The Italian government's response to the problem of Jewish refugees 1945–1948∗

This article deals with the fall of Palestinian-Arab Jaffa in the 1948 war. As the largest Arab city in Palestine, its accelerated social and military collapse came as a surprise to many, despite Jewish dominance in the Jaffa region. While previous research has mostly neglected this question, the present study aims at revealing the underlying causes, besides Jewish military pressure, for Jaffa's collapse and the resulting exodus of its Arab population. The article describes the precarious social and military Palestinian-Arab situation in Jaffa as a case study for Palestine as a whole during the December 1947–May 1948 inter-communal war.     

The challenges facing the First Aliyah Sephardic Ottoman colonists

The case of the tiny Jewish colony of Har-Tuv, which was founded by Ottoman Jews who immigrated to Palestine in 1895 from Bulgaria, sheds light on Ottoman policies vis-à-vis settlement activity by Sephardic Jews in Palestine at a time when there were concerted efforts to limit the Jewish national activity there. The latter was mainly carried out by non-Ottoman Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Palestine from eastern Europe. As the only colony established during the First Aliyah by Sephardic Jews, and also due to its geographical isolation, Har-Tuv was detached from the processes taking place within the other Jewish colonies and the New Yishuv. At the same time, Har-Tuv’s founders had a long tradition of living under Ottoman rule and were on good terms with the local Ottoman authorities in Palestine. This was often useful when the colony had problems with its Arab neighbors, and on several occasions Har-Tuv even served as an intermediary between the Arab rural population and the government.     

Review Article: Professional,Political, and Mercenary Soldiers

Since the late 1970s, most scholarship on the origins of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has emphasised the actions and agency of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, with a focus on the period before 1914. It is argued in this article, however, that the expectation of and commitment to political independence on both sides, a defining feature of the conflict, did not emerge until 1918, and that the actions of the British government in Palestine during the final year of the First World War drove this fundamental shift. Following Britain's occupation of southern Palestine in December 1917, the British administration undertook an extensive propaganda operation in the country to advertise their backing for Arab nationalism and Zionism. This campaign was part of the British government's wider endeavour to mobilise support for the Allied war effort and British imperial expansion in the Middle East in the new age of nationality. It led, the article contends, to a war for national sovereignty over Palestine between two statist nationalist movements. Rather than emphasise British colonial agency at the expense of that of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, the article argues that this development derived from a complex interaction between the three parties within the context of radical changes in international politics.     

Khalsa: The Town with a ‘Golden Fountain’: The Rise and Fall of an Arab Town North of the Huleh Valley

This article deals with the history of a frontier Arab town—Khalsa—which was the centre of the Huleh Valley and the connection between Galilee, Southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights during the British Mandate in Palestine (1918–48). This article aims to explore the changes and transformations that occurred in the town and the Huleh Valley in general, and tries to show that, during that period, this remote and peripheral area underwent many social and economic changes. It also demonstrates that these changes not only occurred in the central areas in Palestine but also reached the northern parts. In addition, this article tells the ‘story’ of how this Arab town, which has not been addressed in earlier studies, grew rapidly, and why it collapsed quickly in the 1948 war. It examines what the role of its leader, Kamil Hussein, was and how his relationship with the Bedouin tribes and the Jewish settlements and leaders in the valley affected the results of the war. The story of Khalsa is, to some extent, a case study on the macro-level of what was happening in the Holy Land in the three decades of British rule.     

Convergence: The Classic Case Nazi Germany,Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II

Despite granting permission for limited Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1930s, the ideology and policy of the Nazi regime never supported establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. During World War II, Hitler's ideologically consistent view that such a state would be a branch of an international Jewish conspiracy converged with shorter-term efforts to gain Arab and Islamic support for the Third Reich's military goals in the Middle East. The ideological convergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism found expression in the works of Nazi propagandists as well as in the speeches and radio addresses of Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, broadcast from wartime Berlin to the Middle East. Examination of the lineages, similarities and differences between Europe's totalitarian past and its aftereffects in the Arab and Islamic world remains an important task for comparative historical scholarship.     

