In all, both Arabs/Palestinians and Jews/Israelis suffered. For the Palestinians, the human tragedy is on top of the resultant refugees, ruining of livelihoods, psychosocial stressors, property destruction, military occupations, and negative financial costs. For the Israelis, the human tragedy is in addition to the fear, insecurity, psychosocial stressors, and negative financial costs.
In contrast, peace talks and processes have taken place over the decades, as is presented in Figure 1.1, but peace has yet to materialize. As Nathan Thrall aptly puts it: “Scattered over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace plans, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions and state-building program[me]s, most of them designed to partition this long-contested territory into two independent states, Israel and Palestine” (Thrall, 2017, para. 1) All kinds of excuses have been cited by the conflictual parties and their supporters, including Zionist machinations, Arab intransigence, Israel’s settlement policy and preference for the status quo, Palestinian maximal demands, and Israeli and ←24 | 25→Palestinian skepticism about peace. In addition to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands over more than five decades, Palestinians and Israelis have been challenged by “the almost scarring peace process that tried to end it …. It brought all the anxieties, terrors, and resistance of a real peace—without delivering the sides any closer to reconciliation and resolution” (Gur, 2017, p. 1). That is the general atmosphere that has surrounded the lives of ordinary citizens and under which peacemakers and peacebuilders have been engaging each other and their societies.
Figure 1.1: Much Talk of Peace, But No Real Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis, 1947–2018
←25 | 26→
Bottom-Up Narrative
Arabs and Jews made historic Palestine their home for centuries, with four hundred years (1516–1917) lived under Ottoman control. Both communities were deeply anchored, with the Arabs constituting the majority. Their interactions were constant and widespread. As Menachem Klein suggests, this went beyond coexistence and living side by side, and makes it possible to speak of an Arab-Jewish identity at that time. “Lifestyles, language, and culture created a common identity that centered on a sense of belonging to a place and to the people who live there” (Klein, 2015, p. 20). Arabs and Jews built neighborhoods, used the same bathhouses, entered into business ventures with each other, and shared celebrations and tragedies. Jews rented from Arabs and Arabs sold land to Jews. There were even some inter-marriages between Arabs and Jews, mostly Arab men marrying Jewish women (Klein, 2014, pp. 22–64). The way Arabs and Jews related to each other in relative harmony is also shown in 1913: Seeds of Conflict, a 2015 film directed by filmmaker Ben Loeterman. Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, and Jews, mostly Sephardic, interacted as Ottomans “with a cultural fluidity enjoyed by all” (Loeterman, 2015).
Belonging to a place and to the people who live there did not last past the start of the 20th century. Palestinianism and Zionism, emerging at the end of the 19th century, took hold of the minds and hearts of their respective national communities. Palestinianism advocated for self-rule or independence from the Ottoman Empire. Zionism, developing in the Jewish Diaspora, sought the settlement of Jews in the Land of Israel. These distinct national aspirations came into competition or conflict with each other and transformed the dynamics of life in Palestine. Palestinianism had a tough time, struggling against major challenges—Ottoman, Zionist, and British. In contrast, the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine evolved, historically, through the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, on August 29, 1897; the Cambon Declaration of June 4, 1917; the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917; and beyond.
The First World War made Palestine feel stranded, and was devastating to both Arabs and Jews. Western (e.g., Austrian, French, German, and Italian) presence diminished as the Ottoman Empire became more aggressive toward the inhabitants. Western banks and post offices closed their doors. Lines of communication with the outside world were cut off. A locust invasion denuded the land of its vegetation during March-October 1915 (Tamari and Turjman, 2011; Wichhart, 2014). The Allies imposed a blockade of the ←26 | 27→Mediterranean coast; wheat became unavailable, which caused food rationing. Water was also rationed. Malnutrition and hunger became part of daily existence. Sanitation was almost nonexistent. Medicine was scarce; despair, disease, and death afflicted many residents; and some, especially children, died from typhus and other plagues. “At every level of society there was a sense that the entire world had turned against Jerusalem and Palestine” (Marcus, 2007, p. 42).
Starting in the early 1920s, a British Mandate was imposed on Palestine by the League of Nations. If anything, this mandate made Palestinian Arab-Jewish relations worse. Increased Jewish immigration, especially from Russia and Eastern Europe; large land purchases by Jews, primarily from absentee Arab landlords; Jewish settlements and a separate Jewish labor, as facilitated by the British economic policy; and the perceived divide and rule policies of the British—all eventually led to riots and a few major violent episodes.
Outright aggression erupted in the 1920s, including the Nabi Samuel riots in March 1920 in Jerusalem; the Nabi Musa riots in April 1920; a cycle of violence between May 1 and November 2, 1921; the Palestinian Arab general strikes in November 1925 and in March 1926, respectively; and major violence between August 16 and September 2, 1929. These disturbances complicated matters for the inhabitants of Palestine and made all cautious as to whom they interacted with, where they worked, and where they shopped. These became the precursors of more difficult years and decades to come. The inhabitants, my family included, learned how to roll with the punches in order to survive. Their ordinary days were tough. Their sorrows were intense. Their happiness was never complete.
One tragic incident related to the Wailing or Western Wall. A disagreement over the site started in September 1928, “when Jewish worshippers brought items for prayer to the Wailing Wall that Muslims deemed to exceed the norm established during the Ottoman period. Upon Muslim complaint, the British police took action, and Jews responded strongly with protest, demonstration, strike, and mob action” (Katz, 2009, p. 5). Accusations and demonstrations spilled over to 1929, when they led to outright inter-communal aggression. As related by Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Palestinian Arab losses reached 300 dead and 1,500 wounded, and those of the Jews and the British armed forces 130 dead and 240 wounded (Tamari and Nassar, 2014, p. 202). Others have stated that those killed numbered 133 Jews and at least 116 Arabs (Katz, 2009, p. 5). Then, the Palestinian Arabs killed 59 Jews in Hebron. This episode poisoned the connections between Palestinian Arabs and Jews ←27 | 28→for years. It “generated a process of rapid social, geographical, and political separation between the two rival political communities whose relations came to assume an increasingly hostile nature” (Sela, 1995, p. 60). The British followed up by sending the first of several royal investigative commissions.
Tensions between Palestinian Arabs and Jews flared up again, resulting in the Palestinian Arab rebellion against the British and the Zionists during 1936–1939, and additional British commissions and reports. “The root causes of the revolt remained unchanged: the Arab Palestinians’ antipathy toward pro-Zionist British policies and their inability to advance toward self-rule” (Farsoun and Aruri, 2006, p. 89). Political protests and strikes led to attacks and retaliations. Palestinian Arabs boycotted Jewish businesses and stopped cooperating with the British. Lawlessness raged. Infighting between traditional Palestinian Arab notables and lower socioeconomic classes, or the grassroots, ensued. The insurgents among them “not only targeted British and Zionist interests, but also attacked the privileged classes of Palestinians, obliging wealthy Palestinians to ‘donate’ to the nationalist cause …. The Palestinian economy was devastated by the rebellion and especially by the anarchy and criminality that became so prominent in its last stages” (Gasper, 2016, p. 36).
With major reinforcements, the British Mandate authorities quelled the rebellion, brutally. It engaged in human rights abuses and devastated the Arab Palestinian leadership (Hughes, 2010). The cost was exceedingly high, and the record was long with imprisonment,