I know Jewish communities existed in Palestine long before 1948. I also know Jewish immigration into Palestine significantly increased starting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and throughout the 1910's, 1920's and 1930's. I also know there were lots of tensions due to Jews buying Arab lands and due to Arab revolts.
**But an aspect of the pre-1948 period I never really hear about is neighbourly relations and coexistence.**Would Jewish and Palestinian neighbours invite eachother over for a BBQ (so to speak, of course); would there be intercultural marriage? Would Jewish and Palestinian women banter together or go shopping together? Or were they two people living seperately very early on?
Or do we have to make a distinction between the older Jewish communities of Palestine (because I assume there must have been a small Jewish community in Palestine all throughout the last two millennia) and the settlers who immigrated starting in the nineteenth century? Maybe the first lived more together with Palestinians while the latter established settlements outside of Palestinian towns?
This is all just guesswork, I don't really know anything about this and would be interested to see someone post any knowledge about this.
Sorry if my English was rubbish here and there. My grammar is mostly okay but I tend to struggle with sentence construction from time to time.
I can't say it for sure, because it's difficult to know, but it wasn't all conflict.
That said, especially after the 1920s when the Ben-Gurion-led Histadrut (Israeli trade union basically) was created, Israeli and Palestinian economies were treated as separate. Israeli economies, while typically relying on cheaper Arab labor (especially in settlements from the get-go) essentially created an economy within an economy, or a state within a state. These accounts are seen even in the reports by commissions like the UN commission that drew up the partition plan, which visited what it regarded as "backwards" Palestinian villages that were dirty, while the Zionists were "making the desert bloom" (both phrases are easily disputed to differing degrees, the first more disputable of course).
Was it all bad? Not necessarily. Some cities were mixed, like Haifa and Jerusalem. Jerusalem was mostly split along ethnic lines as far as I've seen, but Haifa and Hebron (Hebron didn't have a very large Jewish population, but it was there for quite some time, and is said to have been there forever) were mixed cities. Despite differences, the Jews of Haifa (even during the Civil War) urged the Palestinians not to leave, and to accept Jewish rule, but the Arabs (according to Karsh and a few others) were mostly forced to leave by their leaders. This case, while not particularly common, definitely illustrates the times when relations were fairly good. It's said that the Jewish mayor of Haifa and the British commander in the city pleaded with Palestinian leaders to accept the Jewish ceasefire (which was mostly accommodating to Arab local community terms, but not to the overarching Arab leadership), and it's also said the Jewish mayor had tears in his eyes at the thought of the Palestinians leaving.
Also, in a converse case, when the Arabs rioted in 1929 (Western Wall Riots), there was a lot of violence in Hebron. Police forces there were sparse, mostly Arab, and only one British commander was there. The commander, who put up quite the fight and stood down the rioters, was not the only reason that a larger massacre didn't occur. Arabs with Jewish neighbors would take in those neighbors in a selfless and generous gesture of kindness, sheltering them from the rioters and keeping them hidden to save their lives. While not always done, it demonstrates the humanity that Arabs had for their Jewish neighbors as well.
Was friendship and shared culture common? By most accounts, no. Most villages and settlements were kept apart. Attacks were traded between the communities, and economic interaction outside of urban areas was sparse from my understanding. But it wasn't all bad, not at all.