Did the Israelis appreciate the Palestinians?

Answer 1

There are two main definitions of appreciate in this particular context: (1) to be grateful or thankful to someone and/or (2) to value or regard highly. The two cases require different analyses. It is also worth noting that the terms Israelis and Palestinians only go back to 1948 and prior to this point the term for the Jewish Settlements was the Yishuv and its residents were termed Palestinian Jews by the British. As for the Arabs, there were numerous distinct groups. Those who we call the Palestinians today were called the Fellahin or Landed Peasantry. There were also the Druze, who were landed, but did not embrace Islam or a Greater Arab identity. There were also the Bedouins who were nomadic. The British called them all Palestinian Arabs regardless of their incredible cultural differences.

Definition (1): Being Grateful

The Fellahin were openly antagonistic towards the Yishuv. One of the famous early examples of this was the founding of the city of Tel Aviv. A number of Zionist Jews wanted to move into the Arab port city of Jaffa in 1906, but were prevented from doing so by the Arab Fellahin living there. As a result, the Jews petitioned the Ottoman Government to buy land to the north of Jaffa to establish their own town where they could settle. Thus, Tel Aviv was born. (Of course, eventually Tel Aviv became so massive that Jaffa was incorporated into it as district.

Passive resistance to the development of the Yishuv was not the only method by which Fellahin attempted to prevent Jewish Settlement. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, militias founded by the Fellahin attacked members of the Yishuv in what are often considered pogroms, especially the 1929 Attack in Hebron. Fellahin also petitioned the British government to limit and make illegal further Jewish Immigration, resulting in the British White Papers in 1939 that effectively prevented Jews from escaping to Palestine during the Holocaust.

On these grounds, what were the Jews to be thankful for from the Fellahin?

Of course, as mentioned earlier, there were non-Fellahin Arabs in Palestine. These Arabs actually did endear themselves to the Yishuv and developed strong bonds with them. The Jews and Druze were jointly able to secure Druze rights to Nabi Shu'ayb, which is a Druze holy site. In return, Druze pledged themselves to the physical defense of the Yishuv and fought alongside Jews in the Jewish-Arab Engagement of 1947-1949 and in all other Arab-Israeli Conflicts. The Bedouins were able to strike a strong trade relationship with the Yishuv. The Yishuv was often able to provide Bedouin camps with water and additional jobs. The Bedouins in turn helped the Yishuv maintain a strong agricultural food base, especially in the Galilee Region. Similarly, Bedouins have served alongside Jews in Israel.

Understandably, Jews remain grateful to the Druze and Bedouin for their historical loyalty and positive contribution to Israeli culture. Currently the Druze are over-represented in the Knesset and are members of nearly every political party except the Religious Jewish Parties.

Definition (2) Valuing Highly

In Europe, many Zionists, such as Jabotinsky and Ahad Ha'am discussed how they imagined themselves and Fellahin working side by side to build the Land of Israel. They wrote very poetically about the possible collaboration between the two groups and their mutual love for the same land. Initially, the Jews of the Yishuv tried to integrate Fellahin into their agricultural enterprises as they had with the Bedouins. While the Bedouins were receptive, the Fellahin were not. When the outreach to the Fellahin resulted in more violence than benefits, many areas of the Yishuv began to defend themselves more readily against Fellahin than to openly negotiate with them and no longer valued mutual cooperation.

In 1967, when Israel acquired the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a twenty-year period of Palestinian guest-work in Israel began. At this point, the Mizrahi Jews, who had previously made up the lower class, were moving up in the Israeli economy and the drive for manual labor allowed many Palestinians to become guest workers in Israel. Their contributions to the Israeli economy were quite valued by Jews. However, in 1987, the First Intifada began and Israel needed to secure its borders to prevent fatalities from terrorism. As a result, the Palestinian guest-worker project was abandoned and Israel had to seek out guest-workers from Southeast Asia to fill that void in the workforce. Many Israelis still recall when Palestinians worked alongside them quite fondly and have nice things to say both about the Palestinian work ethic and the disposition of Palestinian people, but they will make it clear that the security requirements were more important.