Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

by Amy Dockser Marcus

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the genesis of one of the greatest political struggles of our time

Searching for the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, historians for years focused on the British Mandate period (1920–1948). Amy Dockser Marcus, however, demonstrates that the bloody struggle for power actually started much earlier, when Jerusalem was still part of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism laid the groundwork for the battles that would continue to rage nearly a century later.

Nineteen thirteen was the crucial year for these conflicts—the year that the Palestinians held the First Arab Congress and the first time that secret peace talks were held between Zionists and Palestinians. World War I, however, interrupted these peace efforts.

Dockser Marcus traces these dramatic times through the lives of a handful of the city’s leading citizens as they struggle to survive. A current events must read in our ongoing efforts to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Israel, Middle East, Politics, 20th Century, High School

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Bagus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partly a travelogue, partly a history book, Jerusalem 1913 attempts to retrace the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict through the lens of Amy Dockser Marcus as she visited Jerusalem between 2004 and 2006. She tried to challenge the common notion about the origins of the conflict that traces it back to the period of the British Mandate in Palestine between 1920 and 1948. Instead she digs more into the period of Ottoman rule in Palestine, when the two sides had lived in relative peace for over four hundred years. Her research focuses on one year in history when the Ottoman’s rule grew weakened following its loss of several European provinces after the Balkan Wars, as the turning point when significant decisions could be made by all parties in history: 1913.

She said of it, “Every conflict had a turning point, a moment when things could have gone a little differently, when choices were made or decisions postponed, and from this turning point emerged a cascade of consequences, a narrowing of further options, and the path that had led us to today.” Among other cities in Ottoman’s Palestine, Jerusalem was (and still is) unique in its position as a holy site for three major religions in the region: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. For centuries, the Arabs and the Jews lived side by side in peaceful co-existence. However, the tide of nationalist movement that had sprung up in Europe by early twentieth century also reached Palestine, as the Arabs had gone resentful to Ottoman’s dominance and the Jews sought to create a Jewish land.

The point of no return was the Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1913, during which Arthur Ruppin stated, “the Jews should attempt to become the majority in Palestine.” Though Ruppin would change his opinion in the later years of his life, it was the point of no return. The Congress also happened to screen the film of Noah Sokolovsky entitled The Life of the Jews in Palestine which portrays Jewish religious and historical attachment to the land, including footage of many holy sites. The growing anti-Semitism in Europe, particularly after the Dreyfus Affair, also convinced the Jewish movement at that time that the only solution to anti-Semitism was the creation of a place where Jews could be the majority and rule their own nation. The question of its whereabouts was clear by that year: Palestine.

Despite its emphasis on the year 1913 as the turning point in history for the rise of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, the author also presents us with some historical events that happened in the years 1898, 1908, and 1914. Mostly, the explanations are descriptive, with less analysis or interpretation, leaving us the readers to interpret by ourselves how these events shape the future conflict. The author highlights a few major characters in the story. In 1898, Theodor Herzl just recently published his booklet The Jewish State which called for a Jewish homeland. The original booklet did not mention anything about Palestine being the site of the future Jewish State, yet the first Zionist Congress of that year quickly rallied the idea. For 10 years, Ruhi Khalidi and Albert Antebi were two figures from both sides who played roles as some kind of go-between for the Arabs and the Jews in Jerusalem. Yet the political instability that followed the First World War quickly deteriorated the situation.

