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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
143,323 views Mar 7, 2020
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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.
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Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies in the department of History at Columbia University. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1970, and his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1974. He is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is author of: Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013); Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1996); Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986); British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980); and co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991), and The Other Jerusalem: Rethinking the History of the Sacred City (2020).
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Intro
0:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
0:09
RASHID KHALIDI: In this age, for you to come together like this is an act of courage, and I applaud you for that.
0:15
Soon, we may not be doing these big things anymore. We'll be seeing each other on screens for a little while,
0:20
so enjoy being together while we're together. I'm not going to talk a great deal about the book.
About the book
0:27
What we've agreed to do is to have a dialogue, where Beshara will ask me questions about the book
0:35
and I'll do my best to answer them. So I'll just say a few things in introduction.
0:42
The first is that this is a very different book from the other seven books that I wrote.
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Every other book that I wrote is a standard work of history written in the third person, rigorously based
0:54
on archival sources, and trying to meet the highest standards
1:00
of the historical profession. Whether I achieved that or not is another matter. There is no first person in any of those.
Why this book is different
1:07
This book is completely different. It was urged upon me most insistently
1:14
by my son, who can be a very insistent fellow, that it was about time to stop writing for fellow academics,
1:22
and it was about time to stop writing scholarly boring books, and it was about time to use some of that knowledge
1:31
in a way that was approachable and that people would actually be able to want to read.
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And in addition, he and another relative kept pushing me to include in the history, things
1:46
that I know had happened, or that I had witnessed, or that I had been involved in, and to go in a different way
1:53
into family archives and personal materials
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that I had access to. I had written a book, Palestinian Identity, based on the papers of several families
2:07
in Jerusalem that I had privileged access to-- the [INAUDIBLE] family, the [INAUDIBLE] family, my family,
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and a couple of others. So I had used family archives before, but I had used them in a rigorous historical fashion,
2:20
excluding myself from the narrative. This book uses one of the sets of private papers
2:31
that I have used before, but in a completely different As Beshara says, I start the book by talking about use of the [INAUDIBLE] as a person,
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and talk about his correspondence with Herzl. And then I take it in a different direction, and I do that in every single one of the six chapters.
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I try and either start with a personal anecdote or I actually describe things that were told
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to me in one case by my father. Actually, in one case by my father and another case by someone else.
3:01
So this is a completely different book and it was a very hard book for me to write. Ever since I was an undergraduate back
3:08
in the 1960s, I graduated from Yale in 1970, I have been trained to write in a certain way.
3:14
I had to untrain myself to do this. Beshara told me, and I know he's right,
3:20
that this is a growing trend in the writing of history, inserting yourself into the narrative. So this is not-- I'm not by any means a pioneer in this.
Theoretical framework
3:28
But I think that in spite of the sort of privileged position
3:33
that I had, the privileged position of my family, the fact that we were by no means
3:40
representative of ordinary Palestinians, using family archives, using personal memories,
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using what my cousins and aunts and uncles told me provides a window into the history that you're not
3:56
going to get in a standard historical account. This book has a framework which is theoretical.
4:04
I argue that what we have going on in terms of the conflict in Palestine is not a struggle between two peoples,
4:13
right against right, it's much more complicated than that. It is actually a war waged, not just
4:18
by the Zionist movement in Israel, but by great powers through declarations of war which were issued not by Israel, but by those great powers
4:26
on the Palestinians. So it was not just an unequal struggle, it was a struggle in which the Zionist movement and later
4:32
on the state of Israel, backed by the greatest imperial powers of every age.
4:37
Great Britain at the height of empire. The United States and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War.
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Britain and France in the 1950s. And later on in the United States up to the present were engaged in this war in which the declarations of war
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were actually issued through international documents like the Balfour Declaration, like Security Council
4:58
Resolution 242 by international instances that were being driven by the interests
5:04
of those great powers. So there is a theoretical backbone to the book. There's 45 pages of footnotes for those of you
5:11
who like that sort of thing. But I interweave this with personal experiences,
5:18
with family anecdotes. Some of them slightly bowdlerize so as not to embarrass members of my family, but basically accurate
5:27
otherwise. And materials taken from memoirs of people in my family,
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and other families. [INAUDIBLE], for example. Somebody I knew who played an important role in the PLO.
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And before that, was a distinguished activist, and [INAUDIBLE] was always a distinguished economist,
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has a memoir that I use in one chapter extensively. So I've used all kinds of things.
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But I use these things in a way that I have never done before in anything that I've written, in all the books
5:57
that I've written before. Anthropologists will look at me, I see a couple of them in the audience. Anthropologists would look at me and sort of say, "Oh, yeah.
6:05
That's what we do all the time. That's not new." But historians don't do that. And so it really is--
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for me, it was a departure. I hope that if you do choose to buy the book and read it, you'll appreciate it all the more.
6:18
I am telling a harsh story. I am telling a story of settler colonialism.
6:25
And a resistance that as you may have noticed, has generally not always been successful.
6:30
I'm telling a story mainly of defeats of the Palestinians
6:35
and of victories of the Zionist movement. So unless you have absolutely no sense for the underdog,
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it's not necessarily a pleasant story. But I tried to tell it as dispassionately
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as I can having been myself deeply involved in some of the events towards the end of the book especially.
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And I try and tell it rigorously, but I also try and tell it in a manner that is approachable. I talk about six declarations of war.
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I talk about the Balfour Declaration as a declaration of war on the Palestinians. It's not just a statement by the British government
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which is later incorporated into the legal mandate-- League of Nations mandate for Palestine,
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and therefore becomes an international document. It is a declaration of war. Why? Because it talks about a country without talking
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about that country's people. It talks about a country in terms of somebody who is actually not there at the time.
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It talks about Britain favoring the establishment of a Jewish national home in a situation where
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the Jewish population of Palestine is around 6% of the total. 94% of the population is not mentioned
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in the Balfour Declaration. That erasure, that removal of that people
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verbally in that declaration and in the mandate is a declaration of war. And later on, the British empire, with all its might,
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wages war on the Palestinians in order to guarantee the entrenchment of that project,
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that Jewish national home, in Palestine. They bring 100,000 troops and police, the Royal Air Force,
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armor, artillery to bear against a population which had about 300,000 adult males.
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So you're talking about one soldier for every three men in the society. Enormous weight of repression was used.
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So the British didn't only declare war, the British actually waged war. And this is another part of the argument I make in the six other chapters,
8:23
I won't talk about the others, of the book. That this is not just a war between Israelis
8:29
and Palestinians. Obviously they are the primary protagonists at many stages. This is a much bigger conflict, and it involves bigger actors
8:36
than just Palestinians and just Israelis. It involves not just great powers, it also often involves Arab states.
8:43
And I talk about that in some of the latter chapters of the book. So I think I'll stop here with that summary of it.
Dialogue
8:49
And Beshara and I will now have a dialogue. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yes.
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RASHID KHALIDI: I didn't see that. BESHARA DOUMANI: All right. Thank you, Rashid.
9:10
So Hundred Years War. That's a catchy title, but implies a logic.
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100 years something was driving something. It implies a structure.
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It implies a form of continuity that had to be reproduced at great cost.
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So it's very much in keeping with the truism that the destruction of Palestine in 1948
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and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, most [INAUDIBLE] of the indigenous population at that time, was not an event.
9:45
It was part of a process. Right? So you organize that process into six wars.
9:55
You really spoke about the first one, and I'm wondering if you can just give, because people haven't had a chance to read the book yet,
10:02
a quick overview of the other five station stops. And then I'll follow up something on one of them.
