Conclusion

U

ltimately this book has explored the ways in which the categories

of religion and race functioned within a complex of categories used

by Zionists and Arabs to define one another in the increasingly nation-

alizing environment of Late Ottoman Palestine and the broader region.

I have argued that while there were deep concerns about land in the en-

counter between these communities, the parties related to one another

not as perfect strangers competing for territory, but rather as groups

with intertwined histories, cultures, beliefs, even blood. These points of

intersection and commonality could at times produce a sense of shared

interests while at other times they could generate hostility and fear.

“Enemies of the Crescent and the Cross”:

Religion and Palestinian Identity

My argument— that religion and race were central modes of perception

and identification of others in the Arab- Zionist encounter— has a num-

ber of important implications for our understanding of the emergence

of nationalisms in Palestine. First, it is worth highlighting the way in

which the use of Judaism as a counterpoint facilitated the construc-

tion of a Palestinian Arab national identity that unites Christians and

Muslims on religious/textual grounds. In my analysis of al- Khalidi’s

discussion of the absence of the afterlife in Judaism, I noted how al-

Khalidi linked the New Testament and the Qurʾan, in contrast to the

Jews’ Torah. This association of Christianity and Islam, in explicit con-

tradistinction to Judaism, is a phenomenon that developed further in

the years immediately following the Great War. This was evidenced

by, inter alia, the rise of groups called Muslim- Christian Associations

in Palestine.^1 For instance, at an anti- Zionist rally in February 1920,

(^1) This organization “first appeared in Jaffa early in November 1918, then spread to
Jerusalem later in the same month.” See Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism,

158. On the MCA’s origins and its emergence as the dominant nationalist organization
     among Palestinian Arabs in the years immediately following the Great War, see Porath,
     The Emergence of the Palestinian- Arab National Movement 1918– 1929 , 32– 34, 105– 8.