The idea of partition to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab parts, that was proposed by the British during the period of the British Mandate, was something that the author proposes once again. Yet the idea seems to be an open question as it doesn’t seem acceptable to both sides, at least as of now. But I welcome the novel idea that it proposes on the need to view how the Arabs and the Jews could live in relative peace during the Ottoman era. Could it be that peace necessitates the area to be under the governance of foreign authorities, viz. the Ottoman and the British? And moreover, the balanced view of this book that paints the conflict from both Arab and Israeli sides is something to be commended as well. Yet the book is somehow incomplete in its assessment of the conflict, but I think it'd make a nice introduction for those who would like to know more about the nature of the conflict.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until 1919, Israel-Palestine was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Jerusalem was a multicultural city where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived, for the last time, in neighborliness and harmony. This short book, by an award-winning journalist, paints an unfamiliar picture of Jewish-Arab cooperation and culture in pre-Mandate Palestine. We get a glimpse of pre-Zionist Jewish communities in Israel, the worldly and educated Palestinian elite, and the growing tensions with the Zionist movement, purchasing and settling the land. Palestinian-Arab nationalism emerges in part due to the Ottomans’ imposition of the Turkish language and ethnic (not religious) competition with Jews. This is a sad story, suggesting a multicultural Palestine that could have been. It also tempers two pernicious political claims: that Zionism was a crude colonial-settler movement imposed by the West on an innocent and thoroughly Arab Palestine, and that there was no robust Arab history and presence in Jerusalem.

[Jack Trehy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
While this is a good book I have to admit that is was not the best for keeping my interest throughout. Some parts are extremely solid and entertaining, while giving me a better understanding of the topic at hand. While other parts of the book just lost my attention. Espially as I came to the end but make no mistake. The book, espially Markus's own writing and description is good.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great description of Palestine (before statehood) under Ottoman rule, the Zionist movement, and the beginning of the vicious cycle of violence between Jewish and Arab residents of the region. A combination of idealism and isolationism (the Jewish immigrants), anti-immigrant sentiments (the Arab residents), and nationalism (everyone) ticked off a cycle of violence that is still resonating today.
Marcus is a journalist, and it shows--she used primary sources to reconstruct the lives of several prominent Zionists, Ottoman Jews, and as much primary source of Arab residents as she could get her hands on (because many Arab Palestinians' records are privately held, and what was published is higly edited because of the nature of the political climate in which they were published). She then uses these sources to create a narrative of Jerusalem in particular and Palestine (again before statehood) in general under the Ottomans.
What makes me sad is before all of this, Jerusalem was a diverse, thriving city where everyone mostly got along.
I can't help but feel that if the Zionists had come in with more of a mindset of joining Arab society while maintaining Jewish identity and culture, and all sides had been willing to accept their presence, the area might be something more like the multi-lingual, multi-cultural Quebec province in Canada.

But it's possible I just watch too much Star Trek.

[Felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is good and evocative (which is no less than one would expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner) but there is very little substance.

The book is (as I found out much much later) part of a series in the format "CityName Year" which deals with momentous events localized in time and space (like "Vienna 1814"). But in this case, there is no such event, no matter how hard Ms. Marcus tries to make the case for one.

There's just no there (there were some murky clandestine negotiations in the eponymous year but nothing came out of them).

If I were forced to mark an early date for a lost chance at peace I'd go for the Weizmann-Feisal Agreement of 1918 . This was much more significant than the nebulous 1913 stuff.

Originally I ranked it one star (partly because the author also got the order of events she had witnessed herself wrong in the very introduction) but upon reflection, I revert to two stars for research.

[Tim P · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Israel/Palestine argument so often gets obscured by people who are completely ignorant of the history of the region prior to the 1940s (as I was prior to reading this book). Jerusalem 1913 provides a detailed account of life in the waning hours of the Ottoman Empire through the major thrust of Zionism and the Arab Nationalist movement. An absolute must read for people who want to form an informed opinion regarding the state of the current conflict. Challenged a large number of my previously held beliefs while confirming others. Great read.

[Mark Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good picture of Jerusalem and Palestine from a point of view that we don't see any more. Before WWI, lots of people - Arabs, Jews, Christians, Turks - all lived somewhat peacefully together in Jerusalem. Marcus looks at the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire and the forces which hardened into the Arab-Israeli conflict of today. The bottom line was the lack of willingness to compromise - on anything - that has led to "two states" with no mixing. The religious fanaticism - on both sides - led to this lack of willingness. It's quite unfortunate that both sides weren't/aren't more reasonable.

