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Abstract
This article examines the development of the relations between Jews and Arabs in Haifa during the British Mandate period from the perspective of the Sephardi and Oriental Jews (Mizrahim). It focuses on the two Sephardi neighborhoods in Haifa: Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud. The article examines the character of the shared Jewish-Arab space that existed in both these mixed neighborhoods, which were inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. The character of this spatial system was exposed during the course of a local political struggle to secure representation for the Sephardi and Oriental Jews and to improve their social condition, as well as during periods of security tension. The article also examines the attitude of the Sephardi leadership toward the ‘Arab question’, and discusses the manner in which everyday life in Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud manifested the existence of an Arab-Jewish identity during the Mandate period.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 List of street names from 1942 through 1947, Haifa Municipal Archives (hereafter HMA) File 376/20.
2 Reuven Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism: A Clash of Identities in the Literature of Iraqi Jews (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2005), pp.415–422 (Hebrew).
3 The term Sephardim refers to the ancestors of Jews who were expelled from Spain and to Ladino-speakers. The term Oriental Jews refers to Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who spoke Arabic, Farsi, and Aramaic, as well as the Yemenite Jews, who are conventionally considered a separate category due to their unique cultural and political identity.
4 See, for example, Yosef Meyichas, ‘Proverbs from the Heritage of the Arabs’, Doar Hayom, 13 September 1935.
5 See for example, Jacob Norris, Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); May Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation of a Palestinian Arab Society 1918-1939 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995); Anat Kidron, Between Nationality and Locality: The Jewish Community in Haifa during the British Mandate (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2012) (Hebrew).
6 Regarding the historiography of Haifa during the Mandate period, see Yossi Ben-Artzi, The Creation of the Carmel as a Segregation Jewish Residential Space in Haifa, 1918-1948 (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2004) (Hebrew); on the New Historiography of Arab-Jewish Relations in Mandate Palestine, see Menachem Klein, ‘The Twenty First Century New Critical Historians’, Israel Studies Review Vol. 33/2 (2017), pp.146–163.
7 See for example, Tamir Goren, Cooperation in the Shadow of Confrontation: Arabs and Jews in Local Government in Haifa during the British Mandate (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2008), pp.212–219 (Hebrew); Deborah Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000); Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1996).
8 See for example, Daphna Sharfman and Eli Nachmias (eds), Tea on the Casino’s Balcony: Coexistence in Haifa during the British Mandate, 1920-1948 (Haifa: Misphaton, 2006) (Hebrew); Mahmoud Yazbak and Yfaat Weiss, Haifa Before and After 1948: Narratives of A Mixed City (Dordrecht: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation and Republic of Letters Publishing, 2011).
9 See Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2016).
10 There has been very little discussion in historical research concerning Harat al-Yahud, and even less concerning Ard al-Yahud. See, for example, Mahmoud Yazbak, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914: A Muslim Town in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p.201; Yossi Ben-Artzi, ‘Ard al-Yahud’, in Eli Shiller and Yossi Ben-Artzi (eds), Haifa and its Sites (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1985), pp.206–207 (Hebrew); Tamir Goren, The Fall of Arab Haifa in 1948 (Sede Boqer: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2006), pp.16–17 (Hebrew); Reuven Gafni, ‘Jews, Arabs, and Jews again in the Shama’a Neighborhood in Jerusalem, 1900-1970’, Cathedra Vol. 161 (2017), pp.112–115 (Hebrew); Alex Carmel, The History of Haifa under Turkish Rule (Haifa: Pardes, 2002), pp.140–149 ( Hebrew).
11 On the Dual Society thesis, see Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine under the Mandate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp.16–37. On Haifa as a dual city, see Ben-Artzi, The Creation of the Carmel; Anat Kidron, ‘Separatism, Coexistence and the Landscape: Jews and Palestinians-Arabs in Mandatory Haifa’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 52/1 (2016), pp.79–101. Goren, Cooperation in the Shadow of Confrontation, pp.11–12; Yosef Vashitz, ‘Social Changes in the Arab Community in Haifa during the British Mandate Period’ (Doctoral Thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), pp.8–10 (Hebrew).
12 Regarding the points of encounter between Jews and Arabs in the mixed cities, see, for example, Daniel Monterescu and Dan Rabinowitz (eds), Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics , Gender Relations and Cultural Encounters in Palestinian -Israeli Towns (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), pp.1–32; Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors, pp.121–149; Nachum Karlinsky, ‘Rejecting the Term Mixed Cities’, in Mustafa Kabha (ed.), The Wednesday Divan: Selected Issues in the History of the Modern Middle East, Divan series of the Institute for the Study of the Relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims (forthcoming) (Hebrew). Regarding the public domain in Haifa as an arena for Jewish-Arab encounters, see Manar Hasan and Ami Ayalon, ‘Arabs and Jews, Leisure and Gender in Haifa’s Public Spaces’, in Mahmoud Yazbak and Yfaat Weiss (eds), Haifa Before and After 1948: Narratives of A Mixed City (Dordrecht and The Hague, The Netherlands: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation and Republic of Letters Publishing, 2011), pp.69–98.