Second War
10:14
RASHID KHALIDI: Each of these wars was preceded by some kind of declaration of war. So the first, as I mentioned, was
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preceded by the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine, and that war continued right up
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through the 1930s. And ultimately, was really waged more by Britain than by anybody else.
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The second war was declared by the United States and the Soviet Union ramming the Partition
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Resolution. General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947,
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through the General Assembly. There are ample historical accounts of the arm-twisting, the bribery, the pressure that
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was exerted on small countries to force them to vote for partition.
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As I say, partition was an anti-Arab resolution. That was the declaration.
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The war was then fought, obviously, by the militias of the Zionist movement. And then after May 15, after the establishment
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of the state of Israel by the Israeli army against the Palestinians, but they were not alone in the field.
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In the sense that they could not possibly have fought this war without the ample armament
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that they received both from the Soviet Union and from the United States. So I described this as the second war.
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And I make a point which is not generally understood which is that of the 750,000 or so Palestinians who are driven
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from their homes in what Palestinians call the Nakba in 1948, almost half, over 300,000,
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are forced out before the state of Israel is established, before Britain leaves Palestine.
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The British are there while Jaffa is depopulated, 60,000 people.
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While Haifa is depopulated, 60,000 people. While [INAUDIBLE],, Tiberius and West Jerusalem are depopulated,
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over 150,000 urban residents of the major urban agglomerations in Palestine are driven from their homes by these militias
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before the state is established, before the British leave, before the Arab armies enter.
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So what we think of as the Arab-Israeli part of the conflict, Arab states versus Israel, starts long after the ethnic cleansing of Palestine
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is well underway. So that's a point that I make in so far as this first war is-- second war, I should say, declaration of war
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is concerned. The third was a declaration of war that followed the war of 1967.
Third War
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What I say about the 1967 war are two major things. The first has to do with the war itself, which
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is that it was not an Israeli war in the sense that Israel did not decide, or the Israeli leadership, did not decide on one fine, sunny day in Tel Aviv
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or Jerusalem, or [INAUDIBLE] or wherever they were, to go to war. They went to Washington to get a green light
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which they received and without which they would not have gone to war, and which enabled them to do what they did.
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They thereupon were instrumental to what I described as a second declaration, or third, sorry,
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declaration of war on the Palestinians which is Security Council Resolution 242.
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And this is a document which is described as the framework for peacemaking in the Middle East.
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You might have noticed that peace has not come to the Middle East a number of decades after 242
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was passed in November, 1967. It was not a framework for peace in the Middle East.
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It was a framework for bilateral settlements between Israel and Arab countries, two of which world
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ultimately agreed to between Egypt and Israel and between Jordan and Israel. It was a framework for management
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of the conflict, vis-a-vis the Palestinians, along lines determined by Israel. And in that sense, it's a--
14:01
BESHARA DOUMANI: It's a humanitarian, not a political. RASHID KHALIDI: Exactly. As with the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinians are not there.
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They are erased from the document. They don't exist as far as 242 is concerned.
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A just resolution of the refugee problem is the only thing 242 says in oblique reference
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to the Palestinians. So like the Balfour Declaration, it is essentially, in my view, a declaration of war on the Palestinians.
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You don't exist. You're not the problem. The problem is a state to state problem which we will resolve in the manner laid out land for peace
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in 242. So that's-- where are we now? The third? OK.
Fourth War
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The fourth declaration of war involves a war rather similar in one respect to the 1967 war,
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and this is the Israeli invasion of Lebanon followed by the siege of Beirut starting in June of 1982.
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And this is a war which, just like the 1967 war, is not decided upon by Prime Minister Begin and his defense
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minister, Ariel Sharon, one sunny day in Jerusalem. It's decided upon after Sharon goes to Washington
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and gets a green light from Secretary of State Haig. It is an American-Israeli war.
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It is a war that Israel could not launch without that approval, without that green light
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like the '67 war. And it's a war which I show in my description of what
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happens from the day that green light is offered until the massacres of Sabra and Shatila
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in September of the same year, 1982, could not have happened as it happened
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without American support. So I'm arguing in these, especially in these four chapters, that what we're looking at
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is something bigger than just a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. And it's not-- it's not just a conflict
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between national movements though there is an element of it here already. It is something much bigger.
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And it is as lopsided, and its results are as one-sided because of that big, fat imperial thumb
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on the scales in favor of the stronger side. And so that's the fourth.
Fifth War
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The fifth is, in my view, the negotiations
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resulting in the Oslo Accords. As Beshara mentioned, I was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at Madrid
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and at Washington, which was attempting to resolve this conflict. We failed.
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We were not able to achieve anything that came anywhere near meeting the aspirations of the Palestinians.
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Behind our backs, without our knowledge, Prime Minister Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, began secret negotiations.
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I go into some of the details of them which I found out at the time. And they ended up agreeing on something, which in my view
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amounts to a declaration of war on the Palestinians. That is not how Arafat and the PLO leadership understood it at the time.
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They were wrong, I'm right. Anybody who looks at the situation of the Palestinians since 1993 will see that that's one
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of the worst things that has ever happened to the Palestinians. It was a disastrous mistake, and I talk about how and why.
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The last wars that I talk about are also American Israeli wars,
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and these are the wars on Gaza that began just before President Obama was inaugurated
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starting in December of 2008, and continuing into January 2009. Ending just before he was actually inaugurated later
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in January, and continuing through the last major round of war on Gaza in 2014 in which 3,000 people were killed,
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almost 80% of whom were civilians. These are real wars.
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And again, they're not only Arab Israelis-- or Palestinian-Israeli wars.
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They're Israeli wars on Gaza obviously, but they are American-Israeli wars. I talk about the kind of firepower used in that chapter.
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You should read that part carefully if you know anything about ordnance, about military, hardware.
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Most of that stuff is American. Most of those bombs--
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20 kilotons of high explosive were used in 2014 against the Gaza Strip, the most heavily populated area
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on earth. There's no way to run to when you have 20 kilotons of high explosive coming down on you, almost all of it American.
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From American planes. From American artillery pieces. From American tanks. There's some Israeli tanks.
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There are a few Israeli-- BESHARA DOUMANI: And against American law. RASHID KHALIDI: And as I suggest, in violation of US law. So those are the six declarations of war.
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BESHARA DOUMANI: So my question is on number five. [INTERPOSING VOICES] BESHARA DOUMANI: Well, you started
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in 1987, which is the Intifada. RASHID KHALIDI: Yes. BESHARA DOUMANI: So it brings to mind--
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all the others are actual real wars with involved military.
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World War I, '48, et cetera. This one is an uprising by the Palestinians
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followed by a secret agreement six years later. RASHID KHALIDI: Right.
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BESHARA DOUMANI: It suggests that perhaps-- the temporal structuring of the book opens up the question,
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why is it that number five begins with the Palestinian Resistance Action while the other ones don't?
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So how is that in a way fitting this pattern of wars on the Palestinians? And it also brought to mind the question of the 1936, 1939
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rebellion which was a real big war against the Palestinians by the British military.
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Like you said, over 100,000. [INAUDIBLE] by 30% of the Palestinian male population.
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[INAUDIBLE] RASHID KHALIDI: 10%. BESHARA DOUMANI: 10%, sorry, of the Palestinian male population, which is a heavy number.
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And without a preordained 1948 to a certain extent.
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RASHID KHALIDI: Precisely. BESHARA DOUMANI: So that's, in a way,
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folded under the umbrella of the Balfour Declaration. While it did not get a chapter of it's own.
