Summary
Gaza native from a prominent local family, municipal clerk and regular contributor to Palestine’s newspapers, who in 1943 published Tarikh Ghazza: Naqd wa-Tahlil (The History of Gaza: Critique and Analysis) as a rebuttal to parts of ‘Arif al-‘Arif’s Tarikh Ghazza (Governing Gaza, PDF p.172 / printed p.155).
Details
- Abu Sha’ban suggested al-‘Arif’s outsider perspective hindered accurate representation of Gaza; Feldman reads the problem as not that al-‘Arif’s version was located, but where he was located, since al-‘Arif knew Gazans only as a government official — those with injustices, rights, problems or needs — and so misinterpreted “Gazan character”, which al-‘Arif described as “nervous and quick to anger” (PDF p.173 / printed p.156).
- On Gaza City water, Abu Sha’ban held that private mechanisms had been perfectly adequate in the past and that the expansion of municipal water mattered for the rationalisation of government — efficient government, municipal revenue and health control — arguing that the 1928 decision to compel all Gazans to pay water fees produced the expanded network: “Revenue from water has increased from hundreds to thousands of pounds” (PDF p.179-180 / printed p.162-163).
- He disputed al-‘Arif’s account of water scarcity and of the 1933 well: in Gaza “any small child could dig a well in the sand on the beach and drink sweet water from it”, and the 1933 well’s water should be said to be “less sweet” than another well rather than salty and not good for drinking. Feldman cites a 1936 government report describing the water as “at present adequate and good in quality, slightly saline, but containing some fine sand” (PDF p.180-181 / printed p.163-164).