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CONTENTS
Rashid Khalidi
Dedication
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
Introduction
1. The First Declaration of War, 1917–1939
2. The Second Declaration of War, 1947–1948
3. The Third Declaration of War, 1967
4. The Fourth Declaration of War, 1982
5. The Fifth Declaration of War, 1987–1995
6. The Sixth Declaration of War, 2000–2014
Conclusion: A Century of War on the Palestinians
Notes
Acknowledgments
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance Kindle Edition
by Rashid Khalidi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 824 ratings
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
'Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict ' Noam Chomsky
The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms.
Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba - the Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel - the cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments, Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation, dispossession and colonisation.
==
338 pages
338 pages
Product description
Review
Informed and passionate . . . Khalidi's is an elegy for the Palestinians, for their dispossession, for their failure to resist conquest.
--The Guardian
The Hundred Years' War is one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but it's also a deeply personal work. . . . For a people whose history is all but criminalized, this act of retelling is itself a form of resistance.
--The Nation
Rigorous and lucid . . . Rashid Khalidi, the intellectual heir to Edward Said, has written one of the great books on the Israeli-Palestinian question.
--Financial Times
A book of witnessed historical accounts and enlightening deep analysis . . . each chapter is rich with revelations . . . I doubt if my experience of reading this great intellectual contribution could have been any more enriching.
--Mondoweiss
Masterful . . . brilliant . . . This major work will occupy a central position in the literature of Palestinian history.
--Al-Quds
"After decades of scrupulous objectivity, Khalidi has now written a very personal book. . . . The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is a roller-coaster ride through Palestinian history, one hundred years without a moment of solitude."
--The Baffler
"For those who want to learn about the course of the Israel-Palestine conflict up till now, and are open-minded: read this book. It comes over as a brilliant synthesis of high scholarship and experience, fair-minded, and highly readable."
--Jacobin
Meticulous . . . Rashid Khalidi's exhaustive research leaves no doubt that the Jewish colonizers were acutely aware from the start that the Palestinian people had to be subjugated and removed to create the Jewish state.
--Chris Hedges, TruthDig
This book is a masterful work of scholarship and personal history excavating unlike any I've seen before; this will become a major force in the Palestinian historical canon in the years to come.
--Literary Hub
This book's undertaking is remarkable: renowned historian Khalidi captures over a century of history in strong, compelling prose, including that of his own family (his great-great-great-uncle was the mayor of Jerusalem in the late 19th-century). It is widely considered required reading for anyone truly wishing to understand Palestine.
--Electric Literature
A richly informed, personalized account of a century of repression of a peoples' national aspirations. . . . original and distinctive . . . a remarkable testament to the stubborn resistance that characterizes the Palestinians.
--Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
Riveting and original . . . Khalidi skillfully balances his professional analysis of historical and diplomatic documents with insights of his own and his relatives who had leadership roles throughout the twentieth century. . . . A profoundly moving account.
--Hespéris-Tamuda
Heart-wrenching . . . powerful . . . brave . . . The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is a valuable violation of the taboo against injecting personal narrative into historical accounts. . . .Though it is difficult to look to the future with any degree of optimism, Khalidi manages to find hopeful signs of the growing international support for Palestinian rights.
--Weekly Worker
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is lived history, a testament not only to what Palestinians experienced as a collective but also to what this meant in very immediate ways to the author himself. . . . Khalidi's personal stories make an already tragic history even more poignant.
--Portside
Rashid Khalidi has written a remarkable book. . . . The personal anecdotes add flavour and analytical depth to the historical narrative. . . . Khalidi discusses Palestinian errors with a deep sincerity, while emphasizing how the cards have been greatly stacked to their disadvantage.
--Journal of Peace Research
Dogged . . . a timely, cogent, patient history of a seemingly intractable conflict told from a learned Palestinian perspective.
--Kirkus
Khalidi skillfully balances analysis of historical and diplomatic documents with insights of his own and his relatives who had leadership roles throughout the 20th century . . . Highly recommended.
--Library Journal
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine presents a vital perspective on one of the planet's most intractable geopolitical and humanitarian crises.
--Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"One of the many merits of the book is the way Khalidi uses his family and his own life experience to tell this tragic, yet-to-be-righted, story. . . . While his condemnation of Israel's policies and historic Zionism is unrelenting, Khalidi has straight talk for the Palestinians on the question of compromises."
--Balfour Project
"Rashid Khalidi enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest living historians of the Palestinian people. . . . Khalidi is a sophisticated and unapologetic exponent of an increasingly widely held view of the Israel-Palestine conflict."
--The Literary Review (UK)
"A superb, no-holds-barred history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation . . . Rashid Khalidi pulls no punches in criticizing the abject failings of both global and domestic politicians who have helped perpetuate the continued misery in Palestine."
--Morning Star (UK)
"Focused on the Palestinians' lived experience of a century of war, never losing sight of the geo-political forces that fostered it, Rashid Khalidi has written a book of comprehensive scholarship with the delicacy and intensity of a novel."
--Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love
"With wisdom and insight, Rashid Khalidi lays to rest the illusions of Israelis and Palestinians alike. He combines brilliant scholarship with extensive first-hand experience of war and diplomacy in a call for mutual acceptance and equality of rights as the only way to end a century of conflict. An outstanding book."
--Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs: A History
"A riveting and original work, the first to explore the century of war against the Palestinians on the basis of deep immersion in their struggle--a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict."
--Noam Chomsky, author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
"Brave, brilliant, and magisterial, this outstanding work of historical scholarship is also full of high drama and fascinating narrative. Rashid Khalidi presents compelling evidence for a reevaluation of the conventional Western view of the subject in a book that is a milestone in the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
--Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
"This is the first true people's history of the hundred-year struggle of the Palestinian people, a beautifully written text and a call for justice and self-determination."
--Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
"A meticulous account of Palestinian history that provides a brilliant framework for the study of settler colonialism on a global scale. You can disagree with Khalidi but you cannot afford to miss the opportunity of arguing with him."
--Homi K. Bhabha, author of The Location of Culture
"Through a scholarly narrative rooted in his own family history, Rashid Khalidi offers a fresh interpretation that shows Palestine as a violent, grinding fault in the shifting tectonic plates of Great Power politics. This book is sure to become a classic account."
--Elizabeth F. Thompson, author of Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East
"This book is a remarkable interweaving of three distinctive strands: a deeply researched history of the struggle between Zionist aspirations and Palestinian resistance; an analytical framework that places the conflict within the context of settler colonialism; and a personal family history that brings the narrative alive. Newcomers and specialists alike will learn much from reading this sweeping account."
--William B. Quandt, author of Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967
"Learned and clear-eyed, this compelling history of the long war to deny Palestinian rights exposes a century of blunders, misjudgments, and willful deceptions. Highly recommended."
--Stephen M. Walt, coauthor of The Israel Lobby
"Beautifully written and accessible, this book is an invaluable examination of the Palestinian-Zionist encounter as a struggle against settler-colonial domination, not as an issue of conflict resolution--a vital difference, necessary for a deeper understanding of the war and for its meaningful resolution. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine illustrates, at its core, the refusal of Palestinians to accept their own defeat and their desire to live as equals with Israelis in a land they are destined to share."
--Sara Roy, author of Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector
As in any book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is ample room for debate and controversy. And as in any book by Rashid Khalidi, there is history, erudition, politics and passion aplenty. There is also his tenacious conviction that 'there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other.'
--Rob Malley, International Crisis Group CEO and White House Coordinator for the Middle East under President Barack Obama
"Rashid Khalidi makes clear that the Zionists could not have created modern day Israel without abundant help from Britain and the United States. A must read for the growing number of people who are interested in understanding the real roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
--John J. Mearsheimer, coauthor of The Israel Lobby
"With moral passion and analytical rigor, Khalidi skillfully unearths the narrative of a long and bitter national conflict, providing a multitude of timely, acute, and original insights. This compelling book is a must read."
--Zeev Sternhell, author of The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition
"In a painfully sober analysis of what made Zionism, an anachronistic colonialist enterprise, so successful, Rashid Khalidi also shows how Palestinians defy fatalism and refuse to vanish. His book is a tribute and contribution to his people's perseverance."
--Amira Hass, author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza
"This fascinating and instructive blend of autobiography and history should be read by anybody who wants to understand the tragedy of Palestine and the Palestinians."
--Patrick Cockburn, author of The Rise of the Islamic State
"Rashid Khalidi has produced a sophisticated and insightful historical analysis of the Palestine-Israel conflict that is enriched by deep knowledge, clear and critical views, and his own experiences of key moments."
--Ian Black, author of Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
"This searing account makes clearer than ever the often deliberately understated colonial nature of the Palestinian experience--and it reminds us of the Palestinians' extraordinary capacity to remain steadfast despite the local and global forces arrayed against them."
--Saree Makdisi, author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation of Culture
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
Rashid Khalidi is the author of Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage, among others.His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other journals. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
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Product details
ASIN : B07PJXLBTW
Publisher : Profile Books; Main edition (6 February 2020)
Language : English
File size : 7258 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 338 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 1250787653Best Sellers Rank: 1,342 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)2 in Middle Eastern History (Kindle Store)
3 in History of Israel & Palestine
316 in Textbooks & Study GuidesCustomer Reviews:
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 824 ratings
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Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Khalidi is the author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon Press, 2013) and six other books about the Middle East--Sowing Crisis, The Iron Cage, Resurrecting Empire, Origins of Arab Nationalism, Under Siege, and the award-winning Palestinian Identity.
He is the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has written more than eighty articles on Middle Eastern history and politics, including pieces in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many journals. Professor Khalidi has received fellowships and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Rockefeller Foundation; he was also the recipient of a Fulbright research award. Professor Khalidi has been a regular guest on numerous radio and TV shows, including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Nightline.
Photo Credit: Alex Levac, 2011.
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There are 0 reviews and 7 ratings from Australia
Top reviews from other countries
Ralph Lehman
5.0 out of 5 stars The History is Important to Understanding TodayReviewed in the United States on 23 October 2023
Verified Purchase
The horrific Hamas attack on the Israelis and the planned attack on Gaza by Israel is best understood by looking at the history of the creation of Israel and the resulting displacement and disregard of the Palestinians living there. This is a well-written and even-handed description of that history. The land, possessions and rights of the Palestinians were taken away by Israel with the help of Britain, the Arab states, and the United States. Israel's disregard of the lives of civilians in many instances, with the help and involvement of the United States, especially Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, are as awful as the actions Hamas if we believe that all people are equal and all civilians should be protected. The United States has never been, and is not now, a neutral party that seeks peace. Unfortunately, the term "anti-semitic" is used against those that simply want the Palestinians to have a voice. A true two-state solution with an independent and free Palestinian state, and the recognition of Israel's right to exist is the only solution. This book should be read by all who have grown up with a one-sided view of the Israeli -Palestinian issues.
