LOcATING THe ZIONIST-ARAB eNcOUNTeR • 33among the Christian population, about half were arabic- speaking
members of the Greek Orthodox faith, an eastern Orthodox church
led by a patriarch (who was, by ecclesiastical law, always Greek in
origin) in Jerusalem. the remaining half of the Christians in palestine
consisted of members of a variety of denominations, including Greek
Catholics (especially in the Galilee), Latin Catholics (led by a patriarch
in Jerusalem under the Vatican’s jurisdiction), Maronites, Armenian
Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, and Copts, in addition to
a small but growing (due to conversion by British missionaries) popu-
lation of protestants, particularly arab episcopalians.^67 While the Mus-
lim population was overwhelmingly rural, about three- quarters of the
land’s christians lived in urban environments.^68
Like the Christians of palestine, the Jews both before and after the
Zionist immigrations were primarily urban. the pre- Zionist Jewish
communities were concentrated in the so- called Four Holy cities—
Jerusalem, hebron, tiberias, and Safed.^69 though Zionists founded
a number of agricultural moshavot (colonies such as petah tikva,^70
Rishon Le- Zion, Rosh Pina, and Zikhron Yaʿakov) and kevuẓot (col-
lective settlements, the first of which was Deganiah, established in
1909), the Jewish residents of these rural communities constituted no
more than 20 percent of the total Jewish population at the end of the
Ottoman period.^71 Most Jewish immigrants, in other words, moved to
Palestine’s towns, especially Jerusalem and, increasingly as the years
progressed, Jaffa.
Critical scholarship over the past several decades has contested
certain received assumptions about the “Zionists” of pre– World War
I palestine. In earlier historiography, which followed the dominant
nomenclature of the period itself, Palestine’s Jewish community
was seen as composed of two broad units: the “old yishuv” and the
“new yishuv.” The old yishuv was imagined to be the Jewish religious
(^67) robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine, 5; Harani, “ha- ʿedot ha-
noẓriyot”; ervine, “Yerushalayim ha- armanit”; Mccarthy, The Population of Palestine,
8– 13.
(^68) On village life in the region around Jerusalem, see Oren- Nordheim, “ha- Merkhav ha-
kafri bi- svivot yerushalayim be- shilhei ha- tekufah ha- ʿot’manit.” On the urban nature of
the Christian community, see robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine, 3.
(^69) On the pre- Zionist Jewish community of palestine, see, inter alia, Bartal, Galut ba-
areẓ; eliav, Ereẓ yisraʾel vi- shuvah ba- meʾah ha- 19.
(^70) Petah Tikva was actually first founded in 1878 by Jews from Jerusalem— not new
Zionist immigrants— but it was soon abandoned and then resettled by First Aliyah im-
migrants in 1882.
(^71) Gelvin renders these 12,000 Jews as 15 percent, but he is working with a total
number of 85,000, which is generally regarded as an inflated figure for the Jewish com-
munity before the First World War. See Gelvin, The Israel- Palestine Conflict, 69.