ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the structure and transformation of Palestinian society during the first period. It identifies the major social, economic, and political factors and trends that transformed Palestine and that continues to shape attitudes and events in the region, in Israel, in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and among the Palestinians in exile. Nablus, in contrast, grew as a regional manufacturing and trade center unconnected to European pilgrimage. Its main industries were the manufacture of soap, olive oil, and cotton textiles. The chapter discusses the rise of huge private estates owned by rural notables and by absentee urban landlords. Most significant, it created the conditions for the destruction of Palestine and the dispossession of its people in 1948, the year of al-Nakbah. Arab consciousness in Palestine was strengthened with the spread of literacy and formal education. Ottoman functionaries came and went as officials, but no Turkish colonization or Turkification took place.
