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BackDependence can become interdependence when it is symmetrical, just, and sustainable. This is a continued process, perhaps never fully achieved, rather than a fixed objective or endgame.
During the first half of the 20th century, both sides have gradually developed a distinct national awareness and a desire for political independence. The two national independence movements grew and hardened in tandem, in opposition to each other despite a reality on the ground of porous boundaries and social mixing, especially in the large “mixed” cities such as Jerusalem and Jaffa – namely, a reality of interdependence.
In sociological terms, one could say that the growing aspiration for national independence – and its manifestation through geographical separation – were the result of competing “principles of vision and division” (Bourdieu, 1989). So that “nationality”, which was hardly a credible vision for the motely communities of Ottoman Palestine at the beginning of the century, quickly overcame other possible social divisions based on class, religion, education, urbanity, etc. (see Marom, 2014). After all, a bourgeois Jew living in Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and a bourgeois Muslim living in King George’s Avenue in Jaffa probably had more in common with each other than each of them had, respectively, with an “Old Yishuv” Jew in Jerusalem or a Falah in the Galilee. This interdependence in the case of Tel Aviv and Jaffa was clearly captured in 1925 by Patrick Geddes when making his famous plan for Tel Aviv – but it might be more generally applicable to any place where Jews and Arabs found themselves living in spatial proximity and economic connection.