A Palestinian history of Zionism and its wars

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR ON PALESTINE: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi (2020)

Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, a member of the faculty of Columbia University, has written a history of Zionism from the point of view of the Palestinians, a view that we in the USA rarely if ever hear.  

He is a member of an old Palestinian family, with roots going back into the Ottoman Empire, and his history is, in part, a history of his own family.  I emphasize the personal history in this post, although he himself mentions it only in passing. 

We in the USA are told that Israel’s history is a story of a heroic struggle by Zionists against Arab terrorists to establish a safe haven for Jews from Nazis and other antisemites. Alternatively, we are told it is a history of a tragic unavoidable conflict between two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, with equal claims to the same territory.

Rashid Khalidi said neither story is true.  He said the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an ongoing colonial war waged by an indigenous people against conquerors from afar.  In his story, the Jewish settlers of Israel are equivalent to the Dutch and English settlers in South Africa and the French settlers in Algeria.

Zionists were never underdogs, he wrote.  They had the backing of the British Empire and then of the United States, as well as a powerful global network of supporters and donors.  

Palestinian Arabs never had anything equivalent, he wrote.  Even Arab governments that gave them lip service always had their own agendas.

His book is organized around six specific historical episodes, which he called “declarations of war” against the Palestinian people.     

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Introduction. The story begins in 1889 with Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem and the author’s great-great-uncle, writing a letter to Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism, telling him that Palestine is already inhabited and not open to colonization.  Herzl brushed off Yusuf Diya’s concerns, but, as Khalidi reveals, he was drawing up plans to push the Palestinian Arab population off their land.

Chap. 1.  The First Declaration of War, 1917-1939.  The Balfour Declaration of 1917 announced the British Empire’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” with the proviso that the rights of the non-Jewish population be recognized.  

The League of Nations empowered Britain to rule a Palestine Mandate on former territory of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish Agency for Palestine was officially recognized as a quasi-governmental representative of the Jewish minority.  Internal documents show the British expected the Palestine Mandate to become a Jewish state. No governmental document as much as made reference to Arabs or Palestinians or their rights.  

In the late 1930s, there was a spontaneous uprising of Palestinian Arab population against the British.  Sir John Dill, commander of the British forces, asked the advice of Husayn al-Khalidi, the author’s uncle, who was the current mayor of Jerusalem.  

The mayor advised restricting Jewish immigration.  Dill disregarded this advice and crushed the rebellion with great brutality.  An estimated 14 to 17 percent of adult male Palestinian Arabs were killed, and al-Khalidi was arrested and sent into exile.

Chap. 2. The Second Declaration of War, 1947-1948.  By the end of the Second World War, much had changed.  The British had tried to appease the Arabs by restricting Jewish immigration.  Jewish refugees had forced their way into the Palestine Mandate territory (which I from now on will call the Holy Land) anyway.  

Rashid Khalidi

Bloody conflict broke out between Arabs and Jews.  The United States promoted passage of a United Nations partition resolution, which approved establishment of a Jewish state on 56 percent of the land.  This was followed by the British evacuation, proclamation of the State of Israel (which the U.S. immediately recognized), the First Arab-Israeli War and what Palestinians called the “Nakba,” or catastrophe.

The author’s father, Ismail Raghib al-Khalidi, who had spent the war in the USA, was sent by the newly-founded Arab-American Institute to enlist the support of the King of Jordan for the Palestinian cause.  But his uncle, the former mayor of Jerusalem, insisted that he tell the king that the Palestinians did not need Jordanian tutelage.

About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out during the war.  Their property was taken over by the Israeli government to be used solely for the benefit of the Jewish people, and land they occupied was annexed to Israel.  Egypt and Jordan occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where many Palestinians settled. 

Chap. 3.  The Third Declaration of War, 1967.  In the Six-Day War, the State of Israel, with the Johnson administration’s approval, made preemptive strikes on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and conquered the West Bank, Gaza Syria’s Golan Heights and (temporarily) Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.  

The United Nations Security Council enacted Resolution 242, which in effect repealed the 1947 partition plan and recognized Israel’s right to the additional territories it conquered in 1948.  It also made Israel’s yielding of the newly conquered territories conditional on Israel having “secure borders.” 

The significance of the war was the emergence of the United States as openly a partner of Israel, Khalidi wrote, providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s conquests.  

At the time Khalidi’s father worked at the United States, and observed Arthur Goldberg, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., delay enactment of Resolution 242 in order to give Israel time to complete its conquest of the Golan Heights.   The author himself joined a protest demonstration in support of Palestine.  Exactly four people took part.

