Customer Reviews

Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

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This book examines a number of scenes and characters from the era 1898-1914 in Jerusalem and presents the argument that the roots of the present Israeli-Arab conflict or Jewish-Palestinian conflict is encapsulated in missed opportunities and rising nationalism that coalesced in 1913. It was this year when a number of interesting characters were in Jerusalem, including Albert Ente, Theodore Herzl, Arthur Ruppin and Ruhi Khalidi. The thesis of the book claims the Zionist congress in Vienna which debated the question of Jewish demographic changes and land purchases led to Arab nationalism and Khalidi's interest in Zionism educated the Arabs to awake to the rising danger. This is an interesting argument but also problematic.

The Jewish population of Palestine was tiny, comparable to the Muslim population of Sweden in 2006, or smaller. That Khalidi was far-sighted may be true, it might also be true that he was alarmist and intolerant of new immigrants and thus helped fan the flames of nationalism. It is a circle, more nationalism and riots by Arabs caused more Jewish self-awareness that a peaceful pact might not be found.

The strength in this book therefore is not the argument, but the well written descriptions of the characters and their backgrounds and the very fair and interesting examination of how Jerusalem felt in this period. Free from propaganda and arrogant high-falutent accusations, this book is a wonderful and quick read, enjoyable and informative.

Seth J. Frantzman

This book is an effort to provide a fresh perspective on the origins of the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. Marcus sees the year 1913 as critical in the process. It was the year the Zionist Congress in Vienna adopted a program calling for increased settlement with the aim of becoming a majority in Palestine. It was also the year the Arab-Syrian Congress meeting in Paris determined to strongly oppose the Jewish settlement efforts. A year before the First World War , and the time when conversations between the two sides failed to bring any real agreement between them.
Marcus however is interested in more than just pinpointing the origins of the conflict. She attempts to give a picture of a time before the First World War when relations between Jews and Arabs were more openly friendly than they would be later. She does this in part by telling the respective stories of three different figures, Albert Antebi a Damascaus born Jew and educator who held strongly to his identity as citizen of the Ottoman Empire, Rui Khalidi scion of an established Arab family who studied Zionist texts and intentions in order to know how to oppose them, and Arthur Ruppin the German born Jew responsible for purchasing land and building the Jewish infrastructure. These three men who knew and respected if not especially liking each other are portrayed with sympathy.
She almost wonders aloud whether it all might not have worked out differently had the Young Turks not come to power in 1908 and cut off the option of a broader kind of Ottoman identity which Jews and Arabs each might have aspired to.
The work is written in a somewhat nostalgic affectionate and longing tone- perhaps out of the author's search for a model of being which might transform the bitter conflict into something more palatable for both sides.
I am not sure however ( I don't think she is either) that her hope of a more idyllic future era modeled on the past, makes much sense. For the Arab opposition and naysaying was there from the beginning. In this sense 1913 is not really a turning point but rather a continuation of the same with greater intensity. The subsequent years would again and again see the situation of the Jews offering peace and compromise, and the Arabs refusing this.
But the kind of claim I have just made is out of keeping with Marcus' book. She is not looking to blame, but rather to understand and provide hopeful directions for correction.
And there is something admirable in her searching for a time when Jews and Arabs were in friendly relations. And in her hoping that there will come a time when this friendliness will be restored, and even augmented.

In simple and deeply-felt language and details, this book, (unlike so many which purport to explore Arab/Jewish relations) asks us to go back and examine what happened in the context of history. It serves to fill a void left by so much polemics and political absoluteness concerning the crisis in Israel/Palestine and thereby transcends what have become mere cliches and easy answers to the current conflict. Accurately and full of her own personal passion for the embattled city of Jerusalem, Ms. Marcus documents early friendships between the early Jewish and Arab neighbors in old Palestine. She creates a longing for this vanished world and at the same time poses an important and largely forgotten truth: before politics divided this region, friendships, trade, and mutual respect were a natural part of Arab and Jewish life together, as neighbors, as sharers of land. Sadly, these truths are buried. Why not, in the interest of resolving and uncovering the real origins of the current conflicts, bring them back into luminous light? This beautiful book does just that, and more. It reveals the serendipitous nature of history itself, restores ambiguity and historical context to the debate.

-Leora Skolkin-Smith

Author, "Edges, O Israel,O Palestine"

Marcus makes a major contribution to understanding this conflict by going back -- before the founding of the state of Israel, before the British Mandate -- to the period when the Ottoman Empire was dissolving and both Zionism and Arab nationalism were taking root.

Her writing is not polemical --- but investigative --- trying to understand the context and motives of major players in these movements. Using a narrative format and focusing on several key players - Jewish, Palestinian, and Ottoman --- she rises above the usual two-dimensional portrayal of the origins of the conflict.

By acknowledging multiple narratives -- hopefully she will get readers to get out of their "boxes" so that they can understand that other viewpoints are based on their experiences and not just some vaguely defined hatred. As a matter of fact, her stories about both the positive and negative daily interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims were some of the most interesting parts of the book.

An important read for anyone interested in this topic.

I agree with the positives that other reviewers have mentioned about this book. Marcus writes well, the characters are vividly drawn, and we have little other good popular writing about the period of late Ottoman Palestine.

But for all that, the book is a failure. Why? Because its thesis rests upon a premise that is demonstrably false, i.e. that there was an opportunity for Jews and Arabs to come to an accommodation about the future of Palestine in 1913. How do we know that it is false? Because Marcus shows us.

At the end of the day, Jews wanted to allow essentially unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. Arabs rejected this. The Sephardic Jews with deep roots in Palestine, whom Marcus focuses on (and whose stories are in fact very interesting), never really grappled with that issue, and in any event, were between a rock and a hard place. If they accepted Jewish demands for unrestricted immigration, they would alienate the Arabs. If they accepted Arab demands for stopping that immigration, then they would alienate Zionists.

Nowhere does Marcus even begin to show anything like an arrangement that would have satisfied both sides, for a very good reason: there wasn't one. A unified Arab-Jewish state? The Arabs would have rejected it, because they did not want to give up their demographic supremacy. One can endorse that position, or condemn it. What one CANNOT do is ignore it, yet that is precisely what Marcus does.

I suspect that she does so because of the constraints of the series she is working in. That series seems to want writers to emphasize one year as a turning point in world history. Thus, Leningrad 1941, or Vienna 1814, or others. Marcus got a contract with them, and tried to produce what they wanted. But it just doesn't work here, because nothing realistic was in the cards. She tried her best, jamming her square peg in a round hole. But like most efforts of this nature, it failed.

For those interested in the period, I would strongly recommend Gershon Shafir's brilliant Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. It focuses more on the Zionist side, but has vital background on the nature of the Palestinian Arab community during the time in question. It's not as popular as Marcus' book, but it does have the benefit of getting the analysis right and asking the necessary questions. That's still the most important thing, even in the tortured and contentious historiography of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Amy Dockser Marcus thinks that the origins of the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back 1913: the last pre-WWI year when Muslim and Jewish Jerusalemites lived together side-by-side under Ottoman rule. Thereafter, Arab nationalists and Jewish nationalists (i.e. European-born Zionists) began talking or arguing past each other and extinguished the preexisting world of inter-religious coexistence.

Her writing is very fluid and light. Her narrative is full of little vignettes and episodes constructed around key figures in old Jerusalem. While it is all very entertaining, it's not great history. Often, she describes what an important figure was wearing, then what he was feeling, and then what he was thinking at certain moment (say, before a big meeting). How does she know? How can she recreate the lives of these men and crawl inside their heads? Some of them left memoirs and diaries, but I seriously doubt that they described the tight fit of their suits and the sweat off their brow in politically-minded memoirs. Moreover, the story of what happened and why is much more complicated than the author depicts. It wasn't always all about five or six prominent Arabs and Jews.

[Incidentally, the bibliography is full of memoirs, journals, etc. But the author doesn't speak French, German, Arabic, etc. She relied on assistants and translators for much of her research. That may be fine for journalism (and the author is a former WJS journalist), but a real expert on the history of Ottoman Palestine should know the languages and have a better command of the history.]

I suppose that anyone with a working brain is familiar with the Jewish - Arab conflict in Israel (or Palestine, if you will). Even so, not many have given thought to how all of this friction may have begun. This book attempts to tell this particular author's views on when the conflict began.

As can be seen from the title, the author's theory is that 1913 and the years surrounding it, saw the Arab - Jewish antagonism start. Her idea is that the new Jewish settlers, mainly Zionists from Germany and Russia, came to the Middle East with the preconceived idea of having their own state. This idea persisted despite the fact that there were Arabic people living in this area who had been living there for many centuries.

Jewish settlers began buying lands contiguous to each other so that they could band together for protection. When the Ottoman authorities banned the sale of land to Jews, there were always Arabs willing to sell this land secretly, despite the ban, and despite the problems this action would cause to their own people.

The book shows that there were men of good will from both sides who tried to steer a middle course and keep a peaceful existence. Unfortunately, the rabid Zionists and the nationalistic Arabs each wanted to follow their own agendas, and that inevitably led to the bloodshed and violence we see almost every day in the news.

