The Armenian population of Palestine on the eve of World War I numbered between two and three thousand persons. The majority lived in Jerusalem, with smaller communities in Haifa, Jaffa, Ramla, and Bethlehem. As noted earlier, Palestine’s indigenous Armenian population had been overwhelmed during the war by huge waves of Armenians from Cilicia, the ancient Armenian kingdom in what is now southwestern Turkey.²⁵
Cilicia, in addition to having one of the largest Armenian concentrations in the empire, was also the seat of the Cilician Catholicos, the theological head of the Western half of the Gregorian church.²⁶ Indeed, the first wave of refugees to Palestine, which arrived in Jerusalem in early November 1915, consisted of the Cilician Catholicos himself, Sahag, accompanied by archbishops and priests.²⁷
A few days later, fifteen to twenty Armenian families were sent to Jerusalem from Adana by the Damascus-based commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army, Jamal Pasha.²⁸ Soon the number of the Armenian refugees in Palestine grew to six hundred families. Jamal Pasha, who was on good terms with the Armenian Catholicos, played an important role in saving hundreds of Armenians by sending them to Palestine. In 1916 he even made a visit in person to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
In a report addressed to the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, Catholicos Sahag described what he saw on his journey from Cilicia to Jerusalem:
The road from Aleppo to Damascus was lined with thousands of Armenian refugees. Some were living in tents and others in the open air, begging for bread and water and asking for news about their friends. We went through places where one tenekeh [tin can] of water cost six to seven piastres, but still there was no one to give it.
Many refugees—no one knows the exact number—are in the area of Kerek, and in the district of Salt there are about 400 households. Every village has 100 households of refugees and in the sanjak of Serai there are approximately 500 households. These people come to the Monastery [in Jerusalem], where they receive 30 to 40 loaves of bread a day, which [they] eat in the kitchen. About 80 refugees from Adana—with the special favor of Jemal Pasha—have arrived in Jerusalem and are living in the monastery compound.²⁹
By 1920, some two thousand Armenian refugees had arrived in Jerusalem. The military governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, described the situation in his memoirs as follows:
As if these things were not enough, there were added to our troubles thousands of refugees. Over two thousand desperate Armenians besieged the saintly but incompetent locum tenens of the Armenian Patriarchate.There were the Christian refugees from Salt, a city older than Genesis […] and OETA [Occupied Enemy Territory Administration] had to face feeding and housing of Saltis³⁰ as well as Armenians. Later I find […] 7000 refugees—Armenian, Syrian, Latin Orthodox, Protestant and Moslem suddenly flung on my hands this week: a good deal of typhus, but malaria not expected till autumn. No easy matter feeding and looking after them and I have had to detail three members of my staff for the purpose.³¹
Most of the refugees arriving in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Palestine viewed their situation as temporary and were waiting to return to their hometowns in Cilicia. But in 1922, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) launched an offensive in Cilicia, and several shiploads of Armenian refugees arrived in Haifa. By 1925, there were about 15,000 Armenians in Palestine, mainly in Jerusalem, with smaller numbers in Haifa and Jaffa.³²
[…]
Inevitably, the almost-overnight demographic transformation of the community in the early 1920s caused strains. […] Eventually, however, they were won over by the locals’ kindness and generosity, and a gradual process of integration began.⁴⁰
Only when the Herzlians ethnically cleansed most of Palestine did the Armenian population shrink:
The 1948 war brought to an end an important period of Armenian history in Palestine. Major dislocations followed: The Armenian communities of Jaffa and Haifa and other areas that became Israel were reduced to insignificance.
West Jerusalem—including the wealthy Arab neighborhoods of the New City where several hundred Armenian families had lived—was occupied by [settler] forces and almost the entire non-Jewish population was expelled; losing their homes and businesses, the Armenian residents left the country entirely.⁷⁹
Jerusalem’s Old City, with its Armenian Quarter that for many centuries had been the heart of Palestine’s Armenian community and a vital part of the city, remained in Arab (Jordanian) hands until 1967. But the community had already been dealt a mortal blow, and its dramatic decline was already underway.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)