Securing Zion? Policing in British Palestine, 1917–39

The British period in Palestine (1917–48) was fundamentally shaped by the commitment to promote the Jewish National Home (JNH) as originally stated in the Balfour Declaration (1917). The extent that that commitment shaped public-security policy in Palestine is examined in this article. While the need to reduce costs and the desire for a civilian (rather than military) force also shaped policy, the government's JNH policy was the key determinant in public-security policy in Palestine. It meant the police was specifically configured to protect the Jewish population and there were always a disproportionate number of British personnel in the force. This became more pronounced as British rule progressed. Following deadly riots in 1929, the number of British police was tripled; with the inception of the Arab Revolt (1936–39) that number more than quadrupled. Moreover, during the Arab Revolt the British increasingly relied on members of the Jewish community to assist with their protection. The majority of these Jewish forces were supposedly for defensive purposes; regardless, they were all members of the semi-secret underground Jewish army, Haganah. The British were well aware of this and tacitly approved. In doing so, the British made a significant contribution to the Zionist project.     

The Palestine Question in the 1940s and the Emergence of the Arab Lobby in Canada

In the early 1940s, Arab lobbying activities started to be noticeable in Canada. In 1944 the Canadian Arab Friendship League was founded in Montreal by Muhammad Said Massoud, a Druze emigrant from Lebanon. The League soon became the spearhead of Arab lobbying activity in Canada. Its declared goal was to improve Canada's relations with the Arab world, yet in the second half of the 1940s its main focus of interest was to struggle against the partitioning of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state there.     

Communists and the 1948 War: PCP,Maki, and the National Liberation League

This paper analyzes the way in which Palestine's Jewish and Arab communist parties, the PCP-Maki and the National Liberation League, acted during the 1948 war. Both groups made separate and different efforts to make the two-state solution a reality as originally conceived in the UN partition plan. Ironically, the decisive Jewish victory in the war resulted in an asymmetry between the Jewish Communists the Palestinian Communists when they were unified toward the end of the 1948 war. Despite Maki's labors for an Israeli victory, its standing in the nascent Israeli political system toward the end of the war remained marginal. The concept of Jewish–Arab cooperation under the aegis of the USSR was seen by the Zionist establishment as dangerous and subversive.     

SHORTER NOTICES

The Palestine Arab and Jewish Political Leaderships: A Comparative Study . By Taysir N. Nashif
Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan , ( 1858–1951 ), second revised edition, 1970; reprinted. By S. M. Ikram
Studies in Islamic Mysticism . By R. A. Nicholson     

The Muslim Settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: Comparison with Jewish Settlement Patterns

In the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, Palestine's rural landscape underwent a great transformation. This study examines how the Muslim population expanded beyond its traditional inhabitation in the highlands and settled the fluid inventory of marginal lands in the coastal plains and unpopulated valleys of Palestine. In settling these marginal landscapes their settlement dovetailed with Jewish settlement patterns. While most studies have emphasized the competitive aspect of this process, examining Zionist and Arab national claims, this research points to a different aspect of this new settlement—mainly how much the Jewish and Muslim settlement patterns mirrored one another and how they were part of similar physical processes and complemented one another. Relying on censuses, aerial photographs, and period maps, as well as other archival sources, this is the first systematic research to examine the full extent of new Muslim settlements in Palestine in the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, and to draw parallels between this phenomenon and the settlement endeavors of the Zionists.     

Empire of Scholars: Universities,Networks and the British Academic World, 1850–1939, by Tamson Pietsch

ABSTRACT

This article reconstructs the history of animal protection organisations in Palestine from the British occupation to the beginning of World War II. Although Arab and Jewish mandate state subjects consistently rejected these organisations, animal protection remained an important part of the mandate government throughout the political upheavals of the interwar period. Despite their seemingly apolitical nature, animal welfare associations enjoyed unique legal privileges and drew support from the most prominent British personnel in Palestine. Managing cruelty and compassion towards animals, I argue, was a means of making Palestine part of the British Empire. Animal protection functioned both as a tool for direct financial control over agriculture, and as an educational project that promoted an emotional ‘civilizing mission.’ In the spirit of inter-war British imperial humanitarian networks, animal welfare created civilizational hierarchies through compassion, and revised the role of the human-animal divide in imperial culture.     

