Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948: A Tale of Two Cities

ISBN-13: 9780815395515 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 212 str.

Itamar Radai

Opis

Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948 examines Palestinian Arab society, institutions, and fighters in Jerusalem and Jaffa during the conflict. It is one of the first books in English that deals with the Palestinian Arabs at this crucial and tragic moment in their history, with extensive use of Arabic sources and an inquiry from the Palestinian vantage point. It examines the causes of the social collapse of the Palestinian Arab communities in Jerusalem and Jaffa during the 1948 inter-communal war, and the impact of this collapse on the military defeat. This book reveals that the most important internal factors to the Palestinian defeat were the social changes that took place in Arab society during the British Mandate, namely internal migration from rural areas to the cities, the shift from agriculture to wage labour, and the rise of the urban middle class. By looking beyond the well-established external factors, this study uncovers how modernity led to a breakdown within Palestinian Arab society, widening social fissures without producing effective institutions, and thus alienating social classes both from each other and from the leadership.

Spis treści

Introduction Part One: Jerusalem: The Battle for the Holy City Chapter 1: Jerusalem at War Chapter 2: The Collapse of the Middle Class - The Case of Qatamon Chapter 3: Jerusalem Resists Part Two: Jaffa: The Bride of the Sea in Distress Chapter 4: Jaffa on the Eve of the War Chapter 5: Jaffa as a Battlefield Chapter 6: The Fall of Jaffa Conclusion

O autorze

Itamar Radai is academic director of the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation and a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University.