Loading ...Why did Palestinian Jaffa fall more quickly than Jerusalem in 1948? - Books
“Bein shtei arim: Ha’aravim hapalestinaim beyerushalayim uveyaffo 1947-1948” (“A Tale of Two Cities: The Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1947-1948”), by Itamar Radai (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv University, 302 pages, 80 shekels
On all sides, the extensive literature dealing with the defeat of the Palestinian Arabs in their war against the Jewish community and the State of Israel in 1947-1948 excels in controversy, accusations, self-righteousness and often the denial of the other side’s legitimacy. This is characteristic of writing focusing on conflicts between two national movements. What’s sometimes missing in our case is an analysis of Arab society and the reasons for its collapse in the face of the challenges it faced.
Setting out to fill that vacuum, Dr. Itamar Radai, who teaches at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, conducted a thorough, in-depth study of Palestinian society in an attempt to explain its debacle under seemingly advantageous conditions. Despite the usual claim that any discussion of the War of Independence is vitiated by the lack of access to Arab archives, Radai is able to construct a comprehensive picture based on a variety of sources: Jewish and British archives, Arab archives seized by the Israeli army, memoirs of Jews and Arabs, and the Hebrew and Arabic press.
By painstakingly cross-checking and confirming these sources, Radai has produced an account in which the abundance of details does not obscure the view of the general course of events. He also avoids the judgmental trap, leaving it to the intelligence of the reader to draw conclusions. Moreover, Radai understands that in every war, however just, there are neither absolute saints nor total demons, and that the historian’s role is to try his utmost to step back from the warring sides.
Nevertheless, the picture that emerges is far from being devoid of conclusions concerning the overall responsibility – historical and social – for what transpired. That is a rare scholarly achievement, particularly in the highly charged Middle Eastern atmosphere.
To assist him in comparing developments in Jaffa and Jerusalem, Radai also draws on insight culled from general historical research, such as Fernand Braudel’s theories of Mediterranean society, and Lucien Fevre’s distinction between “coastal cities” and “mountain cities.” These sources add a comparative demographic and social dimension – with implications for the military campaign – and their use by the author is innovative in this context.
Radai’s central research question was: What accounts for the difference in the steadfastness and resilience of Arab society in Jerusalem as compared with Jaffa, in 1948? Whereas Jaffa imploded, in Jerusalem (with a smaller Arab population), though some of the Arab neighborhoods collapsed, others held out.
The book goes into detail about the general causes of the weakness of Arab society in Palestine, notably the absence of an efficient organizational infrastructure, the lack of a political leadership in control of military means, and competition over command and resources between the Arab Higher Committee (the nominal institution representing Palestinian Arabs), led by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, then resident in Cairo, and the Arab League’s military committees. As a result, violent clashes erupted and tensions ran high between the local population and the Arab Army of Salvation recruited by the Arab League, which consisted of Syrian, Iraqi and other volunteers, if not mercenaries. The situation was compounded by the early flight of large segments of the Palestinian elite to Lebanon and Egypt.
These developments were common to both Jaffa and Jerusalem in the wake of the United Nations Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, and Radai describes them in detail that is usually missing in the research literature. But he also adds a singular dimension: the difference in the structure of Arab society in the two cities. In large measure, this is what decided the respective fates of each city.
Source: www.haaretz.com