13 Regarding the existence of a hybrid Arab-Jewish identity during the Mandate period, see Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors; Tammy Razi, ‘Jewish-Arab Women? Ethnicity, Nationality and Gender in Mandate Tel Aviv’, Theory and Criticism Vol. 38/39 (2011), pp.137–160 (Hebrew); Deborah Bernstein, Women on the Margins: Gender and Nationalism in Mandate Tel Aviv (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2008) (Hebrew); Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
14 Albert Memmi, Jews and Arabs (Chicago: J.P. O’Hara 1975), p.20. For further discussion of the definition of the ‘Arab-Jew’ during the Mandate period, see Hillel Cohen, ‘The Life and Death of the Arab-Jew: Eretz Israel-Palestine and Beyond’ in Ofer Shiff (ed.), Iyunim Bitkumat Israel, Thematic Series, Volume 9, Homelands in Exile (Sede Boqer: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2015), pp.171–200 (Hebrew); Menachem Klein, ‘Arab-Jew in Palestine’, Israel Studies Vol. 9/3 (2014), pp.134–153; Lital Levy, ‘The Arab Jew Debates: Media, Culture, Politics, History’, Journal of Levantine Studies Vol. 7/1 (2017), pp.79–103.
15 Abraham Haim, Particularity and Integration: The Sephardi Leadership in Jerusalem under British Rule (1917-1948) (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2000), pp.174–178 (Hebrew).
16 Doar Hayom, 4 November 1919; Committee of the Sephardi Union in Haifa, Review and Report on Activities, November 1922 through May 1923, HMA 209/15.
17 Declaration for the Registration of an Association: Union of Sephardi Jews in Haifa, Doar Hayom, 30 December 1935.
18 Hanna Herzog, Political Ethnicity – The Image and Reality (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1986) (Hebrew); Shlomo Alboher, Identification, Adaptation and Reservation: The Sephardi Jews in Eretz Israel and the Zionist Movement during the National Home 1918-1948 (Jerusalem: Publishing House of the World Zionist Organization, 2002) (Hebrew).
19 Estimate of the Jewish Community Committee of Haifa, HMA 90/8. The committee estimated that the total population of the city at the time was 99,000, compared to 24,634 residents recorded in the British census of 1922. See also the estimate of Avraham Kalfon, Meeting of the Council of the Sephardi Community, 5 May 1938, Archive of the Council of the Sephardi Community of Haifa, preserved in HMA (hereinafter: HMA, CSC Files).
20 Report of the Haifa Jewish Community Committee, September 1918 through January 1919, HMA 208/3; Haim Emanuel Kalfon, Review of the Sephardi Jewish Community in Haifa, 16 December 1987, HMA, CSC Files.
21 Kidron, Between Nationality and Locality.
22 Committee of the Union of Sephardi Jews in Haifa, Review and Report on Activities, November 1922 through May 1923, HMA 209/15; Committee to Clarify the Disputes between the Jewish Community Committee and the Union of Sephardi Jews in Haifa, 6 February 1923, HMA 209/15.
23 Proposed Constitution for the Committee of the Community of Sephardi Jews in Haifa, August 1928, HMA 230/18.
24 Kidron, Between Nationality and Locality, pp.185–187; ‘Foreigners Rule over Us’, Doar Hayom, 15 April 1924.
25 ‘Haifa’, Doar Hayom, 2 May 1929.
26 Jewish Community Committee to National Committee, 7 May 1929, HMA 213/1.
27 Agreement between the Jewish Community Committee and the Executive of the National Council, 7 May 1929, HMA 213/1.
28 ‘Shlomo Ben David Buzaglo’, Hed Hamizrach, 26 February 1943; From Yaacov Ben David Matalon, ‘Shlomo Buzaglo’, Haboker, 21 April 1941; ‘The Genius from Haifa: In Memory of Shlomo Buzaglo’, Haboker, 2 May 1941
29 Aryeh Turgeman, ‘The Sephardim and the Elections to the Haifa Community’, Hed Hamizrach, 22 June 1942.
30 From Haifa District Governor to Alfred Levy, Moshe Souissa, Yosef Ben Tzur, Moshe Cohen and Victor Chetrit, 27 July 1937, HMA 246/11.
31 To the Hebrew Public in Haifa, from the Executive of the National Council, 16 March 1938, HMA 246/11.
32 ‘Against the Destructive Group of Sephardim in Haifa’, Davar, 7 April 1938. See also: From the Haifa Sephardi Community Committee, Statement, 16 March 1938, HMA 246/11.
