Screening Identity: Palestinian National Culture and Intercommunal Dynamics in Haifa’s Cinematic Landscape

Abstract

Focusing on the vibrant cinema scene in Haifa during the Mandate period, this article looks into the city’s Palestinian cultural history and the dialectic intercommunal relations between Jews and Arabs. It analyzes the persistent struggle of Haifa’s Palestinian community to establish a new Arab-owned cinema as part of a broader effort to develop a Palestinian national culture. The article demonstrates how Palestinian entrepreneurs sought to use cinema as an essential means in the formation of a distinct national culture and identity in the context of the escalating national conflict. At the same time, it highlights how cinemas effectively functioned as a shared space of daily intercommunal encounters and cultural collaboration between ordinary Arabs and Jews in Haifa.

Significant transformations occurred in the city of Haifa during the Mandate period, among which was the flourishing of a vibrant cinema scene. In the 1930s and 1940s, the construction of luxurious and modern cinemas in accordance with international standards established a space for regular intercultural interactions between Palestinians and Jews. This article seeks to uncover an unknown side of Haifa’s history and tell the untold story of the city’s movie theaters. It examines the forces that molded the urban cinema culture, which emerged as the most popular and dominant medium in the local mass entertainment industry. It illustrates how Haifa represented a binational environment in which Jews and Palestinians shared urban spaces.

Despite escalating political and national tensions, individuals from both communities opted to come together in the same leisure venues, with cinemas emerging as the favored medium of entertainment during that era. Cinemas rapidly became integral cultural institutions, serving as the focal point of urban leisure by providing amusing, novel, and affordable experiences. Arab and Jewish entrepreneurs alike invested resources in constructing modern and innovative cinemas, employing diverse strategies to draw customers from all segments of the city’s population, irrespective of religion or ethnicity. Aiming to broaden their customer base, this concerted effort further enhanced the intercommunal character of these establishments. Rather quickly, the city’s cinemas enjoyed extensive local demand. Their allure, coupled with the captivating appeal of movies, rendered it a favorable environment for voluntary daily interactions between Jews and Palestinians. The article also reveals the inconsistency and duality of Haifa’s urban reality by illustrating how the reinforcement of national—Zionist and Palestinian—ideologies also shaped its cinema culture. These ideologies aimed to establish and propagate distinct national identities and cultures for each community. National actors in both societies acknowledged the significant potential influence of the cinema, thus employing it as a tool to bolster internal cohesion and foster national identities.

The Palestinian community in Haifa, the protagonist of this article, worked tirelessly to develop a Palestinian cultural repertoire, viewing it as integral to nation-building efforts. As such, during the 1940s, it waged a struggle against the Mandate authorities to establish an Arab cinema. This venue was envisioned not only as a local cultural center but also as a gathering place for the Palestinian public in the city to offer a diverse array of cultural activities. Equally important, it was intended to serve as an alternative to the Jewish movie theaters, discouraging young Palestinians from intermixing with the Jewish audience there. However, despite mutual attempts to construct boundaries between the communities, ordinary Jews and Palestinians continued to frequent these venues and watch the big hits of those years together. While many of the movie theater owners and consumers were committed to the nascent national ideologies of their respective communities, the city’s binational character enabled patterns of shared cultural consumption. Before delving into this intriguing historical episode, the article aims to position the current study within the broader urban historiography of Haifa.

Main Trends in Haifa’s Urban Historiography

To Ottomans, British, and Zionists, as well as to indigenous Arab residents, in the first-half of the twentieth century, Haifa was seen as the city of the future. The Ottoman government accelerated development plans, marked by the inauguration of the Hijaz railway in 1905, that bolstered the city’s industry and commerce. This, in turn, prompted the immigration of affluent Arab families and investors from Lebanon and Syria, as well as from cities and villages in Palestine, who established factories and shops throughout the city. An increasing number of consular agencies opened in the city, attracting different European communities.¹ In 1915, two young civil servants from the Imperial College in Beirut, Muhammad Bahjat and Rafiq al Tamimi, were instructed by the governor of the wilayat of Beirut, Azmi Bey Effendi, to write a comprehensive report on conditions in the province. Their description of the city offers a glimpse into its diverse and heterogeneous character, already evident toward the end of the Ottoman era:

With the transition to British rule in 1918, urbanization processes intensified dramatically. The British government, envisioning Haifa as a gateway to the Middle East, established its imperial center there and initiated the three most extensive infrastructure projects in Palestine: an extension of the railway (1918) and the construction of a deep-water harbor (1933) and refineries (1938) that processed oil from Iraq, distributing it throughout the broader British Empire. These development projects augmented the geopolitical importance of Haifa, transforming it into a British governmental, transportation, and military hub. Subsequently, local commerce, industry, construction, and accommodation services were expanded significantly, enhancing the city’s role as an economic metropolis that attracted tens of thousands of Arab and Jewish immigrants. Consequently, the city’s population increased sixfold, altering its social composition. Christians, Muslims, Eastern Europeans, and Sephardi Jews, alongside immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Germany, Britain, and Italy, mingled in public spaces, giving the city a cosmopolitan character.³ As early as the 1930s, the newspaper Filastin declared that Haifa had become “one of the most important places on the Mediterranean coast.”⁴

Despite the dramatic transformations that the city underwent during the formative period in the first-half of the twentieth century and its crucial geographical, economic, social, and cultural significance, the historical literature on Haifa remains rather marginal. Compared with Jerusalem and Jaffa,⁵ Palestinian and Israeli historiographies have given little attention to Haifa’s urban history. The extant historiography of the city encapsulates many characteristics akin to the historiography of modern Palestine/Israel, yet it bears a set of problems specific to Haifa’s unique context.⁶ By and large, the dominant scholarly discourse overemphasizes the role of Zionist actors in shaping Haifa’s urbanism, focusing on the development of the Jewish Yishuv and Zionist projects and institutions in the city. Considerable attention has also been directed toward the British Mandate as the most influential actor in initiating the city’s transformation. The city’s Ottoman past, as well as the agency of the Palestinian indigenous population in the urban development during the Mandate period, have been relegated to the periphery of scholarly attention. Palestinian society has been viewed as possessing minimal significance in contributing to the city’s history. Hence, its role as an agent of change has been largely disregarded.⁷

