Making Waves: Arabs and Jews on the Beaches of Mandatory Haifa
This article examines daily encounters between Jewish and Arab societies during the British Mandate, focusing on the beaches of Haifa as a case study. Relying on oral interviews, ephemera collections, memoirs, private collections as well as Arabic and Hebrew newspaper articles and reports, the artic...
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| הוצא לאור ב: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rhc, |
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| מחבר ראשי: | |
| פורמט: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| שפה: | en |
| יצא לאור: |
Revue d'histoire culturelle
2023
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| נושאים: | |
| גישה מקוונת: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| סיכום: | This article examines daily encounters between Jewish and Arab societies during the British Mandate, focusing on the beaches of Haifa as a case study. Relying on oral interviews, ephemera collections, memoirs, private collections as well as Arabic and Hebrew newspaper articles and reports, the article shows that beaches like other leisure sites functioned as a neutral space where Arabs and Jews spent their spare time together or side by side, and uncovers the mutual influences produced by this inter-cultural interaction. It demonstrates that physical proximity between these communities, in a mixed city which was experiencing the emergence of the national conflict, generated a complex relationship characterized by mutual curiosity and constant reciprocal examination. The study reveals that the cultural and leisure life of each community constituted a subject for observation, comparison, and competition for its counterpart. This dynamic produced a range of reactions that at the same time included criticism and condemnation alongside adoption and imitation of leisure models and infrastructures, which accelerated internal cultural processes within each community. These findings shed new light on the great extent to which the Arab and Jewish societies were deeply interrelated and influenced by each other during this formative period. |
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