The serpent's egg.

• Author: Akash, Munir
• Position: Jerusalem 1913: The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Conflict - Book review

Amy Dockser Marcus. Jerusalem 1913: The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Penguin Books, USA 2007. Paper $15.00. 207 pages.

And therefore think him as a serpent's egg--Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous--And kill him in the shell. Shakespeare

WRITTEN VERY MUCH LIKE A NOVEL, Jerusalem 1913 takes us back to the earlier Ottoman era when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in peace, shared the same community and saw themselves, for better or worse, as being part of the same group. But its central focus is the question of Jerusalem seen through three pairs of eyes, the eyes of a White European Zionist, the eyes of an Arab Jew, and the eyes of a Palestinian leader. It is also a contribution to a field already cluttered with the Israeli narrative. The disparity of power relations is reflected in the output of both sides, the Israeli and the Palestinian, on this as on many other issues. They have jam-packed the field of knowledge and information in such a manner that they try to define the problem and its solution.

Jerusalem 1913 recounts in a deeply touching narrative how Jerusalem's well-earned social peace was shattered by the convulsion of colonial Zionism. It sheds a new light on the conflict between the Jews, mainly Arab Jews, and White European Zionists. It also documents heated debates between the White Zionists and Arab Jews over the fate of the indigenous Palestinians in the future Zionist State (pp. 81, 95, 117, 118). When the Zionist movement had first started in Jerusalem, Albert Antebi, a prominent Arab Jew and a pillar of the Jewish community in Jerusalem depicted their "noisy nationalism [as] dangerous." (p. 85) In 1914, soon after the war broke, he complained that the White European

"Zionists claimed to be the only heirs of tomorrow." He recognized that this left him and others who shared his worldview as part of the past. The Zionists, he noted, had "conquered Palestine from the Arabs, Turkey, the European powers and the non-Zionist Jew." (156-157)

Putting a mixture of historical and decorative details to good use, Amy Dockser Marcus fashioned a stylish historical "novel" that brings to light the politics and intrigue of the European Zionists' den. (93, 121,122, 123, 126, 129, 167...). Her thrilling narrative uncovers their indefatigable colonial maneuvers and humbugs. It discloses the extent of the dissension between Arab Jews and those mostly Arian Jews from Central Europe. Regrettably, the prevailing White Zionists' decision was that Palestinians would have no place in their own homeland (37), and that they would have to drift to their doom.

Marcus, a Pulitzer prize-winning former Wall Street Journal correspondent, is an able analyst of character and a superb storyteller. Like Hemingway whose fame came to him as public writer, she knows by experience that mainstream readers would feel comforted by a history book whose language, and style lean towards that of the novels. But to read this fascinating narrative, as historian or as scholar, you will be puzzled by the heavy and vaguely referenced details.

Some of these details were imaginal and indecent, to say the least. In one of these many imaginal details, to ridicule the Greek priests, Marcus confidently pictured one narrow street of the old city in 1898 with small boys driving donkeys and Greek priests walking. "The Greek priests, bearded and robed, walked balancing hats that look like black towers trembling atop their heads." (40-41) In another detail she "pictured" the Dome of the rock mosque in 1908 with "heaps of shoes, piled up in small pyramids by the penitents who removed them before stepping inside to pray."

Marcus as a diligent researcher needs to give more attention to some other facts. The map titled "Jerusalem circa 1913" with its colonial and misleading divisions is actually a current map. The Western Wall Plaza, noted on the map has been built 55 years after the date of the map. On the night of Saturday, 10 June 1967, the inhabitants of the Maghribi Quarter, beside the Western Wall were given three hours to evacuate their homes. Then the bulldozer came and reduced this historic district, one of the earliest of the Jerusalem awqaf to rubble. Chaim Herzog, who later became Israel's sixth president, took much of the credit for the destruction of the neighborhood. A large ugly fast food plaza was created and called Western Wall Plaza.

But as I neared the end of this book, something about it suddenly struck me...