Haifa’s historiography has also been shaped by the dominance of the “methodological nationalism” paradigm, which studies the city’s history through the one-dimensional prism of a national collective.⁸ The local arena of Haifa has been traditionally analyzed through the narrow lens of two separate national histories, presupposing complete segregation between the Arab and Jewish communities as the natural order. According to this historiographical model, the two communities were principally monolithic and isolated entities with respective distinct cultures that seemingly had no mutual connections.⁹ Such studies have accentuated the conflictual and violent relations of the two societies, while “downplaying cross-communal coalitions and mixed sociality, regimes, city planning, and local governance.”¹⁰

In recent years, however, a growing scholarly literature corpus has begun challenging the methodological nationalism logic by looking at a wide range of reciprocal relations, interactions, exchanges, contacts, and links between Arab and Jewish societies in Palestine. These new studies have provided a more inclusive understanding of the multiple ways in which the two societies influenced each other within a complex political, economic, and cultural system.¹¹ In recent years, this trend has become increasingly evident in the historiography of Haifa, with a growing number of works seeking to examine the city’s relational history. Such studies have shown that the relations between groups and social actors in the city have been primarily dynamic and continuous rather than fixed or static.¹² At the same time, a parallel trend has emerged, illuminating aspects of local Palestinian history that have been erased, forgotten, or neglected. In the wake of a global historiographical trend of incorporating local voices into historical narratives, the study of Haifa has also recently begun moving beyond the dominant colonial frame, placing native actors at the center of its attention. Such works seek to understand how Palestinians contributed, acted, and understood the reality around them and the ways in which they saw themselves and their futures beyond responding to external conditions.¹³ What has further underpinned these scholarly directions were on-the-ground urban changes that have been unfolding in Haifa over the last two decades. Immigration data indicates a 91 percent increase in the Arab population in Haifa in recent years, with 1,000 Arabs moving into the city every year.¹⁴ Through various avenues of cultural, social, and political activism, the expanding young Palestinian generation, particularly the middle class, has reclaimed its history and language, working for the revival of Palestinian urbanism that was lost after the Nakba.¹⁵ Particularly notable in this process has been the development of a vigorous Palestinian culture and arts scene that has re-established original productions and independent performance venues throughout the city, which led to the crowning of Haifa as the “Palestinian cultural capital” within Israel.¹⁶ With the emergence of Haifa as a focus of secular Arab urban life, it has not only regained its position as the center of Palestinian society,¹⁷ but also made it a de facto binational city.¹⁸ As the editors of this issue discuss in another place, “Haifa’s residential areas, public spaces, and everyday life are undergoing desegregation, leading to relative cross-ethnic conviviality.”¹⁹ The historical study of Haifa has responded to these substantial changes, which deepened the need to probe historical moments of a binational reality. In this regard, more and more historians have sought to harness historical research not only to illuminate the city’s shifting reality in the present but also to imagine a different political urban reality in the future. This growing local tendency reflects a broader historiographical approach known as “the history of the present,” whereby the historical research seeks to explicitly contribute to or address questions of contemporary concern and political relevance while striving for neutrality as an academic ideal.²⁰ In the current moment, David Motadel recently asserted “historians seem more willing to intervene in the public political sphere.”²¹ It is safe to say that this claim is valid for Haifa’s recent scholarship. Several projects, conferences, and works, including this special issue and particularly this article, have offered important topical interventions by looking at subjects that the historical establishment largely ignored while highlighting the history of marginalized social groups.²² Building upon these recent scholarly developments, this article explores a historical period when intercommunalism and shared urbanism were actively practiced and negotiated by Jewish and Arab communities. It ultimately suggests reflecting on the binational nature of cultural consumption in the past and, importantly, the potential directions it may take in the future. Using archival materials, ephemera collections, newspapers, and oral interviews, the article examines the relational history of the city’s cinema culture, focusing on intercommunal interactions and their role in shaping cultural developments within Palestinian society. Additionally, the article seeks to illuminate the agency of the native Palestinian community as a major actor in the historical processes that shaped Haifa’s urbanism.

Intercommunal Encounters in Haifa

Mandatory Haifa was a binational city where its two principal communities—the Arab majority and the rapidly expanding Jewish Yishuv—represented two heterogeneous entities undergoing simultaneous processes of national formation while sharing a common urban environment. Throughout this period, Arabs and Jews lived in different areas, although not hermetically separated. Arab neighborhoods, such as Wadi Nisnas, Wadi Salib, Hallisa, Kfur Samir, and Wadi Jmal, stretched along the lower city in the narrow, flat area at the foot of Mount Carmel. This area was characterized by dense neighborhoods around a few main streets that crossed the city from east to west. During the 1930s, Arab neighborhoods began to climb up Mount Carmel, including HaGefen, Al-Jabal, and Abbas Street. The Jewish neighborhoods of Hadar, Bat Galim, Neve Sha’anan, and Ahuzat Herbert Samuel spread up the mountain, mainly in Hadar HaCarmel. This area became a vibrant center of business and commerce and a hub of Haifa’s Jewish Yishuv.²³ Despite the city’s geographical division between the two spatial and national entities, there were mixed areas where Arabs and Jews lived side by side. The German Colony and Ard al-Yahud continued to be mixed residential areas, as did streets like Jaffa, Herzliya, Ibn Gabirol, Kinneret, and the eastern part of the city. Even in Hadar HaCarmel, which was established as a distinctly Jewish neighborhood, Arabs rented houses on the inner streets and the outskirts. Additionally, on the northern seamline and in the western part of the neighborhood, a mixed residential area emerged.²⁴ The close physical proximity dictated an inevitable mixing between the two communities that was marked by daily intercommunal interactions and spontaneous chance meetings in the city’s diverse public spheres. Jews and Arabs encountered each other in markets and shopping centers, meeting places where individuals from both communities regularly gathered to purchase local agricultural goods from Jewish and Arab farmers alike. Everyday interactions also occurred on public transportation, in government offices, and along the streets of the rapidly expanding city. Alongside these impromptu encounters, deliberate intercommunal collaborations also occurred. In the municipality, for instance, Jewish and Arab representatives collaborated on matters concerning the city’s welfare. Haifa’s municipal system stood out compared with other mixed municipalities in Palestine due to the cooperation among its workers (Jews, Arabs, and some Britons). A unique model of urban management emerged in Haifa, emphasizing unity over division, with joint efforts characterizing much of the municipality’s activity, particularly from 1927 to 1947.²⁵