One person found this helpfulReport
Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars Very poignant considering this weekends events and the bias reporting of Western Media.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2023
Verified Purchase
As a third culture kid who born in Africa and lived in three African countries including MENA by the time I was ten. This sparked interest in the area as a whole and the frequent unreported injustices against the Palestinian people. Which I chose as part of my studies when I finally went to University at the age of 48.
It was interesting to learn the history of the region from the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood through to Hamas. All the time never mentioning the disgraceful behaviour of the Haganah, Stern Gangs and Irgun, British French and latterly the USA.
The author so rightly lays the blame for so many of the Palestinian elderly men and woman, together with those of younger women and children squarely on the Israeli Defence force and the USA for supplying arms to a those forces within Israel, so they can be used against innocent elderly women and children, in order to continue a land, and to run an apartheid fascist state. Hopefully anyone reading this book including those by President Jimmy Carter, Stephen Sizer, Ian Black and Ilan Pappe, will wake up to the disgraceful behaviour against the Palestinians for 140years since the birth of Zyanism in the 1880.
It is time for the west to wake up and stop wringing their hands in shame over the holocaust, and finally stand up to the Israeli Government and the Israeli Defence Force and try them for the numerous war crimes they are guilty of. Sadly until the Israeli government admit their atrocities and allow the subject of atrocities to be on the table for any peace settlement to be achieved. Sadly it is very obvious that the current Government has no interest in peace, all the time that America and the west including the biased Western media are allowing them to continue to behave the way they are.
Read less
22 people found this helpfulReport
Alec Sandretta
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Defence of Palestinan RightsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 September 2020
Verified Purchase
Rashid Khalidi has drawn on his family library and archives, and the involvement of his family, and indeed, himself in writing a history of what he calls the War against Palestine. In six chapters he shows how a combination of a European Zionist movement in alliance with foreign powers have not only denied Palestnians their right to govern themselves, but waged war against them every time they tried. Thus, the first declaration of War was the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the second the UN Partition Plan of 1947; the third the UN Security Council Resolution 242 that followed the 1967 War; the fourth Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the fifth the Intifada of 1987 which culminated in the forlorn Oslo Accords and the Peace Treaty of 1993; and the sixth the Second Intifada of 2000, enabling Khalidi to conclude his analysis with 'President' Kushner's policies on Jerusalem, the 'Golan Heights' (Jabal al-Jawlan), and the current, if still-born proposal to end the conflict with the Palestinians by throwing Gulf money at them. Having closed the PLO officee in Washington DC and withdrawn funding from UNRWA, one wonders how the USA communicnates with the PLO, and indeed, why the PLO should answer the phone when the USA calls.
Khalidi does not compromise in his condemnation of the British during the Palestine Mandate, but, as the book implies, records the military casuaties of the wars, with the Palestinians in every war outgunned and outflanked by Zionists and their friends. He is candid enugh to admit that where Israel succeeded, from the beginning, in recruiting allies in key players -the British Empire, later the US, Palestinians failed, and continnue to fail to win major external players to their cause. His criticism extends to the leading members of the PLO (even though he was part of the Madrid delegation in 1991), seeing a generation of Palestinian leaders who survived Israel's assassination campaign as feeble, out-of-touch with the average Palestinian, and thus willing, as happened with the Oslo process, to compromise Palestinian rights in Gaza and the Occupied Territories in return for nothing more than Israel's continuing illegal occupation.
If there is one omission, it is reflected in the fact that Khalidi agrees that the PLO made a tragic mistake in Lebanon, some might argue, provoking a civil war in which they lost so much, and he agrees that the miitary activities of HAMAS have alienated public opinion while achieving noting positive for the Palestinians cause -yet he avoids similar criticism the 'armed struggle' of the late 1960s and 1970s. This not only included the assassination of prominent Arabs (the Prime Minister of Jordan, for example), and Jews in and outside Israel, but the massacre of Israeli athetes at the Munich Olympics, which with aeroplane hi-jackings severely damaged the Palestinian cause. Indeed, it might be said that at the time, 'they' -the Palestinian guerilla groups- were waging war against 'us'.
That said, there is a remarkable exchange of views between a19th century relative, the intelllectual and polymath Yusuf al-Khalidi, who corresponded with Theodor Herzl after the publication of Herzl's The Jewish State, to point out that Palestine was governed by the Ottoman Empire, and inhabited, and that Zionism would cause deep division in the land between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and he pleads with Herzl- "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone!" Herzl, who only visited Palestine once, not only did not address the points al-Khalidi made, but at a later stage with the Zionist charter of 1901, suggested the best option would be for the Palestinians to go and live somewhere else.
Nevertheless, Khalidi's own plea is for a revival of the just claims Palestinians have to govern themselves, and argues that if two nationalist movements with almost identical aiims cannot reach a solution through dialogue, then a different soution must be found iso that Israelis and Palestinians learn to iive with each other, instead of killing each other.
So, while there is a good deal of bitterness in this historical survey, it does not descend into abuse or despair, but carves out rational arguments from the debris of a dismal conflict, in the hope that the next generation will learn from the mistakes of the past.
Read less
24 people found this helpfulReport
postgrad
5.0 out of 5 stars A superb account of Palestinian dispossession
Photo Credit: Alex Levac, 2011.
Read less
Top reviews
Top reviews from Australia
There are 0 reviews and 7 ratings from Australia
Top reviews from other countries
Ralph Lehman
5.0 out of 5 stars The History is Important to Understanding TodayReviewed in the United States on 23 October 2023
Verified Purchase
The horrific Hamas attack on the Israelis and the planned attack on Gaza by Israel is best understood by looking at the history of the creation of Israel and the resulting displacement and disregard of the Palestinians living there. This is a well-written and even-handed description of that history. The land, possessions and rights of the Palestinians were taken away by Israel with the help of Britain, the Arab states, and the United States. Israel's disregard of the lives of civilians in many instances, with the help and involvement of the United States, especially Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, are as awful as the actions Hamas if we believe that all people are equal and all civilians should be protected. The United States has never been, and is not now, a neutral party that seeks peace. Unfortunately, the term "anti-semitic" is used against those that simply want the Palestinians to have a voice. A true two-state solution with an independent and free Palestinian state, and the recognition of Israel's right to exist is the only solution. This book should be read by all who have grown up with a one-sided view of the Israeli -Palestinian issues.
One person found this helpfulReport
Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars Very poignant considering this weekends events and the bias reporting of Western Media.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2023
Verified Purchase
As a third culture kid who born in Africa and lived in three African countries including MENA by the time I was ten. This sparked interest in the area as a whole and the frequent unreported injustices against the Palestinian people. Which I chose as part of my studies when I finally went to University at the age of 48.
It was interesting to learn the history of the region from the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood through to Hamas. All the time never mentioning the disgraceful behaviour of the Haganah, Stern Gangs and Irgun, British French and latterly the USA.
The author so rightly lays the blame for so many of the Palestinian elderly men and woman, together with those of younger women and children squarely on the Israeli Defence force and the USA for supplying arms to a those forces within Israel, so they can be used against innocent elderly women and children, in order to continue a land, and to run an apartheid fascist state. Hopefully anyone reading this book including those by President Jimmy Carter, Stephen Sizer, Ian Black and Ilan Pappe, will wake up to the disgraceful behaviour against the Palestinians for 140years since the birth of Zyanism in the 1880.
It is time for the west to wake up and stop wringing their hands in shame over the holocaust, and finally stand up to the Israeli Government and the Israeli Defence Force and try them for the numerous war crimes they are guilty of. Sadly until the Israeli government admit their atrocities and allow the subject of atrocities to be on the table for any peace settlement to be achieved. Sadly it is very obvious that the current Government has no interest in peace, all the time that America and the west including the biased Western media are allowing them to continue to behave the way they are.
Read less
22 people found this helpfulReport
Alec Sandretta
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Defence of Palestinan RightsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 September 2020
Verified Purchase
Rashid Khalidi has drawn on his family library and archives, and the involvement of his family, and indeed, himself in writing a history of what he calls the War against Palestine. In six chapters he shows how a combination of a European Zionist movement in alliance with foreign powers have not only denied Palestnians their right to govern themselves, but waged war against them every time they tried. Thus, the first declaration of War was the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the second the UN Partition Plan of 1947; the third the UN Security Council Resolution 242 that followed the 1967 War; the fourth Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the fifth the Intifada of 1987 which culminated in the forlorn Oslo Accords and the Peace Treaty of 1993; and the sixth the Second Intifada of 2000, enabling Khalidi to conclude his analysis with 'President' Kushner's policies on Jerusalem, the 'Golan Heights' (Jabal al-Jawlan), and the current, if still-born proposal to end the conflict with the Palestinians by throwing Gulf money at them. Having closed the PLO officee in Washington DC and withdrawn funding from UNRWA, one wonders how the USA communicnates with the PLO, and indeed, why the PLO should answer the phone when the USA calls.
Khalidi does not compromise in his condemnation of the British during the Palestine Mandate, but, as the book implies, records the military casuaties of the wars, with the Palestinians in every war outgunned and outflanked by Zionists and their friends. He is candid enugh to admit that where Israel succeeded, from the beginning, in recruiting allies in key players -the British Empire, later the US, Palestinians failed, and continnue to fail to win major external players to their cause. His criticism extends to the leading members of the PLO (even though he was part of the Madrid delegation in 1991), seeing a generation of Palestinian leaders who survived Israel's assassination campaign as feeble, out-of-touch with the average Palestinian, and thus willing, as happened with the Oslo process, to compromise Palestinian rights in Gaza and the Occupied Territories in return for nothing more than Israel's continuing illegal occupation.