[Aseel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this and thought it was so enlightening. I was gonna give it five stars but the last chapter just didn’t do it for me. I loved her writing and how the history was written in a story like. I wasn’t bored ( other than the last chapter) instead I was hooked. As a Palestinian this gave me a lot of insight on the origins of my country and a book I was looking for all along.
In conclusion, I hate Zionism more than I did before. Which I didn’t know was possible. The more I learn the more I despise it.

[Relstuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly brief book (especially considering the subject), that looks at whether there was a turning point where the Jews and Arabs in Palestine could have lived in peace together. Under the Turkish Ottoman empire the Arabs and Jews lived together fairly peacefully for a long time in Jerusalem. An interesting example the author points to what that neighbors with children born the same day would pass the baby back and forth between the mothers and both would suckle the two children and raise them as practically siblings irrespective of whether they were Jewish or Arab.

Probably the most fascinating thing to me was the social factors leading to change that are discussed in depth in this short volume. The Jews continued to migrate more and more people in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. As this happened they began to build schools taught in Hebrew and began to self segregate. Not based on a negative racism based on hatred of Turks, Arabs, or others. But, based on their pride in being Jewish and what that meant to them. As they continued to develop their respect for their own heritage and culture, and that was reflected in their language, customs, entertainment, and education, they participated less and less in living out their lives with non-Jewish people. This positive appreciation of their heritage created barriers between them and the Arabs/Palestinians that led to significant conflict and little middle ground to resolve their issues. This conflict continues to this day and the separation is significant enough that no hope of perfect peaceful resolution appears to be in sight.

[Justin Tapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Along with this book, in the last couple years I have reviewed this book along with others on Israel's origins and history (see list as the bottom). This book fails to live up to its promise on the book's cover of being "the first popular account of this key era" of Zionist migration during the late Ottoman empire. A survey of books written in the late 19th and early 20th century on Gutenberg.org uncovers some looking specifically at the Ottoman empire's weakening and the potential for Zionism (from a Dispensationalist Christian viewpoint or from a British viewpoint as to their own interests). The US minister (before there was an Ambassador) to Turkey, Samuel S. Cox, wrote a memoir in 1887 that also speaks of the growing population of Jews in Palestine, particularly Jerusalem, and what it may mean for an eventual Jewish state. There were plenty of times in the early 1800s when the Ottomans fought battles or sent armies to put own uprisings in the greater Levant. The Crimean War was, in part, a question of how nationalities in Palestine were being treated. So, there is no shortage of sources from which to make this "discovery" of zionism before 1920. Ari Shavit's My Promised Land goes back to 1897 and the landing in Jaffa of his ancestors, Zionists from Europe following others who had come before. He examines their influences pretty well. Scott Anderson's excellent Lawrence in Arabia the work of Aaron Aarohnson, who migrated to Palestine in the 1880s and worked for the cause of Zionism through WWI. While Shavit's and Anderson's works were written after Marcus', they draw on earlier works about the era prior to 1913. Marcus' book was the basis for a one-hour PBS documentary and I would recommend that over the book, which is short enough that it could really just have been a long-form article in The New Yorker or someplace.

The author views a film shot by Noah Sokolovsky as a sort of documentary in 1913 and recently discovered and restored; that gives some of the oldest footage of Jerusalem and Palestine known to exist. (You can watch it on YouTube now.) This leads the author to investigate the origins of the film, to be presented to the 11th Vienna Zionist Congress. If there have already been several Congresses convened and now someone is making a propoganda video urging further settlement, there must have already been a growing movement. This is the supposed "discovery" of the book.