Numerous collaborations also took place in the realm of business and economics that spanned the agricultural, industrial, wholesale trade, construction, and service sectors. Daily transactions between Arabs and Jews were commonplace, reflecting dynamic collaborations between the two communities in various economic activities.²⁶ Many members of the elite and middle class from both communities actively engaged in business partnerships with individuals from the neighboring community. A notable example of such collaboration was the business and personal friendship between the Jewish architect Moshe Gerstel and the Arab businessman al Hajj Tahir Qaraman.²⁷ Many workplaces in the city were also characterized by a mix of Jewish and Arab laborers. They worked side by side in various sectors, including the construction industry, industrial plants, the technical and sanitary departments of the municipality, multinational companies established in the 1930s, and government employment positions. This collaboration extended to places like the port with its numerous branches and the railway workshops, which served as the largest employment hub in Haifa and a central economic driver for the city.²⁸ Richard Graves, who led the government’s works department, recounted in his memoirs the nature of relations between Jewish and Arab workers during the Mandate period. He noted that “it was not a difficult task at all. An atmosphere of solidarity prevailed in the department and friendships were forged between the families of Jewish, Arab, and British workers even outside of working hours.”²⁹ The dynamism of urban life, combined with Haifa’s distance from the more politically charged centers of Palestine, facilitated unique patterns of cohabitation. Perhaps more than any other public sphere in the city, though, intercommunal interactions stood out when individuals from both communities voluntarily chose to spend their free time with or alongside members of the other community in leisure and recreation sites.

During those years, Haifa underwent a significant expansion in its commercial leisure culture, marked by the rapid growth of various leisure institutions, infrastructure, and activities. New establishments, such as modern cafes, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, cinemas, hotels, theaters, organized beaches, cultural clubs, sports facilities, and playgrounds, flourished across the city. Both Jewish and Arab private entrepreneurs recognized the potential profitability of the recreation industry and invested in developing new entertainment centers to cater to Jewish, Arab, and British clientele. These places were situated in various parts of the city with no physical barriers segregating venues owned by Arabs from those owned by Jews. Among all the new entertainment options in the city, cinemas emerged as the most popular medium.

Arabs and Jews in Haifa’s Vibrant Cinema Scene

Similar to metropolitan cities around the world, magnificent cinemas or ‘picture palaces’ that contained thousands of seats were built in Palestine during the 1930s. These structures, which offered an architectural innovation in their nature and size combined with the spectacle of sights, colors, lights, and sounds, served as the epitome of modernity in everyday life.³⁰ Sweeping urbanization processes and the connection of cities to electricity accelerated these developments and transformed the urban cultural landscape. The new motion pictures projected unfamiliar cultural images and portrayals of bustling cities worldwide, giving local viewers the feeling that they were citizens of the modern world.³¹ As Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz put it, “Cinema became the fullest expression and combination of modernity’s attributes.”³²

As elsewhere in the Middle East, moviegoing in Palestine quickly became an established form of urban entertainment, and its appearance in the country was a sensational innovation. As early as the 1900s, motion pictures made their way to Palestine, with the first screenings taking place at the Europa Hotel in Jerusalem and in a few cafes near the Jaffa Gate.³³ Over the subsequent years, local entrepreneurs established small movie theaters in Jerusalem and Jaffa, such as Oracle (1908) and the Yiannides Brothers (1913).³⁴ These modest places screened short silent films, each lasting a few minutes, often accompanied by live piano music synchronized with the evolving plot on screen. During the 1920s, movie theaters spread all over Palestine, gaining immense popularity among the country’s population, both Arabs and Jews. In the same decade, several silent movie theaters, some housed within small cafes in the lower city, emerged in Haifa. The Jewish-owned Coliseum, which opened on Allenby Street in 1919, was a pioneering establishment that “catered to the artistic needs of Haifa, irrespective of religion and ethnicity,” as one resident noted.³⁵ From its outset, it featured Egyptian films, including the silent film “Scruples,” which ran for an entire week, attracting Jewish and Palestinian viewers.³⁶ Not long later, Bustan al Inshirah, Eden, Aviv, and Imperia were inaugurated. Toward the end of the decade, Carmel and Gan Ha’ir were also added to the cinematic landscape. Their widespread appeal turned these venues into primary settings for daily intercommunal interactions. Palestinian residents frequently attended Jewish-owned cinemas, just as Jews visited Arab-owned ones. In 1925, the Jewish newspaper Davar assessed the reception of this new cultural phenomenon in the country, asserting that “there were days when cinema was treated with disgust as an inferior art. But the cinema did not pay attention to the protesting voices of the aesthetes and made its way through the masses, rising with victory . . . Cinema has become an enormous force, an informational, educational, and entertaining power.”³⁷ Among the venues operated in Haifa at the time, Bustan al Inshirah in the downtown stood out as particularly popular, representing a collaboration between Jewish and Arab entrepreneurs Yaakov Davidon and Tannous Agile.³⁸ This partnership dissolved in the aftermath of the 1929 riots, marked by violent clashes between Jewish and Palestinian residents throughout the city. The riots erupted following a dispute over Jewish rights of worship at the Wailing Wall, igniting extensive violence across the country. These events underscored the escalating political tensions between Jews and Palestinians, with the latter expressing deep frustration, particularly in response to the surge in Jewish immigration, land sales, and the displacement of Palestinian peasants.³⁹ The countrywide unrest extended to Haifa, resulting in the loss of seven Jewish lives, twenty-one Palestinian lives, and numerous injuries. Although the events were brief, they left a lingering tension in the city. For a few weeks thereafter, Jews and Arabs refrained from visiting each other’s leisure sites.