33 Union of Sephardi Jews in Haifa, To the Hebrew Public in Haifa, Doar Hayom, 13 December 1922.
34 From the Temporary Committee of the Congregation of Sephardim, For the Pure Truth, HMA 230/11.
35 See Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors, pp.19–28.
36 Statement by the Committee of the Congregation of Sephardim, 11 September 1937, HMA 246/11.
37 See, for example, the comments of Alfred Levy, Moshe Souissa and Moshe Cohen at a meeting of the Committee of the Congregation of Sephardim with the Council of Sephardi Community, 9 September 1937, and 1 December 1937. HMA, CSC Files.
38 From the Haifa Jewish Community Committee, Unkosher Butchers, July 1939, HMA 1003/5.
39 Meetings of the Council of the Sephardi Community in Haifa, 13, 21 and 27 November 1939, HMA, CSC Files.
40 ‘The Question of Education in the Mixed Cities’, Hed Hamizrach, 7 August 1943.
41 Rachel Cohen, Social Worker for the Haifa Community, Lecture at a Meeting of the Haifa Jewish Community Committee, 9 April 1946, HMA 236/4.
42 Tammy Razi, Forsaken Children: The Backyard of Mandate Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2009) (Hebrew).
43 From Recha Freier, Memorandum, 17 March 1943, HMA 236/2.
44 From the Haifa Jewish Community Committee to the Education Department of the National Council, Alien Education, 16 July 1933, HMA 210/5.
45 Broadsheet of the District Committee for the Imposition of Hebrew and the Haifa Jewish Community Committee, 8 August 1943, HMA 242/9. See also Liora Halperin, ‘The Battle over Jewish Students in the Christian Missionary Schools of Mandate Palestine’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 50/5 (2014), pp.737–754.
46 From the Haifa Jewish Community Committee to the Director of the Education System of Knesset Yisrael, 2 February 1933, HMA 210/5.
47 From the Parents of Students at the Sephardi Talmud Torah on Hayehudim Street, 14 February 1933, HMA 240/1; From the Parents of Students at the Talmud Torah of the Congregation of Sephardim to the National Council, 1 March 1933, HMA 240/1.
48 Meeting of the Committee of the Congregation of Sephardim in Haifa, 1 December 1937, HMA, CSC Files.
49 Shmuel Ben-Shabat, ‘The Arab-Hebrew Question in the Land of Israel’, Doar Hayom, 21 October 1932.
50 Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp.21–34; Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors, p.57.
51 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, Turn Your Face, Rina Eyal (Ben-Shabat) (ed.) (Tel-Aviv: Debbi Ofakim Publishing, 2014), pp.12–14 (Hebrew).
52 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, ‘The Hebrew-Arab Question in the Land of Israel’, Doar Hayom, 21 October 1932.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 For further discussion, see Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors, pp.86–120; Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (eds), Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writing on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893-1958 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013).
56 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, ‘The Hebrew and Arabic Language’, Haaretz, 6 and 25 December 1927 and 15 January, 13 February, 28 March and 6 May 1928.
57 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, ‘The History of the Semitic Languages’, Haaretz, 20 November, 11 and 18 December 1931 and 15 January 1932.
58 Ben-Shabat, ‘The Hebrew and Arabic Language’.
59 Ben-Shabat, ‘The Hebrew-Arab Question in the Land of Israel’.
60 Ibid.
61 For further details see Kidron, Between Nationality and Locality, pp.157–158.
62 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, ‘A Question and Its Solution’, Doar Hayom, 14 August 1921; my thanks to Prof. Hedva Ben-Yisrael for the information about the newspaper Hashofar.
63 Shamuel Ben-Shabat, ‘Toward the Solution: In Light of the Discussion on the Dominion’, Hed Hamizrach, 2 February 1945.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.; Eliyahu Elyashar, ‘The Triple Thread’, Hed Hamizrach, 1 December 1944. For further discussion of this proposal, see Arie Dubnov, ‘Jewish Nationalism in the Wake of World War 1: A State-in-the-Making or the Empire Strikes Back?’, Israel Vol. 24 (2016), pp.5–36 (Hebrew).
67 Yuval Evri, ‘The Multiple Faces of Sephardiut at the Turn of the 20th Century’ (PhD Dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2013) (Hebrew), pp.134–135; see also Malka Katz, Sephardim and Oriental Jews in the Religious National Movements (PhD dissertation, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007), p.80
68 Avraham Kalfon, ‘My City Haifa’, in Yosef Nedava (ed.) Haifa, Oliphant, and the Zionist Vision (Haifa: The University of Haifa), p.59 (Hebrew).
