Civil alliances – Palestine, 1947–1948

Abstract

Between November 1947 (The UN Partition Plan for Palestine) and May 1948 (The creation of the state of Israel), many Jewish and Arab communities who cared for their country intensified the negotiations between themselves and initiated urgent encounters, some short and spontaneous, others planned meticulously to the last detail, during which the participants raised demands, sought compromises, set rules, formulated agreements, made promises, sought forgiveness, and made efforts to compensate and reconcile. Their shared purpose was to prevent the rising violence in the area from taking over their lives. They sought to protect the common world of their life in Palestine and to salvage it from those who wished to destroy it. In over 100 documented encounters – and probably many more whose records have yet to be found – they promised themselves and each other the continuation of their shared lives. In 2012 I directed a film based on archival documents depicting these events. This essay, followed by the transcript of those events, reflects upon the importance of this chapter for a potential history of Palestine, as well as on her cinematic decisions to film the movie around a map of Mandatory Palestine (from 1947) with the participation of 25 Arabs and Jews of varying ages speaking in Hebrew and in Arabic.