The invention in America of the soundtrack and synchronized sound by Warner Brothers in the late 1920s revolutionized cinema, propelling the rise of talking pictures, which quickly became a global phenomenon. The increasing appetite for motion pictures spurred the construction of grand theaters, reflecting the technological advancements that defined the new cinema culture. In Haifa, this was manifested in a surge in luxurious movie theaters during the 1930s, making it the leading city in Palestine with the highest number of operating cinemas. Ein Dor cinema, inaugurated in proximity to Wadi Nisnas in the lower city in 1930 by Jewish entrepreneurs Yehuda Agam-Lavan and Moshe Gridinger, was the first to incorporate synchronized sound. It was constructed in line with the cutting-edge cinema architecture of the time, boasting both an open-air section and an enclosed winter hall accommodating 1,118 seats.⁴⁰ In the following years, additional cinemas were built: the Jewish-owned Amphi, Orah, Ron, and Armon in the Hadar Carmel neighborhood and the Arab-owned Al Nahda in the lower city.⁴¹ Among them, Armon emerged as the most up-to-date and lavish one. Designed in the Bauhaus style, it featured an open roof, VIP stands, and walls adorned with silver. The Palestine Post noted that this place was “the last word in modern cinema comfort” and declared its “advanced soundbox unparalleled by the other theaters in Palestine . . . None of the delicacies of sound is lost in this new theatre.” It even went so far as to claim that the quality of sound and photography could not have been better at the Paris premiere of “The Merry Widow.”⁴²

The expansion of movie theaters persisted well into the 1940s, driven by the heightened demand for English-speaking entertainment due to the influx of thousands of Allied soldiers during WWII. Local entrepreneurs that recognized the extensive demand and the high-profit potential, submitted numerous applications to the municipal planning committee to establish movie theaters. In 1938, the committee deliberated over a dozen applications, and by 1946, it had reviewed approximately 40. Ultimately, only 15 of these applications were approved, and the entrepreneurs who went on to establish cinemas soon realized that they had made a lucrative investment.⁴³ Among these were several Jewish businessmen who established cinemas, such as Moriah, May, and Orion. Additionally, a number of Palestinian businessmen founded ventures like the 800-seat summer cinema El Amin, which drew a capacity crowd on its opening night and the Al Nader Cinema Company, Ltd. launched the Al Carmel Cinema in the eastern part of the city.⁴⁴ These various halls showcased a diverse array of movie genres in English, French, Yiddish, and Arabic, including Westerns, detective films, comedies, dramas, musicals, romantic and war films, as well as Zionist newsreels and documentaries. Most of the films originated from Hollywood and Europe, with additional popular releases from Egypt, home to the leading film industry in the Middle East.⁴⁵ Cinema owners, both Jewish and Arab, signed contracts with Egyptian film companies that allowed them to screen new hits immediately after their release in Egypt.⁴⁶ In this regard, Haifa, like other cities in the Middle East and worldwide, participated in a global circulation of media products, technology, expertise, and capital. Local businesspeople leveraged extensive local, regional, and transnational networks to meet local demand.⁴⁷

The joint act of watching films in these ‘picture palaces’ offered a brand-new cultural experience for Palestinians and Jews alike. Throughout most of the period, they attended the same cinemas, immersing themselves side by side in the world of films, captivated by the state-of-the-art technology of the time. The movie theaters were shared public spaces locally situated that provided internationally available cultural products. As the city’s residents noted in interviews, the viewing experience was so exhilarating that it eclipsed the nascent national tensions.⁴⁸ Said Abu George, a Palestinian resident of the city, for instance, emphasized several times during our interview that Jews would regularly come to spend time in the lower city, and the shared entertainment of Arabs and Jews was considered entirely normal:

The Greek-American historian of the Middle East, P.J. Vatikiotis, who grew up in Haifa, explained the intermingling in cinemas from an economic perspective, stating that “cinemas served everyone who paid: Jews, Arabs, English, and foreigners. They welcomed money from every nationality.”⁵⁰ The Jewish owner of Ein Dor, for instance, sought to expand its customer base and organized a night shuttle service from Hadar HaCarmel to the cinema and back, offering affordable fares that successfully attracted people from various communities across the city.⁵¹ To appeal to customers from the neighboring community, that same owner, like other Jewish-owned movie theaters, used to publish greetings in Arabic in the Palestinian press on the occasions of Muslim and Christian holidays while promoting cultural events hosted in their establishments.⁵² An abundance of trilingual flyers from that era⁵³ illuminate the intercommunal nature of the city’s cinema culture. Jewish- and Arab-owned cinemas alike advertised screenings of Arab or American films in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, aiming to attract people from all communities within the city. Dating from the 1920s to the end of the 1940s, these flyers serve as evidence that Arab-Jewish interaction in cinemas was not a marginal social phenomenon but rather the norm. Moreover, other than film screenings, these venues served a multitude of purposes. With their spacious buildings and large stages, they doubled as cultural centers, hosting theater plays, balls, worker meetings, community gatherings, musical and dance performances, and more. Spectating—with film as one’s specific object—was only one of a myriad of things that one did at the movies. Arab and Jewish patrons spent their free time there together, intermingling inside and outside movie theaters, whether waiting for tickets, buying ice cream or snacks from vendors outside, or attending various entertainment shows. Renowned artists from the Arab world often performed on the stages of Jewish-owned cinemas in Haifa, catering to the local audience. One notable example was the show of the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, who performed at the Ein Dor cinema for two consecutive evenings in May 1935 during one of her three visits to Palestine.⁵⁴ In contrast, performances by Jewish artists in Arab-owned cinemas were less common due to their smaller size compared with Jewish-owned venues. Cinemagoing was essentially about far more than just watching films. As scholar David Morley puts it: “There was more to cinema than seeing films. There was going out at night, and the sense of relaxation combined with a sense of fun and excitement. The very name ‘picture palace,’ by which cinemas were known for a long time, captured an important part of that experience. Rather than selling individual films, cinema is best understood as having sold a habit, a certain type of socialized experience.”⁵⁵ In a similar vein, Haifa’s movie theaters generated the regular habit of ‘going to the flicks,’ involving a particular kind of weekly experience that became part of the fabric of the city’s everyday life. Interviewees stated that often, the film shown was irrelevant, but it was the very act of going out to the cinema and meeting new people.⁵⁶ Film consumption, thus, was not motivated only by the desire to see a particular film but was also an opportunity for social interaction.

