This secret loophole sparked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While the sale of aristocratic land was not widespread throughout the Ottoman Empire, the amount of land sold in the Palestine region was exceptional.
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This is a guest essay written by Liat Portal.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Like Europe and the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire’s population was polarized into two distinct classes: the aristocrats (the elite, who owned the majority of the land) and the poorest of the people.
There was no such thing as a middle class, so the public split between the masses of illiterate and uneducated poor, on the one hand, and the extremely wealthy and educated, on the other.
While facing similar global challenges, the lower classes in Europe and Russia generally had greater access to education and a broader skill set than the lower class in the Ottoman Empire. These huge disparities contributed to the widening gap between these regions, especially in economic development and social progress.
Most people in the Ottoman Empire were engaged in agriculture, with limited exposure to intellectual knowledge or technical skills. During the Ottoman Empire’s 600 years of rule, the primary profession was peasantry, which used the same business model for hundreds of years. The empire — represented by the Sultan, the aristocracy, or individual proprietors — owned the land, while the peasants cultivated it.
Peasants were granted the use of land in exchange for a portion of the harvest, which was often divided equally between the landowner and the peasant. The Ottoman land system provided minimal means of subsistence for peasants, but it mainly concentrated wealth in the hands of landowners, which led to inequality and significant wealth disparities between landowners and peasants.
Within this business model, landowners could exploit their power, demanding excessive portions of the harvest or imposing unfair labor obligations. The peasants did not have any incentive to invest in land improvements because they did not own the land and, at the same time, did not have the technical knowledge that had developed in Europe during the Industrial Revolution.
At best, the peasants kept using the same farming techniques from the 15th and 16th centuries instead of learning modern new ones.
In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the agricultural land system began to erode. Population growth, economic changes, and the influence of European ideas about land ownership reached the landlords and elite, who realized that global changes could impact their wealth.
During that time, the Ottoman Empire tried to improve the status of the peasants. It introduced new reforms aimed at modernizing the land tenure system, but these efforts met resistance from peasants. The peasants, who were supposed to benefit from the new regulations, suspected government interference. Meanwhile, the elite class and wealthy landowners feared increased taxation and potential loss of land, which also threatened control over land management.
The aristocrats and the elite wanted to secure their wealth more than they cared about the implications of peasants or weakening the management system of waqf (a charitable endowment in Islamic law that involves donating assets for religious or charitable purposes with no intention of reclaiming them).
As a result, when the demand for land rose, they sold it immediately without giving any notice to the peasants or even offering them the opportunity to buy it first. The Ottoman Muslim aristocrats sold their lands to anyone willing to pay for it generously, especially in the area of the biblical Land of Israel, also known as the Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire.
While the sale of aristocratic land was not widespread throughout the Ottoman Empire, the amount of land sold in the Palestine region was exceptional — thanks to increasing Jewish immigration from Europe, other parts of the Middle East, and North Africa (Jews who more often than not were fleeing violent antisemitism in those parts of the world).
The relationship between Ottoman Muslim landlords and peasants, built on a system of mutual dependence for years, was unexpectedly severed without considering the tenants’ future situation. The rapid pace of land sales and the complex legal and social changes accompanying the process left peasants with no other alternatives for livelihood.
As such, hate and resentment arose towards the new landowners (you know, Jews). The new buyers, who wanted to be farmers and work the land on their own — leading to the world-renowned kibbutz movement — did not need the peasants to the same extent, and the financial situation of the local peasants worsened even more.
This hatred is the root of the resentment and desire for revenge among the local Palestinian peasants towards the new landowners, especially the Jewish owners. Hatred has been deeply rooted ever since in their culture and soul.
So, how does one break free from the emotional chains that have bound them for years? There is no easy answer, only the will to let go in order to pave a new path.
How was that even possible? Capitulation.
Capitulation is a treaty or unilateral contract by which a sovereign state relinquishes jurisdiction within its borders over the subjects of a foreign state.
So, with the weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, it signed capitulations mostly with European countries, the United States, and Russia by which foreigners resident in the territories of the Ottoman Empire were subjected to the laws of their respective countries.
The capitulation agreements, which constituted a fundamental violation of the Ottoman imperial authority, were signed after Britain, Russia, and Austria-Hungary helped the Ottoman government eradicate Egyptian forces from Palestine and Syria at the beginning of the 19th century.
The capitulations ushered in a new and privileged era for foreigners in the Ottoman Empire. European countries could establish civil systems parallel to those provided by the empire, such as postal services, banks, hospitals, schools, road construction, and railroads.
The capitulations symbolized subjugation for the host country at the hands of the developed nations. In addition to the ability to purchase land, they granted foreign merchants significant economic advantages. They allowed them to avoid Ottoman taxes and regulations — unlike the citizens of the empire, who were obligated to obey the laws and pay.
While the lower classes, especially peasants of the Ottoman Empire, were likely unaware of the specific details of the capitulations, they experienced the consequences of these agreements through their economic and social conditions. The capitulations contributed to a broader sense of decline and foreign domination and significantly impacted the empire's stability and cohesion.
How to Let Go
At its core, a significant part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to this day originates from the suppression of the peasants regarding the sale of land to the Jews.
The ignorance of the peasants about the property laws of the empire and about the right of the aristocratic landowners to sell land — without giving them an account or worrying about their future — is a trauma that deeply scarred them.