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Yes, while the Intifada seems to be an exception to that rule to a certain extent. So how would you explain that?
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RASHID KHALIDI: OK. You're right in [INAUDIBLE] suggestion.
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BESHARA DOUMANI: Is this working?
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Here in the back? RASHID KHALIDI: There it is. Got it. Sorry, I must have touched it the wrong place.
First Intifada
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You're right in noting that-- chapter 5, which starts with the First Intifada which
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began in December 1987, and was a massive popular uprising
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against the occupation that had been going on at that point for 20 years.
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Is quite different to any of the other chapters, all of which involve real war.
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You ask a subsidiary question, which is why is the '36, '39 revolt lumped into the first. Let's leave that.
21:07
That's an important question, but let's leave that. I start with the First Intifada because in my mind,
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it sets a pattern which I think people should pay more attention to. I argue that it is one of two episodes, or sets of events,
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which constituted a relative victory for the Palestinians.
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A victory that I argue was frittered away in Oslo. But nevertheless, was a victory.
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It had a clear strategic objective. To a certain extent, it achieved that objective.
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It did so with a minimum of violence. Thereby avoiding a problem that resistance
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had faced in the past. And it might, could, should have had a better outcome.
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I'm harshly critical of the PLO leadership for the way it handled the First Intifada.
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So you're actually right. In one sense, that doesn't fit the pattern of the other five
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chapters, which really have bang, bang, shoot 'em up wars. the Intifada was not a bang, bang, shoot 'em up war.
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It was popular uprising. BESHARA DOUMANI: There was one in 2000. RASHID KHALIDI: There was. The Second Intifada. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yes, the Second Intifada
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which was a full-scale military invasion by the Israeli army of the West Bank.
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RASHID KHALIDI: And which involved quite considerable casualties on both sides, especially with Palestinians but very heavy
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casualties among Israelis. And that, I argue, in contrast to the First Intifada,
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was one of several Palestinian defeats that I chronicle in this book. So I talk about some successes, a couple of successes,
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and I talk about several defeats. And I very consciously set the one against the other for reasons that I could go
22:57
into if anybody has a question. But that goes back to an earlier phase of Palestinian resistance, Palestinian armed resistance
23:04
from bases outside of Palestine involving armed attacks into Israel. And I go into that in some depth in chapter 4, actually.
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BESHARA DOUMANI: That's a great segue to the next question actually, which is would you agree that we've seen three phases of the Palestinian national
Three Phases
23:19
movement so far? RASHID KHALIDI: Which are? BESHARA DOUMANI: Which are what I would call the notables phase
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during the mandate period. Followed after 1948, what I call the refugee slash guerrilla
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phase. Which reaches apex maybe by the 1974 [INAUDIBLE]
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olive branch speech of Yasser Arafat and United Nations in which the PLO succeeded in becoming
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the legal, and legitimate, address
23:59
for Palestinian nationalist [INAUDIBLE].. RASHID KHALIDI: Sole, legitimate representative. Yeah. BESHARA DOUMANI: Exactly. Followed by what I would call the suit
24:06
and tie technocrat phase of the Oslo Accords. RASHID KHALIDI: I agree with you.
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That's a perfect description. BESHARA DOUMANI: Where are we now?
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Are we on the cusp of a fourth phase? Has the fourth phase started but we're not paying attention to it?
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I mean, each one of these phases had different constituencies,
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different leaderships, different political programs, and different cultures of politics.
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So I'll just ask you to reflect back on all these three to a certain extent and make some educated guesses
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about what you see happening now that we should pay attention to. RASHID KHALIDI: OK.
The First Phase
24:50
I mean, I think your categories are basically accurate.
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I think that the first phase does end in 1948, and it involves a Palestinian national movement that
25:05
is led by an elite, an out of touch and non-democratic elite,
25:11
largely non-democratic elite which had, in my view,
25:17
largely mistaken tactics and strategy vis-a-vis the imperial patron of the Zionist movement
25:25
and the Zionist movement itself. And which failed and was seen to fail by Palestinians. And that elite lost the material basis of its power.
25:34
It lost much of its wealth in 1948. And it was then superseded by a new elite,
25:39
which grew out of the middle classes and the refugee camps. And which took the form of the various movements that
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ultimately took over the PLO in 1968. And that was a phase which is mainly
25:53
thought of in terms of armed struggle, but also involved a remarkably successful propaganda
25:58
diplomatic campaign, which brought Yasser Arafat to the podium of the General Assembly in 1974.
26:06
Brought the PLO recognition by over 100 countries. Achieved a level of recognition that the Palestinians
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had never in the entire history of the conflict achieved. It was then followed, I would argue,
26:19
it starts a little later than you suggested, but you're right. It then was followed by the, you can call it the suit and tie
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phase, which is a period of an atrophying of that leadership,
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combined with attrition. Attrition of that leadership, not caused by old age or arteriosclerosis.
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Caused by car bombs and assassinations through a campaign that goes back to the lessons
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taught to Zionist militias by their British mentors in the 1930s. How to go into people's homes and assassinate them.
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How to blow up people's houses. This was a man named Orde Wingate who created a group of bloodthirsty murderers whom I will--
27:03
who are known as the Night Squads. And who basically taught what later
27:09
became the Israeli intelligence services, everything they know. If you're interested, a man named Ronen Bergman has written a book called Rise and Kill First:
27:17
A History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. It's a 5-600 page book. It's excruciatingly painful reading.
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He has interviewed hundreds and it looks like over 1,000 people, most of them intelligence operatives.
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But people of every walk of life. And it is largely, as far as I can tell, accurate. And so the attrition was attrition
27:39
by the bullet, or by the car bomb, of a large part of the leadership. What was left then took us into the coat and tie phase.
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And that has been, in my view, the least successful phase
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of the Palestinian national movement. Are we at the end of that phase? Now you take me into ground that I'm
27:58
much more hesitant to tread on. When I'm asked that kind of question, my standard dodge is to say that the job
28:07
description of a historian doesn't include predicting the future. I don't know what's going to happen.
28:13
My educated guess is that sooner or later, hopefully sooner, yes, we are at the end of that phase.
28:19
The bankruptcy of both wings of the Palestinian national movement couldn't be more evident.
28:26
The negotiating approach, the public negotiating approach of the Ramallah wing of the Palestinian national
28:33
leadership, has shown its complete bankruptcy. There's no more to be achieved there.
28:38
In fact, there's not been anything to be achieved since 1993 in my view. The bankruptcy of the other wing, claiming
28:45
to be engaged in resistance while surreptitiously negotiating with Israel, which is to say what's happening in Gaza has also shown its bankruptcy.
28:53
The war on Gaza was not just a military war. The war on Gaza was a war on the people of Gaza
28:59
through a siege, which has been in place in various forms since 2006, since the Palestinian elections of 2006
29:07
were won by Hamas. At least 14 years. So I think that, yes, sooner or later we
29:15
are at the end of that phase. What the next phase will be? I don't know. What I think it should be I suggest at the end of the book.
29:23
Though who am I to say? BESHARA DOUMANI: So let me then be a little more specific
Iron Law
29:31
and say that if there's an iron law to [INAUDIBLE] question of Palestine, even though [INAUDIBLE]
29:37
not my favorite phrase. It's the adamant refusal, of both the Zionist movement
29:45
and its backers, to recognize the Palestinians as a political community. RASHID KHALIDI: Right. BESHARA DOUMANI: The Balfour Declaration
29:51
made that very clear. The Mandate Charter made it clear. The Partition Plan made it clear. 242 made it clear.