The Arab Revolt that erupted in 1936 heightened tension and hostility between the two communities in the city, leading to a gradual decline in mutual visits to each other’s cinemas. A national committee established in Haifa, similar to those in other cities in Palestine, oversaw the strike and compelled businesses to boycott economic ties with Jews, resulting in a halt to all commercial activities, including in the city’s entertainment scene.⁵⁷ At the end of the revolt in the late summer of 1939, the city’s cinemas experienced a resurgence in attendance, drawing Arabs, Jews, and Britons alike.⁵⁸ In my interview with Lila Badran, she recalled, “When the strike was over, I could finally go again with my Jewish friend to see movies in English. They lived in one of our apartments. Her father had a cinema in Carmel . . . We were teenagers, so we walked from downtown up there to watch a movie and came back . . . In those times, it was not at all exceptional.”⁵⁹ In 1940, shortly after the end of the Arab Revolt, a reporter for the newspaper Doar Hayom described a daily occurrence at the Ein Dor cinema that illustrates the dynamism of the mixed-urban reality at that time:

Going out to the cinema on the “other side” was an individual choice that was not perceived then as a subversive act or as a crossing of national and cultural borders. Despite the escalation of the national conflict, ordinary Jews and Palestinians were captivated by the magic of the big screen, flocking to the sprawling theaters. In the darkness of the cinema, mutual suspicions subsided, allowing people to sink into a new and exciting experience together. The unique nature of Haifa’s cinemas aligns with what sociologist Elijah Anderson termed a ‘cosmopolitan canopy,’ describing “settings that offer a respite from the lingering tensions of urban life and an opportunity for diverse people to come together and engage with one another in a spirit of civility, or even comity and goodwill.”⁶¹ According to Anderson, in this particular kind of public spaces, people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds not only share space but also seek out each other’s presence.⁶² In that regard, the cosmopolitan character of Haifa’s cinemas overruled the budding ethno-nationalist preferences. This persisted at least until 1946, as reported in both the Arabic and Hebrew press. The former regularly informed its readership about cultural events and films held in Jewish-owned cinemas.⁶³ In January 1946, for instance, the Arabic newspaper Al Difa’ published the screening times of the Egyptian film “The Fairer Sex” (“”) at Ein Dor and the American film “Bob-Hop” at Armon in Hadar Ha Carmel.⁶⁴

“Eighty thousand Arabs in Haifa go to the cinema every month,” Al Difa’ reported in an ad on behalf of the Theater Construction Company in 1946.⁶⁵ This estimate may seem somewhat exaggerated, considering that in that year, Haifa had a population of slightly less than 70,000 Palestinians out of a total population of 130,000,⁶⁶ but it nonetheless attests to the prevalence of this activity among diverse social groups during that time.⁶⁷ In his article on Palestinian cinema, Adnan Madanat discussed the widespread popularity of cinema among Palestinian Arab society during the Mandate period, emphasizing that moviegoing was a ubiquitous cultural pastime enjoyed by individuals across all social strata.⁶⁸ Unlike other forms of commercial leisure, which were primarily shaped by factors of class and income, the cost of a movie ticket was remarkably affordable at just one grush (10 mils).⁶⁹ This accessibility meant that movie theaters were not only frequented by the affluent but also by the working-class majority that comprised Haifa’s population. As the most industrialized city in Palestine, Haifa gained the moniker “Red Haifa” due to its significant number of workers. During this period, several labor organizations emerged there, advocating for the rights of both professional and nonprofessional workers and campaigning for various social rights, including fair wages, shorter working hours, and vacation time.⁷⁰ Worker struggles led to improvements in their wages and working conditions, strengthening their purchasing power and allowing them to allocate some money and time resources to leisure consumption. Peter Burke demonstrated that in rapidly industrializing areas where work became increasingly demanding and monotonous and working hours more regimented, there emerged a heightened need for nonutilitarian pursuits. Leisure and entertainment activities, then, became a form of “compensation” for the arduous and strenuous work.⁷¹ The frustrating routine nature of the workplace, the highly demanding requirements of the construction and urban services industries, and the robotics of the modern factory have made such activities more attractive, desirable, and necessary.⁷² As in other places in the world where immigrant communities and laborers formed the bulk of moviegoers, the working class in Haifa also comprised a significant portion of cinema attendees. They found solace in the dimly lit halls, where flickering films provided respite from the hard work, offering an avenue for escapism on the silver screen.⁷³ As noted in the diary of Habakkuk HaCohen, who impersonated an Arab laborer in Haifa as part of his activity at the Hashahar unit of the Palmach as an undercover agent (mistaa’rev), “most of the Arab laborers visited the cinema at least once a week except for the religious who hardly even go to the cinema for fear of missing the prayer.”⁷⁴ The presence of laborers in the city’s movie theaters was not a phenomenon unique to the Palestinian community but similarly prevailed among the Jewish one. In the early 1940s, the Hebrew newspaper HaTsofe was outraged that “even the [Jewish] laborers or the hungry unemployed find the shilling to attend the cinema and are ready to give up the partition, the Hebrew language, and the nation building just for a crumb of bread called a cinema film.”⁷⁵ The Arab Chamber of Commerce expressed similar concern over the prevalent trend of Arab workers spending their leisure time at the cinemas. They urged workers to prioritize saving money for more pressing needs and discouraged them from spending their earnings on moviegoing.⁷⁶ As will be elaborated below, national leaders were also troubled by this trend, not solely for economic reasons but instead because of the intercommunal mixing that characterized these venues.

The advent of cinema as a modern cultural form, a novelty for both Arabs and Jews, led to the development of shared viewing patterns in movie theaters. Unlike the common practice today, watching a movie at that time was far from a passive and silent activity. The novel venture of watching a film on a large screen in a lavish venue was infused with the excitement and enthusiasm of the moviegoers. Several interviewees emphasized that the atmosphere there often resembled that of a sports field, with the audience actively engaging in the experience, expressing their feelings loudly, and sharing comments and reactions directed at the actors on the screen. This lively and participatory aspect made it an intercommunal, interactive, and vibrant event. In that sense, the movie theater was a site where audiences engaged with films as well as with one another. Al Wahda newspaper dedicated an article to the issue of noising in movie theaters, emphasizing to its readers that “these noises disrupt other viewers’ ability to follow the movie.”⁷⁷ Mordechai Ron recalled in his memoir about his childhood in Haifa that in the cinema, “the audience was an active participant in the events, and loudly cheered the hero of the film and warned of evil men around the corner. The conversations were heard in Hebrew and Arabic, and chants such as ‘attack him’ were encouraged by the audience.”⁷⁸ Benjamin Gonen also expressed similar memories of the “mixture of languages” he heard in Haifa’s movie theaters, which further increased the awareness of the presence of people from different communities and amplified their interaction.⁷⁹ Likewise, a Jerusalemite resident described an akin atmosphere in the Zion movie theater: “Fezzes and hats sat side by side in peace and amity. The cinema became a kind of Jewish-Arab club. Within its walls, Jewish and Arab youth uttered joint cries of excitement as love scenes played on the screen.”⁸⁰ These modes of conviviality, active sociability, and liveliness were major characteristics of cinema consumption at that time. Movie theaters were inclusive spaces where people from all segments of society mingled, with seating not segregated by ethnicity, gender, age, or class. Cinemagoing became a focal point in the urban leisure pursuits of both Jews and Palestinians in Haifa as in other mixed cities. The act of watching movies together or in close proximity to one another was regarded as an ordinary and socially acceptable practice. The lower prices, the “democratic” seating, and the novelty attraction provided an intense experience that attracted the city’s largest, most heterogeneous audience possible. The choice of a specific venue was influenced by various factors, such as style, convenience, and practical considerations, like location and cost, rather than being inherently linked to political sentiments. Cinemas, much like other recreational spaces, facilitated diverse interactions that unfolded uniquely within those settings compared with other urban spheres.⁸¹

