DEBORAH S. BERNSTEIN, Constructing Boundaries: Jewishand Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine, Israel Studies Series (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 2000). Pp. 293. $71.50 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Abstract

Constructing Boundaries is the latest entry in a growing body of revisionist scholarship on the history and political economy of Palestine under the British, contesting the once cherished notion that the Jewish and Palestinian communities of Palestine/Israel were best investigated and understood as isolated and autonomously developing entities. By focusing on one urban setting—Haifa, which during the Mandate period become Palestine's most important port and industrial center—this work provides new insight into how the industrial economy of Palestine shaped, and in turn was shaped by, the conflictual interaction of the two communities.