Table of Contents
From Local Communities to National Causes
When people today talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, they usually think in terms of two “sides”: an Israeli (often equated with Jewish) side and a Palestinian (often equated with Arab) side. That way of imagining politics as a contest between national groups is relatively recent. For most of history, the people living in this region understood themselves less as members of nations and more as members of religious communities, extended families, towns, or empires. The “rise of national movements” marks the shift from those older patterns of belonging to a new political language in which Jews and Arabs each began to imagine themselves as distinct peoples with collective rights, territorial claims, and political projects.
This transformation did not happen overnight or in isolation. It unfolded in the context of large-scale changes taking place across Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The weakening of old imperial structures, the spread of new ideas about popular sovereignty, and the growing reach of modern communication and transportation laid the groundwork for new types of political identities. The national movements that emerged among Jews and Arabs in and around Palestine were part of this broader global story, yet they took on specific forms shaped by local history, religious traditions, and international pressures.
Empires, Modernity, and the Seeds of Nationalism
To understand why national movements emerged when they did, it helps to see how the political landscape was changing globally. In Europe, the nineteenth century saw the consolidation of states like Italy and Germany out of smaller principalities, often justified through narratives of shared language, culture, or history. Ideas such as “the nation” and “self-determination” gained legitimacy as arguments against dynastic empires and foreign rule. At the same time, industrialization and economic change pushed more people into cities, expanded literacy, and made newspapers and books widely available. These developments allowed new mass identities to take root.
The Middle East, including Palestine, remained under Ottoman rule for most of this period. The Ottoman Empire had long organized its subjects largely through religious communities, granting a degree of autonomy to different groups under the overarching authority of the sultan. But by the late nineteenth century, the empire was under military and financial pressure from European powers and was losing territory. In response, Ottoman rulers attempted reforms intended to centralize authority, modernize institutions, and forge a broader sense of belonging that went beyond religious divisions. These reforms expanded education, reshaped local governance, and exposed more people to secular ideas and political debates.
All of this created a new environment in which people began to ask who they were collectively and what kind of political order they wanted. In many places, older loyalties to monarchs or religious leaders began to coexist with, and sometimes be challenged by, emerging ideas of nationality. For Jews, scattered across many countries and facing distinct pressures in Europe, and for Arabs, living under Ottoman and then increasingly European influence, nationalism provided a new language for expressing grievances and aspirations.
Competing and Overlapping National Projects
The rise of national movements in the land that would become Israel/Palestine is distinctive because it involved not just one, but two communities developing overlapping territorial projects in the same small area. Each movement drew on its own history, myths, and experiences to argue that it constituted a “people” with a legitimate claim to political self-determination.
For many Jews influenced by nationalist thought, the ancient connection to the biblical Land of Israel became the basis for a modern political idea: that Jews should establish or re-establish a national home where they could exercise collective control over their destiny. This did not mean all Jews agreed on what that home should look like or how it should be organized, but it did mark a shift from seeing themselves primarily as a religious community dispersed across the world to a nation in need of territory and sovereignty.
Arab national consciousness developed in a different but related way. Arabic-speaking people had long shared language, cultural practices, and religious references, but the idea of Arabs as a modern political “nation” with rights and interests distinct from those of the Ottoman Empire took time to crystallize. Intellectuals and activists in various Arab cities started to frame their communities not only in religious or local terms, but as part of a broader Arab people whose language, culture, and, for many, shared experience of marginalization under imperial rule qualified them as a nation.
Where Palestine fit within these emerging Arab national ideas was not immediately fixed. For some, it was seen as one part of a larger Arab homeland stretching across several provinces. For others, especially as specific developments unfolded in the local context, Palestine itself came to be imagined as a distinct national unit with its own history and future. As with Jewish nationalism, there was never a single authoritative version of Arab nationalism, but rather a range of ideas and political projects that evolved over time.
What made this situation particularly complex was that the geographic area in question was symbolically and emotionally charged for both communities. For many Jews, it was the ancestral homeland of religious texts and historical memory. For many Arabs, it was an integral part of their lived world, with towns, villages, and family histories deeply rooted in the landscape. As national movements grew stronger, these different ways of belonging to the same land increasingly came into conflict.
Nationalism, Identity, and the Language of Rights
The rise of national movements changed how people articulated their political demands. Previously, communities might have appealed to rulers for protection or privileges on the basis of religious status, loyalty, or local custom. Under the influence of nationalist ideas, both Jews and Arabs began to frame their claims in terms of collective rights as nations.
This shift introduced new concepts such as self-determination, majority and minority rights, and sovereignty into the political vocabulary of the region. It also encouraged each side to tell historical stories that justified its own presence and aspirations. Narratives about ancient roots, continuous settlement, or historical injustice became tools for defining who “the people” were and what they were entitled to.
At the same time, nationalism was not the only way people understood themselves. Many individuals identified simultaneously as subjects of an empire, members of a religious community, residents of a particular city or village, and, increasingly, as part of a nation. These layers of identity sometimes coexisted peacefully and sometimes came into tension. For example, a Christian Arab living in a coastal city might have connections to European trade networks, loyalty to the Ottoman state, and a growing sense of belonging to an Arab nation. A Jewish merchant might feel ties to co-religionists abroad, loyalty to a European state, and sympathy for emerging ideas about a Jewish homeland.
National movements gained traction in part because they could appeal to different segments of these complex identities. They promised protection from persecution, political voice, cultural revival, or social reform. But they also simplified diverse societies into collective categories (“the Jews,” “the Arabs,” “the Palestinians,” “the Israelis”) that could obscure internal differences and fuel confrontations.
The Importance of Timing and Context
The fact that Jewish and Arab national movements in relation to Palestine both gained momentum in roughly the same historical period is central to understanding the conflict as it developed. Neither movement arose in a vacuum; each was shaped by global forces such as European colonial ambitions, changing economic patterns, and shifting ideas about race and civilization. Each also responded to the presence and actions of the other, gradually redefining its goals and strategies in light of perceived threats and opportunities.
Timing mattered in more concrete ways as well. As imperial structures weakened and external powers became more involved in the region, the question of who would control Palestine moved from an abstract possibility to an urgent practical issue. National movements that might, in another context, have developed without direct collision here found themselves pressed into direct competition for territory, recognition, and international support. The same land, the same cities, and often the same sites of religious significance became focal points for two different national projects.
Understanding the rise of these national movements therefore means paying attention not only to their internal ideas and leaders, but also to the broader historical moment in which they operated. The languages of nationalism, rights, and self-rule were new tools being used across the world, but in Palestine they intersected in especially volatile ways.
Setting the Stage for Future Developments
By the early twentieth century, the political landscape in and around Palestine had been transformed by the growth of these national movements. What had once been primarily a question of imperial administration and local communal relations was increasingly framed as a struggle between national claims. The idea that the conflict was, at its core, a clash of two national movements competing over the same territory began to crystallize.
This framing would deeply influence how events were understood by contemporaries and by later generations. It shaped diplomatic efforts, resistance strategies, and everyday interactions. It also meant that compromises became more difficult, as each side tended to see concessions not just as practical adjustments but as betrayals of national rights or identity.
Later chapters will trace how these movements took more concrete institutional forms, how they interacted with colonial powers, and how their ambitions contributed to wars, displacement, and ongoing contestation. For now, it is important to recognize that the rise of national movements introduced a new way of thinking about community, power, and belonging in the region, one that continues to structure debates, identities, and political possibilities to this day.