Cultivating a Distinct National Culture

As previously mentioned, the profitability of movie theaters spurred Jewish and Arab entrepreneurs and businessmen to invest in opening cinemas accessible to all segments of the city’s population. In addition to economic motives, national political considerations also played a role in the development of cultural infrastructures. Both the Zionist and Palestinian national movements viewed cultural activities as pivotal for national revival and promoted participation in endeavors seen as advancing this goal.

The Jewish Yishuv sought to foster a Hebrew national culture, recognizing it as a unifying force in its nation-building efforts.⁸² The Jewish Community Committee in Haifa, acting as the representative body of the community vis-à-vis the municipality, the British government, and national Zionist institutions, saw the support of Hebrew cultural activity as a central part of its national duty.⁸³ During the 1920s, the committee occasionally prioritized cultural budgets over essential allocations such as relief and medical aid. Notably, it augmented funding for cultural activities, earmarking a substantial portion of its budget for this purpose. For instance, in 1924, 20 percent of the committee’s total budget was dedicated to supporting cultural institutions. Beneficiaries included libraries, the cultural committee of the Haifa Workers’ Council, Beit Ha’am, Hebrew stage associations, and organizations offering theater performances, concerts, and music classes. The committee stipulated that financial assistance was contingent upon the promotion of “national culture.” This patronage persisted until 1939, when the Jewish National Committee established a nationwide culture department.⁸⁴

Palestinian society also devoted considerable efforts to nurturing a national culture. As part of the formation of Palestinian nationalism during the first half of the twentieth century, mainly after World War I,⁸⁵ Palestinian society increasingly made deliberate and active efforts to develop a distinct national culture. Similar to other parts of the Arab world, Palestine witnessed the emergence of competing or complementary perceptions of Arab nationalism during that period. These perceptions ranged from a localized form of Palestinian nationalism, which underscored the distinct identity and history of the Palestinian people, to Pan-Arab nationalism, which advocated the unity of a broader Arab identity shared by populations across the Middle East and North Africa, transcending individual national identities. The heightening national competition with the Zionist movement and the growing resistance to British colonialism, however, further enhanced the exigency for a cultural awakening and accelerated a vigorous cultural activity manifest in new forms of fine art and leisure activities that aimed to reinforce Palestinian national identity.

As scholars of nationalism have shown, national culture functions as an organizing tool for the collective identity, which evokes a sense of belonging and connection among the collective members and distinguishes them from other national communities.⁸⁶ The ideology of nationalism established the supposition that the existence of a nation—a cultural community—operates as a justification and a basis for the existence of a separate political sovereignty for this community. National movements claimed to represent nations or peoples and strove to establish the cultural uniqueness of these entities, which ostensibly validated their demand for a sovereign state.⁸⁷ Nationalism, therefore, assigned culture a key role in the formation of a distinct national community. Various components of cultural activity are harnessed to create and preserve a national culture that supposedly embodies the cultural uniqueness of the nation. Pierre Bourdieu termed this process the creation of national cultural capital, and Michel Lamont called it the institutionalized cultural repertoire, which is the process of creating a reservoir of contents, meanings, and behavior patterns that are “naturally” identified with the nation.⁸⁸ Ultimately, this process depends on various daily cultural practices and fine art forms necessary to engrain and deepen the national identity among the masses. As Tim Edensor showed in his research on national identity, popular culture, and everyday life, the cultural experience and expression of national identity do not exist in a virtuosic and spectacular way, but rather one that is represented, performed, and materialized through ordinary and everyday forms and practices, particularly in popular culture.⁸⁹

The Palestinian case clearly illustrates Edensor’s analysis. Considering the escalating national conflict during the Mandate period, Palestinian society worked consciously and tirelessly to foster its national cohesiveness and identity. It recognized the unifying force of popular culture and its effectiveness as a means to promote social unity and used it as a vital platform for forming a Palestinian culture that would invigorate the identity of the national community. Significant transformations prompted by rapid urbanization and modernization processes in those years catalyzed the emergence of diverse fine art mediums. As technological innovations permeated daily life and modern perceptions took root, new avenues for artistic expression flourished. Staged theater productions captivated middle-class audiences with narratives that reflected evolving Palestinian national values.⁹⁰ A growing body of Palestinian literature integrated themes of national resistance and portrayal of Palestinian identity and heritage that firmly consolidated national sentiment in the minds of the expanding educated circles.⁹¹ The development of new forms of music, the expansion of various song genres, and new compositions of instrumental music also reflected the shifting Palestinian social and political landscape and became a powerful tool for expressing and shaping the emerging national identity.⁹² New poems and songs helped popularize Palestinian nationalism among lower classes and peasants. Nuh Ibrahim, for instance, recited and sang his poems in the colloquial dialect to peasants working their grapevines, orchards, and wheat fields when composing music for the 1936–1939 Palestinian Revolt.⁹³ Radio shows broadcasted by the Palestine Broadcasting Service also served as an effective platform for disseminating modern social ideas and fostering national feelings on a mass scale.⁹⁴

Alongside the emergence of new forms of fine art, the Palestinian cultural revival was also manifested in the proliferation of modern urban leisure venues. Ordinary Palestinians aimed to showcase their modernity through the daily consumption of new modern leisure activities. Given their centrality in people’s everyday lives, leisure venues became politicized, serving as useful arenas for reinforcing and disseminating national identity. These sites were used to translate and distribute national ideas, converting as they were into attractive and accessible cultural products for ordinary people. In other words, Palestinian entrepreneurs and intellectuals harnessed urban leisure spaces to foster Palestinian national cultural capital. A careful examination of one struggle to establish an Arab-owned cinema in Haifa in the 1930s sheds light on how this process took shape in practice.

