Resling Publishing, November 2024. Danacode: 058500018032. 266 pages.

THE PALESTINIAN ARAB CITRUS INDUSTRY FROM OTTOMAN RULE TO THE NAKBA, 1850-1950 [Hebrew]

In the Zionist-Israeli national myth, the citrus industry—especially its flagship product, the Jaffa orange—holds a prominent place. Much like today’s high-tech sector in Israel, the citrus industry during the British Mandate and Israel’s first decade after the 1948 war served not only as a central economic engine but also as a Zionist national symbol. Yet, as with the broader Zionist-Israeli narrative, scholarship on the citrus sector has often erased the role—and at times even the very existence—of Palestinian Arabs in this vital chapter of history, or has depicted them solely as adversaries. In this groundbreaking study, a revised and expanded Hebrew edition of their 2021 book published by Syracuse University Press, Mustafa Kabha and Nahum Karlinsky uncover previously unknown layers of the Palestinian citrus industry before the Nakba, as well as its complex relationship with its Zionist counterpart. These relations, initially shaped by economic and national competition, gradually developed into a shared binational organization—unprecedented in both scale and longevity—that remained active until April 1948. The book reveals that the country’s citrus industry was founded by Arab entrepreneurs from Jaffa and its surroundings as early as the mid-19th century, well before the rise of the Zionist movement. Zionist growers later relied on the professional and technological expertise developed by these Palestinian pioneers. Kabha and Karlinsky demonstrate how the citrus sector brought economic prosperity and significant social mobility to large segments of the Palestinian rural population during the Mandate period. The study also explores the tragic fate of Palestinian citrus growers—most of whom became refugees—and their groves, which were nationalized by the State of Israel and, in an Orwellian turn, officially classified as “abandoned.” Finally, the book offers a profound lesson: even amid destruction and loss, as in these difficult times, another path remains possible. It is a path of peace, cooperation, and mutual respect—one that both peoples had already begun to tread.

Nahum Karlinsky is a visiting associate professor at Boston University and former faculty member at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Mustafa Kabha is a full professor at The Open University of Israel.