29:58
RASHID KHALIDI: Partition as it worked out made it clear. Nominally, there's an Arab state in partition. But what happens is what is important.
30:04
But go on. BESHARA DOUMANI: No, no. I think you're right. There is a language deficit there.
30:10
I skipped it because the Zionist movement was involved in negotiations with the Jordanians
30:17
and through the British to make sure that there will be no Palestinian state. RASHID KHALIDI: Right. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah, OK.
30:22
So they knew what they were doing. But that's just another example of--
30:27
that refusal [INAUDIBLE] been an iron law. It seems to have been broken at a certain moment in time, 1974
30:35
and maybe even 1987 to a certain extent. And yet-- RASHID KHALIDI: And to a certain extent
30:42
1993, and I'll talk about that in a second. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah, 1993. That's what I've [INAUDIBLE].
30:47
But after 1987, 1993. '87, the beginning of the Intifada. '93, the Oslo Accords.
30:55
But ironically, that was a recognition that turned the clock back to a certain extent.
31:03
There is no real now--
31:09
actual recognition of Palestinians as a political community in the same way that existed earlier. It's gone backwards, it seems.
31:14
Would you agree? RASHID KHALIDI: I would agree. And let me start from 1993.
31:22
What happens in 1993? What happens in 1993 is that the victory that the Palestinians
31:32
achieve through the First Intifada convinces Israeli elites that the way in which they have
31:37
controlled the Palestinians up to this point is not sustainable. It convinces the man who becomes prime minister in 1992,
31:46
Yitzhak Rabin, and who had been defense minister in coalition governments and had failed to suppress the Intifada
31:53
from 1987, onwards. It convinces them that they have to do something different.
31:58
Ultimately, Rabin in the Oslo Accords and in the secret negotiations that preceded the Oslo Accords,
32:06
accepts two or three propositions
32:12
that the state of Israel and the Zionist movement had never been really willing to accept.
32:17
The first was that the Palestinians are a people. The second is that they have a political representative.
32:23
And the third is that Israel will negotiate with them openly. This was a revolutionary departure
32:29
from the time of Herzl until 1993. This had never happened.
32:34
The idea that this was a political community that constituted a people, which implicitly therefore
32:40
had certain rights, was something that the Zionist movement had never been prepared to accept and the state of Israel had never been prepared to accept.
32:47
That the PLO represented this community was anathema to them, the idea.
32:53
And finally that they would actually sit down and negotiate with them, or bring them into Palestine as leadership
32:59
and as military forces, and as cadres, and as a movement, obviously all of this is entirely new.
33:04
Now, what were the problems? The problems have to do with the iron law that you talked about. Accepting that they're political community,
33:11
accepting that they're a people, accepting that that's their representative and accepting to negotiate with them did not involve
33:17
conceding the right of national self-determination statehood. Real partition of the country, an extension of sovereignty
33:25
to the Palestinians. Rabin, just before he's assassinated which we should all know and read.
33:30
I quote from it in [INAUDIBLE] in which he says, "This is not going to be a state. It's not going to have sovereignty.
33:36
We're not going that far." And no Israeli leader, including Olmert
33:41
who made some moves in the same direction much later, has ever gone that far. So ultimately, the iron law you're talking about
33:48
is still in force. And in fact, I think we've gone further backwards in the years since 1977 because in the Likud
33:57
party and its offshoots which have dominated Israeli politics and political discourse for almost the entire time since 1977,
34:04
you have a much more extreme version of that same iron law that was always there.
34:09
BESHARA DOUMANI: So now we're on to what I think is-- and then we'll conclude after this, the most difficult part
The Zionist Movement
34:18
of the book for people to ensure, which is your understanding of the Zionist movement.
34:24
So it's clear from the title that you think of it as first and foremost a settler colonial movement.
34:31
But you also are very careful to say, and you do so at several points in the book, that it's also simultaneously at the same time
34:38
a national movement. RASHID KHALIDI: Becomes a national movement. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah. Well, that's the question.
34:45
Was it always national? Did it become national? And what implications does this have for understanding of the--
34:53
what are the political implications of this characterization of the Zionist movement?
34:59
RASHID KHALIDI: Right. I have no discomfort whatsoever in describing the Zionist
settler Colonialism
35:06
movement from its inception, and the Zionist project up to this day, as a settler colonial movement.
35:13
It's different from every other settler colonial movement, it's somewhat similar to some. But it is by, not only various yardsticks
35:22
we can use, by its own self-description. For its first 40 to 50 years, a settler colonial movement.
35:32
All the settlements established in Palestine, all the colonies, self-described,
35:38
established in Palestine before 1948, are established by something called the Jewish Colonization
35:45
Agency. That's not my-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] RASHID KHALIDI: [INAUDIBLE] JCA. It's not my description, that's their description.
35:51
You read Herzl. You read Ben-Gurion. You read Jabotinsky, the founder of the strain of Zionism
35:58
that develops into Likud, they talk about this with no-- in private at least, they talk about this with no qualms.
36:05
"We are a colonial settler movement. There is an indigenous population we have to move.
36:10
That's what we have to do. Like others have done, we are going to--" Now remember, they are talking in the era of high colonialism.
36:17
They're talking in the era where colonialism, colonization, settler colonialism, are not in a bad odor.
36:24
Where they're fully accepted. Where Britain and France are settler colonial powers,
36:30
and Britain is protecting the Zionist movement. There's no shame in it. So in this aspect, I have no problems with this.
36:39
And you can take it up to the present. I mean, look at what happens in the West Bank day in, day out. What is it but settler colonialism?
36:45
Look at what happened to the land taken over by the state of Israel from 1948 until 1967.
36:53
Look what happened to the Arab population. Look what happened to their rights. Look what happened to their property.
36:59
Look what happened to the Jewish population. Look at how the two peoples were treated, the two groups were treated.
37:05
This is settler colonialism. There is no other possible way of describing it. It is a unique form of settler colonialism. I'm prepared to accept that it has manifold differences
37:14
from South Africa, from Algeria, from Canada, from Australia. I'm prepared to accept that it also has other characteristics,
37:21
I am prepared to accept. For example, it is not an extension of the metropole, which every other settler colonial
37:27
movement is. The Dutch settlers in South Africa were originally extensions of the Dutch of the Netherlands.
37:34
British settlers in North America were extensions of the crown. The French in northern Algeria were French persons,
37:41
French people. Extensions of the metropole Zionism wasn't like that. It was completely different in multiple respects.
37:47
I don't need to go into that further. Now, where's the hard part?
37:53
The hard part is the national aspect. The hard part is that successful settler colonial projects
38:00
eventually turn into a nation state. We just heard a moving acceptance of the fact
38:10
that we stand on somebody else's land here in Providence. OK? So who would deny the settler colonial
38:18
nature of this country? Nobody in their right mind. But who would deny that it is a nation state?
38:24
That a national entity has been created? Or that the same has happened in Canada?
38:29
Or that the same has happened in Australia? Or that the same has happened in New Zealand? Nobody in their right mind even while accepting the settler
38:36
colonial origins of every one of those four states. What I'm suggesting by talking about the national aspect
38:44
of Zionism is that a national entity has been created. Now, when it becomes national, that's a hard question.
38:53
And I am not sure about that. In one respect, the United States and Israel are similar in that both separate themselves
39:03
from the metropole in different ways and for different reasons. And behave very similarly thereafter.
