Re: ...occupiers living apart in separate communities from the Muslims. Whereas in Israel, I understand there is not a distinct separation.....
Nor was there any "distinct separation" between the Pieds Noirs and Native/Muslim Algerians:
History
The Europeans had arrived as colonists from all over the Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, and Malta), starting in 1830. The Jews had arrived in several waves, some coming in Roman times while most had arrived as refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and had largely embraced French citizenship and identity after the décret Crémieux in 1871. Before 1962, both the Europeans and the Jews of Algeria were listed under the name Européens (Europeans) for statistical or official purposes. They considered themselves just French, or Algerian, or Africans, each of these identities intertwined in their mind. Their unofficial anthem was the Song of the Africans (Le chant des Africains).
In 1959, the pieds-noirs numbered 1,025,000, and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria, a percentage gradually diminishing since the peak of 15.2% in 1926. However, some areas of Algeria had high concentrations of pieds-noirs, such as the regions of Bône (now Annaba), Algiers, and above all the area from Oran to Sidi-Bel-Abbès. Oran had been under European rule since the 17th century, and the population in the Oran metropolitan area was 49.3% European and Jewish in 1959. In the Algiers metropolitan area, Europeans and Jews accounted for 35.7% of the population. In the metropolitan area of Bône they accounted for 40.5% of the population. The département of Oran, a rich European-developed agricultural land of 16,520 km² (6,378 sq. miles) stretching between the cities of Oran and Sidi-Bel-Abbès, and including them, was the largest area of pieds-noirs density outside of the cities, with the pieds-noirs accounting for 33.6% of the population of the département in 1959.
The pieds-noirs felt betrayed by the act of Charles de Gaulle sanctioning the independence of Algeria and some of them fought a limited civil war. The terrorist organization OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) set up by a group of these who had served in the French army was active in the first half of the 1960s and is well known for its role in the plot of the fictional The Day of the Jackal.
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