The Druze in the Jewish State: A Brief History (review)

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Reviewed by: The Druze in the Jewish State: A Brief History Michael Dumper The Druze in the Jewish State: A Brief History, by Kais M. Firro. Leiden: Brill, 1999. 266 pp. $76.00. Comprising about 10 percent of the non-Jewish or Palestinian population of Israel, the Druze community is thus both a minority and a minority within a minority. The result has been a conflict between those Druze who seek to ally themselves with the Palestinians in Israel and those who side with the dominant Israeli Jewish community. Professor Firro has done academia a great service in pulling together a riveting account of the push and pull of these forces from the Mandate era to the present day. As such his book is a critique of the current canon, The Druze in Israel: A Political Study, by Professor Gabriel Ben Dor, and can be seen as a worthy successor. The position of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and its component parts, is a controversial subject in Israeli academic and official circles. In addition to discussions as to whether the Jewish nature of the Israeli state is discriminatory to non-Jews, there is also the question of the extent to which academic study of the minority has been [End Page 138] shaped by official requirements of the state. How independent are the copious studies on Palestinian identity, education, history, politics etc., and how have the studies themselves been formulated in ways that conform to the perspectives and requirements of bureaucrats and security officials? Professor Firro has not evaded this controversy. Indeed he wades into it without hesitation. On the very first page of his Introduction he makes his intentions clear with a tirade against the orthodox Israeli view of Druze “particularism” and sets out to demolish what he regards as an inaccurate and overly primordialist Israeli image of the Druzes. At the same time, Firro can be placed in the new revisionist school of Israeli historiography. Not only does he question many Israeli myths about Druze history and politics, but he also confronts face-on the internal machinations of the community which do not show it in a good light. For example, he produces strong evidence that severely qualifies the accepted view of Druze collaboration and cooperation with Zionist officials during the latter part of the Mandate era. Yet, he simultaneously pulls no punches with regard to self-serving nature of many of the actions of the Druze elites during the era of the Israeli state. What is of added interest in his analysis is the way he conveys the reciprocal nature of the patron-client relationship between Israeli officials and Druze leaders. The manipulations of factions within the Druze community by Yeshoshua Palmon, Advisor of the Prime Minister for Minority Affairs 1949–54, and Abba Hushi, formerly of the Histadrut and a Mayor of Haifa in the 1950s, are laid bare in all their detail gleaned from Israeli state documents. At the same time, the way in which Shaykhs Amin Tarif and Jabr Mu’addi exploited the rivalry for influence over the Druze community between these two Israeli officials in order to advance their own positions is one of most important elements in this study. What is surprising, however, is that this even-handedness in approach does not seem to be sufficient to explain satisfactorily the central conundrum in contemporary Druze life in Israel: that despite confiscation of Druze land comparable to other sections of the Palestinian minority, and that despite a level of service provision and infrastructural development way below what is received by Jewish neighborhoods and settlements, the Druze continue to serve loyally in the Israeli army, the paramilitary Border Guard, and the prison service. Partly at fault is Firro’s methodology that amounts to the straightforward chronological presentation of developments. Chapter headings indicate an overall theme, and each incident and turn of events is examined in minutiae with ample references. But there is little attempt to make explicit a broader argument by introducing each chapter’s main focus or drawing together the main points in a conclusion. Thus the reader is left with an impressive and dazzling array of facts and figures but looking for a...