The significance of the legal legacy of Ottoman land-tenure reforms first promulgated in 1858 can be read in property laws throughout the Middle East until today. In contrast to their enduring significance, the predominant historical narrative asserts that Ottoman landholders evaded Land Code reforms en masse, fearing that registering ownership on a title deed (tapu) would lead to an increased tax burden and conscription. In Palestine, this supposed evasion has long been viewed as a main factor leading to rural landlessness and impoverishment in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Newly uncovered evidence on the implementation of Ottoman land-tenure reform in the villages of the Hebron district compels us to revise this paradigm. A 337-page property-tax assessment register follows the trail of an Ottoman emlak commission through the 50 villages of Hebron in 1876, recording in each locale the names of owners and shareholders of its immovable properties, agricultural lands, and trees; a valuation of each property; and the amount of the new property tax (vergi-i cedid) for which its registered owner(s) were responsible. I use this register to analyze inter- and intra-village landholding patterns, and the methods that villagers and officials employed to comply with reform while allowing landholders to preserve individual, family, and traditional, communal (mushac) ownership. Identifying both geographical and organizational patterns of landholding and tracing the extent of properties registered to particular individuals, extended families, and villages communally, I argue that property ownership in rural Hebron as recorded in the emlak register demonstrates a remarkably thorough implementation of reform in the district, in contradiction to common understanding. Concomitantly, through analysis of land-dispute cases brought before the Hebron district’s Islamic-law court in the post-reform period instead of the newly established civil-law courts, I argue that the post-Ottoman, British and Israeli administrations’ insistence on tapu records to prove historical land tenure, seen as upholding the status quo, is artificially narrow, since tax payment and oral testimony continued to be accepted alongside tapu records as proof of property ownership in Ottoman law. In conclusion, through a close examination of rural responses in Hebron to registration of immovable and landed properties for tax purposes in the era of land-code reform, and of subsequent land-tenure disputes, this research offers revision of the longstanding paradigm of land-tenure reform as an Ottoman “failure” and sheds new light on the neglected subject of rural Ottoman social history.

This paper traces the impact of the 1948 War and the loss of Palestine through the recently-published diaries of Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Shrouf, a Palestinian from Nuba, a village located about 11 kilometers northwest of Hebron. Nuba was, post-1948, a “front-line” village, along the cease-fire lines and de facto border with the newly declared state of Israel, with much of its agricultural lands falling on the opposite side. These new boundaries severed social and economic networks connecting Nuba—and the Hebron region—with villages, cities, and regions to the west, while the British withdrawal disrupted professional networks developed around government service. The disruption of some kinship, social, and professional networks within Palestinian society led others to be reconfigured or activated in reaction to the catastrophe of 1948. Centering Shrouf’s diaries, while drawing on historical and personal accounts of Hebron and its surroundings during this period, this paper illuminates the socio-economic infrastructure that filled the immediate post-Mandate political vacuum and shaped the Jordanian administration that followed. Shrouf kept his diary for nearly 20 years, from 1943 to 1962, with entries from 1944 to 1955 comprising an almost daily account of his movements and interactions. They follow Shrouf from his days as a shopkeeper in Jerusalem to his service as a policeman in Jaffa under British Mandate rule and then to his return to the Hebron area as war loomed in anticipation of the Mandate’s end. Following the war, Shrouf records Hebron’s passage from Egyptian to Jordanian administration and the efforts of the Jordanian government, international organizations, and the local population to recover from the disastrous loss of 1948. Pre-existing networks, albeit constrained and reconfigured by circumstances, remained vital in shaping these efforts. Clan and family networks proved the most resilient in the aftermath of the Nakba, and were vital in mediating the humanitarian, educational, economic, political, and security interventions by the Jordanian state as well as international organizations like the Red Cross. Links among neighboring villages were also crucial to the organization of education, medical care, and security. Finally, socio-economic ties continued to link the city of Hebron to its surrounding villages. Tracing these networks’ configurations and reconfigurations around 1948 thus sheds light on the social and economic history of the greater Hebron region, the impact of the Nakba on the everyday lives of villagers around Hebron, and governmentality in the Jordanian-administered West Bank.