If there is one omission, it is reflected in the fact that Khalidi agrees that the PLO made a tragic mistake in Lebanon, some might argue, provoking a civil war in which they lost so much, and he agrees that the miitary activities of HAMAS have alienated public opinion while achieving noting positive for the Palestinians cause -yet he avoids similar criticism the 'armed struggle' of the late 1960s and 1970s. This not only included the assassination of prominent Arabs (the Prime Minister of Jordan, for example), and Jews in and outside Israel, but the massacre of Israeli athetes at the Munich Olympics, which with aeroplane hi-jackings severely damaged the Palestinian cause. Indeed, it might be said that at the time, 'they' -the Palestinian guerilla groups- were waging war against 'us'.
That said, there is a remarkable exchange of views between a19th century relative, the intelllectual and polymath Yusuf al-Khalidi, who corresponded with Theodor Herzl after the publication of Herzl's The Jewish State, to point out that Palestine was governed by the Ottoman Empire, and inhabited, and that Zionism would cause deep division in the land between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and he pleads with Herzl- "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone!" Herzl, who only visited Palestine once, not only did not address the points al-Khalidi made, but at a later stage with the Zionist charter of 1901, suggested the best option would be for the Palestinians to go and live somewhere else.
Nevertheless, Khalidi's own plea is for a revival of the just claims Palestinians have to govern themselves, and argues that if two nationalist movements with almost identical aiims cannot reach a solution through dialogue, then a different soution must be found iso that Israelis and Palestinians learn to iive with each other, instead of killing each other.
So, while there is a good deal of bitterness in this historical survey, it does not descend into abuse or despair, but carves out rational arguments from the debris of a dismal conflict, in the hope that the next generation will learn from the mistakes of the past.
Read less
24 people found this helpfulReport
postgrad
5.0 out of 5 stars A superb account of Palestinian dispossession
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 February 2020
Verified Purchase
This book charts the key stages in the dispossession of the Palestinian people by Zionists, assisted in particular by Britain and the United States, over the course of one-hundred years. It’s a fluent historical account which succeeds in being simultaneously scholarly and very readable. It is also up to date and ends with President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (which as Khalidi notes was entirely consistent with the great powers’ history of disposing of Palestinian history, identity, culture and worship without even the pretence of consultation).
It has a number of advantages over other books on the subject. The author is able to draw on texts in Arabic which lie outside the competence of many writers on this subject. Secondly, Rashid Khalidi was born into an elite Palestinian family, and the story of dispossession is a very personal one. He describes how his grandparents were forced out of their home by Jews in 1948 and how the ruins of their house still stand abandoned on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, preserved only because of a link to an early Zionist settler. He includes a photograph of the ruins of his brother’s home in the West Bank, bulldozed by the Israeli military. Thirdly, Khalidi’s family background gave him privileged access to many key figures in the twentieth century Palestinian struggle for justice, including the novelist Ghassan Kanafani and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Finally, as history, this is a balanced, humane and objective book which is not afraid to address failings on the Palestinian side. Khalidi is prodigiously well-read and draws on a vast range of sources.
His central thesis is that the modern history of Palestine can best be understood as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will. In the course of this narrative history Khalidi deconstructs many myths about Palestine promoted by apologists for Israel. He identifies the early evidence for Palestinian identity and nationalism. As long ago as 1914, even before the Balfour Declaration, perceptive Palestinians saw the implications of European Zionism, writing ‘We are a nation threatened by disappearance.’ Zionism was always a sly, racist ideology which had at its heart a desire to expel all Palestinians from their land. It is a process which has continued now for over a century, and Khalidi records its progress in dispassionate detail. This is not, as so many books on the subject are, a polemical work but rather a scholarly accounting. Khalidi shows how the brutality of the Israeli state was preceded by the barbarism of the British military occupation of Palestine - tying civilians to the front of armoured cars and trains, demolition of homes, the execution of prisoners and resistance fighters, detention without trial, and the deportation of political leaders. Violent repression was paralleled by a political process which pretended to consider the Palestinian aspiration for nationhood while all the time giving the Zionist movement the right of veto. The bad faith of successive British governments was later replaced by the bad faith of successive US administrations. One of Khalidi’s arguments is that it is delusional to think that the USA is some kind of neutral arbiter, the ‘honest broker’ who can bring the two sides together. Donald Trump merely continues a process which began long ago.
There is a great deal of forgotten history in this book, including the regular massacres which Israel has carried out against Palestinian civilians. In November 1956, in Khan Yunis and Rafah, for example, more than 450 civilians were summarily executed. Khalidi identifies such atrocities as part of a pattern of behaviour by the Israeli military, which can usually rely on a compliant Western media to ignore, downplay or sanitise such killings.
The book ends with a paradox. After a century of dispossession the Palestinians are a broken people, imprisoned in fragments of a country which was once theirs, at the mercy of a bellicose, self-righteous and viciously repressive settler state, which has the ultimate goal of expelling every single one of them. At the same time the Palestinian cause is better-known and stronger than it has ever been, as knowledge of the true nature of the Zionist state and its pitilessly sectarian ideology becomes better known through the medium of print and, more recently, social media. Whereas Zionism was once able to pass itself off as a progressive movement it is now much more easily identifiable as a colonial enterprise which has always been sponsored by states which have no interest whatever in democracy or human rights. Rashid Khalidi recalls a demonstration he attended in 1967 outside Yale Law School, where Golda Meir had been invited to speak. She received a rapturous reception from her audience, while the protesters outside consisted of the author and three others. If this was repeated today the protest would be very much greater because over the past half century the ongoing displacement of the Palestinians from their land has been accompanied by a growth in awareness of why Israel is a pariah state, like apartheid South Africa. A book like this one adds to this growth in consciousness and is to be commended for its balance, its comprehensiveness and its impressive range of sources.
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This book charts the key stages in the dispossession of the Palestinian people by Zionists, assisted in particular by Britain and the United States, over the course of one-hundred years. It’s a fluent historical account which succeeds in being simultaneously scholarly and very readable. It is also up to date and ends with President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (which as Khalidi notes was entirely consistent with the great powers’ history of disposing of Palestinian history, identity, culture and worship without even the pretence of consultation).
It has a number of advantages over other books on the subject. The author is able to draw on texts in Arabic which lie outside the competence of many writers on this subject. Secondly, Rashid Khalidi was born into an elite Palestinian family, and the story of dispossession is a very personal one. He describes how his grandparents were forced out of their home by Jews in 1948 and how the ruins of their house still stand abandoned on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, preserved only because of a link to an early Zionist settler. He includes a photograph of the ruins of his brother’s home in the West Bank, bulldozed by the Israeli military. Thirdly, Khalidi’s family background gave him privileged access to many key figures in the twentieth century Palestinian struggle for justice, including the novelist Ghassan Kanafani and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Finally, as history, this is a balanced, humane and objective book which is not afraid to address failings on the Palestinian side. Khalidi is prodigiously well-read and draws on a vast range of sources.
His central thesis is that the modern history of Palestine can best be understood as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will. In the course of this narrative history Khalidi deconstructs many myths about Palestine promoted by apologists for Israel. He identifies the early evidence for Palestinian identity and nationalism. As long ago as 1914, even before the Balfour Declaration, perceptive Palestinians saw the implications of European Zionism, writing ‘We are a nation threatened by disappearance.’ Zionism was always a sly, racist ideology which had at its heart a desire to expel all Palestinians from their land. It is a process which has continued now for over a century, and Khalidi records its progress in dispassionate detail. This is not, as so many books on the subject are, a polemical work but rather a scholarly accounting. Khalidi shows how the brutality of the Israeli state was preceded by the barbarism of the British military occupation of Palestine - tying civilians to the front of armoured cars and trains, demolition of homes, the execution of prisoners and resistance fighters, detention without trial, and the deportation of political leaders. Violent repression was paralleled by a political process which pretended to consider the Palestinian aspiration for nationhood while all the time giving the Zionist movement the right of veto. The bad faith of successive British governments was later replaced by the bad faith of successive US administrations. One of Khalidi’s arguments is that it is delusional to think that the USA is some kind of neutral arbiter, the ‘honest broker’ who can bring the two sides together. Donald Trump merely continues a process which began long ago.
There is a great deal of forgotten history in this book, including the regular massacres which Israel has carried out against Palestinian civilians. In November 1956, in Khan Yunis and Rafah, for example, more than 450 civilians were summarily executed. Khalidi identifies such atrocities as part of a pattern of behaviour by the Israeli military, which can usually rely on a compliant Western media to ignore, downplay or sanitise such killings.
The book ends with a paradox. After a century of dispossession the Palestinians are a broken people, imprisoned in fragments of a country which was once theirs, at the mercy of a bellicose, self-righteous and viciously repressive settler state, which has the ultimate goal of expelling every single one of them. At the same time the Palestinian cause is better-known and stronger than it has ever been, as knowledge of the true nature of the Zionist state and its pitilessly sectarian ideology becomes better known through the medium of print and, more recently, social media. Whereas Zionism was once able to pass itself off as a progressive movement it is now much more easily identifiable as a colonial enterprise which has always been sponsored by states which have no interest whatever in democracy or human rights. Rashid Khalidi recalls a demonstration he attended in 1967 outside Yale Law School, where Golda Meir had been invited to speak. She received a rapturous reception from her audience, while the protesters outside consisted of the author and three others. If this was repeated today the protest would be very much greater because over the past half century the ongoing displacement of the Palestinians from their land has been accompanied by a growth in awareness of why Israel is a pariah state, like apartheid South Africa. A book like this one adds to this growth in consciousness and is to be commended for its balance, its comprehensiveness and its impressive range of sources.
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017
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Rashid Khalidi
4.41
3,045 ratings443 reviews
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone." Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.
Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.
Cover photograph Amnon Bar Or—Tal Gazit Architects LTD
GenresHistoryNonfictionPoliticsWarIsraelHistoricalReligion
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336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 2020
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4.41
3,045 ratings443 reviews
Dr. Appu Sasidharan (Dasfill)
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October 10, 2023
This book tells us about the war Palestine has been fighting for the last one hundred years. This is written from a Muslim perspective by the author whose family was actively involved in many of the events mentioned in this book.
What I learned from this book
1) Balfour Declaration
On behalf of Britain's cabinet on November 2, 1917, Arthur James Balfour made a declaration known as the Balfour declaration. It supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It comprised just a single sentence that promulgated Jewish people's attempt to settle in Palestine. Many people commented that the declaration threw platitudes at the Palestinian people. The situation was highly poignant as many Palestinian people sadly lost their homeland due to this declaration's long-term effect.