39:10
So quite differently from the French in Algeria, quite differently from the British settlers in Canada,
39:16
Americans and Israelis, at a certain stage, develop a national project. Now, what stage that is and when that happens,
39:23
I am not prepared to say that would require much deeper thinking that I've been able to do on this. But I think you've put your finger on something
39:29
that is not entirely clear. Does it have a national aspect? Yes. When does that national aspect take over or become important?
39:40
I'm not as sure of that. BESHARA DOUMANI: All right.
Palestine Studies
39:45
So you've been doing Palestine studies for a very long time. RASHID KHALIDI: Since I was a kid really.
39:52
I mean, I sat at the dinner table listening to my father who worked at the United Nations talking about the question of Palestine
39:58
when I was a pre-teen. So I've been listening, at least-- BESHARA DOUMANI: Not just listening.
40:04
If you read the book you'll see that there's actually a family tradition that you're continuing to a certain extent.
40:09
A lot of them have been [INAUDIBLE] public intellectuals on this issue for generations.
40:17
So I have to ask this question because we are at Brown University. We're home to new directions of Palestinian studies, which
40:23
has created a certain kind of presence here and beyond. And we're very interested in the question
40:30
of knowledge production on Palestine and the Palestinians. I'm just interested in your own personal perspective
40:38
having been doing this for a long time. Have you seen this field change? Its vocabulary, its reach, its [INAUDIBLE] frames?
40:49
RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah, that's a big question. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah. Briefly-- RASHID KHALIDI: I'll try and be brief.
40:55
It doesn't come naturally to me, but I'll try and be brief.
41:02
I don't think there was such a thing as Palestine studies at some stage. I don't know where I would describe it as beginning,
41:09
but I don't think this is a question about origins. When the Institute for Palestine Studies was founded in 1964,
41:17
it was a new departure. And I was living in the United States at the time
41:24
and I was an undergraduate in the United States. And I remember that finding books on Palestine
41:29
was virtually impossible. There were some, a few books published in the United Kingdom.
41:35
Almost nothing published in the United States. So although the institute had started in 1964,
41:41
I would say that somewhere around then there was almost nothing in the way of Palestinian studies.
41:47
Today, I don't have room on my shelves for the publications
41:52
which I receive. Whether monographs, whether synthetic works, whether personal accounts, whether novels,
42:02
whether other forms of literature, all of which involve discussion of aspects of Palestine.
42:10
And some of which are actually academic. Most of which are actually academic. Something clearly has changed in remarkable ways
42:18
in the last few decades. It has had an effect on academia which is quite profound.
42:28
The kind of canards. The kind of shameless lies. The kind of propaganda derived deceit
42:35
that was canonized and worshipped as fact for generations made the desert bloom,
42:42
their leaders made them leave, I could go on and on and on. The myths that took the place of reality.
42:48
The kinds of things that if you ever saw a horrible movie called Exodus, or read an execrable novel by Leon Uris of the same name,
42:56
you would have learned-- were passed for fact and passed for legitimate historical truth
43:07
in much of academia. That simply is not the case anymore. So Palestine studies has helped to demolish
43:13
a whole infrastructure of largely false understandings,
43:22
and has established an entirely new narrative which I wouldn't say has hegemonic, I wouldn't say is dominant,
43:29
but has a vigorous place in the arena of scholarship.
43:35
Especially in certain fields in history and Middle East studies, and anthropology, and a few other fields,
43:40
it is very powerful. Now, what is it characterized by? I could talk about that if you want.
43:47
BESHARA DOUMANI: No, I think we-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] RASHID KHALIDI: It is a remarkable--
43:52
now, all of this, I have to just say one more thing. This doesn't mean that all is rosy in Palestine studies
44:00
because the outside world is not an academic world. The outside world is a political world.
44:07
The outside world is a legal world. The outside world is a media world. The outside world is a world of public opinion.
44:14
And the things that we, as scholars, Israelis, Arabs, Americans, Europeans, Indians, Chinese, know to be the case
44:23
are not necessarily shared in the political world. You can get resolutions of Congress,
44:28
which speak about something that's closer to Mars than it is the United States in terms of Palestine. It's complete fantasy, and these are our elected representatives
44:37
who will pass bills of various sorts. And that's also true in the media.
44:42
You can have people pontificate for half an hour saying things that every scholar with a PhD on earth, except a very few, know
44:50
is not true, and they'll get away with it. So we are operating in the academy within one
44:55
set of constraints and within one framework, and the rest of-- much of the rest of the world
45:01
is operating in other frameworks. BESHARA DOUMANI: Climate change is a hoax. RASHID KHALIDI: For example.
Question
45:06
BESHARA DOUMANI: OK. So we're not exceptional. RASHID KHALIDI: Perfect example. BESHARA DOUMANI: All right. Why don't we open it up?
45:12
There's a couple of microphones. You could just line up and-- RASHID KHALIDI: Fire away. BESHARA DOUMANI: Fire away as long as you keep it brief
45:19
so we can get a lot of people. RASHID KHALIDI: We have until when?
45:24
25 minutes. Great. Go for it. SUBJECT 1: Thank you very much.
45:30
My name is Nadia [INAUDIBLE]. We just met at Columbia. So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about resistance.
45:37
We've focused on wars and settler colonialism, but I'm interested both in the way you conceptualize
45:46
resistance theoretically, but also empirically what is contained under that rubric?
45:52
Because as an anthropologist, I mean, there's this whole range of [INAUDIBLE]
45:58
from political armed resistance to everyday forms of resistance, steadfastness.
46:04
And I guess I'm also interested in are you sort of including more recent ideas around resistance
46:10
as just politics of leisure and pleasure, and art, and what about gendered resistance?
46:16
Or are you focusing mainly on the more-- sort of political armed resistance?
46:22
RASHID KHALIDI: Right. Let me answer the theoretical question.
46:29
I argue and would argue that resistance
46:34
goes far beyond the political, or for that matter, the military. And in fact, quite frequently has nothing
46:40
to do with the military. And I talk about the two great successes, or two of the successes of the Palestinian national movement
46:49
having to do with actually non-armed resistance. Which is to say diplomatic and propaganda campaign of the PLO,
46:55
and the First Intifada. The second of which is, I think, the most important because it was mass-based.
47:01
As it went on, it was largely run by women because the men were-- the first leaders were arrested and it ended up
47:07
being run by women. And because it involved, as had the '36, '39 revolt,
47:15
actually, almost the entirety of Palestinian society. So when I say mass-based, it wasn't just a part of the population.
47:20
It was almost the entire population was engaged. And that's, in my view, one of several forms of resistance
47:28
that you could point to. So it involves diplomacy and propaganda, it involves mass popular resistance.
47:36
Generally nonviolent or at least unarmed, and it can also involve armed resistance.
47:43
Now, having said that, I would add two things. The first is that there is another form of really quite
47:49
stubborn invisible resistance, which is what in Arabic you'd call sumud, steadfastness.
47:55
Just staying there. Staying on the land. If Herzl said in his diaries, "We will spirit the population
48:03
across the frontiers." Now, they didn't do a lot of spiriting in 1948. They did a lot of killing, and massacring, and raping,
48:09
and blowing up of houses. But throughout the process, the objective was to get the people from here to there, as many as possible.
48:17
OK? Just resisting that process-- Everybody understood this, everybody
48:23
understood there was a demographic element to this conflict. From the very beginning, Zionists, Palestinians.
48:29
Everybody understood it. Simply staying put, holding fast, sumud is a form of resistance.
48:36
Now, does that have dimensions that include leisure and so on and so forth? To be very blunt with you, I think
48:42
that this can involve a trivialization, frankly, of sumud.
