Nadene Goldfoot
The Ottoman–German Alliance was an alliance was ratified on August 2, 1914, shortly following the outbreak of World War I. The alliance was created as part of a joint-cooperative effort that would strengthen and modernize the failing Ottoman military, as well as provide Germany safe passage into neighboring British colonies
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, the Germans. Many people from the opposing Allied countries lived in Palestine, and its Turkish officials considered them a threat to military security. More Jews had immigrated to Palestine in 5 waves, starting in 1881 from Russia and a few other eastern European countries. Pogroms that occurred there were driving the Jews out of Russian areas and back to their origins.
Two waves of expulsion occurred as part of Turkish failed defense of their fading empire.
In December 1914, the Turks expelled up to 6,000 Jews who resided in Jaffa (a city originally in the area of the tribe of Judah). They were resettled in Alexandria, Egypt. In February 1915 in Syria, Djemal Cemal Pasha exercised absolute power in both military and civil affairs. Cemal Pasha was convinced that an uprising among local Arabs was imminent. Leading Arabs were executed, and notable families deported to Anatolia. The Ottoman Empire then issued forcible drafts of Jews into the army, demanding Jews to take Ottoman citizenship or either getting expelled from the region before 15 May 1915. Following the devastating effect of the Lebanese famine, situation worsened.
Aharon Aharonson ((Hebrew: אהרון אהרנסון) (21 May 1876 – 15 May 1919) was a Jewish agronomist, botanist, and Zionist activist, who was born in Romania and lived most of his life in the Land of Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Aaronsohn was the discoverer of emmer (Triticum dicoccoides), believed to be "the mother of wheat.") described the situation, "Meanwhile, people are literally starving. Horrified sights have seen our eyes: old women and children wandering, hunger and nightmare-madness in their dying eyes, no food falling under them and dying. "An unnamed eyewitness stated, "Even wealthy people in Jerusalem are becoming recipients (of alms) and even courting the remaining."
The repulse of British forces in Palestine in the spring of 1917 was followed by the loss of Jerusalem in December of the same year. The Ottoman authorities deported the entire civilian population of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, The Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation, pursuant to the order from Ahmed Jamal Djemal Pasha on 6 April 1917. Tel Aviv and Jaffa are joined together, Tel Aviv being the garden suburb of Jaffa. Founded in 1909, Tel Aviv became a separate town in 1921. In this same year were Arab riots going on, forcing Jews to leave Jaffa and find refuge in Tel Aviv.
The Muslim evacuees were allowed to return before long.
At the same period, the Balfour Declaration was being negotiated (published on 2 November 1917) in which the British Government declared its support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
By January 1917, British forces had crossed the Sinai Desert and were about to invade Palestine, which alarmed the Turkish authorities. The Ottoman Empire began to become skeptical of the residents in the region, mostly Jews, as the Ottomans disdained them for alleged collaboration with the British.
The First Battle of Gaza was fought on 26 March 1917, during the first attempt by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) to invade the south of Palestine in the Ottoman Empire during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War. Fighting took place in and around the town of Gaza on the Mediterranean coast when infantry and mounted infantry from the Desert Column, a component of the Eastern Force, attacked the town. Late in the afternoon, on the verge of capturing Gaza, the Desert Column was withdrawn due to concerns about the approaching darkness and large Ottoman reinforcements. This British defeat was followed a few weeks later by the even more emphatic defeat of the Eastern Force at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917.
At the start of March, all the inhabitants of Gaza were expelled, a town of 35,000–40,000 people, mostly Arabs. They had 48 hours to leave "even if crawling on their knees" of the men were conscripted and the rest scattered around Palestine and Syria, first to nearby villages and then further afield as those villages were also evacuated. Death from exposure or starvation was widespread. Gaza did not recover its pre-war population until the 1940s.
Over 40,000 Jews had been forcibly deported, many would not return until after the British conquest and some died on their way, but many Arabs did. Friedman holds that this was a deliberate decision on the part of the Ottoman authorities. Sheffy regards that it is more reflective of cultural and behavioral differences: the Arabs had no central organization, and with their experience of how government decrees were enforced, just remained nearby until the storm had passed, whereas the Jews obeyed the evacuation decree as a group. In any case, when New Zealand troops entered Jaffa in November 1917, only an estimated 8,000 of the previous population of 40,000 was present.
On 28 March 1917, Djemal Pasha ordered the evacuation of the inhabitants of Jaffa. They could go wherever they liked except Jerusalem or Haifa. Farmers with crops in their fields, the workers of the winery in Rishon Lezion, and the teachers and students of the Mikveh Israel school and the Latrun estate were excluded.
Djemal Pasha, who was in charge of the Greater Syrian Theatre of the war, was forced to provide explanations.
Ahmed Jamal Pasha effectively separated these groups. The Jewish evacuees returned after the British conquest of Palestine, in the summer of 1918.
It followed one month after the expulsion of all the inhabitants of the similarly-sized Arab city of Gaza City. This coincided with the larger and systematic repression on minorities by the Ottoman Empire during the World War I.
However, as Turkish nationalism began to rise in the late 19th century, the Jewish position in the empire came into question. The Young Turks, who came to power in 1908, openly espoused the idea that all non-Turkish subjects had to be Turkified. Even though the Ottoman leaders did not target the Jews for Turkification, their skepticism of Jewish motives increased and as a result of it, they became increasingly hostile towards the Jews.
The homes and property of the Jews of Jaffa and Tel Aviv were kept in the possession of the Ottoman authorities, and they were guarded by a handful of Jewish guards. Djemal Pasha also released two Jewish doctors to join the deportees. Nonetheless, many deportees had perished during the harsh winter of 1917–1918 from hunger and contagious diseases due to negligence by the Ottoman authorities: 224 deportees are buried in Kfar Saba, 15 in Haifa, 321 in Tiberias, 104 in Safed, and 75 in Damascus.
Many Jewish deportees ended up in Zichron Yaacov, Hadera, Petah Tikva and Kfar Saba, with few chose to go to Jerusalem despite being forbidden by the Ottoman authorities. Sympathizing with the situation, local population decided to provide needed medical and financial support. But when winter 1917–1918 arrived, the situation worsened for many deportees and many died by hunger, famine, starvation and maltreatment, as several Yishuvs didn't receive them and thought they could be Ottoman spies. Deterioration of condition had prompted many Jews to flee and several of them had migrated to Egypt, or Europe and the United States.
On 3 October 1918 forces of the Arab Revolt entered Damascus accompanied by British troops, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule. The Ottomans finally were defeated due to key attacks by the British general Edmund Allenby.
Ottoman casualties of World War I, the Ottoman Empire mobilized a total of 2.6 million men. It lost 325,000 men and 400,000 were injured. 202,000 men were taken prisoner, mostly by the British and the Russians, and one million deserted, leaving only 323,000 men under arms at the time of the armistice.
The financial losses are also huge with an expense of 398.5 million Ottoman Lira, the equivalent of 9.09 billion gold francs of the time: the Empire was practically bankrupt in 1918.
Resource;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire_in_World_War_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Jaffa_deportation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Aaronsohn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Gaza
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1917-jews-expelled-from-tel-aviv-1.5244091
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