Powerful State,Powerless Mediator: The United States and the Peace Efforts of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, 1949–51

The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 produced complex questions that needed to be solved to obtain peace. Whereas the Arab states suffered humiliating defeats, Israel was the undisputed winner, expanding and solidifying its power. For the Palestinians, the outcome was catastrophic. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinians fled, becoming refugees on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in surrounding Arab states. Palestinian society collapsed and Palestine became divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, leaving the borders undecided. The Palestinians’ dreams of statehood were crushed. After the war, Israel used diplomacy to achieve its goals, defending the post-war status quo to preserve its expanded territory and resisting the return of Palestinian refugees. Through its membership in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 to solve these problems, the United States was deeply involved in the negotiations. The United States became the informal, yet undisputed leader of the PCC, thus, it would seem, empowering it with the muscles of a superpower. After three years of struggling for peace the PCC had toadmit failure. Knowledge about these negotiations gives important insights into how mediators approached the conflict and shows that power asymmetry may explain why the belligerents could not obtain peace.     

Military Rule,Political Manipulation,and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950s

This article explores the first decade of relations between the State of Israel and the city of Nazareth, which after the 1948 war constituted the largest and most important Arab center in the new Jewish state. It focuses on the strategies employed by central government officials to retain state control over the all-Arab city and surrounding region, highlighting the integrated use of military, political, and spatial mechanisms. The Nazareth municipal elections of 1954 emerge as an important milestone in this process, compelling officials to intervene in local politics and to take immediate concrete steps towards establishing the Jewish town of Upper Nazareth.     

The Rise and Fall of ‘Mediterranean Atlanticism’ in Italian Foreign Policy: the Case of the Near East

The article aims at studying the reasons for the new way of looking at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by the Italian political world: the mutual recognition of Israel and the Vatican, the visit to Jerusalem by the leader of the formerly fascist party, Mr. Gianfranco Fini, and the beginnings of a movement of interest towards the Jewish State also within the political left. From a historical viewpoint, anti-Semitism in Italy found its origins in the Church's attitude toward the ‘deicide people’. Beginning with WWI, to this position was added the worry that the Holy Places might fall under Jewish control. From those times dates the Holy See's evermore manifest liking for the Arab populations of Palestine. Nowadays the line of conduct of the Church has as its basic objective the defense of Christian minorities in the Middle East, and for this reason it maintains dialogues with all actors in the region. The weight of the Church influenced also the attitude of the Italian State, even though from its inception the latter had to make adjustments because of other international requirements. This multiple subordination caused the different republican governments to always keep an official equidistant stance among the conflicting parties in the Near East. Behind this apparent neutrality, however, the feelings of benevolence for the Arab countries and the Palestinians have gradually intensified. Italian leaders have been trying to conduct a Mediterranean policy on the borders of the Western alliance, and their feelings have been oriented in consequence. During the 1970s, the governments went as far as to conclude a secret pact with Palestinian terrorists, to avoid terror acts on the Peninsula in exchange for some freedom of action. And in the mid-eighties the Craxi government did not hesitate to challenge the US in order to guarantee the continuity of that line of conduct. On that occasion Craxi, speaking in Parliament, compared Arafat to Mazzini. The end of the Yalta-established order has modified the traditional data of Italian foreign policy. However, the increased attention paid to Israel has also other causes: the changed attitude of the Church after the civil war and the Syrian occupation in Lebanon, events which both caused difficulties for the consistent Christian minorities; the hope that the Oslo process could reward the Italian ‘clear-sightedness’; last, but not least, the quarrelsome internal politics that make the Palestine conflict a mirror of the Roman conflicts. Lastly, the article connects the recent goodwill for Israel with the threats of Islamic terrorism in Italy. A political opinion trend would revisit the Middle Eastern conflict as the upturned perspective of a ‘clash of civilizations’ already existent nowadays. And a possible act of terrorism in Italy might give to this opinion a mass basis.     

