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Fair Competition: Opposing Internationalisms in Palestine's "National" Fairs of the 1930s
Abstract
On the eve of Palestine's violent ethno-national clashes of the 1930s, two simultaneous, competing industrial and craft fairs were mounted in Palestine: the Levant Fair in Tel Aviv (1932) supported by the Municipality of Tel Aviv and the Zionist trade organization Mischar w'Taasia, and the First National Arab Fair in Jerusalem (1933) sponsored by the Supreme Muslim Council. The Levant Fair invited participants from countries ranging from France to Egypt and the USSR, in order to brand itself as the first-and only-international fair in the Levant. Contesting the internationalist aspirations of the Levant Fair, seen as epitomizing the economic and cultural colonization of Palestine by Zionist organizations, the Arab Palestinian leaders of the First National Arab Fair summoned a powerful inter-nationalism of a different sort: pan-Arabism. Advertisements and press were distributed solely in Arabic and only countries with largely Arab populations were invited to exhibit. Each fair's organizers claimed to pursue a global outlook as part of the bid for local autonomy under British Mandate rule; the ability to harness a wide political, economic, and cultural network served as proof of national development. Previously discussed independently, I examine the two fairs in tandem and analyze the artwork exhibited at each fair as a potent index of their disparate approaches. While the Levant Fair specifically promoted the cultural strides of the yishuv (the Jewish settlement in "pre-State Palestine"), featuring monumental sculptures of Jewish agricultural workers by Zeev Ben-Zvi and crafts produced by the Zionist-initiated Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, the First National Arab Fair exhibited intimate portraits of intellectual leaders of the pan-Arab movement, such as Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali and King Faisal I by the female painter Zulfa al-Sa'di, and displayed wooden bas-reliefs and leatherwork with traditional Islamic designs by Jamal Badran. By examining these artworks alongside newspaper articles, British government reports, and institutional documents, I argue that the fairs reflect a discourse of political "parity" that began to emerge in Palestine in the 1930s, as a result of the oppositional threads of internationalism and pan-Arabism.
Discipline
Art/Art History
Geographic Area
Israel
Palestine
Sub Area
None