Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel

Too often, the study of Israel/Palestine has focused on elite actors and major events. Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel takes advantage of new sources about everyday life and the texture of changes on the ground to put more than two dozen human faces on the past and present of the region. With contributions from a leading cast of scholars across disciplines, the stories here are drawn from a variety of sources, from stories passed down through generations to family archives, interviews, and published memoirs. As these personal narratives are transformed into social biographies, they explore how the protagonists were embedded in but also empowered by their social and historical contexts. This wide-ranging and accessible volume brings a human dimension to a conflict-ridden history, emphasizing human agency, introducing marginal voices alongside more well-known ones, defying “typical” definitions of Israelis and Palestinians, and, ultimately, redefining how we understand both “struggle” and “survival” in a troubled region.

Mark LeVine is Professor of History at UC Irvine. He is the author of An Impossible Peace, Overthrowing Geography (UC Press, 2005) and Heavy Metal Islam. Gershon Shafir is Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego and Director of its Institution for International, Comparative and Area Studies. He is the author of Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, National Insecurity and Human Rights (UC Press) and Being Israeli, winner of MESA’s Hourani Award.

Foreword by Edmund Burke III

Introduction: Social Biographies in Making Sense of History
Gershon Shafir and Mark LeVine

Part One. Voices of the Ottoman Past: From the Mountains to the Sea
1. “Left Naked on the Beach”: The Villagers of Aylut in the Grip of the New Templers
Mahmoud Yazbak

2. The Sephardi Entrepreneur and British Vice-Consul Haim Amzalak
Joseph B. Glass and Ruth Kark

3. A Musician’s Lot: Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s Old Jerusalem
Salim Tamari

4. Revolutionary Pioneer: Manya Shochat and Her Commune
Gershon Shafir

Part Two: From Empire to Empire: Palestine under British Rule
5. Hero or Antihero? S. Yizhar’s Ambivalent Zionism and the First Sabra Generation
Nitsa Ben-Ari

6. “A Son of the Country”: Dr. Tawfiq Canaan, Modernist Physician and Palestinian Ethnographer
Philippe Bourmaud

7. The Ordeal of Henya Pekelman, a Female Construction Worker
David De Vries and Talia Pfeffermann

8. “A Nation in a Hero”: Hajj Mohammad Abdul Rahim and the Arab Revolt
Sonia Nimr

9. Hillel Kook: Revisionism and Rescue
Becky Kook

Part Three: A State Is Born; A Nation Is Dispersed
10. Matar ‘Abdelrahim: From a Palestinian Village to a Syrian Refugee Camp
Rochelle Davis

11. Joseph Spronz: From the Holocaust to a Safe Shore
Gershon Shafir

12. The Trees Die Standing: A Story of a Palestinian Refugee
Ramzy Baroud

13. The Brief Career of Prosper Cohen: A Would-Be Leader of Moroccan Jewry
Yaron Tsur

14. A Tale of Baghdad and Tel Aviv
Aziza Khazzoom

15. Is Slavery Over? Black and White Bedouin Women in the Naqab (Negev)
Safa Abu-Rabia

Part Four: A Land Occupied and Liberated
16. Of Possessions and Dispossessions: A Story of Palestinian Property in Jewish Israeli Lives
Rebecca L. Stein

17. The Rise and Fall of the Russian-Speaking Journalist in Israel
Nelly Elias and Julia Lerner

18. The Village against the Settlement: Two Generations of Conflict in the Nablus Region
Moriel Ram and Mark LeVine

19. Majed al-Masri in Two Intifadas in Nablus
Lætitia Bucaille

Part Five: An Impossible Peace, a Shared Future?
20. Benni Gaon: From Socialist to Capitalist Tycoon
Michal Frenkel

21. From Religion to Revenge: Becoming a Hamas Suicide Bomber
Bader Araj

22. Yigael Amir: The Making of a Political Assassin
Michael Feige

23. Mais in the War of the Words
Erin F. Olsen

24. Jonathan Pollak: An Anarchist “Traitor” in His Own Society
Neve Gordon

25. Abu Ahmad and His Handalas
Ala Alazzeh

List of Contributors
Index