Lives in Common (Paperback)

Paperback. Challenging the received wisdom, this candid portrait of three cities reveals a history of co-existence between Arabs and Jews.Most books dealing with the IsraeliPalestinian conflict see events through the eyes of policy-makers, generals or diplomats. Menachem Klein offers an illuminating alternative by telling the intertwined histories, from street level upwards, of three cities Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron and their intermingled Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants, from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of them was and still is a mixed city. Jerusalem and Hebron are holy places, while Jaffa till 1948 was Palestines principal city and main port of entry.Klein portrays a society in the late Ottoman period in which Jewish-Arab interactions were intense, frequent, and meaningful, before the onset of segregation and separation gradually occurred in the Mandate era. The unequal power relations and increasing violence between Jews and Arabs from 1948 onwards are also scrutinised. Throughout, Klein bases his writing not on the official record but rather on a hitherto hidden private world of Jewish-Arab encounters, including marriages and squabbles, kindnesses and cruelties, as set out in dozens of memoirs, diaries, biographies and testimonies.Lives in Common brings together the voices of Jews and Arabs in a mosaic of fascinating stories, of lived experiences and of the major personalities that shaped them over the last 150 years.A work of deeply humane scholarship. It has been criticised by some as an expression of nostalgia for an irretrievable past or wishful thinking about an unattainable future. Yet Klein is neither a hopeless romantic or an ivory tower academic. He helped draw up the Geneva initiative for Israeli-Palestinian peace and, when Israel and the PLO were still negotiating, acted as an adviser to the Palestinian side a remarkable example of open-minded commitment to a common good. The Guardian Drawing on diaries, memoirs and correspondence, Klein weaves a dazzling tapestry of complicated, sometimes fraught, but always intermingled connections between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron. Richly detailed and profoundly evocative. Adam LeBor, Haaretz Captures the image of [a] lost world before national polarisation took hold. this book sows the possibility of a different Middle East in the maelstrom of inter-ethnic conflict. History TodayKleins unique focus on bottom-up interactions between Jews and Arabs in their shared urban environment exposes the reader to a new dimension of the complex relations between Jews and Arabs, and sheds fresh light on the existence, evolution and changes in a local form of a joint Palestinian identity, shared by Jews and Arabs alike. This is an exciting and invaluable contribution to a more nuanced look on the complex and dynamic relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine and Israel. Abigail Jacobson, MIT, author of From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British RuleA highly sensitive tale of three cities which sheds light on often touching Arab and Jewish daily encounters before 1948. Klein is no nostalgic. His is a sober political assessment of a world that cannot be rebuilt, but a world whose civilised dialogues between Arab and Jew must be re-invented if Israel wants to move forward beyond todays political impasse. Diana Pinto, historian and author of Israel Has Moved Challenging the received wisdom, this candid portrait of three cities reveals a history of co-existence between Muslims, Christians and Jews from the nineteenth century until the present day. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…