48:47
Sumud can involve living your life and so on, and so forth. It has to involve because if you're going to stay there,
48:53
you have to live. You have to earn a living, you have to educate your children,
48:59
you have to protect your family. You have to do things that society has to do to protect itself.
49:05
But at the same time, to talk about every time everybody gets in a taxi is resistance to my way of thinking
49:10
is, frankly, meaningless. Now, I don't mean to insult a scholar who may have written this. But I have to say, I don't see that as resistance.
49:16
BESHARA DOUMANI: We know who it is. RASHID KHALIDI: I don't see that as resistance. I see it in terms of the forms that I mentioned.
49:25
Does it involve gendered resistance? Of course it does. It has to partly because in order for this society
49:32
to survive, in order for the society to succeed in achieving its objectives,
49:39
it has to overcome some of the internal problems that have prevented it from succeeding in the past.
49:46
Why are the energies of women not tapped in the way that the energies of children were
49:51
tapped at different stages of resistance? By which I mean demonstrations of high school kids,
50:00
which had an enormous impact during the First Intifada, and at other stages of Palestine. And in the 30s for that matter, before even the
50:11
'36, '39 revolt. So there are all kinds of elements to this. It certainly doesn't just involve
50:17
guns and an armed struggle. It certainly doesn't just involve diplomacy and propaganda.
50:24
It certainly doesn't just involve mass popular uprisings. It has multiple.
50:30
And in many ways, I think that if you look at the Palestinian population inside Israel, you see some of the most innovative forms of resistance
50:38
by the people who've been the most affected in some ways by the Zionist project. And that involves things that are subtle in many cases
50:47
and involve ways of making a living and ways of making your way through a maze that was created to prevent you
50:55
from getting from a to b. And I think those deserve a lot more study than they're getting actually.
51:01
Long answer, sorry. BESHARA DOUMANI: It's no problem. Please. SUBJECT 2: I wonder how you view the historical and future role
51:09
of the [INAUDIBLE] administrations in Syria, Jordan, Egypt [INAUDIBLE].
51:18
And you're probably [INAUDIBLE] 1979 would probably be
51:27
a betrayal by Egypt, I guess. RASHID KHALIDI: You're talking about the peace treaty? BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah. RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah.
51:35
The book actually goes into this at some length. I mean, there are phases of the war on the Palestinians that are waged by Arab armies, or Arab militias in Lebanon
51:45
in particular, and also in Jordan. The role of the Arab regimes, the governments that you're talking about, has largely been negative.
51:54
One of the dichotomies in the Arab world is between Arab public opinion and the position
52:00
of the Arab governments. Arab public opinion has been enormously supportive of the Palestinians since the 1930s.
52:06
In fact, since before that I've written about newspaper articles being written by the dozens,
52:12
by the hundreds before 1914 talking about Palestine in Damascus, in Cairo, in an Arabic newspaper in Istanbul
52:19
called [INAUDIBLE]. Arab public opinion was supportive of the Palestinians
52:25
before World War I, and this continues through the 20s, the 30s, the 40s. In [INAUDIBLE],, before this building
52:31
was destroyed by the Hafez Al-Assad regime in 1982, there was a regional museum in the basement
52:37
of which were pictures, or names, of literally scores, maybe hundreds of [INAUDIBLE],, people from the [INAUDIBLE]
52:45
region who went to Palestine. Volunteered under the French mandate. So the French didn't send them. There was no Syrian government to send.
52:51
They went on their own volition to fight in Palestine. And that support continues to this day.
52:56
I cite twice in the book a public opinion poll taken by the Arab center in Doha,
53:01
in Qatar, which talks about the very high level of support of the Palestinians.
53:07
By contrast, people will tell you the Arabs don't care about Palestine. What do they mean? They mean the kleptocratic, undemocratic monarchs,
53:15
absolute monarchs of the Gulf, and the dictatorships of other parts of the Arab world. They don't care about Palestine.
53:21
They care about making themselves rich, staying in power, staying on the good side of the superpower.
53:26
And if that means that the road to Washington goes through Tel Aviv, so be it. OK? Those are not the Arabs, those are the governments.
53:34
So the governments have played a largely negative role. I talk about this in the 30s, I talk about this a little bit in the 40s in the book, and it's the case
53:41
right up to the present. SUBJECT 2: And in the future? RASHID KHALIDI: [INAUDIBLE]. I don't know what's going to happen in the future.
53:47
I will say one thing. Since 2011, it is quite clear that in many Arab countries,
53:56
there is a broad popular thirst for democracy.
54:01
It is clear that there is also a massive reactionary, powerful
54:06
bloc which will do everything possible, Arab block, to prevent democracy.
54:13
It will spend unlimited amounts of money. It will support any kind of government to prevent that popular trend from achieving democracy
54:21
in Arab countries. And we-- SUBJECT 2: By administrations or by people? RASHID KHALIDI: Pardon me? SUBJECT 2: By administrations or by people?
54:27
RASHID KHALIDI: What by administration-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] SUBJECT 2: You said there is an Arab bloc. RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah, governments.
54:32
The undemocratic regimes of the Gulf and other places will fight the idea of popular sovereignty everywhere.
54:39
It's sort of like the 1848 revolutions. Who put the 1848 revolutions down?
54:44
Vienna and St. Petersburg. Riyad, Abu Dhabi.
54:51
Enough said. SUBJECT 2: Thank you. BESHARA DOUMANI: Alex. SUBJECT 3: Thank you Rashid.
54:57
I want to apologize in advance because I think my question will also be a little bit about what the future holds. RASHID KHALIDI: It's OK.
55:03
SUBJECT 3: But I was struck in thinking about how you kind of frame this as not simply
55:10
a kind of question of Israel-Palestine, but the massive foam of great powers. And then thinking about Beshara talking about these three
55:17
phases, which in many ways line up with the phase of British imperialism, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War, US neoimperialism.
55:24
RASHID KHALIDI: You're right, actually. Yeah. SUBJECT 1: And so I'm curious about this kind of broader
55:30
kind of geopolitical balance of powers, and whether there's any kind of shift happening?
55:37
Or what kind of-- what a potential shift might look like that
55:43
could change things. RASHID KHALIDI: I get that question every time I talk about this book.
55:48
BESHARA DOUMANI: What's your quick answer? RASHID KHALIDI: My quick answer is I don't know,
55:53
but we do still have a single hegemon. It appears that we're moving towards a more
55:59
multilateral global system, and that might have a positive effect on Palestine.
56:06
It might not. Because one of the enormously inventive aspects
56:14
of the Zionist movement has been its constant search for external support, which led them
56:21
to the German Kaiser, Abdul Hamid, the French Republic, and ultimately Britain, and later
56:26
on to Moscow and Washington. And back to Paris and London, and then back to Washington.
56:32
And is leading them today to New Delhi and Beijing, and Moscow. And so on and so forth.
56:37
So I don't know what the multilateral, how multipolar the world will become.
56:43
I do know, however, that because it is essentially, in its essence, a settler colonial project,
56:51
it depends on external support. That's not to say that Israel is not in and of itself
56:56
a superpower, regional, a nuclear power. It's not to say that Israel doesn't have a huge margin of independence.
57:02
It's not to say that it doesn't have all kinds of assets, but it is dependent. It is much more dependent in many ways
57:09
than any other state in that region. That means-- And that dependence is to this day largely
57:16
on Euro-America. As Israel changes, as the project
57:22
becomes more and more ethnocratic, less and less democratic, less and less liberal, more
57:28
and more discriminatory, the nation state law of 2018 is an extraordinary step in that direction.
