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That was then and this is now: Jewish and Palestinian Narratives from the Ottoman Period
Abstract
In the introduction of my book, Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland, I wrote: “When writing histories of conflicts we often read history backwards, projecting the realities of today back in time, leaving us with a skewed picture of how conflicts are formed and how they emerge.” In other words, Israeli history narratives based on Aliyahs, settlement of the Land, and Young Guardsmen, only make sense if the end sum game is 1948; if the state of Israel had not been established, much of this history could be all but irrelevant. On the flip side, had the war in 1948 turned out differently, Palestinian history of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate period would have been written completely different as well. During the last decade, however, scholars have worked to deconstruct the history of Jews and Palestinians in Ottoman Palestine, radically reassessing our previous understandings, producing what one might even call a revisionist history that is no less important than the revisionist histories of 1948, which emerged in the late 1980-90s. While conclusions might differ, during the last two decades, a plethora of research on Ottoman Palestine points to the fact that nationalist narratives have misconstrued the period (or written a history to suit their nationalist agendas) and that there is a general need to reassess it. In this paper, I will use my previous research as a launching point to ponder on existing narratives of the late 19th-early 20th century Jewish Yishuv and Palestinian history. Importantly, it will rethink the history through the eyes of the majority of the land’s residents, the Palestinians, and use this as vantage point to understanding also the Yishuv itself. Can we reimagine a history of Palestine not necessarily based on Jewish sources but one that places the Palestinians in the center, and the Jewish Yishuv in the background and not in the forefront? In short, this paper is setting out to understand Ottoman Palestine in a new light, one that will help integrate the multiple works out there, which have challenged our convictions of this period. This hopefully will serve as a bridge to understanding the dynamics of Palestine in the post-World War One era, which transformed into a colonial hold of Britian, giving the Jewish Yishuv a novel sense of homeland, while serving as the first real occupation Palestinians would encounter as a modern community.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries