Once upon a Time Jews and Arabs Were Partners in the Land

Once upon a Time Jews and Arabs Were Partners in the Land Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron by Menachem Klein. London Hurst, 2014, 290 pp.

This is the story of three cities where what is unimaginable today was normal not so long ago: Jews and Arabs lived side by side in peace and harmony. Not always, butfor most of the time.

The story begins toward the end of the 19th century. Menachem Klein, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, explains that "a local Palestinian identity began to form, an identity in which Jews and Arabs were partners". He terms it a "Jewish-Arab identity" and quotes copiously from personal testimonies to illustrate how people lived together.

In Jerusalem, Jews were in the majority at the end of the century but Arabs owned most of the housing. Jews rented their homes from Arabs and lived among them. Muslim women respected Jewish religious customs and, for example, drew water from communal courtyard wells before the Sabbath so as not to dirty the yard which had been cleaned by their Jewish neighbors.

During the Ottoman era, Islamic law decreed that Jews were of inferior status. Extra taxes were imposed on them and they were denied legal equality. But, says Klein, the official status did not carry over into everyday existence, where intimate relations were the norm, even though they were not as strong among youth as between adults.