent, I will utilize both types of sources as a way to understand the changes taking place in the city and how the inhabitants generated and responded to life in the modern New City.

One of the effects of increased literacy was a population that had a greater appetite for the written word and that was thus a market for printed material. Shortly after the British occupation of Jerusalem, to Palestinians, �Arif al-�Arif and Hassan al-Budeiri, began publishing newspaper entitled Suriya al-Janoubiyya (�Southern Syria�). This newspaper took an active position against the establishment of the British Mandate in Jerusalem and against the Balfour Declaration calling for Palestine to be homeland for the Jews. Also in 1919, Boulos Shehadeh started a newspaper called Miraat al-Sharq (�Mirror of the East�) which was published in Arabic and English. "In 1921, the paper introduced a column called �The Pens of Ladies� which ran articles by pioneers in the woman�s movement such as Asma Toubi and Kudsiyyeh Khursheed, and it also solicited contributions from readers." It was closely indefinitely in 1939 by the Mandate Administration for publishing an inciting poem. By the end of the Mandate, many different types of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines were being published in Jerusalem; in addition, daily newspapers and other publications were available not only from other cities and towns in Palestine, but also from other parts of the Arab world. Jabra recalls reading "�Egyptian magazines which used to come to us weekly, bringing knowledge, humor,and the stories of Cairo�s political struggles and literary battles."

Bookstores were common site in Jerusalem. Not only did they sell local and imported books, magazines, and newspapers in Arabic and other languages, but also school and office supplies. �Arif al�Arif recalls the names of twelve Arab bookstores, saying, "I would not be exaggerating if I said that if a book were published in the Eastern or Western world and its reputation spread, he would be ill-defined it in one of these bookstores�" Statistics from the late Mandate period show that there were eight bookshops owned by Muslims, sixteen by Christians, and fifty-five by Jews. Hala Sakakini remembers that her mother subscribed to in English woman�s magazine, "Wife and home". Hala and her sister Dumiya were more likely to read novels: "At the age of seventeen I bought three novels myself: Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, and The Citadel." The tastes and values of being modern also expressed themselves in the desire to read foreign publications, largely due to the educational opportunities available to students who could acquire the language skills necessary to read such works. At the same time, personal libraries and the acquisition of books was becoming common in educated households in the New City.

British Mandate statistics from the 1940s detail the different shops, stores and commercial enterprises in Jerusalem. These statistics, which indicated religion of the owner, can be used to give some idea of the trade specialization�s of the different communities as well as the rise and importance of particular professions. In 1947, of forty-six photographers and suppliers in the city, twenty-two were Christian, twenty were Jewish, and four Muslim. These people catered to the middle and upper classes who went to professional photographers for wedding pictures, a relatively new, but popular, subject of film. One of the more famous was Khalil Raad who studied photography in Basel (Switzerland) and established a shop in 1895. He took many pictures of rural life surrounding Jerusalem, and from his store near Jaffa Gate he also sold photographic supplies.

In the milieu of Jerusalem, which combined an emphasis on education with a political awareness and engendered by the British policies, the rise of Arab nationalism, and Zionist activities, life for the educated and elite in Jerusalem was active. Lectures and literacy gatherings were popular cultural and social pastimes. Khalil Sakakini was a much sought-after and provocative lecturer. He gave numerous lectures at clubs and associations in Jerusalem�the YMCA, Terra Sancta College, to name a few�and literary societies and clubs in Jaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Gaza and other towns also invited him to lecture. His daughter Hala recalls, "Walking home after one of Father�s lectures at that club [The Arab Orthodox Club in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Upper Baq�a], I was thrilled to overhear a group of men, who were walking a few steps ahead of us, enthusiastically discussing the new ideas Father had expounded. The subject of that lecture, I remember, was the future evolution of Man. It was one of Father�s favorite themes." Khalil Sakakini would meet with friends and colleagues, and [o]ccasionally Jewish professors of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University were present and participated in the discussion. �The subjects discussed at these daily informal meetings of friends were varied. They included philosophy and the philosophers, Arabic poetry and the Arab poets, intricacies of the Arabic language, problems in education, social systems, Eastern music and Western music, psychology and its application.