"His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
2) Colonialism and its impact over Palestine.
Colonialism is considered one of the leading causes of the degradation of natural resources and economic instability in many countries. Palestine also had to suffer a lot due to this colonialism. There were some positive impacts too for colonialism. But in many instances, we have seen people exaggerating the positive effects of it and avoiding discussing how their imprudent measures affect the proletariat.
"'You cannot do without us,' Lord Curzon said in one of the speeches."
3) Zionism and its impact on Palestinian population.
Zionism is an ideology among Jewish people that support a Jewish state in the region of Palestine. It mainly deals with things on behalf of Israel. The people who support Zionism consider it a liberation movement, while those against it consider it colonialist and racist. The polemic effort of Muslim people in Palestine to prevent encroachment of their birthplace via the channel of Zionism was overcome by Israel's mighty military strength and economic power. It was a precipitous task for the Palestinian people to defend their pristine homeland. Muslims consider Zionism as one of the quixotic ideologies that worsened the conflict in Palestine. In contrast, Jews consider it an indispensable ideology due to the Middle East and European events.
"The Zionists' colonial enterprise, aimed at taking over the country, necessarily had to produce resistance. "If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living," Jabotinsky wrote in 1925, "you must find a garrison for the land or find a benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces." At least initially, only the armed forces provided by Britain could overcome the natural resistance of those being colonized"
4) How Hitler's antisemitism affected Palestine?
Hitler's antisemitic measures have affected the Palestine people to a great extend. Hitler's unjust killing of Jews in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau is considered one of History's darkest chapters. The amount of pain Jews had to pass through was unfathomable. Some of the Jews who were afraid of the measures taken by Hitler immigrated to Palestine. This, in turn, caused an increase in the Jewish population in Palestine, and the demand for a Jewish state increased. This caused more problems for the Muslims living in Palestine.
"Jewish immigration as a result of persecution by the Nazi regime in Germany raised the Jewish population in Palestine from just 18 percent of the total in 1932 to over 31 percent in 1939. Hitler's ascendancy proved to be one of the most important events in the modern histories of both Palestine and Zionism."
5) Divide and rule policy
The author says that the divide and rule policy adopted by the authorities complicated the Palestine situation to this extent.
"The Palestinians fight against colonialism were undermined by the hierarchical, conservative and divided nature of Palestinian society and politics, characteristic of many in the region, and further sapped by a sophisticated policy of divide and rule adopted by the mandatory authorities, aided and abetted by the Jewish agency. This colonial strategy may have reached its peak of perfection in Palestine after hundreds of years of maturation in Ireland, India and Egypt."
6) Nakba
Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe," referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. The author's grandparents were also displaced among many people in 1948.
"The Nakba represented a watershed in the History of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium- an aboriginal Arab country- into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority."
7) Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the USA
America has been playing a significant role in trying to control the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time. Roosevelt, Truman, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and even the latest Biden administration had played a crucial role in it. In 1945 Roosevelt met and pledged his support to Ibn Sa'ud. It lasted for just nine months. In November 1945, Harry Truman said that Zionism was a political necessity, supporting its ideology. The reason he told for this support was that he would have to answer hundreds of thousands of Jews who are his constituents. (the number of Arab immigrants was meager at that time while the American Jewish population grew from a quarter of a million to four million between 1880 and 1920 which again grew after the Second World War started.)
America almost always supported Israel after Truman. Leaders like Yasser Arafat didn't give much importance to the relation with the USA, which only worsened the situation. The author says that the Israel people were successful in getting the USA's support mainly due to the above reasons. The global opinion in favor of Jews after the holocaust also helped them. Few violent acts that happened due to the pitfalls from Palestinian Muslims only worsened the situation. Palestinian Muslims were considered terrorists by countries like America due to these reasons. Palestinian attempt to protect their homeland was misjudged as a terrorist act. Palestinians were sadly unsuccessful in rectifying this misjudgment for a long time. Only recently, many countries are understanding what exactly is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
"The Palestinian national movement must recognize the true nature of the American stance and undertake dedicated grassroots political and informational work to make its case inside the United States, as the Zionist movement has done for over a century. This task will not necessarily take generations, given the significant shifts that have already occurred in the key sectors of public opinion. There is a great deal to build on."
8) Children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The death of many children during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has received a lot of international attention recently. The killing of innocent children can't be substantiated for any reason. The pictures of children who died and were injured are disheartening. Even in the recent conflict in 2021, Joe Biden has voiced his support for a ceasefire after widespread protest after seeing the pictures of children injured and killed during the airstrikes.
"From the beginning of the first Intifada to the end of 1996 1,422 Palesians were killed. Of them, 294, or over 20 percent were minors sixteen and under. ”
9) How gulf war affected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The Persian Gulf war conflict badly affected many countries in the Middle East. During the Iraq invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, almost all the gulf states, including Egypt joined the US-led coalition to fight against Saddam Hussain. Yasser Arafat's miscalculation of the situation was a severe blow to Palestine.
“Yasser Arafat and most of his colleagues miscalculated the Gulf war. Instead of firmly supporting Kuwait against Iraq, Arafat tried to steer a neutral course, offering to mediate between the two sides. His suggestion was ignored by all concerned. ”
My favourite three lines from this book
“The surest way to eradicate a peoples right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.”
"Since from the Zionist vantage point the name Palestine and the very existence of the Palestinians constituted a mortal threat to Israel, the task was to connect these terms indelibly, if they were mentioned at all, with terrorism and hatred, rather than with a forgotten but just cause. For many years, this theme was the core of a remarkably successful public relations offensive, especially in the United States. ”
"Car bombs were a weapon House for the Israeli forces besieging Beirut, and one of their most terrifying instruments of death and destruction- was described by one Mossad officer as "Killing for killing's sake.'"
What could have been better?
Some of the events where Palestinian Muslims had gone wrong, like the Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, leading to the death of 11 Israelis when Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic village, were just mentioned passively in this book. This book is indeed written from a Palestinian perspective. Still, I think that events like these that attracted a lot of international attention should also have been discussed more.
Rating
5/5 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has again come under the international radar due to the recent Jerusalem violence when Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza. After reading the initial ten pages itself, we will understand that the author has done a lot of research and hard work for writing this book. This is a must-read book if you want to know about the Palestinian perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The killing of innocent children should never be allowed, whatever the reason may be. Let us hope that all the nations, together with U.N., Israel, and Palestine, will finally work together to end this conflict.
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Thomas
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December 9, 2020
5 stars for a book that is both depressing and illuminating. This book tells the story of an indigenous people colonized and deprived of their own land over a 100 year period. The first colonization was by the British who conquered Palestine during World War I from the Ottoman Empire. They had issued the Balfour declaration in 1917, stating their intention to provide a national home for Jewish people in Palestine. Although 94% of the population in Palestine in 1917 was Palestinian, the declaration did not promise them the same political or national right guaranteed the Jews.
Britain then embarked on a program granting Jewish immigrants preferred status in their new colony.
Britain even armed Jewish immigrants to help suppress the great revolt against the British from 1936-1939. Britain was following an old colonial strategy of divide and rule, setting two groups against each other. It had used this strategy before, in India, Muslim against Hindu and Ireland, Protestant against Catholic. Britain savagely suppressed the revolt, killing , wounding or exiling 10% of the adult male population. This provided the Zionist movement 2 advantages: they had a nascent military force and it greatly weakened the native population. The subsequent 1947-48 war between the Palestinians and Jewish settlers saw the Zionists win and steal land and homes from thousands of Palestinians. This theft is continuing today. Israel calls it "settlements."
The Palestinian point of view is rarely presented in the US today.
The author frequently compares the Irish rebellion of 1919-21 to the Palestinian rebellion of 1936-39. He comments that the British even used veteran "Black and Tan" soldiers of the Irish rebellion. The "Black and Tans" were renowned for their cruelty. Many of them were criminals that Britain released in return for being part of the force suppressing the Irish rebellion.
The US is actually complicit in the theft of Palestinian land, in that gives billions of dollars yearly to Israel.
There are extensive footnotes, some of which have links to documents in the public domain.
Thanks to the author and Henry Holt & Co for sending me this eARC through NetGalley.
#TheHundredYearsWarOnPalestine #NetGalley
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Whitney Atkinson
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ReadMay 23, 2021
Credit to the Decolonize Palestine reading list for this recommendation!
After not being taught whatsoever about Palestine (or Israel, for that matter), this was the first resource I picked up in the endeavour of teaching myself. I would recommend the audiobook for this book because at times the writing can be decently lengthy and academic. Since this book is an overview of 100 years of history, it wasn't able to delve deep into each era, so I found that with every question this book answered, it made me ask four more. If it's your first time reading deeply into the history of Palestine and Zionism, I would come into it equipped with a basic overview, or else be prepared to continue researching during and after reading!
Just a tip on if you plan to read this: I would start with the conclusion first because it provides a modern-day context and then you can work backwards in time with chapters 1-7 to learn the backstory. I found that last chapter to be most interesting part of the book and it answered a lot of questions I had at the beginning.
audiobook from-library palestine
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Alex
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April 23, 2020
Rashid Khalidi starts his book by vaguely attacking other books on Israel and Palestine for their one sided narrative that favors Israel, without providing much detail on their historiographic failings. He points out that there is a need to provide a Palestinian narrative using extensive primary sources, which is true. He does not do that however, and instead resorts to primarily relying upon personal and family stories. When he uses historic sources, he proceeds to leave out rebellions, massacres, entire wars and whole sections of essential biographies, that would be easily criticized as callous mistakes, if it was not clear that he carefully left them out to fit his narrative. He left out the Arab revolt of 1929, when Jews were raped and massacred, and the second holiest city in Judaism, Hebron, was ethnically cleansed of Jews. He left out the entire Nazi past of Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini. He only mentioned the Yom Kippur War once. Why? Because each of those facts disprove key points in his narrative.
On the the note of the Grand Mufti, the only time Khaldi mentioned Nazi Germany, was to note the damage his “presence” there did to the Palestinian cause. Thus he seemed to care more about image of the cause than the deaths of Jews. He repeats this disregard when talking about how suicide bombers killed innocent Israelis and he talks about how it was foolish, because it looked bad in the media. This highlights another problem with this book. For a book that is oozing with emotion, personal stories and cries for sympathy, he shows almost no empathy to Jews killed in the long conflict or at any other time or place.
