May 17, 2012
The history of the city of Haifa before 1948 is the subject of a third book published by a loose research cooperative of Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian historians and social scientists. This cooperative met for the first time under the auspices of the Institute for Historial Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague supported by The Hamburg Institute for Social Research.
The volume was presented to the public on Friday the 11th of May in the Al-Midan Theatre in Haifa.
The single contributions deal with daily life of one of the urban centers of the rapidly modernizing Palestine under the British Mandate. The authors describe spaces: the story of two houses (Weiss & Yazbak, A Tal of Two Houses): the home of the family Shiblak and that of Hanna Swidan, luxurious residences, testimonies of a flourishing culture in the city. It is about public spaces: new leisure activities like football and swimming and new freedoms for the young women not only of the Arab and Jewish community, but also in the German Templar families (Manar Hassan & Ami Ayalon, Arabs and Jews, Leisure and Gender in Haifa’s Public Spaces). Also places of memory and renewal are described, like Café Fattush and stories that demonstrate power (Saman Natour & Avner Giladi, „Eraser and „Anti-Eraser“). In terms of social history the book talks about production of commodities of daily life, like oil and soap (Mustafa Abbasi & David de Vries, Commodities and Power: Edible Oil and Soap).
The cooperative has been working on the project for several years, founded and supported by the IJHR. The goal was, not to find one truth but recognition of individual experiences and interpretations. It is about the meaning for those who want to tell their stories, about the function of memory in the processes of the collective memory of a group, of a nation. It made sense that the authors did not want to exceed themselves, because many of them brought their own stories: Descendents of Jewish Israelis, for whom the newly establishes Israel was a safe haven, the Palestinian, whose family was spread all over the world due to the expulsion and which lost not only their property but also their status.
In a first step this book is about recognition. But also a very coherent parallel story was created: The history of a multi-ethnic coexistence between Palestinian merchants, who recognized the advancement of time, Jewish architects, who build their beautiful houses, German Templar families with their knowledge of craftsmanship that stayed German nationalists. The flourishing and modern Haifa, influenced by Arabic culture was next to Jaffa and Jerusalem one of the three centers of the former Palestine until Mai of 1948. Its new inhabitants, mostly Jewish refugees from Europe were usually poor and had to build a new existence. The luxurious houses were used as emergency accommodations and degenerated.
The history before 1948 was oppressed, forgotten and finally denied. It is not a part of the school curricula in Israeli schools or part of the Israeli common memory. It was written, this is due to the credit of this group of researchers. The listeners of the presentation, which was well attended by 150 to 200 people, were a very attentive audience. They wanted to hear the story, which is not representative for the Israeli public. But now it is time to tell the story.
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