Jerusalem women during this period were active in a number of different spheres, including educational projects, political activities, and social work. Ellen Fleishmann�s research on women in Mandate Palestine exposes the wide range of women�s involvement. The women�s movement, which expressed its protests to Zionist activity in churches, mosques, and to the High Commissioner himself, was begun in Jerusalem. The Arab Women�s Union and the YWCA provided forums for women to the active in sporting, cultural, and educational events. The Palestine Broadcast Service transmitted programs for women and girls, and on Fridays the women�s hour featured prominent women known for their literacy, political or charitable contributions. Katie Antonius, the wife of George Antonius and daughter of Dr. Faris Nimr, "established a celebrated salon frequented by British officials, Arab notables and intellectuals, and occasional non-Zionist Jews." Richard Crossman, a British MP visiting Palestine in the 1940s visited this salon: "Mrs. Antonius seems to have a political salon in true French style. It was a magnificent party, evening dress, Syrian food and drink, and dancing and marble floor."

Entertaining in the homes was also a popular way to spend leisure time. Mary Shehadeh, a journalist and wife of newspaper editor Boulos Shehadeh recalls, "Our social life was busy, and our house was like a literary school. Writers and journalists from all over the world visited us, and just listening to their dinner conversations was in itself educational." Mariana Spiridon recalls that her families home in Baq�a, surrounded by olive groves and eucalyptus trees, was a favorite spot for picnics with friends and family on Sundays. Hala Sakakini remembers being allowed to stay up and attend evening social gatherings (sahrat) held by her parents in which a young singer, Kazem Sabassi, would sing and play his �oud. Similarly, paying social visits to friends and colleagues at their home was a common practice as was the tradition of offering condolences at People�s homes and visiting on holidays. This served to bring people in contact from the different neighborhoods, even in times of violence and curfew. John Rose writes, "I had many friends in Jerusalem whom and spite of all the troubles I continued to visit, among them the Markarian family living in a street off Princess Mary Avenue � I would spend my evenings with them, leaving between nine and ten o�clock and often walking home to the Greek Colony through deserted streets.

The spacious areas of the New City made walks and day trips to nearby sites and historical or natural interest a common outing for children and families. The countryside adjoining the suburbs was full of wildflowers in the spring and the many hills of Jerusalem offered views of Bethlehem and other surrounding villages. Scout troops planned camping trips in the area, and schools took walking field trips to sites around the city. Jerusalemites also journey outside of the city to Jericho and the Dead Sea in the winter, and the Jaffa seaside was a popular outing for many.

By the end of the Mandate, Jerusalem could boast of fourteen public gardens totaling 77 dunums. In addition to the park established by the Municipality during Ottoman rule, later called al-Manshiyya, there was the Municipality garden located just west of the tomb of Sheikh Jarrah, the nearby zoological garden, and a General Park [hadiqa �ama] established by Jews in the Ratisbonne neighborhood in 1945. In 1929, the Rockefeller Museum was endowed, to be built outside the northeastern corner of the Old City, and it was opened to the public in 1938. The Islamic Museum was established in 1923 by the Islamic Council in the al-Haram al-Sharif.

Another part of modern life in the New City was a public, social role for people�in particular children, single men, and quite often women�in the forms of clubs and charities. According to British statistics of 1945, in the twenty-eight years of the British occupation over 2,023 clubs in organizations (charities, cooperatives, sport clubs, cultural and literary societies, etc.) had been registered in Jerusalem, eighty five percent of which were Palestinian (of all denominations) and fifteen percent were foreign. Of those Palestinian, thirty five percent of them were Jewish, thirty percent were Muslim, and twenty five percent were Christian. Bertha Vester recalls that in the mid-1920s a favorite activity of her family�s was the gardening club, which held spring and summer flower shows.

