Nazareth, the Nakba, and the Remaking of Palestinian Politics

with Leena Dallasheh

hosted by Chris Gratien

| As an Arab city inside the 1948 borders of Israel, Nazareth defies many of the general narratives of both Israeli and Palestinian histories. But as our guest Leena Dallasheh explains, that does not mean that Nazareth is necessarily an exception. In fact, its paradoxical survival is key to understanding the history of modern Palestinian politics. In this conversation, we chart the history of Nazareth's rise from provincial town to Palestinian cultural capital. We consider the reasons why Nazareth survived the Nakba, and we explore the important role of Palestinian communities in the years before and decades after the foundation of Israel.   

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As an Arab city inside the 1948 borders of Israel, Nazareth defies many of the general narratives of both Israeli and Palestinian histories. But as our guest Leena Dallasheh explains, that does not mean that Nazareth is necessarily an exception. In fact, its paradoxical survival is key to understanding the history of modern Palestinian politics. In this conversation, we chart the history of Nazareth's rise from provincial town to Palestinian cultural capital. We consider the reasons why Nazareth survived the Nakba, and we explore the important role of Palestinian communities in the years before and decades after the foundation of Israel.

Contributor Bios

Leena Dallasheh is an independent scholar, and a board member at PARC — Palestine American Research Center . Her research focuses on the history of Palestine/Israel, with a particular interest in Palestinians who became citizens of Israel in 1948. She is currently finishing a manuscript on the social and political history of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966, tracing how Palestinians who remained in Israel in 1948 negotiated their incorporation in the state, affirming their rights as citizens and their identity as Palestinian. She has published articles and reviews in IJMES, JPS, AHR, and edited collections. She has also been engaged in academic and public conversations on Palestine/Israel, and has been interviewed and published in various media outlets. She has held several academic positions, the last of which was associate professor at Cal Poly Humboldt. She received her PhD in the joint History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program at NYU. Before coming to NYU, she received a law degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century.

Credits

Episode No. 563
Release Date: 24 March 2024
Sound production by Chris Gratien
Music: Chad Crouch
Bibliography courtesy of Leena Dallasheh

Further Listening

	Shay Hazkani	515 11/29/21	Dear Palestine
	Maha Nassar	558 1/8/24	Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World
	Shira Robinson	273 10/20/16	Both Citizens and Strangers in Post-1948 Israel
	Rashid Khalidi	553 11/19/23	The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
	Lauren Banko	272 10/16/16	Nationality and Citizenship in Mandate Palestine

Further Reading

Abbasi, Musrafa. “Nazareth in the War for Palestine: The Arab City that Survived the 1948 Nakba.” Holy Land Studies 9, no. 2 (2010): 185–207

Ben Zeev, Nimrod. “Palestine Along the Colour Line: Race, Colonialism, and Construction Labour, 1918-1948” Ethnic and Racial Studies, February 22, 2021

Budeiri, Musa. The Palestine Communist Party, 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism.London: Ithaca Press, 1979. 

Dallasheh, Leena. "Persevering through Colonial Transition: Nazareth's Palestinian Residents after 1948," Journal of Palestine Studies (2016) , 45:2, 8-23

Dallasheh, Leena.  "Troubled Waters : Citizenship and Colonial Zionism in Nazareth." International Journal of Middle East Studies, 47(3) (2015), 467–487.

Forman, Geremy. “Military Rule, Political Manipulation, and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950's.”  Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 2 (September 2006): 335-359. 

Jiryis, Sabri. The Arabs in Israel, 1948-1966. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968. 

Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann and Isis Nusair. Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel.Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. 

Nassar Maha, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017. 

Robinson, Shira. Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Robinson, Shira. “Local Struggle, National Struggle: Palestinian Responses to the Kafr Qasim Massacre and its Aftermath, 1956-66.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 35, no. 3, (2003): pp. 393-416. 

Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej. “Citizenship as accumulation by dispossession: The paradox of settler colonial citizenship.” Sociological Theory 40, no. 2 (2022): 151-178.

Seikaly, Sherene. Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. 

Zureik, Elia T. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.