Overthrowing Geography

by Levine, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780520243712
• ISBN10: 0520243714
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-14
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

This landmark book offers a truly integrated perspective for understanding the formation of Jewish and Palestinian Arab identities and relations in Palestine before 1948. Beginning with the late Ottoman period Mark LeVine explores the evolving history and geography of two cities: Jaffa, one of the oldest ports in the world, and Tel Aviv, which was born alongside Jaffa and by 1948 had annexed it as well as its surrounding Arab villages. Drawing from a wealth of untapped primary sources, including Ottoman records, Jaffa Shari'a court documents, town planning records, oral histories, and numerous Zionist and European archival sources, LeVine challenges nationalist historiographies of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, revealing the manifold interactions of the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities that lived there. At the center of the book is a discussion of how Tel Aviv's self-definition as the epitome of modernity affected its and Jaffa's development and Jaffa's own modern pretenses as well. As he unravels this dynamic, LeVine provides new insights into how popular cultures and public spheres evolved in this intersection of colonial, modern, and urban space. He concludes with a provocative discussion of how these discourses affected the development of today's unified city of Tel Aviv-Yafo and, through it, Israeli and Palestinian identities within in and outside historical Palestine.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1	(14)
1. Modern Cities, Colonial Spaces, and the Struggle for Modernity in the Eastern Mediterranean	15	(13)
2. From Cedars to Oranges: A History of the Jaffa-Tel Aviv Region from Antiquity to the Late Ottoman Period	28	(32)
3. Taming the Sahara: The Birth of Tel Aviv and the Last Years of Ottoman Rule	60	(24)
4. Crossing the Border: Intercommunal Relations in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv Region during the Mandate Period	84	(37)
5. A Nation from the Sands? Images of Jaffa and Tel Aviv in Palestinian Arab, Zionist, and Israeli Literature, Poetry, and Prose	121	(31)
6. Ceci N'est Pas Jaffa (This Is Not Jaffa): Architecture, Planning, and the Evolution of National Identities in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, 1880-1948	152	(30)
7. Planning to Conquer: The Role of Town Planning in the Expansion of Tel Aviv, 1921-1948	182	(33)
8. The New-Old Jaffa: Locating the Urban, the Public, and the Modern in Tel Aviv's Arab Neighborhood	215	(34)
Notes	249	(128)
Bibliography	377	(40)
Index	417