He made strong points about Israel’s botched invasion of Lebanon and the failures of the Oslo Accords. Yet by the time I came to that part of the book, I was suspicious of everything he said. I can’t imagine the effect that the trauma of the siege of Beirut of 1982 and the Nakba had on him and his family. However, does not give him the right to produce a false historical narrative void of any empathy towards Jews. Regardless to your feeling on this deeply emotional conflict, this book offers an extremely narrow and one sided narrative, that takes shocking liberties with historic data.
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Lubinka Dimitrova
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October 20, 2020
Once a person starts reading about the Palestine conflict, they can never un-see Israel and USA's stance on this issue. It is mind-boggling how this matter has been mishandled, misrepresented and ignored for more than a century now. And one can never go back to seeing Jews as only victims of another mind-boggling genocide. Truly a heart-wrenching and deeply insightful book.
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Brian
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December 8, 2020
This reminded me of Jakarta Method. A deeply human yet academic and critical look at Palestine and their oppression and resistance. While very critical of Palestinian leadership, Khalidi is still offering a distinctly Palestinian perspective on this story, which is not something I'd gotten before.
In the book and elsewhere, it is mentioned that Khalidi was used as a smear against Obama in 08, as they were colleagues and friends. Obama didn't even bother defending his friend, which is exactly what he did to Palestine when he got into office and ignored Israel's most violent siege against Palestine in the 100 year history of this conflict. I find it interesting that McCain called Khalidi a terrorist, and that Obama didn't defend him, because Khalidi represents a pretty moderate perspective on Palestine. He's critical of violence against civilians, denounces antisemitism, and writes beautifully about Israelis' connection to Palestine, as most were now born there. If there's ever going to be peace, his view should be the starting point for discussion. This does not seem likely while the far right have captured israeli politics and have helped create a deeply racist society.
I highly recommend reading this for a critical and accurate, while also beautifully written story of Palestine.
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Meg
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June 10, 2020
A sweeping overview of the reality America (and the evangelical community in particular) has willfully ignored for the last century. Rather than packing this with pathos, Khalidi patiently and carefully walks his reader through decades of policy, war, Western support and withdrawal, intifadas, settlements, and lines drawn and redrawn. I lament the US's blind and misguided partnership with a colonizing, ethnically cleansing, nationalistic state so anathema to democracy.
I've thought a lot about the similarities between Israel and the United States the last several weeks—their zionism, nationalism, and brutal systems of oppression swept aside by powerful, foundational myths—and Khalidi speaks to this in a way I'd been probing for:
"Establishing the colonial nature of the conflict has proven exceedingly hard given the biblical dimension of Zionism, which casts the new arrivals as indigenous and as the historical proprietors of the land they colonized. In this light, the original population of Palestine appears extraneous to the post-Holocaust resurgence of a Jewish nation-state with its roots in the kingdom of David and Solomon: they are no more than undesirable interlopers in this uplifting scenario. Challenging this epic myth is especially difficult in the United States, which is steeped in an evangelical Protestantism that makes it particularly susceptible to such an evocative Bible-based appeal and which also prides itself on its colonial past. The world ‘colonial’ has a valence in the United States that is deeply different from its associations in the former European imperial metropoles and the countries that were once part of their empires.
“Similarly the terms ‘settler’ and ‘pioneer’ have positive connotations in American history, arising from the heroic tale of the conquest of the West at the expense of its indigenous population as projected in movies, literature, and television. Instead, there are striking parallels between these portrayals of the resistance of Native Americans to their dispossession and that of the Palestinians. Both groups are cast as backward and uncivilized, a violent murderous, and irrational obstacle to progress and modernity. While many Americans have begun to contest this strand of their national narrative, Israeli society and its supporters still celebrate—indeed, depend on—its foundational version. Moreover, comparisons between Palestine and the Native American or African American experiences are fraught because the United States has yet to fully acknowledge these dark chapters of its past or to address their toxic effects in the present. There is still a long way to go to changes Americans’ consciousness of their nation’s history, let alone that of Palestine and Israel, in which the United States has played such a supportive role."
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Rick Homuth
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March 10, 2020
My favorite part of this book wasn't the book itself (which was good, it is a good book, I liked the book) but rather the dumbass NYT reviewer who wrote about this book and critiqued it b/c it doesn't "move us any closer to some kind of resolution." AKA, don't write a book about how fucked up the situation in Palestine is if you're not also gonna solve it for us in a way that doesn't involve ceding any annexed land
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Michael
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January 27, 2021
Excellent book. It's comprehensive, readable, well-researched, and current. Each chapter focuses on a major event or time period in the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to argue that Palestinians have--and continue to be--the victims of a hundred years of settler colonial warfare against them. Two things that set this book apart from other histories I've read are (1) the personal dimension Khalidi is able to offer not only as a Palestinian but as someone with first-hand experience in Palestinian politics and (2) a "rigorous, introspective self-criticism of Arab weaknesses and failures" which he takes from historian and intellectual Constantine Zureiq as indispensable for charting the best path forward for Palestinian action.
INTRO
provides the academic and personal background for the books main thesis: that the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be understood as a colonial war against an indigenous Palestinian population. While Khalidi employs plenty of scholarly sources to make his argument, what sets this book apart is the personal element which is expressed in the introduction through the account of his great-great-great uncle Yusuf Diya, an Islamic scholar. Through Diya's correspondences with Herzl and Khalidi's academic sources, a picture is presented of the early zionist project as a clearly settler colonial one. Whether that colonial aspiration was expressed discreetly (as in Herzl's memoir entries regarding "spiriting the penniless population across the border) or explicitly (as in Jabotinsky's declaration of zionist colonialism).
CH1
This chapter covers the "first declaration of war" on Palestine embodied by Britain's sponsoring of the Zionist project beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Khalidi looks at a changing Palestine at the turn of the 20th century. Its modernizing national infrastructure (education, transportation, and the press) as it integrates into the world market bringing with it an ascendant bourgeois class against the backdrop of a declining Ottoman Empire.
Concurrent with these developments was the growing threat to self-determination posed by the settler colonial Zionist movement and its European backers. Khalidi draws on memoirs, press reports, and oral history to show that the Palestinian national identity was formed alongside of and in response to the burgeoning Zionist movement.
Some of the key historical moments covered in this chapter include: demographic shifts due to Jewish immigration and land purchases, the 1922 Mandate which established Britain as the colonial power in the region, Britains support for a parallel Jewish administration with representative authority and control over public works (things the Arab population was denied), growing tensions resulting in a 1936 general strike, The Peel Commission's partition plan ceding 17% of the land to the Jewish population (and the expulsion of Arabs therein) while handing the rest over to Transjordanian control, the Great Revolt of 1937-1939, and, finally, Britains brutal repression of Palestinian fighters and activists.
The chapter ends with Chamberlain's 1939 conciliatory white paper to appease Arabs as it prepared for WWII (the commitments never being carried out on Britain's part, of course).
Ch.2
This chapter, focusing on the 1947-49 Nakba, begins with an anecdote recounting the author's father (Ismail al-Khalidi) delivering an official message from the Arab Higher Committee to King Abdullah of Transjordan to the effect that "were the Palestinians to succeed in escaping the British yoke, they did not want to come under that of Jordan. They aspired to control their own fate." Therefore, the AHC would not accept the King's offer of "guardianship" or "protection." The delivery of this message coincided with the UN vote on Resolution 181 in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine.
This anecdote speaks to three themes important to this chapter. 1. Palestinians' uncompromising desire for full self-determination 2. King Abdullah's desire for westward territorial expansion and 3. Palestinians' lack of state apparatuses in the run up to war (Ismail's role as messenger here was ad hoc as his real reason for meeting with the King concerned unrelated academic matters connected to the Arab-American Institute, not as an official diplomatic liaison which the AHC simply didnt have). This 3rd point is one of many factors that explains the Arab defeat by the organized, militant, higly prepared Israeli forces.
It's this combination of the personal and historical that sets this book apart from other histories of the conflict I've read.
This chapter also details the shifting global power structure in which the old colonial powers were replaced by the US and USSR as the major imperialist forces in the Middle East after WWII. A situation shrewdly foreseen by Israeli leadership. Khalidi emphasizes the internal division, ineffective leadership, and disorganized institutions (the AHC, ANF, Arab Office, etc.) on the Palestinian side as contrasted to the organized, sophisticated, well-funded and well connected Jewish para-state throughout the 30s and 40s. The outbreak of violence as Britain ceded control of Mandatory Palestine to the UN in '47 resulted in decisive military victories for the Israelis and, ultimately, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Continued colonial control over the Arab League, particularly in foreign affairs, further hamstrung efforts to resist Israeli conquest. When the dust settled in the summer of 1949, Israel declared statehood and sovereignty of 80% of historical Palestine, over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip while King Abdullah fulfilled his territorial ambitioins by claiming the West Bank as part of Jordan.
The chapter concludes by discussing Palestinian Fedayeen activity in the early 50s, Israel's disproportionate reprisals, the resulting outbreak of the 1956 Suez War, and the tripartite alliance of Israel, Britain, France yielding to USSR/US demands to end the conflict further cementing the latter as the dominant regional actors.
Ch 3
The Third Declaration of War is the 1967 Six Day War and its aftermath. Khalidi begins by dismissing the myth of a vulnerable Israel beset on all sides by its hostile Arab neighbors seeking its destruction. A popular propaganda line that was used to justify Israel's first strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. First off, it was apparent to US intelligence that an "attack was not immanent" and, secondly, if war did break out Israel would "whip the hell out of them" (in President Johnson 's words). The factors leading up to the war included Arab popular distress at Israel's diversion of Jordan River waters to its territory, Fatah harassment (mostly symbolic actions of sabotage), Israeli threats and attacks on Syrian targets, and the needlessly provocative saber rattling of Egypt moving troops into the Sinai ultimately giving Israel the causus belli to initiate its pre-emptive attack.
The main ideas of this chapter revolve around the changing power alignments and evolving terms of the Palestinian debate following the war. To the first point: while the Truman, Eisenhower, and even Kennedy administrations occasionally pushed back against Israeli overreach (see Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis), the Johnson administration and his pro-zionist circle of friends and advisors like Fortas, Goldberg, and Clifford proved utterly supportive of Israel in essentially all respects.
