E-Book Overview
As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists, aspiring peacemakers continue to search for the precise territorial dividing line that will satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist demands. The prevailing view assumes that this struggle is nothing more than a dispute over real estate. Defining Neighbors boldly challenges this view, shedding new light on how Zionists and Arabs understood each other in the earliest years of Zionist settlement in Palestine and suggesting that the current singular focus on boundaries misses key elements of the conflict.
Drawing on archival documents as well as newspapers and other print media from the final decades of Ottoman rule, Jonathan Gribetz argues that Zionists and Arabs in pre-World War I Palestine and the broader Middle East did not think of one another or interpret each other's actions primarily in terms of territory or nationalism. Rather, they tended to view their neighbors in religious terms--as Jews, Christians, or Muslims--or as members of "scientifically" defined races--Jewish, Arab, Semitic, or otherwise. Gribetz shows how these communities perceived one another, not as strangers vying for possession of a land that each regarded as exclusively their own, but rather as deeply familiar, if at times mythologized or distorted, others. Overturning conventional wisdom about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gribetz demonstrates how the seemingly intractable nationalist contest in Israel and Palestine was, at its start, conceived of in very different terms.
Courageous and deeply compelling, Defining Neighbors is a landmark book that fundamentally recasts our understanding of the modern Jewish-Arab encounter and of the Middle East conflict today.
E-Book Content
Defining Neighbors Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World Edited by Michael Cook, William Chester Jordan, and Peter Schäfer A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book. Defining Neighbors Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter Jonathan Marc Gribetz Pr i ncet on Un i v er s i t y Pres s P r incet on a n d Ox f or d Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Detail of map: Hans Fischer, Palästina, 1890. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The National Library of Israel. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gribetz, Jonathan Marc, 1980– author. Defining neighbors : religion, race, and the early Zionist-Arab encounter / Jonathan Marc Gribetz. pages cm. — (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-15950-8 (hardcover) 1. Zionism—History—20th century. 2. Palestinian Arabs—History— 20th century. 3. Jewish-Arab relations. 4. Khalidi, Ruhi, 1864–1913. 5. Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 1858–1922. 6. Palestine—History—1799–1917. 7. Palestine—History—1917–1948. I. Title. DS149.G738 2014 320.54095694—dc23 2013040012 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Charis Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To Sarit, Sophie, Daniela, and Max Contents Acknowledgments ix Note on Transliterations xiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Locating the Zionist-Arab Encounter: Local, Regional, Imperial, and Global Spheres 15 Chapter 2 Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi’s “as-Sayūnīzm”: An Islamic Theory of Jewish History in Late Ottoman Palestine 39 Chapter 3 “Concerning Our Arab Question”? Competing Zionist Conceptions of Palestine’s Natives 93