In the mid to late 19th century, the Ottoman intellectual and political elite adopted nationalist ideas that equated Ottomanism with Turkishness. This trend contributed to the alienation of the non-Turkish subjects of Istanbul, mostly Arabs, from the Ottoman Empire.
The nationalization process in Turkey itself was accompanied by secularization trends in the second half of the 19th century which diminished the importance of Istanbul as a religious authority.
In the Arab World, secularization was also part of the process of nationalization. Not surprisingly, it was mainly minorities, such as the Christians, that embraced the idea of a secular national identity based on shared territory, language, history, and culture. In Palestine, Christians who engaged with nationalism found eager allies among the Muslim elite, leading to a mushrooming of Muslim-Christian societies all over Palestine towards the end of World War I.
In the Arab world, Jews joined these kinds of alliances between activists from different religions. The same would have happened in Palestine had not Zionism demanded total loyalty from the veteran Jewish community there.
How Palestinian nationalism arose?
A thorough and comprehensive study of how Palestinian nationalism arose before the arrival of Zionism can be found in the works of Palestinian historians such as Muhammad Muslih and Rashid Khalidi.
They clearly framed how both the elite and non-elite sections of Palestinian society were involved in developing a national movement and sentiments before 1882 - particularly Khalidi who shows how patriotic feelings, local loyalties, Arabism, religious sentiments, and higher levels of education and literacy were the main constituents of the new nationalism, and how it was only later that resistance to Zionism played an additional role in defining Palestinian nationalism.
Khalidi, among others, portrayed how modernization, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the greedy European quest for territories in the Middle East contributed to the solidification of Palestinian nationalism before Zionism made its mark in Palestine with the British promise of a Jewish homeland in 1917.
One of the clearest manifestations of this new self-definition was the reference in the country to Palestine as a geographical and cultural entity, and later as a political one. Despite there not being a Palestinian state, the cultural location of Palestine was very clear. There was a unifying sense of belonging.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the newspaper Filastin reflected the way the people named their country. Palestinians spoke their own dialect, had their own customs and rituals and were portrayed on the maps of the world as living in a country called Palestine.
During the 19th century, Palestine, like its neighboring regions, became more clearly defined as a geopolitical unit in the wake of administrative reforms initiated from Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. As a consequence, the local Palestinian elite began to seek independence within a united Arab State (like the United States of America).
This pan-Arabist national drive was called in Arabic qawmiyya, and was popular in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world.
Reference:
Ten Myths About Isreal, by Ilan Pappe.
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