The first Vienna congress was founded by Theodr Herzl in 1898, building on the work of previous zionists. By 1913, there were many Jews living along side a much larger Arab population, but with plenty of other ethnicities such as Armenians, Greeks, Druze, and various other sects. In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Jerusalem to inaugurate a Luthern church. The Kaiser supposedly privately voiced his support for a Jewish protectorate but later changed his mind. As the population grew, so did a sense of a growing importance about the area. It was integrated and largely peaceful under Ottoman rule. In 1908, the Young Turks succeeded in re-establishing democratic reforms in the Empire, which meant Palestine would have official represenation in Istanbul. There was a growing sense in the early 20th century of national determinism, a flame later fanned by Western influences like President Woodrow Wilson. With more freedoms came further demands for greater media as newspapers began to spring up. (While 1908 and previous reforms had given freedoms to the hinterlands, many decrees from Istanbul were dead letters outside of Istanbul, something the author might downplay in this book.) By 1913, Hebrew was beginning to be important for a unified Jewish identity. One sore point was when a British radio station began translating into Hebrew the word "Israel" to describe the territory.

Marcus details the lives and interactions of a few specific characters in the book including a Russian-born Jew who founded the Rehovot colony in 1890 and a Muslim leader who is increasingly concerned about Jewish activities. While Jewish nationals and Arab nationals may have been united in their desire for independence from Ottoman control, there were also many who did not seek that, or perhaps sought only that the other party would not gain the upper hand. By 1914, there were something like 80,000 Jews living in 30 different colonies in Palestine, pioneering and making money off the land. If private property rights to the land would be held, then you were not far from having a state. As one side has property, it protects that side and hence Jews begin arming themselves. The Ottomans were generally not strong enough to balance all the influences and local corruption allowed skirting of the law. By 1916 and British invasion of the continent, the Arab Revolt began and the Jewish Question would demand an answer.

I give this book 2.5 stars out of five. I don't believe Marcus "rewrites" anything as is said in the book's promo. Plenty of things were written at the time. It is short, and somewhat interesting. I recommend following it with Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia as he takes a similar approach to detailing the lives of a few characters as they cross in Palestine during WWI.
-------------------------------------
Other books I have reviewed on Israel's founding and modern history:
A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson (4 stars)
My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (4 stars)
Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson (5 stars)
I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish (4 stars)
Six Days of War by Michael Oren (4 stars)
13 Days in September by Lawrence Wright (4 stars)
Jerusalem 1913 by Amy Dockser Marcus (2.5 stars)

[Jonathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up because the premise intrigued me: what if there was a moment, a turn in history, when things could have gone another way and there could have been peace in the Middle East? What if that peace was just another causality of World War 1, run into the sand and blood by Balkan separatists, marauding Turks and Lawrence of Arabia.

Sadly, you won't find that here. I'll save you the trouble: Marcus' argument, such as it is, that there was a chance for peace, as long as Jews, Arabs and others could learn to be good Ottomans. Peace was possible, under the iron fist of the Turk. That troublesome thing known as liberation and independence ruined all that.

It doesn't help that the writing is awful, being more interested in romantic musings about life in late 19th and early 20th century Jerusalem then actually about substance. We get interminable descriptions of how cluttered someone's study is, or what they kind of tea they preferred.

Compounding the poor writing is the awful audiobook reader, who reads like a condescending mother addressing her ignorant children. Joyce Bean also reads like she has never read english before, or even glanced at the words being presented before her to verbalize. When she mis-pronounced sepulchre, I gave it a pass because that is an unusual word, even if it is one you would think the reader of a book about Jerusalem might know. When she mis-pronounces "short lived"(saying "live" as in "livestock") I turned off the book. That was it.

[Husam Abdullatif · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book talked a lot about the arabs and jews and their views on the issue of Palestine but it clearly has a lot of bias and contradiction. for example the author keeps on saying that the jews outnumbered the arabs in jerusalem since the eighteen hundreds but she also states clearly that they were not nationals of the ottoman state. This is like saying that the Indians or Persians are the majority of people residing in Dubai and thus have a claim to the ownership of the city. Also it is worth mentioning that even according to zionist writings and Israeli Scholars the jews up to the 1917 were less than ten percent of the population and owned less than 5 percent of the land.

[Jeff Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised -- perhaps I shouldn't have been -- at my own level of ignorance about the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also surprises me, now that I have read this book, how rarely, if ever, the Ottoman era comes up in discussions of the history of this conflict in the U.S. media. Perhaps it seems simply so long ago to some, and yet it only ended less than a century ago. In the U.S., we still feel psychologically effected by things that happened much further back in our own country's history.

