Was the newspaper Al-Quds a vehicle for advocating ideas for the formation of a modern society, and did it show how this objective could be attained? If so, how did the beginnings of modernization in the Province of Jerusalem manifest themselves in its pages?
To answer these questions, I begin by making two assumptions. The first is that the Province of Jerusalem as shown in the pages of that newspaper did indeed, since the late Ottoman era, experience the beginnings of modernization which refutes the view that it was European imperialism, in the guise of the British Mandate, which sowed the seeds of modernization. The second assumption is that the inhabitants of that province did indeed possess distinct cultural and nationalist characteristics and with deep roots in their homeland, contrary to one early Zionist myth which alleged that these inhabitants lacked any distinct cultural and nationalist characteristics, rendering it easy to drive them off their land.