A tour of Palestine mid-revolt

[Palestine] - Binnington, E. Photograph album: The Holy Land. Palestine. 1936-37.

€ 2.500,00

Tourism in Palestine in the midst of the Arab revolt: a curious photograph album by a British visitor to Palestine in 1936/37, during the upheavals and bloody British reprisals in Mandate Palestine. Despite the ongoing guerrilla warfare, the photo album generally looks away from the tensions. Unlike most records of '36-'37 in Mandate Palestine, this is the work of a civilian, and paints a picture which may have been presented to the British public in the Mandate. All the favourites of Holy Land tourism (popular with Brits since at least the 1880s) are present: Mount Carmel (Mar Elias), views of Jerusalem and the Dome of Rock, the Wailing Wall, the Jaffa Gate, and more. But around the edges, the realities of war creep in. Following a series of photos showing daily life among Bedouins and an Arab village, is a snapshot of an Arab boy of about ten, saccharinely captioned "The Littlest Rebel": he has a rifle slung on his bag and a belt of ammunition. Another shows "A Jewish Colony", and another a memorial to a Jewish mother and two children who, per the caption, had been murdered by an Arab assailant. On an historical tour, more recent history presses in. Elsewhere in the album, a handwritten caption of the Golden Gates of Jerusalem describes how "it was blocked by the Turks who believed that the Turkish Regime in Palestine would cease when they were opened. During the Great War (1914-18) the Turks were driven out, [but] the Gate was not opened. The City was surrendered to Lord Allenbury [i.e., Allenby] in 1918".

This new world of a 20th century British colony moved in other ways, too: another snapshot shows Haifa Bay and its Petroleum Works, with five large storage tanks visible on the beach. Further out in the Haifa harbour are British battleships; the HMS Rodney, Elizabeth, Valiant, and Quebec. A larger photograph shows ceremonies in Haifa for Coronation Day (12 May 1937). Others show orange groves and packing sheds, the "Bat-Galim Pool & Casino" in Haifa, and the construction of a jetty in Tel-Aviv, "the youngest port in the world". Small streets in Haifa, street food and fun fairs in Nablus, Muslims at prayer in a mosque at Acre round out the set, which largely paints a picture of unconcerned normalcy, in spite of - or perhaps because of - the tense reality.