[George · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an especially beguiling liberal Zionist fairy tale. Yet despite all its nuance and sophistication, it has all the hallmarks of the usual propaganda:
- beginning heavily with foregrounding of anecdotes and stories that suggest the author speaks from a place of universal values of human rights, but without naming those values specifically or explicitly and - therefore - not being able to be held accountable to them later on (such as emphases on coexistence, without really saying what that means)
- highlighting stories at every opportunity that demonstrate Jewish vulnerability, not strength
- framing the entire story in terms of Jewish agency and consequences for Jewish people, as if this is the only reason it would be of any interest
- acknowledging the facts of Jewish racist exclusion in Palestine, Jewish violence, and Jewish authorship of the story- while simultaneously downplaying them, and continuing to write all-the-same as if one is an objective disinterested voice
- foregrounding Arab violence and Jewish "response"
- never using the words "colonial" to describe Jewish activity or "native" to describe the Palestinians
- a methodological individualism that overstresses the power of individual leaders to shape events and understresses systems and structures of power
- a naming of “good” characters, and not directly naming those intolerant 'other’ forces who are supposedly truly responsible for things we dislike
- taking a long time to let the liberal credentials stew and lull the audience with jovial colourful good-natured stories, until suddenly amping up the volume at the very end that takes as a given the colonial claim of the land and prescribing *more* segregation and partition of the territory as some kind of reasonable antidote to the century's failure of segregation and partition.

The author's apologetics of colonialism is exemplified by this lovely summary of the 1937 British proposal to divide the country: "The Jews rejected the proposed British boundaries, although they accepted the concept of a partition in Palestine; The Arabs, for their part, refused to consider partition.... When the fighting broke out again a few months after the commission's visit, the British put it down with brutal force, and deported many of the Arab leaders. The Hagannah, the underground militia that had grown out of the force the Jews set up prior to the war to protect the settlements, was not allowed to organise officially. They were deployed not only to guard Jewish settlements against Arab attacks but also to launch their own reprisal missions."
- there is no related mention of the 1939 British proposal to reject partition and allow the Jews to move to Palestine only as immigrants, not colonists, and to a country that was whole and belonged to its native inhabitants
- "the Jews" are instead framed as agreeing with 'peace' plans in the face of violent, rejectionist Arabs
- British complicity with Zionist colonialism is not mentioned: that the Palestinians were totally disarmed the prior year, while the Zionist militias were trained by the British and quietly allowed to accumulate arms; that any indigenous Palestinian leadership was totally decapitated - leaving the Palestinians totally defenceless against Zionist ethnic cleansing that would soon begin under British watch and be facilitated by them
- This destruction of the native capacity for self-defence is presented by Dockser-Marcus as somehow equivalent to the Zionist militias not being allowed to organise 'officially'
- Jewish initiated violence is not conceived as possible - but only imagined as defensive (guarding of settlements) and in 'reprisals' that reacted to barbaric Arabs
- The Palestinians are not even named as such, and are instead called "Arabs," in complete contradiction to the historical record showing a strong sense of national consciousness - within a broader Arab identity - at that time.

One is accustomed to the liberal Zionist tale that Zionism was pure and good and Israel was all cupcakes and cotton candy until the 1967 theft of the West Bank changed everything. The innovation of this author is to update that mythology by resetting the date for the wrong turn, to 1913. She does so, of course, without any engagement whatsoever on the moral validity of the colonial and racist premises of Zionism itself. She still instrumentalises nostalgia to avoid engaging with critiques of Zionism, but updates that nostalgia so far back to Zionism's beginnings that it gives the appearance of engaging with critiques of Zionism. This is sophisticated stuff.

