238 • CONCluSION
a conflict between groups that perceive themselves and their counter-
parts in national terms. Did religious and racial modes of perception
and identification morph into national ones, and if so, through what
process? In part, ʿAbboud’s simultaneous use of religious, racial, and
national language discussed above alludes to the fluidity between these
categories and the ways in which one might be employed in the service
of another. Methodologically, however, it is difficult to discern which
is the most significant, motivating category and which others are sim-
ply serving it. Were speeches such as ʿAbboud’s “truly” nationalist ar-
guments expressed in a language that had not yet fully evolved for
the purposes of nationalism and that still depended on older forms of
categorization? Were the elites of each community “really” thinking in
national terms but employing other terminology and logic to appeal to
the masses? Or did all these categories simply continue meaningfully to
be used simultaneously, as they had in the Late Ottoman period? I do
not propose to answer these questions here— they obviously demand
considerable research on the post- Ottoman period. I do, however, offer
some suggestive reflections on the years that followed based on the
Late Ottoman background that I have presented in this book.
It seems reasonable to expect that modes of categorization and per-
ception might have changed after the fall of the Islamic Ottoman Em-
pire and the imposition of a League of Nations mandatory regime led
by a European (majority Christian) government that was charged with
helping to forge a “national home for the Jewish people.”^11 But to
the extent that mutual perceptions in Palestine were informed by the
legal structures of the governing regime, matters in this regard did not
change quite as radically with the arrival of the British conquerors as
one might suspect. The British left in place much of the Ottoman millet
system. In Article 83 of the 1922 Palestine Order in Council, the British
declared that “each Religious Community recognized by the Govern-
ment shall enjoy autonomy for the internal affairs of the Community,
subject to the provisions of any Ordinance or Order issued by the High
Commissioner.” Four years later, in 1926, the British issued the Reli-
gious Communities Organization Ordinance, establishing the process
by which a “Religious Community” would apply to the high commis-
sioner to make “regulations for its organization as a religious com-
munity and its recognition as such by the Government of Palestine.”^12
Assaf Likhovski explains that the British may have left the millet
(^11) As per the Balfour Declaration, the language of which was adopted in the league
of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
(^12) “Palestine Communities Ordinance: Text,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service,
Jerusalem, February 16, 1926 (March 12, 1926).