Rashid Khalidi: Hundred Years War on Palestine, (2020, TBS/GBS/Transworld)
352 pages
English language
Published March 17, 2020 by TBS/GBS/Transworld.
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 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.
I stopped reading these after Hamas atrocities but just finished it quickly. A remarkable book bringing to light at least for me the flaws with the Oslo accord, parallels between today the 1982 war in Lebanon, etc...
I really liked the hundred years' war on Palestine, it is a book that is well written, very documented and present a thorough history of Palestine through 6 key moments, from 1917 to the second Intifada. Rashid Khalidi makes the book really interesting, by focusing on key moments and mixing the historical narrative with his and his family history. Two of the strong arguments of this book are that there is a Palestinian nation and population (something that is regularly denied by Israel) and that the Zionist and Israeli project is by its nature colonial. While these are strong arguments in favour of a free Palestine, the author doesn't fall into an easy demonization of Jewish people in Israel and concludes that whoever claim Palestinian and Israelis have on this land, they both need to find a way to live together, without colonial and repression of Palestinian.
In 1984, [a:Rashid Khalidi|40811|Rashid Khalidi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363879765p2/40811.jpg] was part of a group of respected Palestinian academics that tried to persuade Yasser Arafat that the Palestinian movement “needed to take American public opinion into account, and devote to it sufficient resources and energy, but to no avail.” (110-21)
If this book is any measure of Khalidi’s ability to address an American audience and get them to understand the history of Palestine and its people, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization made a grave mistake.
[b:The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|41812831|The Hundred Years' War on Palestine A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|Rashid Khalidi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556345491l/41812831.SY75.jpg|65247140] is a powerful retelling of the last century in the Middle East.
One of the central themes of Zionist justification of their right to set up a Jewish state in the Holy Land is that there is no such …
In 1984, [a:Rashid Khalidi|40811|Rashid Khalidi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363879765p2/40811.jpg] was part of a group of respected Palestinian academics that tried to persuade Yasser Arafat that the Palestinian movement “needed to take American public opinion into account, and devote to it sufficient resources and energy, but to no avail.” (110-21)
If this book is any measure of Khalidi’s ability to address an American audience and get them to understand the history of Palestine and its people, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization made a grave mistake.
[b:The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|41812831|The Hundred Years' War on Palestine A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|Rashid Khalidi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556345491l/41812831.SY75.jpg|65247140] is a powerful retelling of the last century in the Middle East.
One of the central themes of Zionist justification of their right to set up a Jewish state in the Holy Land is that there is no such thing as “the Palestinian people.” They described the land they wished to claim in the late 19th century as “a land without a people for a people without land.” In practical terms, this was never true. Khalidi notes that while Palestinians are frequently abandoned and marginalized, they usually made themselves heard.
You owe it to yourself to read this book if your understanding of the conflict in the Middle East is limited to the conventional narrative of this conflict: Where brave little Israel builds a democratic beachhead in the desert, but is only beset by constant attack by Arabs and Iranians. Where the only people calling themselves “Palestinians” are terrorists planting bombs or firing rockets against peaceful civilians. Where so-called Palestinians cannot be “partners for peace,” but autocratic monarchs can.