All the same, this 2007 liberal Zionist story was already out of date at its publication, given the rise of the neo-Zionist right in Israel since 1996. Now, the mask is falling off, and - in the words of Ilan Pappe - we no longer need Foucault and other complex theories to disentangle liberal Zionist propaganda and show it for what it really is. Now, not even Pulitzer prize-winning Jewish-American journalists can hide Zionism's true self from our eyes.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the digging through lots of early 1900s materials and finding the buds of the conflicts - very thought provoking.

“Here before my eyes emerged the shape of Jewish life in Palestine in 1913 and with it a growing realization: every conflict had a turning point, a moment when things could have gone a little differently, when choices were made or decisions postponed and from this tuning point emerged a cascade of consequences, a narrowing of further options, and a path that had led us to today. It seemed that held many of the answers to my efforts to understand what was happening in our own time in Israel and with the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

“For all its problems, Ottoman control had been responsible for the longest peaceful period Jerusalem had known. Now the rise of Nationalism was shrinking the shared traditions and communal space that had always been a central part of the fabric of life in the city.”

“Jerusalem was, after all, a city filled with people with messianic visions.”

“But by now each side had already made a crucial misjudgment that would continue to affect its policies in Palestine for years to come. The Muslims were convinced the Jews could never win which the Jews believed the Arabs would someday yield.”

“But the Zionists proved to be both hasty and impatient and seldom took the time to listen to people who had lived and worked with the Turks for far longer than they had.”

“He realized that as much as he disliked the Zionists and their methods, if forced to choose he knew which side he would take and it was with the Jews.”

“Both the Zionists and the Arabs recognized that eventually there would be a parting of the ways. The only question that remained was how soon that would occur. Each side preferred to postpone the inevitable until a more advantageous moment.”

“At first the British were so preoccupied with their administration of Jerusalem that they did not realize that the tensions between Jewish and Arab communities were growing steadily worse. It soon became clear however that any notion that this tension could somehow be resolved by trying to create an inclusive Palestinian identity, one that both Arabs and Jews could adopt, share, and shape together, was a futile proposition.”

“In a report issued in 1937 the commission concluded that the Arab and Zionist positions regarding Palestine's future were ‘irreconcilable’. The British themselves were at a loss about how to solve the problem and at first suggested a partition, dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with the British themselves keeping control over Jerusalem as well as Nazareth and Bethlehem (two cities strongly associated with the history of Christianity. The Jews rejected the proposed British boundaries, although they accepted the concept of a partition in Palestine. The Arabs for their part refused to consider partition. Even the British eventually decided that the idea was impractical and probably impossible to implement.”

“To go in search of the Ottoman past and Antébi’s place in it was to believe that while the issues confronting Jerusalem are and have always been very difficult and painful there was a basis for resolving them.”

“But postponing a discussion of the city’s political future has created other dire consequences. Jerusalem has been buckling under the enormous weight of the continuing inability of the opposing sides, not so much to fail to come to a final agreement, which seemed years off, as to fail even to talk openly about any aspect of the city’s future.”

“...what the Zionists perceived as the advantages of their presence in Palestine would not move the Arab side to give up their own ideological positions.”

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling book that I don’t necessarily believe proved its thesis.

The thesis is pretty obvious from the tin: Jerusalem in 1913 played a pivotal role in setting up the pieces of the contentious, future Israel and Palestine conflict. She particularly follows three men of the time with three distinct viewpoints—Zionist Arthur Ruppin, Jewish non-Zionist Albert Antebi and Ruhi Khalidi, from a prominent Arab-Muslim family. Though really, said thesis might boil down to 1913 being the year of the last Zionist Congress before World War I, when leaders really cemented the idea of pushing Jewish cultural and population dominance in Palestine. It was also the year of the first Arab-Syrian Congress and a nascent Arab nationalist movement.

But the book itself, which is less than 200 pages discounting notes, a bibliography and an index, also spends ample time chronicling Theodor Herzl’s 1898 trip to Jerusalem, other events leading up to and after the British Mandate, and “current day” chapters from about 15 years ago when Marcus worked as a reporter in Jerusalem. She also acknowledged formative years spent in Israel, citing how her Jewish parents met there and she herself took immersive Hebrew classes.