69 Ibid., p.62.
70 See Menachem Klein, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron (London: Hurst, 2014).
71 Shabtai Levy, ‘From My Memoirs’, in Yosef Nedava (ed.), Haifa, Oliphant, and the Zionist Vision, p.83.
72 Miriam Busquela Gottman, Two Sofas (Tel Aviv: Golan, 1998), pp.166–172 (Hebrew).
73 Yazbak, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, p.201; Ben-Artzi, ‘Ard al-Yahud’, pp.206–207.
74 On the Kurdish Jews in Ard al-Yahud, see Ephraim Balila, ‘My Father, Eliyahu Balila and the Settlement of the Kurdish Jews in Haifa and Elròi', Hithadshut: A Journal of the Kurdish Jews in Israel Vol. 5 (1985), pp.87–89 (Hebrew).
75 See for example: ‘When Will the Bnei Yehuda Neighborhood be Redeemed’, Davar, 4 December 1938; Moshe Rabi, ‘Rabbi Eliahu Reine’, Hed Hamizrach, 25 February 1944.
76 Salim (Shalom) Aldaudi, Wandering through the Maze of Life: Memories, preface by Yisrael Ben-Dor, ed. by Yaffa Sakali (Haifa: Self-Publication, 2011) (Hebrew).
77 From the Jewish Community Committee to the District Governor, 28 September 1920, HMA 222/6.
78 Mendel Singer, With the First Victim of the 1936 Events in Haifa (Haifa: Self-Publication, 1967 (Hebrew).
79 Moshe Elzam, Time Slipped between Our Hands (Azor: Tzameret, 2016) (Hebrew).
80 Gottman, Two Sofas.
81 Elzam, Time Slipped.
82 From the Haifa Refugees Assistance Committee to the Director of the Government Health Department, 20 September 1929, Archive of Haifa Historical Society, Block 3, File 29.
83 Zadok Eshel, The Haganah Battles in Haifa (Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1978), p.83 (Hebrew).
84 From the Secretary of the Haifa Jewish Community Committee, 12 September 1929, HMA 213/10. See also: Kalfon, ‘My City Haifa’, p.62.
85 Salim Aldaudi, Wandering through the Maze of Life, p.432. See also the memoirs of Miriam Ben-Dor, From all the Beginning: Chapters of Memories (Haifa: Self-Publication, 2011), p.6 (Hebrew). See also Yisrael Ben-Dor, ‘The Aldaudi Family and the “Events” in Haifa’, Sharsheret Hadorot Vol. 27 (April 2015), pp.22–31. I would also like to note here my thanks to Dr. Ben-Dor for allowing me to review his family’s memoirs.
86 Testimonies of Damage to Jewish Property and Life during the 1929 Events, HMA 234/13.
87 For further discussion, see Anat Kidron, ‘The Impact of the Outcomes of the 1929 Riots on Haifa and on Jaffa/Tel Aviv: A Comparative Perspective’, Israel Vol. 22 (2014), pp.73–109 (Hebrew).
88 Jewish Community Committee to the National Council, 5 January 1930, HMA 234/23.
89 Ibid.
90 Hillel Cohen, 1929: Year Zero of the Jewish-Arab Conflict (Jerusalem: Keter, 2013), pp.88–96 (Hebrew).
91 Yitzhak Ben-Dor, ‘Impressions from Haifa’, Davar, 29 July 1939.
92 Meetings of the Council of the Sephardi Community in Haifa, 10 January, 21 February, and 20 May 1938, HMA, CSC Files.
93 ‘When Will the Bnei Yehuda Neighborhood be Redeemed’.
94 The built-up area of the neighborhood included 49 plots with an area of 19,400 square meters under Jewish ownership and 65 plots totaling 22,545 square meters owned by Arabs. Census of Buildings in Ard al-Yahud, 10 March 1940, HMA 245/9.
95 Moshe Rabi, ‘In Ard al-Yahud in Haifa’, Hed Hamizrach, 25 February 1945.
96 From the Refugees Bureau of the Situation Committee to Haifa Jewish Community Committee, 22 July 1948, HMA 279/1; Goren, Cooperation in the Shadow, pp. 57–60.
97 Refugees Bureau of the Situation Committee to Haifa Jewish Community Committee, 22 July 1948.
98 On the Jewish refugees in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, see for example Moshe Naor, Social Mobilization in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp.148–174.
99 Aryeh Nesher, ‘The Situation of the Refugees in Haifa Demands a Solution’, Haaretz, 9 January 1948.
100 Goren, Haifa in 1948, p.191.
101 ‘On the Situation in Haifa’, Kol Ha’am, 14 December 1947.
102 Menachem Klein, ‘Arab Jew in Palestine’, Israel Studies Vol. 19/3 (2014), p.135.
103 Lital Levy, ‘Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq’, Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 98/4 (2008), p.458.
104 Yehudit Hendel, Street of Steps (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1955 (Hebrew); ‘A Story of a Poor Suburb’, Davar, 2 July 1954.