The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: The International Bestseller

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.

The book gives a very detailed history of the 100 year campaign to remove the Palestinians from their land starting in 1917.I had read a lot in the press since October last year and wanted to gain an understanding of what is really happening.The sources used for the history outlined in the book appear to be highly credible starting with the founders of Zionisms own statements at the end of the 19th century setting out a plan for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians when at the time time the population was 94% Palestinian.A very distressing story but well worth reading.

A short but informative account of the grand mama of Middle Eastern conflicts. I also found it quite a sensible unbiased narrative in general considering the author is from a leading Palestinian family. Overall I found it a very good read as an overview to the Israeli/Palestine problem, not exactly a lively or jolly read as this is a pretty morose topic. A topic that is best surmised by the phrase Orlando Bloom used as he is defending Jerusalem against Saladin in the epic film that is The Kingdom of Heaven....'Who has claim? No one has claim, all have claim!'

Absolutley essential reading if reasearching the past history. Credible information, extremely interesting and easy to follow.

Enjoyed reading

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.

A really detailed book about the history of Palestine 🇵🇸 a must read!

Very informative and eye opening. I loved how it has a cited history while also including personal experiences of the author. You really learn a lot about Palestine and Gaza including a history and information I never learned or knew. The involvement of the US with Israel and how far back that goes was not surprising but also very factual and effective in showing how this has impacted Palestinians. Overall I think it’s a necessary read for anyone that doesn’t know a lot about Palestine.

I was blown away by the author's quality of writing, his thorough referencing, and most of all his documentation of decades of oppression against the Palestinian people since 1947. While I acknowledge the absolute horror of Hamas' assault against innocent Israeli citizens on October 7th, 2023, this book provides a detailed and convincing context for understanding the roots of that attack. I consider the book to be an essential read for anyone who's appalled by the genocide that's currently occurring in Gaza. (Review submitted in February, 2024, with over 27,000 Palestinians known to be killed so far, and an unknown number of bodies buried under rubble, impossible to recover.)

Ótimo livro!

von einem Ort bis zum anderen.. Aufjedenfall ein gutes Buch

Livre interessant. Facile à lire…