Much has been written about Israel’s so-called “mixed cities,” a term that, more than anything, reveals how anomalous they are in a country where separation is a foundational concept. But the story of the urban, Palestinian bourgeoisie, the group that Palestinian researcher Sherene Seikaly refers to as “Men of Capital,” in the years following the Nakba, has yet to be told.
The forgotten story of the Boutagy family, one of the few middle class Palestinian families that remained in the land after 1948, allows us to comprehend how this group thrived in the city of Hayfa during the British Mandate (I use the Arabic-to-English transliteration “Hayfa” to distinguish between pre-occupation “Hayfa” and “Haifa” after the city was occupied in 1948). This prosperity was made possible also by the ability of its members to maneuver between contradictions at a time rife with political, social, and economic changes.
The story of the Boutagy family following the Nakba, during which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homeland and were forcibly
— source 972mag.com | Himmat Zoubi | Jan 6, 2022