So she comes with bias into a highly contested political and cultural conflict, but I don’t think she lets it color her views too much. She gives ample, if brief, perspectives from all sides, often using quotes from letters and such about growing Zionist nationalism and the wary to alarmed response from Arabs about being displaced.

Nationalism stuck out a lot to me. It became the self-centered and exclusionary ideology first cemented by the Jews and then by the Arabs. But nationalism was a broader, global perspective from that time period as well, often in response to imperial colonialism. Also around 1913, certainly before and arguably up until the end of World War I to some extent, both Jews and Arabs were oppressed by the Ottoman Empire, which could give them a sense of common ground. The Ottoman Empire was on its last legs, but it ruled over Jerusalem, often bringing in mayors from Constantinople who refused to speak anything but Turkic, and didn’t take kindly to either group striving for self-determination.

I was taken sometimes with the layers of history. Khalidi acknowledged at one point that Jews had been displaced from Palestine, but that was by the Roman Empire, whereas Arabs had conquered the land from Byzantium, not Judeans. Still, a reminder of how far back conquering and displacement goes in human history. Also the idea of immigration and nativist pushback, with regards to Jews coming to Palestine to escape antisemitic exclusion or violence. Within Palestine, the Empire pushed for Jews to become Ottoman citizens, but they didn’t always treat Jewish Ottomans as equals, either. That being said, there were schisms in the Jewish community, particularly between the religious Sephardim who had often been living on the land for centuries, and the secular, oft-Zionist Ashkenazim, who let their European-centric biases and racism often cloud their thinking.

The depressing takeaway here is often the intractability of the conflict. Or at least that’s how my book club saw it; I joined a new one, as run by my synagogue, as a way to encounter diverse voices about the conflict. I think our first meeting went well, for participants who for the most part have personal ties to Israel. We had discussion questions and a set of mannered rules in order to tackle a subject with nuance and respect that often devolves into polarized arguments. I think we did okay with this book, and I’m looking forward to the next one!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

***.5

The book gets off to a great start, with the author briefly describing her experiences in Israel and how that led to trying to better understand the source of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, when they had seemingly co-existed peacefully for hundreds of years under Ottoman rule. While 1917 and the Balfour Declaration is often cited, she takes it back a few years to 1913 before the British arrived on the scene, while the Turks were still in charge.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time following the argument. It's obvious that she did an awful lot of work in researching the book, but it felt like she tried to include all of it into a relatively short book. As a result, there are so many quotes and references and extraneous details that it failed to hold my attention and I kept losing the plot. Which maybe is my fault more than hers, and the uninspired audiobook narration with its painful mispronunciations certainly didn't help.

She writes with journalistic crispness, and in the conclusion we see how the snapshot of 1913 influenced the more familiar events over the next three decades, culminating in the morass of current day Jerusalem. Was 1913 a missed opportunity for peace that could have avoided the century of suffering and violence that followed? Probably not, but it's still important to look back and fully understand what went wrong, so at least we won't continue to make those same mistakes out of ignorance.

[Banbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned a bit about the common interests of the Jews and Arabs in regard to the Ottoman Empire, but beyond that, there seems to be nothing really here. Despite the author's assertions, 1913 does not appear to be a lost opportunity of peace between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, any more than any other year. It was pivotal only in the sense it was the last gasp of the Ottoman Empire. The personal details provided about the political figures seemed to be there only for purposes of evoking the emotional response of "so sad!" The personal details do not add to the the thesis of the book, or even to an understanding of how or why any events happened. Indeed, one gets the feeling that the amount of time the author devotes to each person is proportionate to how many personal details she could find about the person, and it seems that many important persons were omitted altogether because personal details were not available.

[Stephen Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book one can appreciate why the author won a Pulitzer Prize for another. As a journalist her writing style is wonderfully to the point. Perhaps that’s why the book is under 200 pages. Yet the story she tells of “The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” seems spot on to me. Through the lives of a few key players in the Jerusalem of around 1913, Dockser-Marcus gives us a lens through which we can understand the perspectives of a long-time Ottoman Syrian Jew, a native Palestinian and a Zionist Jew, and other key characters of the time. As she quotes one of them at the end of the book, the most important lost capacity among today’s Palestinian and Israeli combatants is elucidated. Quoting from the writings of one of them says it all.

