Arab-Jewish ‘neighbourly relations’ in rural Mandatory Palestine: the case of Khirbat ʿAzzun–Raʿanana

This article explores Arab-Jewish intercommunal interactions in Rural Mandatory Palestine. The relations between Zionist settlers and Arab inhabitants in Palestine is an oft-told story of mostly-tense encounters that peaked in the War of 1948 and the Nakba. Starting with the settlement of the Arab villagers of Khirbat ʿAzzun and the Zionist colonists of Raʿanana in Palestine’s coastal plain, this article offers close, mutually contradictory yet complementary perspectives on these neighborly interactions. Such micro-historic inspection casts a focused light on the fine threads that made up the fabric of Arab-Zionist relations in Palestine’s extensive rural areas during the decades before the Nakba and the foundation of the State of Israel. It shows how common interests encouraged dynamic instability and delicate coexistence, while considerable gaps triggered confrontations. These confrontations, however, were a local matter, not a national one, unpleasant but bearable in the context of rural intercommunal interactions in Palestine’s changing countryside.