The Struggle to Establish an Arab-Palestinian Cinema in Haifa

Urban entertainment venues, particularly movie theaters, served as daily meeting points where Jews and Arabs regularly interacted. Both Zionist and Palestinian national movements viewed this intercommunal mingling as a challenge to their respective national projects that sought to establish distinct national identities. Such frequent unmediated encounters between ordinary Jews and Arabs were seen as blurring ethnic and cultural lines, posing a potential threat to the desirable cohesion of each national community. National factors in both societies tried to promote cultural activities aimed at bolstering intracommunal identity and distinguishing it from the surrounding environment. The emphasis on boundary marking was particularly crucial for new national collectives as delineating boundaries became more significant, charged, and central to the collective identity.⁹⁵ Accordingly, Palestinians in Haifa made attempts to establish cultural institutions that would serve this purpose. As such, the establishment of Arab-owned cinemas located in an Arab neighborhood, featuring films in the Arabic language and catering to the Arab public was perceived as an essential means of fortifying Palestinian national culture. It was also meant to counter the influence of the Zionist movement and its burgeoning cultural institutions in the city. As symbols of progress and cosmopolitanism and due to their innovative technological nature, movie theaters signified the society’s cultural development and modernity, and contributed to the image of the society as dynamic and vibrant.⁹⁶ These physical places played a crucial role in the nation-building process by providing spaces for shared cultural experiences, fostering social cohesion and public discourse, and promoting inclusivity within the budding national collective.⁹⁷ An article published on the front page of Al Difa’ titled “The Cinema Company and the Need of the Nation,” aimed to illuminate to its readers the advantages of cinema in the national struggle:

Additional motivation for constructing a new and opulent movie theater stemmed from the role of such venues as cultural centers offering diverse activities. Beyond screening films, the establishment of a cinema was intended to serve as a local cultural hub, fostering the development of an Arab-Palestinian cultural repertoire. The expanding Palestinian middle class, which was at the forefront of leading the national project, increasingly acknowledged the significance of cinemas in the national struggle. This was manifested, inter alia, in the flourishing of cooperative companies that established such venues during the 1930s and 1940s in cities like Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.⁹⁹ The cooperatives typically comprised small- and medium-sized business owners with limited capital who pooled resources to share the high construction expenses and provided the Palestinian public with the opportunity to purchase shares.¹⁰⁰ In Nablus, for instance, a group of business owners established Cinema Granada in 1944 with an initial investment of 30,000 LP. Remarkably, all the company’s shares were sold during the launch meeting.¹⁰¹

In the same year, a similar cooperative of entrepreneurs and businessmen established a cinema company in Haifa named Al Kawkab (The Star). Its objective was to build a cinema in a new structure that would be “situated in an area that is distinctly Arab,”¹⁰² referring to the predominantly Arab-populated lower city. At that time, Arab-owned cinemas in the city were typically opened in smaller existing venues, which were deemed less appealing to young Arabs enthralled by the state-of-the-art cinemas introduced by Jewish newcomers. During their frequent visits, the first were exposed to news broadcasts and mini-documentaries promoting the Zionist movement. Short newsreels known as “Carmel Diaries” produced with the support of the Zionist national institutions were regularly shown before the main feature films. These newsreels were designed to propagate Zionist events, highlight the accomplishments of the Jewish Yishuv, showcase aliyot, and positively depict the development of new Jewish settlements.¹⁰³ In an era when movie theaters were full to capacity, these newsreels were a powerful tool for constructing and disseminating Zionist narratives of the “New Jew” and sabras as modern and progressive, juxtaposing it with a portrayal of the local Arab population as primitive, backward, and traditional.¹⁰⁴ Zionist national institutions demanded that Jewish cinema owners support the national cause by purchasing and screening these newsreels. At the end of the 1930s, cinema owners across the country ceased broadcasting them due to economic reasons, but Haifa was the only city where Jewish-owned cinema owners persisted in airing them, underscoring their dedication to the Zionist national cause.¹⁰⁵

To counter the potential impact of Zionist propaganda on the local Palestinian public, Al Kawkab aimed to attract it to a newly built luxurious cinema that would not only compete with the city’s Jewish-owned cinemas but also serve as a local Palestinian cultural hub that would offer a verity of cultural activities. Immediately upon its foundation, the company’s management hired an architect to plan and design the structure. The urban planning committee approved the plan, describing it as “outstanding architecture.” However, the company was unable to commence the construction as the Mandate government’s Department of Heavy Industries refused to release the construction materials due to a severe shortage of resources during the war against Nazi Germany. This refusal aligned with the wartime regulations established in Palestine by Britain’s War Office during World War II. These regulations included the appointment in May 1942 of a controller of heavy industries. Whose role was “to secure expenditure of shipping space, supplies of commodities required for defense and the efficient prosecution of the war, and for maintaining services essential to the life of the civil population, and to ensure that such supplies were distributed to the best advantage and at fair and reasonable prices.”¹⁰⁶ Construction materials imported to Palestine during the war were used to build houses for the increasingly expanding population, while the construction of other structures was utterly prohibited.¹⁰⁷ The company’s management made several appeals to the governor of the Haifa district, seeking assistance in overturning the decision of the controller, but to no avail. The chairman of the company, lawyer Hanna Asfour, wrote to the chief secretary of the Mandate government, John Valentine Wistar Shaw, elucidating the pressing reasons for establishing an Arab cinema in Haifa:

