ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the maze of issues posed in the analysis of inter-group relationships in contemporary urban settings. It examines majority-minority group relationships and more particularly, relations between Jews and Arabs, plus some others as these have been unfolding in two Israeli cities, Haifa and Jaffa-Tel Aviv. Both Haifa and Jaffa were busy entreports during much of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkish rule. They were Arab towns and, to a considerable extent, they also were the front-pieces of Palestinian modernity as they funneled exported goods and occasional travelers around corners of the Mediterranean. They connected as well with imported European products and the expanding European colonial powers. In 1850 Jaffa had a population of 5,600 and Haifa's population numbered about 3,500: they were fishermen and importers, cafe owners and porters, poor laborers and members of the small commercial middle-class, mainly focused inwards towards the Palestinian countryside but also outwards to Beiruth, Alexandria, Marseilles.
