FROM NAHDA TO NAKBA: THE GOVERNMENTAL ARAB COLLEGE OF JERUSALEM AND ITS PALESTINIAN HISTORICAL HERITAGE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract: The Governmental Arab College of Jerusalem is a little-known constructed space that emerged and then disappeared in just a few decades, a remarkable while extremely limited time if we reflect on the ancient history of the town that hosted it. However, it would be a great mistake not to consider these 30 years of history, from 1918 to 1948, and especially the wealth of cultural consciousness that the College was able to instill in its students. Ihsan Abbas (1920-2003), Ismail Ragib Khalidi (1916-1968), ‘Abdul Latif Tibawi (1910-1981), Irfan Shahid (1926) as academics, and Haidar Abdel Shafi (1919-2007), Halil-Salim Jabara (1913-1999), Hasib Sabbagh (1920-2010) etc. as politicians and activists are some of the most important names in Arab Palestinian culture and politics of the twentieth century, and all of them studied at the Arab College of Jerusalem. In this article, I would like to focus attention on the importance of this secondary/preparatory school, the social and cultural values that the teaching body was able to impart, and the role it played within the increasing and violent debate that the Arab College ignited concerning the growing Arab Palestinian-Jewish conflict in the first half of the twentieth century under the British Mandate. The Palestinian intelligentsia that was shaped within the Arab College symbolizes a cultural elite that, even if it would learn what it means to live as refugees, continued to work in different ways on its own cultural tradition. A key subject in understanding the main reasons behind the roots of identity within this divided city.