"Government documents, newspaper accounts, and personal letters in five languages from the Turkish state archives provide new and fascinating insights into dramatic events that took place in Palestine just before the outbreak of World War I.
1913 Palestine is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society. Muslims, Jews and Christians coexist in relative harmony and often gather together in the coffeehouses of Jerusalem. It is a time before Jerusalem’s Old City is segregated into separate ‘quarters’ for various groups. But after European Jewish migrants arrive, Ruhi al-Khalidi, Jerusalem’s representative to the Ottoman Parliament in
Istanbul, voices growing concerns about what he sees as their secret agenda to build a state. So does Albert Antebi, an Arab-speaking Sephardic Jew known as the Jewish “pasha,” who embraces economic and cultural Zionism, but fears the consequences of a Zionist land grab.
Meanwhile, Arthur Ruppin arrives from Germany to be the Zionist’s land agent and Khalil Sakakini returns from a trip to America filled with pride and optimism of a new Palestinian Arab identity. In 1913, growing tensions erupt into violence in the vineyard just outside Rehovot, leaving an Arab and Jew dead, and sowing the seeds for a century of conflict." NEH
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I watched this last night and recommend it. It makes a nice companion piece for the book "A Peace To End All Peace" by David Fromkin. pl