Furthermore, new militant activism sprung up in the 60s like the Movement of Arab Nationalists, the Marxist PFLP, Fatah, and the PLO which had been originally intended by the Arab League to coopt rejuvenated Palestinian nationalist fervor but soon lost control of the organization after '67.
The political alignments of the Arab League itself was also changing as with the Carter Admin's success in prying Egypt away from Palestine and into the Israel/US fold culminating in the bilateral Camp David treaty of '79.
On the point regarding the discurssive side of the issue, the main takeaway is that Palestinians managed to re-insert themselves into the discussion as political agents and a cultural force. Khalidi documents the cultural renaissance that flowered throughout the 60s and 70s with the writings of Kanafi, Darwish, Zayyad, and others. The assertion of a strong Palestinian identity and its expression on the world stage (Edward Said being an immensly important figure in that) countered the Zionist falsegoods that the Palestinians simply didnt exist. This isn't an exaggeration...in 1969 Prime Minister Golda Meir once claimed "there were no such thing as Palestinians...they did not exist".
Finally, this Palestinian movement gave itself a voice through the PLO which managed to set up channels of communication (much to Israel's frustration) with world powers including the US. This laid the groundwork for their participation in international politics when before they were sidelined as an incidental piece of state-to-state conflicts over territorial boundaries.
The chapter ends on the Lebanese civil war, the PLO's role, and the various motives/interests/players involved. All of which is too complicated for me to cover in this review...or even understand tbh.
Ch 4
Thr 4th Declaration of War is the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon--a country already years into its civil war--aimed at dislodging the PLO from the country. The plan was to knock out PLO operations in Israel's northern neighbor, destroy the Palestinian national movement, and use the opportunity to consolidate control over and eventually annex occupied territory.
Because Khalidi and his family lived in Beirut at the time, he is able to add a personal perspective and human dimension that gets lost in other histories of the conflict I've read. Especially moving were his reflections on the Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by the Philangist militias avenging assassinated president-elect Bashir Gamayel with full complicity of the IDF. The ominous scenes of military flares silently floating "over the southern reaches of Beruit" reminded me of the animated documentary Waltz With Bashir which Khalidi references. The IDF used the flairs to illuminate the refugee camps so the Philangist militiamen could effectively carry out its two day slaughter of over 1300 Palestinians.
Khalidi details the duplicity employed by Begin, Sharon and others--detailed in the Israeli Kahan Commission reports--to nullify meaningful safeguards for civilians during the PLO's evacuation demanded by Palestinian negotiators, French diplomatic interlocutors, and promised by American officials. The picture Khalidi presents is one of concentric "circles of responsibility" from the innermost architects of the war (Begin and Sharon) to the American officials tacitly supplying diplomatic and propaganda support.
The upshot of the war, however, was not the annihilation of the Palistinian national movement Israel hoped for but rather an intensification of the civil war, the rise of Hezbollah, and the relocation of the movement back into Palestine itself where it soon developed into the First Intifada.
Ch. 5
The Fifth Declaration of War spans the period between the First Intafada in 1987 to the Oslo II accords in ’95. During this period, the Israeli army carried out brutal repressions against the Palestinian uprisings and secured a legal codification of the status quo through the Oslo framework which Khalidi argues was a major defeat for the Palestinian national cause. The authors details how simmering tensions erupted in the largely non-violent wave of uprisings beginning in Dec. 1987, the excessive Israeli response, the global public’s response, and the response of the PLO to the Intifada—which was to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s “right to exist” and support of a two-state settlement based on Resolutions 242 and 338 thus marking a major strategic shift toward diplomatic resolution.
Khalidi is particularly critical of the PLO in this chapter, not for adopting non-violent tactics which he sees as a more effective path forward, but for a number of blunders that caused long-term harm to the movement for Palestine. The first was Arafat’s support of Iraq in the first gulf war and the second was accepting the Oslo framework which essentially outsourced the responsibility for enforcing the Palestinian’s colonial status to the Palestinians themselves. Khalidi, having been part of the advisory team to the Palestinian delegation at Madrid and both Oslo conferences, provides important insider perspectives on the diplomatic front. This is especially useful in his evaluation of the possible alternatives, the different actors (Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk in particular come under well-deserved heavy fire), and outcomes of the peace process.
Ch. 6
The final (sixth) declaration of war consists in the continued colonial occupation of the West Bank and Gaza well after “final status” settlements were supposed to be adopted according to the Oslo accords, including the 3 massive attacks on the Gaza Strip during operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge. Topics also include the Camp David conference, the rise of Hamas, the politics of the Palestinian Authority, and the failures of the Obama administration to produce any substantive change.
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Cass Vogel
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May 18, 2021
Essential reading if you know nothing about the war on Palestine, or if you know some stuff, or even if you know most stuff....just read it. Free Palestine
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017
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Rashid Khalidi
4.41
3,045 ratings443 reviews
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone." Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.
Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.
Cover photograph Amnon Bar Or—Tal Gazit Architects LTD
GenresHistoryNonfictionPoliticsWarIsraelHistoricalReligion
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336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 2020
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4.41
3,045 ratings443 reviews
Dr. Appu Sasidharan (Dasfill)
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October 10, 2023
This book tells us about the war Palestine has been fighting for the last one hundred years. This is written from a Muslim perspective by the author whose family was actively involved in many of the events mentioned in this book.
What I learned from this book
1) Balfour Declaration
On behalf of Britain's cabinet on November 2, 1917, Arthur James Balfour made a declaration known as the Balfour declaration. It supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It comprised just a single sentence that promulgated Jewish people's attempt to settle in Palestine. Many people commented that the declaration threw platitudes at the Palestinian people. The situation was highly poignant as many Palestinian people sadly lost their homeland due to this declaration's long-term effect.
"His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
2) Colonialism and its impact over Palestine.
Colonialism is considered one of the leading causes of the degradation of natural resources and economic instability in many countries. Palestine also had to suffer a lot due to this colonialism. There were some positive impacts too for colonialism. But in many instances, we have seen people exaggerating the positive effects of it and avoiding discussing how their imprudent measures affect the proletariat.
"'You cannot do without us,' Lord Curzon said in one of the speeches."
3) Zionism and its impact on Palestinian population.
Zionism is an ideology among Jewish people that support a Jewish state in the region of Palestine. It mainly deals with things on behalf of Israel. The people who support Zionism consider it a liberation movement, while those against it consider it colonialist and racist. The polemic effort of Muslim people in Palestine to prevent encroachment of their birthplace via the channel of Zionism was overcome by Israel's mighty military strength and economic power. It was a precipitous task for the Palestinian people to defend their pristine homeland. Muslims consider Zionism as one of the quixotic ideologies that worsened the conflict in Palestine. In contrast, Jews consider it an indispensable ideology due to the Middle East and European events.
"The Zionists' colonial enterprise, aimed at taking over the country, necessarily had to produce resistance. "If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living," Jabotinsky wrote in 1925, "you must find a garrison for the land or find a benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces." At least initially, only the armed forces provided by Britain could overcome the natural resistance of those being colonized"
4) How Hitler's antisemitism affected Palestine?
Hitler's antisemitic measures have affected the Palestine people to a great extend. Hitler's unjust killing of Jews in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau is considered one of History's darkest chapters. The amount of pain Jews had to pass through was unfathomable. Some of the Jews who were afraid of the measures taken by Hitler immigrated to Palestine. This, in turn, caused an increase in the Jewish population in Palestine, and the demand for a Jewish state increased. This caused more problems for the Muslims living in Palestine.
"Jewish immigration as a result of persecution by the Nazi regime in Germany raised the Jewish population in Palestine from just 18 percent of the total in 1932 to over 31 percent in 1939. Hitler's ascendancy proved to be one of the most important events in the modern histories of both Palestine and Zionism."
5) Divide and rule policy
The author says that the divide and rule policy adopted by the authorities complicated the Palestine situation to this extent.
"The Palestinians fight against colonialism were undermined by the hierarchical, conservative and divided nature of Palestinian society and politics, characteristic of many in the region, and further sapped by a sophisticated policy of divide and rule adopted by the mandatory authorities, aided and abetted by the Jewish agency. This colonial strategy may have reached its peak of perfection in Palestine after hundreds of years of maturation in Ireland, India and Egypt."
6) Nakba
Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe," referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. The author's grandparents were also displaced among many people in 1948.
"The Nakba represented a watershed in the History of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium- an aboriginal Arab country- into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority."
7) Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the USA
America has been playing a significant role in trying to control the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time. Roosevelt, Truman, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and even the latest Biden administration had played a crucial role in it. In 1945 Roosevelt met and pledged his support to Ibn Sa'ud. It lasted for just nine months. In November 1945, Harry Truman said that Zionism was a political necessity, supporting its ideology. The reason he told for this support was that he would have to answer hundreds of thousands of Jews who are his constituents. (the number of Arab immigrants was meager at that time while the American Jewish population grew from a quarter of a million to four million between 1880 and 1920 which again grew after the Second World War started.)
America almost always supported Israel after Truman. Leaders like Yasser Arafat didn't give much importance to the relation with the USA, which only worsened the situation. The author says that the Israel people were successful in getting the USA's support mainly due to the above reasons. The global opinion in favor of Jews after the holocaust also helped them. Few violent acts that happened due to the pitfalls from Palestinian Muslims only worsened the situation. Palestinian Muslims were considered terrorists by countries like America due to these reasons. Palestinian attempt to protect their homeland was misjudged as a terrorist act. Palestinians were sadly unsuccessful in rectifying this misjudgment for a long time. Only recently, many countries are understanding what exactly is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
"The Palestinian national movement must recognize the true nature of the American stance and undertake dedicated grassroots political and informational work to make its case inside the United States, as the Zionist movement has done for over a century. This task will not necessarily take generations, given the significant shifts that have already occurred in the key sectors of public opinion. There is a great deal to build on."
8) Children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The death of many children during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has received a lot of international attention recently. The killing of innocent children can't be substantiated for any reason. The pictures of children who died and were injured are disheartening. Even in the recent conflict in 2021, Joe Biden has voiced his support for a ceasefire after widespread protest after seeing the pictures of children injured and killed during the airstrikes.