Millenarism and agricultural settlement in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century

The pioneers of modern agricultural settlement in the Holy Land were Christians. Foremost among these were several Americans who came in the 1850s and 1860s to settle—ignoring warnings from local experts and from representatives of the United States government. The leaders of the settlers were inspired by millenarist ideas and by faith in the Return to Zion—rife among fundamental Protestant sects in the early nineteenth century. The personal accounts of these visionaries provide insights into what drove them to attempt to migrate to remote and backward Palestine and also throw light on the economic concepts and practical plans for implementing their schemes. Despite their failure, these attempts were very important in the history of agricultural settlement in nineteenth-century Palestine. The settlers maintained a wide range of international contacts through letters, pamphlets, sermons and publicity in the press in America, England, Germany and Palestine. In addition, many people who heard indirectly about these ventures, took an interest in their ideology and practice. Millenarist schemes influenced early preachers and founders of Jewish societies for agricultural settlement in Palestine. The Jewish forerunners of the Hovevi Zion and Zionist movements promoted remarkably similar ideas. Millenarist and Jewish visionaries alike spoke of the hour being propitious for the coming of the Messiah and favourable for settlement in the land of Israel. Both groups established schools to teach the lore of the land and to educate youth in agricultural pursuits. Many years after the disappearance of American settlers from Palestine, their story reverberated in Jewish polemic literature.     

Heritage Interpretation and Politics in Kfar Etzion,Israel

Kfar Etzion is a Kibbutz first established in Palestine in the 1930s. At the end of the British Mandate, in 1948, it became a de facto Israeli military outpost that controlled access to Jerusalem from the south. Kfar Etzion fell to Arab forces in 1948 and the area became Jordanian territory until 1967 when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank. Kfar Etzion was re-established in the same year. Kfar Etzion now interprets its history through a sophisticated multilingual audio-visual presentation offered in a museum built over a former bunker where Jewish defenders were killed. This presentation is analysed to illustrate the ways in which an historical narrative is constructed for interpretive purposes and to show that Bloc and Israeli perspectives are conflated for political purposes. The battle for the Bloc continues through the interpretation of heritage.     

For all the Wrong Reasons? Re‐evaluating Truman,Domestic Influences,and the Palestine Question

This essay is a re‐evaluation of President Harry Truman's foreign policy in Palestine and whether his decision‐making was influenced by domestic issues, events and attitudes. The article both weighs in on the current debate of whether Truman was susceptible to electoral influences and the Jewish vote, and argues that Truman never knowingly placed American interests in jeopardy by going against the recommendations of his State Department. Rather, the advice of his closest aids convinced him that a pro‐Zionist policy would not detriment American interests in the Middle East. Thus, Truman could then seek to gain political and electoral advantages from a policy that he believed was already in America's best interest. In addition, I will argue that American anti‐Semitism and a revival of nativist attitudes in America resulted in an environment in which America would not accept its share of the displaced persons. As a result, Truman advocated a policy of refugee Zionism with regards to the Palestine Question, which ultimately undermined the British, who were too weak to uphold the Palestine Mandate following the war. Thus, the influence of American domestic issues took many forms and was one integral factor in the eventual outcome of the Palestine Question.     

Imagining Palestinian Archaeologies: A Sampler

As three of the articles in this collection demonstrate, one central axis of the Zionist archaeological project is the absolute necessity of diminishing, and ultimately erasing, the importance and existence of aspects of “the archaeological record” that pertain to non-Jewish presences in Palestine, particularly and especially Islamic civilizations and the long-term presence of an indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian population. In this introduction, I focus, however, upon Zionist archaeology’s rearticulation of Jewish identity in nationalist form, an operation that has entailed the elaboration of a consistently simplified, unidimensional, or narrowly channeled interpretive version of Jewish history and Jewish identity in Palestine over time. Through several pointed queries, I suggest alternative interpretations of one element of the Zionist archaeological narrative that in turn could lead to other ways of thinking about the long-term presence of Jewish people in Palestine.     

Intergroup Dialogue as a Just Dialogue: Challenging and Preventing Normalization in Campus Dialogues

The tensions from the Israeli occupation of Palestine reach around the globe and heated debates over the struggles of these two peoples are evident on U.S. college campuses. The power imbalance represented in the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is replicated on college campuses. BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) is a response to this inequality, is a movement to end the occupation, and has raised the issue of normalization. Teaching about this conflict presents particular challenges for faculty who negotiate this highly contested issue in classrooms or campus communities, and intergroup dialogue is an important pedagogy that can be used. It is critical to address normalization in intergroup dialogue. We discuss examples and themes of normalization in intergroup dialogue, and present pedagogical and other strategies to prevent and address normalization in intergroup dialogue and in other similar intergroup contact approaches with Arab or Palestinian and Jewish or Israeli participants.