236 • CONCluSION
one of the Muslim- Christian Association movement’s leaders, Maronite
vicar Paul ʿAbboud, reminded his audience that Palestine, “this blessed
land,” is the “sanctuary [mazār] of Christianity and the direction of
prayer [qibla] for Islam.”^2 In perhaps the most evocative line in his
speech, ʿAbboud beseeched his audience: “Do you want our holy places
of worship, our noble sanctuaries, our glorious antiquities to be at the
mercy of those enemies of the cross and the crescent?”^3 The desig-
nation of the Jews as “enemies of the cross and the crescent,” if not
unprecedented, is surely a rarity,^4 and its appearance here is indicative
of a transformation in relations between Muslims and Christians in
Palestine, and between those two groups and the Jews as the political
situation transformed after the rise of Zionism and, still more, after the
Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the British Mandate.^5
ʿAbboud’s rhetoric goes even further, linguistically fashioning a single
religious community that unites Palestinian Christians and Muslims, and
this is consistently done in relation and contrast to the Jews. In a speech
to Muslims and Christians, ʿAbboud warned that “the goal of the Jews is
dangerous for our religious- communal existence [kayānunā al- millī] and
our national life [ḥayātunā al- qawmiyya].”^6 Speaking in Arabic, a lan-
guage with a grammatical dual form, ʿAbboud nonetheless chooses the
singular (rather than the dual) in the phrase “our religious- communal
existence,” suggesting that the Muslims and Christians of Palestine share
not merely a “national life” but also a “religious- communal existence.”
In a later speech, also to a mixed crowd of Christians and Muslims,
ʿAbboud appealed not only to their “Arab pride” in their common “na-
tion” and “race” but also to their common language, “our noble Arabic
language, the Sultaness of the Semitic languages,”^7 yet another mark
of identity implicitly contrasted with the Jews and their less exalted
Semitic language. This is not to say, though, that particularistic Chris-
tian language is wholly absent from this speech. In the text’s conclu-
sion, those who argue that the battle against Zionism is already lost
(^2) According to Muslim tradition, Jerusalem was the first of the two directions of Is-
lamic prayer [ūlā al- qiblatain] but had been replaced by Mecca in the second year of the
Hijrah. See A. J. Wensinck, “Ḳibla,” Encyclopaedia of Islam; and “Qibla,” Encyclopaedia of
the Qur’ān. ʿAbboud, al- Arḍ al- muqaddasa wa- ṣ- ṣahyūniyya, 11.
(^3) ʿAbboud, al- Arḍ al- muqaddasa wa- ṣ- ṣahyūniyya, 13.
(^4) I know of no earlier use of this phrase and, in personal correspondence, Mark Cohen
confirmed that he, too, had not seen this phrase used previously. See Cohen, Under Cres-
cent and Cross.
(^5) On the role of Christians in the development of mandate- era Palestinian national-
ism, see Haiduc- Dale, Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine; Robson, Colonialism and
Christianity in Mandate Palestine.
(^6) ʿAbboud, al- Arḍ al- muqaddasa wa- ṣ- ṣahyūniyya, 7.
(^7) Ibid., 13.