"From the beginning of the first Intifada to the end of 1996 1,422 Palesians were killed. Of them, 294, or over 20 percent were minors sixteen and under. ”
9) How gulf war affected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The Persian Gulf war conflict badly affected many countries in the Middle East. During the Iraq invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, almost all the gulf states, including Egypt joined the US-led coalition to fight against Saddam Hussain. Yasser Arafat's miscalculation of the situation was a severe blow to Palestine.
“Yasser Arafat and most of his colleagues miscalculated the Gulf war. Instead of firmly supporting Kuwait against Iraq, Arafat tried to steer a neutral course, offering to mediate between the two sides. His suggestion was ignored by all concerned. ”
My favourite three lines from this book
“The surest way to eradicate a peoples right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.”
"Since from the Zionist vantage point the name Palestine and the very existence of the Palestinians constituted a mortal threat to Israel, the task was to connect these terms indelibly, if they were mentioned at all, with terrorism and hatred, rather than with a forgotten but just cause. For many years, this theme was the core of a remarkably successful public relations offensive, especially in the United States. ”
"Car bombs were a weapon House for the Israeli forces besieging Beirut, and one of their most terrifying instruments of death and destruction- was described by one Mossad officer as "Killing for killing's sake.'"
What could have been better?
Some of the events where Palestinian Muslims had gone wrong, like the Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, leading to the death of 11 Israelis when Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic village, were just mentioned passively in this book. This book is indeed written from a Palestinian perspective. Still, I think that events like these that attracted a lot of international attention should also have been discussed more.
Rating
5/5 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has again come under the international radar due to the recent Jerusalem violence when Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza. After reading the initial ten pages itself, we will understand that the author has done a lot of research and hard work for writing this book. This is a must-read book if you want to know about the Palestinian perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The killing of innocent children should never be allowed, whatever the reason may be. Let us hope that all the nations, together with U.N., Israel, and Palestine, will finally work together to end this conflict.
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Thomas
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December 9, 2020
5 stars for a book that is both depressing and illuminating. This book tells the story of an indigenous people colonized and deprived of their own land over a 100 year period. The first colonization was by the British who conquered Palestine during World War I from the Ottoman Empire. They had issued the Balfour declaration in 1917, stating their intention to provide a national home for Jewish people in Palestine. Although 94% of the population in Palestine in 1917 was Palestinian, the declaration did not promise them the same political or national right guaranteed the Jews.
Britain then embarked on a program granting Jewish immigrants preferred status in their new colony.
Britain even armed Jewish immigrants to help suppress the great revolt against the British from 1936-1939. Britain was following an old colonial strategy of divide and rule, setting two groups against each other. It had used this strategy before, in India, Muslim against Hindu and Ireland, Protestant against Catholic. Britain savagely suppressed the revolt, killing , wounding or exiling 10% of the adult male population. This provided the Zionist movement 2 advantages: they had a nascent military force and it greatly weakened the native population. The subsequent 1947-48 war between the Palestinians and Jewish settlers saw the Zionists win and steal land and homes from thousands of Palestinians. This theft is continuing today. Israel calls it "settlements."
The Palestinian point of view is rarely presented in the US today.
The author frequently compares the Irish rebellion of 1919-21 to the Palestinian rebellion of 1936-39. He comments that the British even used veteran "Black and Tan" soldiers of the Irish rebellion. The "Black and Tans" were renowned for their cruelty. Many of them were criminals that Britain released in return for being part of the force suppressing the Irish rebellion.
The US is actually complicit in the theft of Palestinian land, in that gives billions of dollars yearly to Israel.
There are extensive footnotes, some of which have links to documents in the public domain.
Thanks to the author and Henry Holt & Co for sending me this eARC through NetGalley.
#TheHundredYearsWarOnPalestine #NetGalley
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Whitney Atkinson
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ReadMay 23, 2021
Credit to the Decolonize Palestine reading list for this recommendation!
After not being taught whatsoever about Palestine (or Israel, for that matter), this was the first resource I picked up in the endeavour of teaching myself. I would recommend the audiobook for this book because at times the writing can be decently lengthy and academic. Since this book is an overview of 100 years of history, it wasn't able to delve deep into each era, so I found that with every question this book answered, it made me ask four more. If it's your first time reading deeply into the history of Palestine and Zionism, I would come into it equipped with a basic overview, or else be prepared to continue researching during and after reading!
Just a tip on if you plan to read this: I would start with the conclusion first because it provides a modern-day context and then you can work backwards in time with chapters 1-7 to learn the backstory. I found that last chapter to be most interesting part of the book and it answered a lot of questions I had at the beginning.
audiobook from-library palestine
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Alex
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April 23, 2020
Rashid Khalidi starts his book by vaguely attacking other books on Israel and Palestine for their one sided narrative that favors Israel, without providing much detail on their historiographic failings. He points out that there is a need to provide a Palestinian narrative using extensive primary sources, which is true. He does not do that however, and instead resorts to primarily relying upon personal and family stories. When he uses historic sources, he proceeds to leave out rebellions, massacres, entire wars and whole sections of essential biographies, that would be easily criticized as callous mistakes, if it was not clear that he carefully left them out to fit his narrative. He left out the Arab revolt of 1929, when Jews were raped and massacred, and the second holiest city in Judaism, Hebron, was ethnically cleansed of Jews. He left out the entire Nazi past of Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini. He only mentioned the Yom Kippur War once. Why? Because each of those facts disprove key points in his narrative.
On the the note of the Grand Mufti, the only time Khaldi mentioned Nazi Germany, was to note the damage his “presence” there did to the Palestinian cause. Thus he seemed to care more about image of the cause than the deaths of Jews. He repeats this disregard when talking about how suicide bombers killed innocent Israelis and he talks about how it was foolish, because it looked bad in the media. This highlights another problem with this book. For a book that is oozing with emotion, personal stories and cries for sympathy, he shows almost no empathy to Jews killed in the long conflict or at any other time or place.
He made strong points about Israel’s botched invasion of Lebanon and the failures of the Oslo Accords. Yet by the time I came to that part of the book, I was suspicious of everything he said. I can’t imagine the effect that the trauma of the siege of Beirut of 1982 and the Nakba had on him and his family. However, does not give him the right to produce a false historical narrative void of any empathy towards Jews. Regardless to your feeling on this deeply emotional conflict, this book offers an extremely narrow and one sided narrative, that takes shocking liberties with historic data.
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Lubinka Dimitrova
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October 20, 2020
Once a person starts reading about the Palestine conflict, they can never un-see Israel and USA's stance on this issue. It is mind-boggling how this matter has been mishandled, misrepresented and ignored for more than a century now. And one can never go back to seeing Jews as only victims of another mind-boggling genocide. Truly a heart-wrenching and deeply insightful book.
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Brian
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December 8, 2020
This reminded me of Jakarta Method. A deeply human yet academic and critical look at Palestine and their oppression and resistance. While very critical of Palestinian leadership, Khalidi is still offering a distinctly Palestinian perspective on this story, which is not something I'd gotten before.
In the book and elsewhere, it is mentioned that Khalidi was used as a smear against Obama in 08, as they were colleagues and friends. Obama didn't even bother defending his friend, which is exactly what he did to Palestine when he got into office and ignored Israel's most violent siege against Palestine in the 100 year history of this conflict. I find it interesting that McCain called Khalidi a terrorist, and that Obama didn't defend him, because Khalidi represents a pretty moderate perspective on Palestine. He's critical of violence against civilians, denounces antisemitism, and writes beautifully about Israelis' connection to Palestine, as most were now born there. If there's ever going to be peace, his view should be the starting point for discussion. This does not seem likely while the far right have captured israeli politics and have helped create a deeply racist society.
I highly recommend reading this for a critical and accurate, while also beautifully written story of Palestine.
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Meg
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June 10, 2020
A sweeping overview of the reality America (and the evangelical community in particular) has willfully ignored for the last century. Rather than packing this with pathos, Khalidi patiently and carefully walks his reader through decades of policy, war, Western support and withdrawal, intifadas, settlements, and lines drawn and redrawn. I lament the US's blind and misguided partnership with a colonizing, ethnically cleansing, nationalistic state so anathema to democracy.
I've thought a lot about the similarities between Israel and the United States the last several weeks—their zionism, nationalism, and brutal systems of oppression swept aside by powerful, foundational myths—and Khalidi speaks to this in a way I'd been probing for:
"Establishing the colonial nature of the conflict has proven exceedingly hard given the biblical dimension of Zionism, which casts the new arrivals as indigenous and as the historical proprietors of the land they colonized. In this light, the original population of Palestine appears extraneous to the post-Holocaust resurgence of a Jewish nation-state with its roots in the kingdom of David and Solomon: they are no more than undesirable interlopers in this uplifting scenario. Challenging this epic myth is especially difficult in the United States, which is steeped in an evangelical Protestantism that makes it particularly susceptible to such an evocative Bible-based appeal and which also prides itself on its colonial past. The world ‘colonial’ has a valence in the United States that is deeply different from its associations in the former European imperial metropoles and the countries that were once part of their empires.
“Similarly the terms ‘settler’ and ‘pioneer’ have positive connotations in American history, arising from the heroic tale of the conquest of the West at the expense of its indigenous population as projected in movies, literature, and television. Instead, there are striking parallels between these portrayals of the resistance of Native Americans to their dispossession and that of the Palestinians. Both groups are cast as backward and uncivilized, a violent murderous, and irrational obstacle to progress and modernity. While many Americans have begun to contest this strand of their national narrative, Israeli society and its supporters still celebrate—indeed, depend on—its foundational version. Moreover, comparisons between Palestine and the Native American or African American experiences are fraught because the United States has yet to fully acknowledge these dark chapters of its past or to address their toxic effects in the present. There is still a long way to go to changes Americans’ consciousness of their nation’s history, let alone that of Palestine and Israel, in which the United States has played such a supportive role."
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Rick Homuth
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March 10, 2020
My favorite part of this book wasn't the book itself (which was good, it is a good book, I liked the book) but rather the dumbass NYT reviewer who wrote about this book and critiqued it b/c it doesn't "move us any closer to some kind of resolution." AKA, don't write a book about how fucked up the situation in Palestine is if you're not also gonna solve it for us in a way that doesn't involve ceding any annexed land
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Michael
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January 27, 2021
Excellent book. It's comprehensive, readable, well-researched, and current. Each chapter focuses on a major event or time period in the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to argue that Palestinians have--and continue to be--the victims of a hundred years of settler colonial warfare against them. Two things that set this book apart from other histories I've read are (1) the personal dimension Khalidi is able to offer not only as a Palestinian but as someone with first-hand experience in Palestinian politics and (2) a "rigorous, introspective self-criticism of Arab weaknesses and failures" which he takes from historian and intellectual Constantine Zureiq as indispensable for charting the best path forward for Palestinian action.