“It is not, however, a question of what we would like but of what we can have.” Both sides would do well to accept this and find the path to peace.

[Malcolm Murrell-Byrd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to rate this at most a two star rating. I don't agree with the title first of all that such conflicts on so many deep issues have a distinctive turning point or inevitability. This book reads more like a novel rather than a detailed historical analysis. In addition, the narrative is organized by highlighting three perspectives: a white European Zionist, an Arab Jew, and a Palestinian leader seems to credit balanced approach to the origins and even evolution of the conflict. This approach, at least the way it was written, is misleading and conclusively wishful thinking leaning towards favoring Zionism and ignoring Palestinians on numerous events in history. Professor Munir Akash's book review (Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30 Issue 3, Summer 2008) is very agreeable on many points of criticism.

[Matt Bartek · Rating 3 out of 5]

First book on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Very little knowledge of the conflict except news I heard on TV starting in mid 1980s. One side attacks the other side. And then a retaliation attack. Learned a lot in this book. Seemed a little too one sided from my naive view.

For some reason I thought the book would start (the origins) in 1913, but seems to end in 1914. What happened in WW2, 1948, 1967, and more recent? Thought it would cover the peace treaty between Sadat and Begin. (I remember seeing Sadat at Andrews Air Force base around 1979 while on a Boy Scout trip, and being only feet away from him…but not knowing about the conflict.) will need to read more on the post-1914 history. Definitely makes me want to visit Jerusalem.

[Zora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving 4.5 stars for the book because I know the targeted audience is for people with little to no education on the Isreali-Arab conflict origins. Would probably be closer to a 3 if someone who had any specialized education in Middle Eastern politics or a related field.

I felt the author wrote an entertaining yet educational account of Jerusalem between the time frame of 1898 and 1914. She randomly includes things that happened on later dates and her present-day account of Israel. The author was a journalist and writes just like one. For the purpose of the book, she did a great job keeping things simple while explaining in detail the things she found in her research to be significant.

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the Zionist movement, immediately prior to the First World War, the conflict between the arabs and Israelis especially over Jewish immigration and land purchases, Theodore Hertzel's meeting with the Kaiser in Jerusalem, the tragic fate of his children. Anyone who doesn't think unchecked immigration can undermine a country, at this time in Palestine there were 80,000 Jews and 450,000 arabs, Immigration created the modern state of Israel.

[Joyce Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells you things you didn’t know

I have read a great deal about the founding of Israel. This book tells it from multiple sides, including the decay in the Ottoman Empire and the focus of the Jews in buying land. And who knew that afternoon tea became a thing in Jerusalem under the mandate? Just another British colony

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what the thesis of the book really was. The book itself at times feels as though it undermines its own thesis. Not badly written, but at times it feels like there's a reason few books have discussed Jewusalem in 1913 before - as far as a specific date, maybe ther wasn't much there specifically.

[Jake Berlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book really brings palestine -- and in particular jersusalem -- under the ottoman empire to life. i'm not sure that it's totally successful in its goal to demonstrate how the israeli-palestinian conflict came about, but it undoubtedly adds even more color to what is already a complex story.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intriguing analysis that gave me greater knowledge of the ongoing problems there. I have better appreciation for the role of the Ottomans and British in the whole mix and how WWI played in that. Its not heavy lifting and fairly short read; a good way to get a bit of education.

[John Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book deals a lot with Jerusalem in the Ottoman empire era. Well worth the read and details that the author presents.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

As now, in 1913 there were some Jews, Christians, and Muslims who came together in friendship and love. There have always been others who take extremist and terrorist views, as there are today.

[Abigail G · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting an excellent view into the formation of the Palestinian Israeli conflict. I would definitely suggest this book as a source for perspective on the situation in the Middle East.