One of the largest of these clubs was the YMCA, established in Jerusalem around 1876. The current YMCA building, still standing in what is now West Jerusalem, was dedicated in 1933. In 1947 it had 1,950 members. The Anglo-Palestine Yearbook for 1947-8 proclaims that "because of the extensive educational facilities and the use of the auditorium and other spaces for general public programs, concerts, drama, cinema, exhibits, etc., the YMCA has become a cultural center enjoyed by a large section of the Jerusalem population." It was an active and busy arena of social life and athletic opportunities for many Jerusalemites. Hala Sakakini writes.

The YMCA in those years was a social and cultural center, which offered the residents of Jerusalem a variety of entertainment and provided the young people with amusement of the best kind. The many sport facilities, the different youth clubs, the rich library, the auditorium, the cafeteria, were all of great service to the public. Young man from all over Palestine�law students, teachers, Government Officials�who had to live away from their families and homes, occupied rooms in the YMCA hostel.

But 1930s, there was also an Arab sports club in Qatamon, which on Sunday afternoons held football matches between Arab club teams in Palestine and tennis matches in the summer. Gym classes and tennis and swimming lessons were held at the YMCA for both children and adults, male and female. Equipment for these sports and activities was available at Gabi Deeb�s sports shop on Julian Way.

Public social life also took place in a variety of other venues. A popular pastime of Jerusalemites in the summer was going to the garden cafes of the many Arab hotels located in villages around Jerusalem. The Everest, the Panorama, and the Aida were near Beit Jala, and the grand (or Odeh), the Hamra and the Harb Hotels were popular sites in Ramallah. �Ayn Karim, southwest of Jerusalem, was another favorite spot, with Ash-Sharafeh and other local cafes offering beautiful views of the countryside. Well-to-do families from Jaffa also would stay the summers in Ramallah hotels or rent private rooms to escape the coastal heat. The atmosphere at these places was open and carefree. "Children in their light colorful summer clothes would be running around among the fruit trees, the waiters would be rushing from one table to another, the men would be smoking their narghilehs or playing tric-trac, the women would be chatting, laughing or calling out to their children, and the atmosphere was always lively, noisy and gay." Other entertainment included dancing: "In the evenings a dance-band played foxtrots, tangos, rumbas and English waltzes from a stand while couples glided around the floor below. Periodically a waiter would sprinkle Lux flakes over the tiles to make them slippery and facilitate the dancing.

Evening entertainment was available in the commercial districts of the New City and was patronize by the many communities in the city. Cafes such as the Alaska, the Attara, Caf� Europe, Caf� Vienna, and the Viennese Tearoom, were some of the popular places serving coffee, ice cream and deserts. The new city also had older style coffee shops where men would sit and drink coffee and smoke the nargeileh. Elegant dinner dances were held at the King David Hotel, and dancing indoors or in the open-air cafes was popular with some, particularly the younger generation. There were eight cinemas in Jerusalem: Edison, al-Sharq (�the East�), Zion, �Aden (�Eden�), Rox [sic], Regents, Studio, and Tel Or, which showed such films as Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo, Alexander�s Rag Time Band, and Gone With the Wind. In addition, the YMCA would occasionally show films in the large hall. The YMCA also had concerts; Hala Sakakini recalls attending one by the Arab organist Salvador Arnita. Egyptian acting companies touring the Arab world stopped and performed in Jerusalem. More popular and less expensive forms of entertainment, such as puppeteers and storytellers, appeared in the coffee shops in the Old City, for the male audiences.

Dating and mixing between the sexes was made possible by these new forms of public social life. In addition, middle class and educated women began entering the administrative workforce as employees, secretaries, and typists in mixed gender work environment. As they gained some sense of economic independence, they also were able to mix more freely with men who were not their relatives, going to coffee shops and out dancing after work. John Rose recalled that his generation, growing up in the 1930s and 1940s had different ideas about dating than the previous generation.

