“We Are All Poor Nowadays”: From Ottoman Palestine to British Mandatory Palestine, 1914-1920

If we teach modern world history, chances are we teach the First World War. And if we’re teaching the First World War, we have an ideal opportunity to integrate Israeli and Palestinian history into what we’re already teaching. I’ve written before about Palestinian Ihsan Turjman’s diary of his service in the Ottoman military (as well as African and women’s perspectives of the war), but that post focused on military service. We can also explore how the Great War affected Palestinians and European Jews living in Ottoman Palestine. The British conquest and occupation of Palestine also substantially altered how everyone living in Palestine interacted with the state.

The Great War in the Ottoman Empire and Palestine