INTRO
provides the academic and personal background for the books main thesis: that the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be understood as a colonial war against an indigenous Palestinian population. While Khalidi employs plenty of scholarly sources to make his argument, what sets this book apart is the personal element which is expressed in the introduction through the account of his great-great-great uncle Yusuf Diya, an Islamic scholar. Through Diya's correspondences with Herzl and Khalidi's academic sources, a picture is presented of the early zionist project as a clearly settler colonial one. Whether that colonial aspiration was expressed discreetly (as in Herzl's memoir entries regarding "spiriting the penniless population across the border) or explicitly (as in Jabotinsky's declaration of zionist colonialism).
CH1
This chapter covers the "first declaration of war" on Palestine embodied by Britain's sponsoring of the Zionist project beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Khalidi looks at a changing Palestine at the turn of the 20th century. Its modernizing national infrastructure (education, transportation, and the press) as it integrates into the world market bringing with it an ascendant bourgeois class against the backdrop of a declining Ottoman Empire.
Concurrent with these developments was the growing threat to self-determination posed by the settler colonial Zionist movement and its European backers. Khalidi draws on memoirs, press reports, and oral history to show that the Palestinian national identity was formed alongside of and in response to the burgeoning Zionist movement.
Some of the key historical moments covered in this chapter include: demographic shifts due to Jewish immigration and land purchases, the 1922 Mandate which established Britain as the colonial power in the region, Britains support for a parallel Jewish administration with representative authority and control over public works (things the Arab population was denied), growing tensions resulting in a 1936 general strike, The Peel Commission's partition plan ceding 17% of the land to the Jewish population (and the expulsion of Arabs therein) while handing the rest over to Transjordanian control, the Great Revolt of 1937-1939, and, finally, Britains brutal repression of Palestinian fighters and activists.
The chapter ends with Chamberlain's 1939 conciliatory white paper to appease Arabs as it prepared for WWII (the commitments never being carried out on Britain's part, of course).
Ch.2
This chapter, focusing on the 1947-49 Nakba, begins with an anecdote recounting the author's father (Ismail al-Khalidi) delivering an official message from the Arab Higher Committee to King Abdullah of Transjordan to the effect that "were the Palestinians to succeed in escaping the British yoke, they did not want to come under that of Jordan. They aspired to control their own fate." Therefore, the AHC would not accept the King's offer of "guardianship" or "protection." The delivery of this message coincided with the UN vote on Resolution 181 in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine.
This anecdote speaks to three themes important to this chapter. 1. Palestinians' uncompromising desire for full self-determination 2. King Abdullah's desire for westward territorial expansion and 3. Palestinians' lack of state apparatuses in the run up to war (Ismail's role as messenger here was ad hoc as his real reason for meeting with the King concerned unrelated academic matters connected to the Arab-American Institute, not as an official diplomatic liaison which the AHC simply didnt have). This 3rd point is one of many factors that explains the Arab defeat by the organized, militant, higly prepared Israeli forces.
It's this combination of the personal and historical that sets this book apart from other histories of the conflict I've read.
This chapter also details the shifting global power structure in which the old colonial powers were replaced by the US and USSR as the major imperialist forces in the Middle East after WWII. A situation shrewdly foreseen by Israeli leadership. Khalidi emphasizes the internal division, ineffective leadership, and disorganized institutions (the AHC, ANF, Arab Office, etc.) on the Palestinian side as contrasted to the organized, sophisticated, well-funded and well connected Jewish para-state throughout the 30s and 40s. The outbreak of violence as Britain ceded control of Mandatory Palestine to the UN in '47 resulted in decisive military victories for the Israelis and, ultimately, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Continued colonial control over the Arab League, particularly in foreign affairs, further hamstrung efforts to resist Israeli conquest. When the dust settled in the summer of 1949, Israel declared statehood and sovereignty of 80% of historical Palestine, over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip while King Abdullah fulfilled his territorial ambitioins by claiming the West Bank as part of Jordan.
The chapter concludes by discussing Palestinian Fedayeen activity in the early 50s, Israel's disproportionate reprisals, the resulting outbreak of the 1956 Suez War, and the tripartite alliance of Israel, Britain, France yielding to USSR/US demands to end the conflict further cementing the latter as the dominant regional actors.
Ch 3
The Third Declaration of War is the 1967 Six Day War and its aftermath. Khalidi begins by dismissing the myth of a vulnerable Israel beset on all sides by its hostile Arab neighbors seeking its destruction. A popular propaganda line that was used to justify Israel's first strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. First off, it was apparent to US intelligence that an "attack was not immanent" and, secondly, if war did break out Israel would "whip the hell out of them" (in President Johnson 's words). The factors leading up to the war included Arab popular distress at Israel's diversion of Jordan River waters to its territory, Fatah harassment (mostly symbolic actions of sabotage), Israeli threats and attacks on Syrian targets, and the needlessly provocative saber rattling of Egypt moving troops into the Sinai ultimately giving Israel the causus belli to initiate its pre-emptive attack.
The main ideas of this chapter revolve around the changing power alignments and evolving terms of the Palestinian debate following the war. To the first point: while the Truman, Eisenhower, and even Kennedy administrations occasionally pushed back against Israeli overreach (see Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis), the Johnson administration and his pro-zionist circle of friends and advisors like Fortas, Goldberg, and Clifford proved utterly supportive of Israel in essentially all respects.
Furthermore, new militant activism sprung up in the 60s like the Movement of Arab Nationalists, the Marxist PFLP, Fatah, and the PLO which had been originally intended by the Arab League to coopt rejuvenated Palestinian nationalist fervor but soon lost control of the organization after '67.
The political alignments of the Arab League itself was also changing as with the Carter Admin's success in prying Egypt away from Palestine and into the Israel/US fold culminating in the bilateral Camp David treaty of '79.
On the point regarding the discurssive side of the issue, the main takeaway is that Palestinians managed to re-insert themselves into the discussion as political agents and a cultural force. Khalidi documents the cultural renaissance that flowered throughout the 60s and 70s with the writings of Kanafi, Darwish, Zayyad, and others. The assertion of a strong Palestinian identity and its expression on the world stage (Edward Said being an immensly important figure in that) countered the Zionist falsegoods that the Palestinians simply didnt exist. This isn't an exaggeration...in 1969 Prime Minister Golda Meir once claimed "there were no such thing as Palestinians...they did not exist".
Finally, this Palestinian movement gave itself a voice through the PLO which managed to set up channels of communication (much to Israel's frustration) with world powers including the US. This laid the groundwork for their participation in international politics when before they were sidelined as an incidental piece of state-to-state conflicts over territorial boundaries.
The chapter ends on the Lebanese civil war, the PLO's role, and the various motives/interests/players involved. All of which is too complicated for me to cover in this review...or even understand tbh.
Ch 4
Thr 4th Declaration of War is the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon--a country already years into its civil war--aimed at dislodging the PLO from the country. The plan was to knock out PLO operations in Israel's northern neighbor, destroy the Palestinian national movement, and use the opportunity to consolidate control over and eventually annex occupied territory.
Because Khalidi and his family lived in Beirut at the time, he is able to add a personal perspective and human dimension that gets lost in other histories of the conflict I've read. Especially moving were his reflections on the Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by the Philangist militias avenging assassinated president-elect Bashir Gamayel with full complicity of the IDF. The ominous scenes of military flares silently floating "over the southern reaches of Beruit" reminded me of the animated documentary Waltz With Bashir which Khalidi references. The IDF used the flairs to illuminate the refugee camps so the Philangist militiamen could effectively carry out its two day slaughter of over 1300 Palestinians.
Khalidi details the duplicity employed by Begin, Sharon and others--detailed in the Israeli Kahan Commission reports--to nullify meaningful safeguards for civilians during the PLO's evacuation demanded by Palestinian negotiators, French diplomatic interlocutors, and promised by American officials. The picture Khalidi presents is one of concentric "circles of responsibility" from the innermost architects of the war (Begin and Sharon) to the American officials tacitly supplying diplomatic and propaganda support.
The upshot of the war, however, was not the annihilation of the Palistinian national movement Israel hoped for but rather an intensification of the civil war, the rise of Hezbollah, and the relocation of the movement back into Palestine itself where it soon developed into the First Intifada.
Ch. 5
The Fifth Declaration of War spans the period between the First Intafada in 1987 to the Oslo II accords in ’95. During this period, the Israeli army carried out brutal repressions against the Palestinian uprisings and secured a legal codification of the status quo through the Oslo framework which Khalidi argues was a major defeat for the Palestinian national cause. The authors details how simmering tensions erupted in the largely non-violent wave of uprisings beginning in Dec. 1987, the excessive Israeli response, the global public’s response, and the response of the PLO to the Intifada—which was to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s “right to exist” and support of a two-state settlement based on Resolutions 242 and 338 thus marking a major strategic shift toward diplomatic resolution.
Khalidi is particularly critical of the PLO in this chapter, not for adopting non-violent tactics which he sees as a more effective path forward, but for a number of blunders that caused long-term harm to the movement for Palestine. The first was Arafat’s support of Iraq in the first gulf war and the second was accepting the Oslo framework which essentially outsourced the responsibility for enforcing the Palestinian’s colonial status to the Palestinians themselves. Khalidi, having been part of the advisory team to the Palestinian delegation at Madrid and both Oslo conferences, provides important insider perspectives on the diplomatic front. This is especially useful in his evaluation of the possible alternatives, the different actors (Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk in particular come under well-deserved heavy fire), and outcomes of the peace process.
Ch. 6
The final (sixth) declaration of war consists in the continued colonial occupation of the West Bank and Gaza well after “final status” settlements were supposed to be adopted according to the Oslo accords, including the 3 massive attacks on the Gaza Strip during operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge. Topics also include the Camp David conference, the rise of Hamas, the politics of the Palestinian Authority, and the failures of the Obama administration to produce any substantive change.
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Cass Vogel
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May 18, 2021
Essential reading if you know nothing about the war on Palestine, or if you know some stuff, or even if you know most stuff....just read it. Free Palestine
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