During my youth we were already breaking away from traditional norms, and both sexes were beginning to mix in an atmosphere of moderated freedom. However close friendship or excessive passion had to be carefully expressed and kept as secret as possible�making it all the more exciting. It was the day for rendezvous in downtown cafes, private parties and moonlit picnics by the Dead Sea. � Life was sweet, full of short-lived love affairs and crushes, which inevitably turned out to be one-sided but provided experience for the next time.

Despite political differences and the difficulties of World War II, Jerusalem residents were in the process of building a vibrant and active city. Many new forces and changes�economic, political, and social�were slowly reshaping people�s lives and their tastes and values. Although Arab, Greeks, and Armenians in the city maintained their traditional values and activities, the city provided opportunities for increased literacy, widespread education, and a variety of social interactions with people from other backgrounds, cultures, religious denominations, and classes. With higher standard of living, the rising middle class began to value and emphasize ways of life and opportunities that had not been available to the generations prior to them, including homes in the spacious gardens suburbs, education, and a public social life, among other things.

The End of the Mandate

By the end of the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948, Jerusalem was the second largest city in Palestine, with a population of over 164,400, comprised of 99,320 Jews and 65,010 Christians and Muslims. The majority of the Jewish population and half of the Christian and Muslim populations lived in the new city. During the fighting in 1948, most of the New City fell under the control of the Zionist forces that later became the Israeli army. The Arab forces took over the Old City and the eastern edges of the New City. In the fighting, approximately 30,000 Palestinians fled or were evicted from their New City homes, and 2,000 Jews were removed from the Old City Jewish Quarter. The armistice solidified the division of the city between what became known as West Jerusalem, within the new Israeli state, and East Jerusalem, part of Jordan along with the remainder of the West Bank. The approximately 30,000 Palestinian Jerusalem refugees from West Jerusalem took temporary refuge in the Old City, other parts of the West Bank, and the surrounding Arab countries. For many years following 1948, these Jerusalemites continue to move to new places of refuge in pursuit of work, family, and places to live.

This chapter has tried to provide some idea of Jerusalem city life during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, it serves to record was lost in 1948 when the New City Arab residence fled or were driven out of their homes in the fighting. Not only the people lose their homes and possessions, but also their businesses, livelihoods, contact with neighbors, friends, nearby village neighbors, and relatives. The areas of Jerusalem which remained Arab�the Old City and Eastern part of the city�were completely cut off from the access to resources of the New City which were essential parts of their lives. No longer was there a commercial district outside the Old City, access to the ports of Jaffa and Haifa was cut off, and the city�s economic and social fabric had to be rebuilt. Ruhi al-Khatib, the mayor of Jerusalem, describes the city in 1949:

Arab Jerusalem [after the war] was confined to the part inside the city walls and a few residential centers falling East, North, and South of the city; an area not exceeding two and a half square miles out of twelve and a half square miles that was the total area of Jerusalem � Our heritage from the Mandate government in this part of Jerusalem was a distressed city of shaking buildings, a paralyzed commerce and industry, devoid of any financial resources and without a government, water, or electricity�

In addition to the economic losses, the Arab residents also suffered the political and social consequences of the division of the city. The power base of the educated elite, centered in the New City, was destroyed and spread out across the Middle East. The center of Jerusalem social life for the upper middle-class�the clubs, cafes, and restaurants of the New City�was now out of their reach, as were many of the educational institutions. Many of the schools were left without staff or students. Arab Jerusalem now consisted of the Old City and the northeastern neighborhoods. But the Old City had maintained a more traditional nature and also housed many of the poor and elderly. The Eastern neighborhoods, Wadi Joz, Sheikh Jarrah, and Bab al-Zahira, were almost entirely residential quarters. The parts of Jerusalem that remained in Arab hands were in no way able to compensate for life in the New City, particularly given the poverty of the refugees from the suburban neighborhoods of the city. These refugees were often without employment and no longer able to afford to send their children to private schools or to live in or rent large and spacious homes. Not only did people lose property, businesses, jobs, and material possession in the division of Jerusalem in 1948 and the eviction of Arabs from the New City, but they also lost a way of life.