As a result, the Palestinian peasants have carried this trauma for generations, still today, often blaming the Jews for fairly buying land that the Ottoman Muslims were happy to sell them.
 | A guest post by
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The author fails to acknowledge the religious component to the conflict. Muslims will never accept Jewish sovereignty on land Muslims claim for themselves. Before there was a Jewish state, Muslims killed Jews for no other reason then because Jews existed in the same space as Muslim Arabs.
Thank you so much to all the readers! I was honored to read your comments and see the conversations sparked by the recent blog post here.
First, let me clarify that this current post is part of a series that describes the hardships faced by Jewish people who arrived in the Land of Israel region in the late 19th century from the Russian Empire until World War I and before the British Mandate took effect. The series described what happened to the Jewish community since the assassination of Tzar Alexander, including the sanctions and laws enacted by the Russian Empire specifically targeting the Jewish community. These laws and sanctions forbid Jews from owning land and deny them employment in certain professions or conducting trade on specific days, which led to mass emigration. While many Jews emigrated to the Americas, only a small fraction - less than 3% - chose to come to the Land of Israel. The series highlights that the Jews chose to emigrate to the less popular region at that time to build a new life in other parts of the world where they wouldn’t face oppression. They embodied initiative, vision, and the creation of alternatives, forming entire communities in times when Jews faced extreme oppression in Europe and Russia, leading up to the Holocaust during World War II. In other words, despite everything that jews faced since the Babylonian exile, which included pogroms, oppressive laws, massacres, and humiliations, they did not adopt a victim mindset. Instead, they forged alternatives and created a new life for themselves rather than dwelling on past grievances or seeking revenge.
In describing this post's context, I shed light on the changes within the Ottoman Empire that affected its citizens internally, aspects often overlooked or unmentioned in many historical discussions. It’s often forgotten that the Ottoman Empire, an Arab - Muslim empire, ruled over the Arab world for 600 years, during which it oppressed, exploited, and weakened its people. This empire served only the elite, the aristocracy, and the Muslim religious leadership, ensuring that its residents remained uneducated, lacking legal status, and denied any concern for their well-being, health, or livelihood. Due to the transformations in land ownership in the world during the 19th century, the wealthy Muslim landowners, concerned only with their tax payments, sold extensive lands to Jews without any compassion or concern for the fellahin (peasants) who had worked these lands for generations. This indicates that the elite and aristocracy had low moral values, a lack of basic ethics, and disgraceful attitudes that were customary and common among them toward the lower classes within their own empire. This is something the Arab world needs to deal with; even more than a century has passed because their own leadership betrayed them first. Moreover, as part of the Industrial Revolution, these wealthy landowners refused to invest in agricultural technology that could have advanced these peasants, keeping them ignorant and incapable of competing with the industrialized world’s production pace. They abandoned the peasants without notice and simply sold the lands to anyone who could pay.
Understanding this perspective does not detract from the Jewish claim to the land of Israel; rather, it strengthens two main points. First, in the Arab world, there is a lack of mutual responsibility and concern for the weaker citizens. Even today, more than a hundred years later, they don’t have organizations to help the people; they don’t have unions or provide decent healthcare as a social responsibility. No national systems are dedicated to education, health, employment, or human capital investment. In 2024, we keep hearing that women are not allowed to go to school, hold specific professions, or issue driver's licenses. In some regions, people have succeeded in acquiring education and creating alternatives. Still, as a collective Arab group, the Arab nation suppresses education, progress, and knowledge, dragging their entire community down in comparison to Europe or the United States nations.
Second, the Jews, who believed in their right to the land since biblical times, did not foresee in the late 19th century that World War I would break out in 1914, bringing an end to the Ottoman Empire, nor did they anticipate the British Mandate or that in 1948 David Ben-Gurion would declare the establishment of the State of Israel. When the Russian Empire enacted laws against Jews, they chose to immigrate to the Land of Israel, found a way within the Ottoman legal system to own land, and purchased lands legally. They learned what was needed to establish Jewish settlements, how to purchase land legally, and how to build settlements (they tried dozens of settlement types that failed, and most people aren’t aware that only the Moshav and Kibbutz models survived after costly lessons). They learned how to build a community, create a culture, establish educational institutions, and invest in compulsory education. The Jewish community established organizations to aid settlement in Israel and institutions that would serve a future country without knowing when this country would happen. They worked hard to build the foundation and the infrastructure for a country they dream of having. They created, innovated, failed, and kept moving forward, not complaining that this was their land 2000 years ago or fostering a victim mindset over grievances toward the Romans, Mamluks, Crusaders, Byzantines, Hasmoneans, or Ottomans. They stood up and created despite being oppressed, massacred, defined as second-class citizens, or when they went through the Holocaust. They did not bury themselves in the past or nurture resentment. They rose every time they were knocked down and created a new reality.
In conclusion, the Arab world consistently nurtures resentment toward the British, French, Americans, and Jews over the period between World War I and World War II. However, this period was merely 40-50 years, after 600 years, during which the Arabs were the ones in control and oppressed the people of the Ottoman Empire far more than any other external force. It is time for the Arab world to take direct responsibility for its own leadership and demand accountability. Their governments need to care for the well-being of their people now, to move beyond the past and build a new future instead of brainwashing these people that in a few years, all Muslims in the world will control Israel, Europe, and the United States. The mechanism of maintaining resentment and hatred continues to oppress Arab people and upholds a regime that harms them in every aspect of life more than anything else.
It is time they realize that they are the only ones responsible for their fate and that creating a better life is in their hands.