the fight and who is to be blamed. This incident illustrates the difficult task facing historians in analyzing the late Ottoman Palestine, the period of the early Zionist-Arab encounter and conflict. It is alleged that this was the moment when a previously peaceful co-existence among Jews and Arabs, united under the Ottoman Empire, instantly became an "us vs. them" divisiveness that has prevailed ever since.

In February 1914, Rothschild visited Rehovot during the fourth of his five visits to