Shortly after the 1948 War Jordan took control of central Palestine, which it legally added to the kingdom through legislation in 1951. While Jordanian law was applied to the now renamed “West Bank,” the law and its application underwent changes over the 19-year period in which Jordan controlled this territory. The Jordanian Bar Association was established in 1951 and a Palestinian from the West Bank was elected to serve as the first president of the Association. The Civil Bar Association Law No. 5 of February 6, 1955 revised the guidelines for the Bar Association, including the rights and duties of attorneys, their ethical obligations, and a system of apprenticeship. These two laws, of 1951 and 1955, encapsulate the period of civil jurisprudence. While the law is guided by legislation, this paper explores cases of arrests, drawn on sijillat, from the West Bank city of Hebron during the years 1951-1953. The arrest records offer a rare look at how the Jordanians policed Palestinians living in Hebron at the onset of Jordanian rule in the West Bank. The records are nearly complete for three years, 1951-1953, just as the attorneys were grappling with a new system of laws now that the British Mandate had ended and Jordan emerged as one of the Arab states to take control of Palestinian territory following the war. How would that translate into policing? The arrest records give some indication, some of which reflects the new geographical situation. It became a crime, for example, to “cross into the Jewish areas,” which meant that an individual had to return back to Jordanian territory and be caught. Many Palestinians are known to have crossed the new border between Jordan and Israel in an attempt to harvest their fields or reach their flocks, but the literature does not discuss this as an individual criminal act. Indeed, the Israeli state retaliated against individual actions through violence en masse, a subject about which scholars have written. These arrest records detail how Jordan dealt with individual perpetrators and will be analyzed in the paper. Other categories of arrest included four types of theft as well as animal theft, in addition to murder, attempted murder, and accidental murder. It is premature to say whether Palestinian crime increased under Jordanian rule, but the records offer an exploration into Jordan’s police apparatus in the little studied-Hebron district early in their rule in the West Bank.

Although relations between Israelis and Palestinians are conflictual throughout the West Bank and Gaza, the conflict is most extreme in the city of Hebron. This is because Israeli settlers and Palestinians are in close daily contact, due to the presence of the Jewish settlement in the middle of the Palestinian city. This special situation has caused unique problems not found elsewhere in the West Bank. Previous studies on the conflict in Hebron have focused on the city’s sectarian division into two areas (H1 and H2) and its religious importance as the main reasons for the conflict. They offer statistical and factual evaluation of the clashes and problems that form the conflict and the efficacy of attempted solutions. Yet, these studies have given insufficient attention to the personalities inhabiting Hebron: the traditional conservatism of Hebron Muslims and the ideological extremism of the Israeli settlers. The political solutions in force attempt to accommodate the Zionist settlers who have migrated to Hebron since it was conquered by Israel in the June 1967 war. The Hebron Protocol of 1997, in particular, has divided the city between the two groups, while the stationing of a temporary foreign observer force monitors the behavior of the two populations. Neither measure has addressed the problem at the heart of the conflict, and both are insufficient to solve it. In this paper, I focus on the ideological dimension of the conflict. I argue that the mindsets of Hebron’s Palestinian and Zionist inhabitants are the key to understanding and solving the conflict. I argue that the problem is not the proximal residence of Jews and Muslims in the city of Hebron. It is a political problem grounded in the extremism of the Zionist settlers. To focus on this question, I rely on a wide range of Palestinian, Israeli, and international institutions’ statistical and factual, incident-based reports on the history of Hebron’s conflict, and interviews with Palestinian Hebronites. I examine these sources to develop an underlying logic of the motivations of the conflict and reasons for the violent nature of the interaction between the two populations, while demonstrating that extremism is initiated from the Zionist side. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the physical barriers between the populations imposed to prevent further conflict have not been effective and are not a sustainable solution but, rather, that they have exacerbated it. Further geographical division of the land will not end the conflict.