Ian Black - Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

Enemies and Neighbors

IAN BLACK

Enemies and Neighbors

Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 19172017

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2017 by Ian Black

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First published by Allen Lane in 2017, an imprint of Penguin Books, United Kingdom

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: November 2017

ISBN 978-0-8021-2703-7

eISBN 978-0-8021-8879-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

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Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler and Royce M. Becker

Jacket photographs: top, Jerusalem Manuel-F-O/iStock; bottom, General Allenby entering Jerusalem, 1917 HIP/Art Resource, NY

Contents

List of Illustrations

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List of Maps

The Ottoman Empire, 18781914

The Middle East after World War 1

UN Partition Plan, 1947, and UN Armistice Line (also known as the Green Line), 1949

Israel and the occupied territories

Greater Jerusalem and the old city

Israel and the West Bank separation wall, 2016

Language Matters

A Note on Terminology and Transliteration

The terminology used in this book generally reflects contemporary usage. In Ottoman times it was common to refer in Arabic, Hebrew and English to Muslims, Christians and Jews, reflecting the primary identity of the communities living under the imperial millet system of religious autonomy. The term Arab became more widely used in Palestine and beyond in the first years of the twentieth century. The word Zionist first appeared in the late nineteenth century but only became common currency during the British Mandate era. Before 1948 the term Palestinian was far less widely employed than it is today and it made no distinction between Arabs and Jews. In those days people didnt use the word Palestinian so much, as the economist Yusif Sayigh explained. There were many things that were called Palestinian, but official names usually had the word Arab for instance al-Haya al-Arabiya al-Ulya, the Arab Higher Committee, not the Palestinian Higher Committee. Because the Jews were Palestinian too.as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974 reinforced that trend. Israels post-1948 Arab minority were usually described in Hebrew as Israeli Arabs, though this term was later rejected by many in favour of the modern phrase Palestinian Israelis in line with the growing salience of a Palestinian national identity. The Palestinian National Authority was set up after the Oslo agreement in 1993. By the 2000s even right-wing Israelis referred routinely to Palestinians, which was not the case twenty years earlier. Arabic-language Palestinian media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip nowadays often describe Israel simply as al-ihtilal the occupation.

TRANSLITERATION

Arabic and Hebrew names have been transliterated in line with standard practice but without diacritical marks, and usually following the way a person chose or chooses to spell their name in English. Place names also reflect common English usage: Jerusalem, not al-Quds or Yerushalayim; Nablus rather than Shechem; Acre, not Akka or Akko; and Gaza, not Ghaza or Aza.

Preface

Anniversaries are occasions for celebration, mourning, commemoration, re-telling and reflection. This book was planned to mark key events in the history of the IsraelPalestine conflict in the centenary year of the British governments Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and the half-century since the Middle East (Six Days) war of June 1967. Other significant events, described in the pages that follow, took place (by coincidence, unless perhaps the seventh year of nearly every decade has some mysterious, occult quality) in 1897, 1937, 1947, 1977, 1987 and 2007. Enemies and Neighbors looks back to the establishment of the first Zionist settlements in Palestine, then made up of several provinces of the Ottoman Empire, in the early 1880s, and proceeds chronologically, with thematic diversions, up to the present day. My hope is that this long overview, based on up-to-date research, will bring the big picture of what is widely considered to be the worlds most intractable and divisive conflict into sharper focus. It tries to tell the story of, and from, both sides, and of the fateful interactions between them.

Unrest, violence and peace initiatives are its inevitable milestones. But to concentrate too narrowly on wars, diplomacy or terrorism is to overlook the ordinary Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, who have encountered and confronted each other on the ground on front lines, at refugee camps, at checkpoints and in daily life, language and culture. Politicians, strategists and soldiers in London and Washington, as well as in Amman, Beirut, Cairo and Damascus, have all played roles in this drama, but closer attention is paid here to Jerusalem, Jaffa, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nablus, Hebron and Gaza and the bitterly disputed landscape around them.

Underlying structures, attitudes and routines matter as much as the endless newsworthy events that erupt from them a conclusion I have reached in my work both as a journalist and historian. Important themes include the creation of a separate, autonomous Jewish society and economy before 1948 and, especially, the extent to which the Zionists were aware of Arab opposition which was evident far earlier, in my view, than is often understood. Other big themes are Palestinian flight, expulsion and dispossession and the subsequent yearning to return home; the massive impact of the 1967 war; the steady expansion of Jewish settlements in the territories occupied that year; the driving forces behind two