57:36
Its values and the values of liberal democracy are completely incompatible. That's one reason we have what's happening in the United States.
57:43
The changes that are happening in the United States. It's not just because younger people are smarter, yes they are. It's not just because young people have access
57:49
to information that my generation didn't, yes they do. It's not just because other changes are taking place
57:56
inside the Jewish community. It's because this clash of values is becoming increasingly apparent. What is being done to the Palestinians
58:02
is unacceptable in terms of the values that, nominally at least, sustain this country and Western Europe.
58:09
And that's a problem. And that's one reason that you have this hysterical campaign
58:14
to smear as anti-Semitic any opposition to Israeli hegemony, any effort to support Palestinian rights.
58:20
They have no other argument. It's the cry of anti-Semitism of scoundrels.
58:27
If you have nothing else to say, say your opponents are-- go ad hominem, and that's what they're doing. Because you cannot defend the nation state law.
58:35
You cannot defend the discriminatory nature of the state otherwise. BESHARA DOUMANI: Can you defend the very notion
58:42
of the nation state? RASHID KHALIDI: That's a whole other issue. BESHARA DOUMANI: No, the reason I ask this is it
58:47
has to do with not the geopolitical aspect, but back to the resistance question.
58:54
If the fourth phase, let's just for the sake of argument, say is going to be a rights-based, not
59:00
a state-based phase. RASHID KHALIDI: And I [INAUDIBLE] at the end of the book.
59:05
BESHARA DOUMANI: You do. Rights-based doesn't make the self-determination
59:14
or achievement of a Palestinian state the central goal, it makes dignity, equality, justice, et cetera,
59:23
the central goals. Regardless of where you find yourself as a Palestinian, it kind of reframes the question to cover
59:31
the entire Palestinian population instead of maintaining the focus just on '67 borders, and so on and so forth.
59:38
And this rights-based phase, nation states are not--
59:44
are not the goal, which is really
59:51
bad news for everyday Palestinians because they do need water, electricity, and a police
59:56
force, and jobs, and all sorts of things that until now, only governments can do.
1:00:03
And it also means that they cannot be free until the whole world is free. Right?
1:00:08
Because-- RASHID KHALIDI: At least the whole Middle East. BESHARA DOUMANI: Because they are not powerful enough
1:00:14
to do it by themselves. Intersectional politics with other rights-based movements
1:00:21
might bring a change, but it means that they all have to change together and the Palestinians will be part of a larger global, which
1:00:33
basically stretches the time scale of thinking pretty wide.
1:00:38
And I want-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] RASHID KHALIDI: Do you expect me to respond to this? BESHARA DOUMANI: No, I'm just happy to talk.
1:00:45
No, there is a punchline here. The punchline is, how do you sustain such a movement
1:00:54
and the current balance of power in which it's very difficult? RASHID KHALIDI: This is a question
1:01:00
I get from often younger members of the audience when I talk about this book because they all
1:01:07
end up at the same place that you've just ended up at. So how long is this going to take
1:01:12
and how are we going to get there? And I go back to this old slogan that back in the Maoist days, [INAUDIBLE]..
1:01:21
Long-term people's war. A Maoist slogan. And the key part of it is [INAUDIBLE]..
1:01:27
Long-term. I mean, we've been at this for a century. That's to say the conflict.
1:01:33
The conflict has been underway for over a century. SUBJECT 4: [INAUDIBLE]. RASHID KHALIDI: [INAUDIBLE].
1:01:38
Same thing. And actually, if you look carefully
1:01:49
at the ways in which the Palestinians have operated, they haven't been at it as long as the Zionists.
1:01:55
Zionists started a little earlier. This is not an origins claim.
1:02:01
This is just a claim about Ben-Gurion was in New York for three years starting in 1916, working to build up
1:02:08
a base, an independent, financial, and organizational base for the Zionist movement. He and yet [INAUDIBLE],, the two first--
1:02:15
first prime minister. Sorry, second president of Israel. Two of the key figures in Zionist history.
1:02:21
When did the Palestinian start working in the United States? Not yet.
1:02:27
In other words, when did the PLO or Palestinian leadership that [INAUDIBLE]? Those guys had no idea where America was.
1:02:33
None of them had ever been there. They didn't understand America at which point as I mentioned,
1:02:40
Ben-Gurion, [INAUDIBLE],, Golda Meir, born in Milwaukee, were senior leaders of the Zionist movement. They spoke American English.
1:02:46
They were busy at it. So it's going to be a long-term thing to get to where you need to be in terms
1:02:52
of any of these aspects. Whether the rights-based aspect, whether in terms of mobilization, and so on and so forth.
1:02:58
That's all I'll say.
1:03:05
You had a question, and that may be the last one. SUBJECT 5: Welcome back. I was going to ask you about your sources.
1:03:12
I was really struck that you were apparently using a lot of personal family sources.
1:03:17
And I was wondering if you can share with us something that you found particularly surprising,
1:03:22
or maybe just something that really you weren't expecting [INAUDIBLE] with what you thought
1:03:28
was your family's position in this long story. In other words, I'm just doing free publicity for this book
1:03:33
so that everyone will go and buy it because there's stuff in it that I don't think is in your bookshelves
1:03:41
already because it's also a really personal story of your family. And I'm just wondering if there's
1:03:47
a particular person, or a source, or a letter, or a diary thing that you'd like to share with us that you
1:03:55
weren't expecting to find or that in some ways, that you'd like to leave us.
1:04:01
And then everyone should buy the book. RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah. Actually. SUBJECT 6: She's your agent. RASHID KHALIDI: She's doing a good job.
1:04:07
Thank you. You'll get a small percentage of sales. SUBJECT 5: [INAUDIBLE].
1:04:15
RASHID KHALIDI: The one that immediately springs to mind is actually not something from a family archive.
1:04:21
I mean, I found a lot of things in either family archives or I use extensively in one chapter of my uncle's memoirs,
1:04:26
which I was sort of obliged to write an introduction to by my 94-year-old cousin.
1:04:33
She made me do it, basically. And I'm deeply grateful to her, my cousin, [INAUDIBLE]..
1:04:39
Because she-- I couldn't say no to her. And I was forced to read this thing in manuscript
1:04:44
and I said, oh my god, I've never seen some of this stuff. So I could give you stuff from my uncle's memoirs,
1:04:50
but that's not the thing that immediately leaves to mind. It's something from [INAUDIBLE] memoirs.
1:04:55
His description of the mufti. I have never seen anything like that.
1:05:00
I mean, I've talked to people-- BESHARA DOUMANI: [INAUDIBLE]. RASHID KHALIDI: The Grand Mufti of Palestine, [INAUDIBLE] Amin Al-Husseini.
1:05:07
The leader of the Palestinian national movement up until 1947, '48. A much reviled figure.
1:05:14
He ends up in Germany during World War II. That's been used to paint the whole Palestinian national movement as one huge anti-Semitic endeavor
1:05:21
from beginning to end. An interesting and strange figure. I actually met him, the mufti, because he came
1:05:29
to my father-- the [INAUDIBLE]. BESHARA DOUMANI: The mourning. RASHID KHALIDI: The morning from when my father died in 1968.
1:05:36
He's a tiny little man. You could hardly hear his voice. You could see the charisma, though, of the guy.
1:05:41
I've talked to many people who met him and knew him, and so on. But [INAUDIBLE] description of him is amazing
1:05:47
and it is a perfect description of Yasser Arafat in some ways. And [INAUDIBLE] wrote this, I know
1:05:55
that he was thinking of both of them because he'd served on the PLO executive. I didn't put this in the book, actually.