After receiving the letter, the chief secretary reached out to the controller of heavy industries, urging a reconsideration of the materials’ release and drawing his attention to the paragraph in which Asfour underscored the prevailing sentiment among the Arabs concerning the government’s perceived disregard for Arab cultural initiatives. The controller, however, maintained his refusal, believing that constructing a cinema during the war would violate wartime regulations. The company’s management did not despair and explored alternative avenues to import the construction materials privately. Concurrently, they continued operating through the usual channels with other government units.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian press, assuming a pivotal role in disseminating national consciousness, closely and sympathetically covered the company’s struggle. Prominent daily newspapers like El Carmel, Filastin, and Al Difa’ published regular reports, encouraging the Palestinian public to support the initiative and purchase shares.¹⁰⁹Filastin, for instance, published a letter from one of its readers reprimanding Arab youths who spent their time in Jewish cinemas, highlighting the inadvertent assistance to the Zionist cause: “Come, my brother, to the city of Haifa, which does not have a single Arab cinema, and see the influx of our youth to the Jewish cinemas, so you will learn how the Jews serve their cause by screening Arab films in their cinemas.” He noted that part of the profits of these cinemas go to the Jewish National Fund and stressed that “the time has come for the youth to wake up and stop visiting these places.”¹¹⁰ Buoyed by the public momentum surrounding the affair, the Arab Higher Committee also intervened, attempting to exert pressure on the controller. In its letter to the latter, the Arab Higher Committee underscored the cinema’s significance amid competition with the Jewish community:

It appears that the local struggle to construct the movie theater gained attention and legitimacy even during a time of global war by highlighting its significance to the Palestinian national cause. This stood out in one of Asfour’s numerous letters to the Mandate government’s chief secretary, one of which he concluded with the following words:

The persistent pressure exerted by Palestinian figures eventually persuaded various officials in the Haifa municipal office, as well as the district governor, of the urgency of the matter. The latter even tried himself to urge the controller of heavy industries to release the construction materials, asserting that “the large Arab population is forced to visit the Jewish cinemas, where they do not show films in Arabic.”¹¹³ These claims about Jewish cinemas not screening films in Arabic are not fully accurate. In at least one venue, Ein Dor cinema in the lower city, Arabic films were regularly screened until 1947, and Palestinians visited the place frequently.¹¹⁴ Oral testimonies also indicate that Palestinians continued to visit this cinema until the outbreak of the 1948 war.¹¹⁵ In fact, despite the escalation of national tensions in the second-half of the 1940s, movie theaters in Haifa, as in other cities in the country, continued to attract people from both communities.¹¹⁶ There was, apparently, a discrepancy between the perceived national urgency that various parties attached to the necessity of an Arab cinema and the more dynamic and complex urban reality that involved ordinary Arabs spending time regularly in Jewish movie theaters. It was precisely this intermingling that was perceived as undermining the Palestinian national identity, prompting a sense of pressure to construct a lavish cinema as an alternative for the city’s Palestinian community. Filastin tended to mirror these concerns mainly in light of the intercommunal interactions of young men and women in these places:

Al Kawkab, perhaps, intentionally painted a gloomy picture of the Arab cinema scene in Haifa to put pressure on and persuade the government to release the needed construction materials. In the end, the company’s management directly appealed to the minister of colonies in London, George Henry Hall, demanding his intervention. In its appeal, it emphasized, “For us, this initiative is not only of commercial importance but even more crucial for our national cause.”¹¹⁸ It is clear that, from the company’s point of view, the awaited cinema had an important role in promoting Palestinian nationalism, particularly in light of the rising conflict. The minister of colonies was eventually convinced of the initiative’s importance and ordered the controller in Palestine to release the construction materials. Al Kawkab was finally able to commence the cinema’s construction.¹¹⁹ At this point, though, two Arab-owned cinemas, Al Amin and El Carmel, had already opened in existing buildings, and shortly thereafter, another summer cinema was inaugurated on Iraq Street.¹²⁰ Nevertheless, the company initiated the construction works, which lasted about a year and a half. Shortly after the opening of the long-awaited cinema, though, the 1948 war broke out, bringing this project to an end.

Conclusion

This article aimed to shed light on the dialectical urban reality that characterized Haifa during the Mandate period. As the national struggle intensified, each collective actively endeavored to foster a distinct culture that became increasingly identified with each respective nation. As demonstrated, different facets of Palestinian society in the city, mostly from the middle class, worked diligently to forge a Palestinian national culture, appropriating leisure venues to enhance national sentiment. The effort to establish a new Arab-owned movie theater underscored the agency of Palestinian entrepreneurs in cultivating cultural capital, vital for the success of the national struggle. It also emphasizes how ordinary Palestinians intertwined their daily leisure patterns with their engagement in the national project.

Despite ongoing processes of national differentiation, intercommunal interactions, encounters, and cooperation persisted. Individuals from the Palestinian community continued visiting Jewish-owned movie theaters and vice versa. These intercommunal meetings were occasionally born out of a deliberate disregard for national divisions or a lack of awareness of their existence. At times, they arose from a conscious decision regarding where and with whom to spend leisure time. Overall, the routine experiences in shared urban spaces frequently took precedence over allegiance to the national cause, affording ordinary people the opportunity to make personal choices that diverged from the totality of national ideologies, even amid an emerging national confrontation. It is safe to say that many of those actively involved in the Palestinian national movement who harbored reservations about the Zionist enterprise, frequented Jewish-owned cinemas and spent their free time along with members of the Jewish community. This situation reflects the multidimensional reality of Mandatory Haifa as a binational city. The examination of the cinema culture reveals how the urban setting fostered patterns of interaction and shared living amid national conflict. Daily routines and the shared urban environment challenged national boundaries and blurred political rivalries. Although national ideology dominated Jewish and Palestinian public discourses, individuals did not always strictly adhere to them in their everyday choices. Ordinary Jews and Arabs exercised agency in creating reciprocal life patterns that transcended binary political relations. In this regard, the historical case of Mandatory Haifa illuminates the possibility of an alternative relationship between Arabs and Jews in the present and in the future. The historical academic corpus, which has mostly underscored the segregation and violence between the two communities in the past, seems to parallel the present Israeli reality marked by a division between Jews and Arabs, racism, hostility, and mutual apprehension. The common narrative suggests that this has been a linear and fixed dynamic that inevitably leads us to the same predetermined destiny. However, examining historical moments in which intercommunalism and binationalism were the lived experience of both Jews and Arabs provides an opportunity to reframe such conventional suppositions. It also highlights the importance of daily interactions between the two communities in present-day Haifa and their potential to develop alternative political futures. This study on shared leisure culture breaks down the rigid uniformity of the “canonical” historical knowledge about the relations between Jews and Arabs, opening a window to alternatives that were possible at different moments in history. It illuminates that ordinary people living in mixed cities, who may not necessarily be part of decision-making circles, have the capacity and agency to shape “from below” a possibility of shared existence between Arabs and Jews and that violence and animosity are not inevitable.

Notes