How does urban space transform into a symbol of national identity? If one considers the case of metropolitan regions in Israel/Palestine during the late Ottoman and British Mandate era, it seems that a variety of actors were struggling to assign different meanings to places, objects and symbols. This struggle can be understood as conflicts over interpretation of urban space and was the focal point of this panel.

JOHANN BÜSSOW (Bochum) opened the panel with a short introduction in which he highlighted the topic’s contemporary relevance. Büssow remarked that various religious traditions and diaspora communities connect Israel/Palestine’s local society to larger parts of the globe. He said that historians of the Ottoman Empire and Mandatory Palestine experience this global connectedness when they search for documents pertaining to their topic, as many aspects of Palestinian society can only be examined by consulting archives around the world, including former imperial capitals such as Istanbul and London but also locations in the Americas or Addis Ababa. Based on this archival source material, he noted, it is possible to illuminate the local history of Mandate Palestine. Büssow pointed out that the global city of Jerusalem (Vincent Lemire) is one prime example of this phenomenon. Here, as well as in lesser-known urban areas such as Haifa or Gaza, material together with visual objects became adhesive components of long-lasting transnational communities centered on Israel/Palestine. Images like these, Büssow noted, have become detached from their local contexts and have turned into widely recognized symbols of identity as a result of battles over the interpretation of historical events (Deutungskämpfe).

Büssow then turned to the subject of the following presentations. By focusing on the late Ottoman Empire and Mandate combined with an innovative focus on space and materiality, each of the three studies, he said, give us a better insight into the constructed nature of religious, communal, and national symbols, addressing both local specificity and universal symbolism. He asserted that the three decades of British rule in Jerusalem/Palestine (1918-1947) begot a vast transformation of this region and its neighboring societies. In consequence of these widespread changes, centuries-old traditions and institutions were redefined. In conclusion, Büssow stated that the combination of social and cultural history with urban history, space, and materiality seems very promising and allows us to fully appraise these transformations.

MARA ALBRECHT (Erfurt) discussed the topic of riots in Jerusalem as transformative events that altered and reinforced imperial, religious and nationalist imaginations of urban space. She began by providing an overview of the formation of rivalling imaginations of Jerusalem from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. From the late Ottoman Empire until World War One, influential evangelical Protestants in Great Britain promoted the idea of the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine through organizations such as the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews or the Palestine Exploration Fund with its activities in biblical archaeology. In reference to historian Anita Shapira, Albrecht highlighted that this conception was also taken up by Jewish circles in the mid-19th century. British Prime Minister Lloyd Georges, his Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, and other members of his War Cabinet were nonconformist and evangelical Protestants and adherents of Christian Zionism who supported Jewish immigration to Palestine. It was this small circle that drafted the Balfour Declaration, projecting their religious imaginations onto Palestine and ignoring the history and aspirations of Palestine’s local Arab population. Eventually, the different visions of Zionists, Arabs, and the British triggered physical violence in the cities of Mandatory Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem.

Albrecht argued that the 1920s were a decisive phase as it was in this time that the different imaginations first clashed in the symbolic landscape of Jerusalem and in the violent conflicts that followed. She highlighted that individual groups projected imperial ambitions, religious visions, and nationalist aspirations onto urban space and thus imbued it with meaning. The perception of urban space was gradually changed in the course of the successive riots and particularly sacred space was politicized.

Working with reports by commissions of inquiry, documents from archives in Jerusalem and London and Arab and Zionist newspapers, Albrecht analyzed the routes of demonstrations and processions that triggered small and large-scale riots in Jerusalem: The demonstration of March 8, 1920, the Nabi Musa riots in April 1920, the demonstration on Balfour Day 1921 and the rallies and ritual processions that initiated the riots of 1929. She pointed out how public places, government buildings and holy places were used by the different actors, how they projected their religious and nationalist imaginations on them and particularly how sacred space was politicized as a result. In summarizing her talk, Albrecht stated that the realm of the imaginative became the backdrop against which a new physical reality was attempted to be formed in Jerusalem. Sacred space, particularly the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount area, became the core of the conflict and was increasingly imbued with rivalling political and nationalist meanings.

The next panelist was ROBERTO MAZZA (Limerick) who addressed the issue of the transformation of religious space into a national symbol with the case study of Jerusalem’s Western Wall/Wailing Wall. In his first remarks, he explained the relevance of this investigation: this particular (place’s) transformation helps us better understand the contemporary conflict between Palestinians, Israelis, and the Arabs at large. Furthermore, he highlighted the importance of tracing the changing Arabic (Ha’it al-Buraq) and Jewish (HaKotel HaMa’aravi) narratives of the Wall.