1:06:01
He'd served on the PLO executive committee and he was inordinately frustrated by Yasser Arafat.
1:06:06
That, I knew from [INAUDIBLE] telling me. And so the description in the book is the best description I've ever seen
1:06:12
of the mufti, of his methods. And also one of the best descriptions of Yasser Arafat's
1:06:19
[INAUDIBLE] from someone who knew both of them very, very well. SUBJECT 6: They were related. RASHID KHALIDI: Who?
1:06:24
[INAUDIBLE] and the mufti? SUBJECT 6: No, no. Arafat and Husseini. RASHID KHALIDI: Oh, yes.
1:06:30
Arafat any Husseini were through Arafat's mother's family. Yes. SUBJECT 7: [INAUDIBLE].
1:06:36
RASHID KHALIDI: In his old age. In his 70s, I think. SUBJECT 8: [INAUDIBLE].
1:06:41
RASHID KHALIDI: Yes. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah, the one-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] RASHID KHALIDI: Yes, Rosemary edited the English version. But there's an Arabic and an English,
1:06:47
and then she also published an article based on the English. She edited and probably did more to the English, I'm sure.
1:06:55
BESHARA DOUMANI: Please, yes. RASHID KHALIDI: [INAUDIBLE]. Use the microphone. SUBJECT 9: [INAUDIBLE].
1:07:01
BESHARA DOUMANI: Because we're recording and streaming.
1:07:07
SUBJECT 9: [INAUDIBLE] history a century [INAUDIBLE].. I mean, [INAUDIBLE].
1:07:14
1:07:23
Are there any aspects of the book that you disagree with? RASHID KHALIDI: You really put him on the spot.
1:07:30
Didn't you? I'm gonna enjoy this.
1:07:37
BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah, right. RASHID KHALIDI: Actually, you already talked about one. BESHARA DOUMANI: I--
1:07:44
Rashid [INAUDIBLE] Professor [INAUDIBLE] was kind enough to come speak to my class just before this event, and I think
1:07:49
I was clear in a couple of instances where that was. So yeah, I'll leave it there.
1:07:55
RASHID KHALIDI: Actually, his first question embodied one of the areas where he has [INAUDIBLE]..
1:08:04
BESHARA DOUMANI: We do different kinds of history sometimes, and it's really great to-- I was never really interested in political history, for example.
1:08:13
And what I think Nadia's question raises is the issue of the social question, not just
1:08:19
a political question. And how resistance can be refracted through the internal contradictions
1:08:26
of Palestinian society. And then we cannot speak about one form of resistance or one
1:08:32
way of thinking. And how important is it for us to understand
1:08:38
these internal contradictions, these internal forms of agency. And admit that with agency comes responsibility
1:08:47
in a way to rethink the entire narrative of these 100 years.
1:08:53
So for example, somebody like a social historian who hasn't really been writing on the 20th century. But if I did write on the 20th century,
1:09:02
I think the points for me would include, for example, the 1987
1:09:07
as a distinct stage, but all the other stages will be from the bottom up that way as opposed
1:09:13
to what's being done from the top down to them. Not that it doesn't matter. It matters a huge deal.
1:09:19
I think you convince me more than anyone how tremendously [INAUDIBLE] the odds are
1:09:25
against the Palestinians. It's a fact. But yes, it would be a different kind of emphasis
1:09:33
and a different kind of timeline and structure. RASHID KHALIDI: Different kind of historian. BESHARA DOUMANI: Different kind of historian.
1:09:39
And there's many different historians, and both of us too. RASHID KHALIDI: Four of them that I can see in the room. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yeah, I can see here--
1:09:44
RASHID KHALIDI: People who are-- whose work we know. BESHARA DOUMANI: Exactly. And so what's wonderful about the whole thing
1:09:49
is it's very rich. The Palestinian condition is a global condition.
1:09:54
And I don't think we can understand the Palestinian condition without understanding the world, or the other way around.
1:10:02
And that's source of power and it's also a huge weakness
1:10:08
at the same time. RASHID KHALIDI: Vulnerability. BESHARA DOUMANI: Yes, [INAUDIBLE] vulnerability. Can I, just before we leave, ask you a personal question?
1:10:16
Which is how has writing this book changed you? Because it's one thing to write a book with a personal element
1:10:23
that witnesses. Right? You witness 1982.
1:10:30
You can tell us through your own eyes, or the eyes of the letters of your relatives, what they witnessed
1:10:36
and that adds a beautiful, wonderful, and imaginative dimension. But part of writing a personal narrative
1:10:43
is also introspection, also trying to ask yourself existential questions like who am I?
1:10:49
Why am what I am? What brought me to this point? What does my life really about?
1:10:57
And I'm just wondering if you focus on the second part of the personal, how has writing this book--
1:11:04
you said it was hard so it must have left some-- RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah. [INTERPOSING VOICES]
1:11:09
RASHID KHALIDI: It was hard. I think I mentioned that here and I mentioned it to your class.
1:11:14
It involved unlearning decades and decades of rigorous training to do things one way
1:11:21
and doing them another way. But behind your question is another question.
1:11:27
And the thing that I felt when I finished it,
1:11:33
and once I realized that it more or less did some of the things I wanted it to do, was that I felt I'd gotten something off my chest.
1:11:41
In the sense that I had been sort of holding myself back, restricting myself in, especially as I
1:11:48
wrote in previous books about things that I knew a lot about because I was there,
1:11:54
and I couldn't put myself into the narrative. I couldn't use that experience that I
1:12:00
had as yet another datum, as yet another whatever, yet
1:12:06
another piece of evidence. And so I let myself go in this. I mean, there's stuff I didn't say in the book.
1:12:12
There are a lot of things I didn't talk about that I could, and maybe should have talked about. But where I felt I needed to and that I
1:12:19
thought [INAUDIBLE] I unburdened myself by doing it, I did it here. In a bunch of places in this book.
1:12:26
And so I now feel that if people actually get to read the book, there are things that I never was able to say that now I've
1:12:34
said it. It's In the book. And I can talk about it if people ask me questions about the book, I can talk about it freely.
1:12:42
So in that respect, I feel better. On another level, I'm dissatisfied because there
1:12:51
are many other things that I could have and maybe should have added. But I don't have the kind of ego that
1:12:58
makes me want to write an autobiography. I just don't think that's something I'm going to do or want to do.
1:13:03
I wanted to enrich the historical record in ways that I thought only I could do it, and do it
1:13:09
in ways that, as I said, got something off my chest. You can feel it, I think, the most strongly
1:13:15
in the 1982 chapter. But you can also feel it in the Oslo chapter. I'm really angry about Oslo.
1:13:21
I witnessed, we witnessed, we went through stuff in Lebanon especially in '82, which I never really was
1:13:28
fully able to get out there. And there are accounts of it, and there are versions of what happened which
1:13:34
go nowhere near touching on it. And I don't think I even did go as far as one would have to do.
1:13:41
I mean, [INAUDIBLE] book on [INAUDIBLE] takes you
1:13:47
where you really need to go. If you really want to know what happened, read [INAUDIBLE] book. It's available in English.
1:13:53
It's available in Arabic. It's harrowing. And there are other accounts of other things that I talk about that are far better than anything
1:13:59
I will ever write. But I got my part of it out, I felt. And so that made me feel better.
1:14:06
BESHARA DOUMANI: Well, with that, we thank you very much. RASHID KHALIDI: You're very welcome. Thank you.
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