There could have been more coverage of this emerging conflict, but it is a very complicated subject, and the author has done her best to try and be evenhanded in her treatment. This book will satisfy many, and also inflame others who will not agree with her conclusions. That is always the essence of a well-written book.

A fascinating look at a neglected period in the history of Zionism and the pre-history of Israel. Marcus draws human portraits for us of largely forgotten but highly influential figures: on the Arab and Ottoman side the Khalidis, Khalil Sakakini, Ali Ekrem; on the Jewish side, especially Albert Antebi and Arthur Ruppin. She succeeds incontrovertibly in her aim of showing that the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict go back well before 1920 and the British Mandate, in fact to the end of the 19th century; and how the Zionists, with European chutzpah, turned a blind eye to the danger. She gives us too an idea of what the crumbling Ottoman Empire was like in its twilight years. It was not yet to be written off. Despite the Empire's shortcomings and the intrusions of foreign powers, there were native Jews like Albert Antebi who felt a loyalty to it.

Marcus is to be thanked for recounting Noah Sokolovsky's 1913 film "The Life of the Jews in Palestine" and for introducing us to the treasure chest of the Khalidi Library, which, as she says, is "off the beaten track for most visitors" to Jerusalem. She obtained access to several important unpublished sources like Ruhi Khalidi's "Zionism and the Zionist Question" and the letters that are in the possession of Albert Antebbi's granddaughter Elizabeth, and she did so by personal interviews with family members. (There is a good section on her sources.) In short, though she was hampered by not knowing Arabic, her research was fresh, assiduous, and more serious than the popularising impression that the book might give readers at first.

I make that last remark because, as a historian, I find Marcus's style too personal and intrusive for my taste. The book begins, "In September 1991, I flew to Tel Aviv...," and the concluding Acknowledgements end with "a mother's love and gratitude." But that's her character and I got used to it.

There are one or two minor inaccuracies. Notably, the date of publication of Hertzl's "The Jewish State", both in the original German and in the English translation by Sylvia D'Avigdor (who is not credited), was 1896 and not 1897 (p. 22).

The book could do with more and better-reproduced photographs, including pictures of the protagonists. The only clear photograph is on the dust jacket. There is a revealing map of the Old City of Jerusalem, but a map of Palestine as it was then would be useful. There is a good index.

This book is unfortunately told from the author's personal point of view of events, without benefit of historical knowledge, and apparently without benefit of major historical sources. Thus for example, she concludes somewhat arbitrarily, and without explanation, that "things started going wrong" in November 1995, when Yithak Rabin was assassinated.

Only this, Dockser Marcus erroneously concludes, drove the era of suicide bombing into full force. The bombing she remembers "most vividly took place on Friday March 21, 1997," during the Jewish Purim festival, commemorating the biblical era defeat of Haman, the Persian royal adviser who plotted to assassinate the entire Jewish people in that land. The bomber killed three women at the Tel Aviv cafe where he detonated himself, and injured 48 others, including a 6 month old infant. The image of the injured Shani Winter, only one month older than the author's own daughter, especially haunted her.

Alas, suicide bombing certainly did not result from the Rabin assassination. It began earlier than that, and as a result of a long history of strife, long predating the earliest incidents mentioned in this book.

The earliest time that Dockser Marcus discusses is the 1880s, when "the first Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine," where the Ottomans had ruled for more than 400 years.

But the author is blissfully ignorant, and the risk is that she leaves readers blissfully ignorant, too. In reality, the conflict dates back much longer than that, to the Muslim conquest of ancient Israel that began in 634, with the sack of Gaza, north through Cesarea, during which 4,000 Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants were slaughtered, according to Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem at the time. Negev villages were also pillaged, while the towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated and laid waste in the wanton destruction, famine and plagues that ensued.

And it was during that period that the Khalidi family actually arrived in Palestine, not as indigenous people, but as conquerors attached to the forces of Mohammed's heirs. Indeed, they continued to remain in the ranks of the oppressive classes (as opposed to the oppressed) throughout the Ottoman era. Readers will learn none of this from Dockser Marcus' book.

It's an interesting take of the early 20th century, apparently based on personal journals at the like. But Dockser Marcus has no background whatever on repeated historical conquests of Palestine by Islamic forces, first by Abu Bakr and then Umar, and later by Umayyads, Abbasids, Mamluks, Mongols, Ottomans and so on.

By all means read this book. But understand it more as the author's personal interpretation and pie in the sky than history.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

For anyone frustrated by the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts, this is a must read. This books presents the cultural and ideological differences of the Arabs and the Israelis in the historical context of the fading Ottoman empire. The book does not force one viewpoint over another but is remarkably even-handed in the telling of this story. I recommend it highly.