Mazza next moved to the issue of the Jewish narrative of the Wall. In earlier times, Jewish pilgrims visited this location only occasionally. They were more interested in the cemetery that provided a view over the Temple Mount since it was connected to the concept of people being raised from the dead after the end of days. According to Mazza, the Wall gained its religious and national importance for the Jewish community not until the beginning of the modern era, when European travelers explored the Holy Land and internal changes within the Jewish diaspora occurred. After 1929 at the latest, Jews around the world associated the Wall with the suffering of the Jews.

Mazza also touched on the question of owning a place. He gave several examples of fruitless attempts to purchase the Wall by the international Jewish diaspora in the 19th century. However, one occasion was of special interest: a secret offering of the Wall and nearby houses from Cemal Pasha to Albert Antébi in 1916. In short, this secret negotiation had two purposes for the Jewish community: a) the Wall should be redeemed to the Jews and b) to acquire the Wall and turn it into a Jewish national symbol. Mazza observed that this unsuccessful effort of the Zionist movement clearly shows how a sacred space was meant to be turned into political space and finally into national space. He then gave a brief sketch of the Islamic counter-narrative of the Wall. This narrative is linked to the life of the Prophet Muhammad as the Wall was the place where he supposedly tethered his horse Buraq before his night journey (isra’). Mazza concluded by stating that the Wall was not in the focus during the 1920 Nabi Musa riots. This changed with the 1929 demonstrations when Zionists and Palestinians chose the Wall as the main battleground for contradicting religious and nationalist goals.

MAAYAN HILEL (Evanston, IL) introduced the topic of the last panel segment: the transformation of Haifa’s leisure spaces into politicized areas of nationalist ideologies. Hilel claimed that the politicization process of recreation areas within Palestinian society bolstered national claims of ownership of Haifa’s urban space during the 1940s.

She then continued with a brief historical overview of Haifa’s urbanization development which can be divided into two stages: Firstly, the growth in the course of the Tanzimat reforms of the late Ottoman Empire. Secondly, the expansion of the city in the time of the British Mandate. Especially since 1918, when Haifa fell under British rule, the Mandate authority started to build a deep-water harbor and refineries for processing oil from Iraq. This external influence meant that the coastal region was altered into an industrial center with a thriving economy. Therefore, as stated by Hilel, numerous Jewish and Arab immigrants settled in Haifa and contributed to its rapid urbanization process by investing heavily in businesses owned by the Jewish or Arab community. One outcome of this development was the establishment of new institutions and leisure spaces like cafes. She noted that these locations became a central part of everyday life and thus were selected to propagate ideas of national identities in Haifa and all over Palestine. Hence, the utilization of these places by Zionists and Palestinians in spreading a national consciousness made them contested arenas of belonging.

Hilel next turned to discuss the specific example of an Arabic cinema in Haifa which became a symbol for the Palestinian national cause. In 1944, several Palestinian entrepreneurs from Haifa founded a company named The Star/Al-Kochav. The intention behind this was to build a movie theater that could compete with Jewish cinemas and attract the young Arab residents of Haifa. Though the scarcity of building materials presented a challenge to the project, the intervention of various actors made the completion of the Arabic cinema possible in the end. However, this building and other structures in Haifa were eventually destroyed during the 1948 war. She also briefly talked about the mundane aspect of Jewish and Arab leisure spaces in Haifa where local people from different communities interacted with each other. In conclusion, Hilel pointed out that her research examines the functions of urban cultural areas as a neutral place for intercommunal encounters as well as a place of national aspirations during the British Mandate in Palestine. Thus, her analysis reveals the inconsistencies between the political and cultural arena.

The panel showed that a combination of different actors such as the British Mandate authorities, the Jewish community, and the Arab public of Palestine were fighting to impose their interpretations of urban space in Mandatory Palestine by altering the narratives connected with places, objects and symbols. Furthermore, each paper presented in this panel provided a deeper insight into the politicization process of public, sacred and leisure spaces in Jerusalem as well as Haifa. The findings of the panel pose significant implications for the understanding of how Palestine’s society was changing in the early 20th century.

Panel overview:

Panel organizer: Mara Albrecht (Erfurt)

Johann Büssow (Bochum): Chair and Introduction

Mara Albrecht: Realm of imaginations – conflicting interpretations of (sacred) urban space in Jerusalem in the early 20th century

Roberto Mazza (Limerick): When the sacred fosters violence: the Western Wall in Jerusalem from 1900 to 1929

Maayan Hilel (Evanston, IL): Claiming national ownership of the urban space – the struggle for establishing Palestinian cinema in Mandatory Haifa