How a surviving Kingdom of Jerusalem would have prevented the Palestines from destroying our culture

The current situation in Palestine is often viewed in the context of modern 20th-century nationalism and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (1). But historical trajectories are fragile. Had one major geopolitical variable from the Middle Ages remained intact, the specific conditions that created the modern Palestinian situation would simply not exist.

If the Christian feudal structure of the Crusader states, particularly the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had survived its historical destruction in 1291 and maintained its grip on the Levant into the modern era, the demographic, political, and social landscape of the region would be entirely unrecognizable.

The erasure of the Arab nobility and the A'yan

For centuries leading up to the modern era, the social, economic, and political life of Palestine was controlled by a powerful aristocratic class of Arab notables known as the A'yan. Under the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent British Mandate, a small group of elite, land-owning families—such as the Husseinis, Nashashibis, Khalidis, and Tuqans—dominated the region. They controlled the vast majority of agricultural land, held the highest religious endowments, and claimed Ottoman honorifics like Pasha, Bey, and Effendi.

If a medieval Christian kingdom had survived, this Arab aristocracy would never have risen to power. The lucrative tax farming systems and mayoralties of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Gaza would not have existed for them to control. Instead, the land and wealth would have remained in the hands of European feudal lords. The bitter, factional rivalries that defined Palestinian politics in the 1920s and 1930s—such as the fierce divide between the maximalist Husseini faction and the pragmatic Nashashibis—would never have materialized, as the political framework that empowered them would be completely absent.

The fate of the fellahin and the rural population

The Palestinian national identity crystallized largely in opposition to British colonial rule and the shifting control of their lands. In actual history, the rural peasant population, the fellahin, effectively worked as tenant farmers for the wealthy Arab Effendis, before being largely displaced by the conflicts of the mid-20th century.

Under a permanent Crusader kingdom, the trajectory of the local Arab population would have been drastically different. During the actual Crusader period, the European ruling class (the Franks) established a rigid feudal system. The local Muslim and Eastern Christian populations were largely reduced to the status of serfs, tied to the land and heavily taxed to support the European nobility in their castles (2).

If this system had endured for another seven centuries, the Arab population would have faced a slow, grinding process of subjugation. History shows that European religious states of that era, such as Spain during the Reconquista, eventually mandated the conversion or expulsion of their Muslim populations. A surviving Kingdom of Jerusalem would likely have launched its own inquisitions, fundamentally altering the demographic makeup of the Levant. Even if a Muslim underclass remained, they would have been a tightly controlled feudal caste rather than a population moving toward modern national statehood.

The preemption of modern political tragedy

In our actual timeline, the history of the region in the 20th and 21st centuries became defined by a tragic sequence of missed opportunities, leadership failures, and internal corruption. When international partition plans offered borders and independence in 1947, regional leaders rejected statehood in favor of a disastrous war. In the decades that followed, neighboring Arab regimes—despite rhetoric of brotherhood—refused to grant rights or integrate the displaced populations, instead confining them to refugee camps for generations to be used as political leverage and propaganda.

Rather than focusing on state-building after subsequent regional wars in 1967, the leadership entrenched itself in a doctrine of absolute rejection and endless conflict. When autonomy and billions in international aid were finally secured in the 1990s, those resources were frequently squandered through severe corruption or diverted into armed militias and violent uprisings rather than schools, factories, and infrastructure.

When given full territorial control over Gaza in 2005, the subsequent election of militant factions turned the coastal strip into a fortified base of tunnels and endless war rather than a prosperous Mediterranean hub. This led to a complete collapse of democracy, with no elections held for nearly two decades, while rival factions violently suppressed and imprisoned dissenters. Instead of fostering a culture of scientific advancement and institution-building, the prevailing leadership often prioritized religious extremism, glorifying militarism and raising younger generations on a culture of endless struggle.

In a world where the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem survived, this entire modern tragedy of squandered international aid, political corruption, and endless regional proxy wars would never have occurred. The local population would never have been in a position to negotiate for a modern state, nor would they have been weaponized by neighboring Arab regimes. The cycle of modern political failure, driven by the choices of a contemporary leadership class, would simply never have begun.

A different geopolitical map without the Ottoman Empire

The immediate bureaucratic catalyst for the modern situation in Palestine was the British Mandate, created after the British defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

A surviving Crusader state removes the Ottomans from the Levant entirely. If a Christian kingdom held the coast, the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Egypt and Arabia would have been blocked or severely altered. Consequently, the British and French would never have carved up the Middle East with the Sykes-Picot agreement (3). Without the power vacuum left by the Ottomans, and without British imperial administrators attempting to manage local Arab populations, the architecture of the current predicament could never have been built. To assert that the modern Palestinian situation would not have occurred under a surviving Crusader state is historically sound.  

References

(1) Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

(2) Prawer, Joshua. The Crusaders' Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages. Praeger, 1972.

(3) Barr, James. A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.