Chap. 4.  The Fourth Declaration of War, 1982.  With U.S. weapons and backing, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in order to root out the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was headquartered there.  Israel bombed residential areas indiscriminately, killing or wounding nearly 50,000 Palestinians and Lebanese.

When bombs started falling on Beirut, Khalidi was a professor at American University of Beirut and was an off-the-record source for foreign journalists.  His wife, Mona, was editor of the PLO’s English-language bulletin.  She was four months pregnant with their son, and their two daughters were in pre-school.

The PLO in August agreed to evacuate Lebanon, without specific guarantees to protect the Palestinian civilian population.  Almost immediately after, Israeli tanks and troops started rolling into Khalidi’s neighborhood.  He and his family were granted refuge at the university.

Soon after, an Israeli tank rolled up to the gates of the university, and an Israeli commander demanded the right to enter to search for terrorists.  Khalidi said that he, his wife and even their children were considered terrorists.  But Malcolm Kerr, the president of the university, denied entrance to the troops.

That night, Khalidi and his family observed flares over a Palestinian refugee camp.  They were set off by the Israeli army to facilitate a massacre of refugees by an allied Christian militia that had been admitted to the camps.

Chap. 5.  The Fifth Declaration of War, 1987-1995.  At long last, the focus of the Palestinian struggle shifted to the Holy Land itself.  Palestinians launched the First Intifada, a mass uprising against Israeli rule, using both peaceful and terrorist tactics.  

Khalidi said the Intifada did more damage to Israel’s power and prestige than anything that had gone before, but the negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo accords were a great missed opportunity.  He served on an advisory committee to the PLO negotiators, but his advice was not heeded.

Israel agreed to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.  It gave the PLO responsibility for governing parts of the West Bank and Gaza.  In return, the PLO recognized Israel as a legitimate government and accepted responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks from the territory it controlled.

There was no agreement on Palestinian sovereignty, land and water a Palestinian right of return, limits of Israeli settlement on the West Bank and Gaza and an end date to Israel occupation.  All these issues were made a topic for future negotiations, which never took place.

Chap. 6.  The Sixth Declaration of War, 2000-2014.  Israel’s treatment of the PLO and the new Palestinian Authority was followed by the rise of Hamas and other militant organizations.  After a Hamas election victory, Israel exited Gaza, then subjected it to a partial blockage.  Hamas fired rockets into Israel.  Israel responded with attacks on Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014, using armed drones, Apache helicopters, war planes and heavy artillery.

Rashid Khalidi seems to have a kind of grudging respect for the Zionist movement, its unrelenting sense of purpose over decades and how it grew from a tiny group of zealots to an important force in world affairs.  

Zionists used all possible means to advance their cause, not just military conquest and covert action, but diplomacy, politics, economic pressure, philanthropy and, very importantly, appeals to world public opinion.  

Palestinians need to learn from their example, Khalidi wrote, and not just lash out blindly.  As of 2020, he said, the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions movement was doing more to advance the Palestinian cause than either Hamas or its rival Fatah.

They need to recognize that Arab governments are not necessarily their friends and that the U.S. government is their enemy.  This does not rule out appeals to public opinion in the United States or even in Israel.

He said attempts to create settler nations end in three ways.

1. The full subjugation of the native population, as in North America.
2. The defeat and expulsion of the colonizer, as in Algeria.
3. The abandonment of colonizer supremacy, as in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ireland. 

In the first instance, the settlers vastly outnumbered the natives.  In the second and third, the natives vastly outnumbered the settlers.  But Palestinians and Israelis are roughly equal in numbers.

Khalidi thinks the third option is the realistic option.  It would mean that Jews would have to abandon Zionism, which is the goal of a homogenous ethnic Jewish with exclusive rights to rule the Holy Land.  

But it also would mean that Palestinians would have to abandon the goal of driving out the Israelis.  Even though the State of Israel was established by illegitimate means, he wrote, the Israelis are not going to leave the Holy Land, any more than the Palestinians are.

The foundation of Israel’s power is its backing by the United States.  But neither the ability or the willingness of US Americans to support Israel will continue indefinitely, he wrote.  

He went on to write that the world is changing and “perhaps such changes will allow Palestinians, together with Israelis and others worldwide who wish for peace and stability with Palestine, to craft a different trajectory than than of oppression of one people by another.  Only such a path based on equality and justice is capable of concluding the hundred years’ war on Palestine with a lasting peace, one that brings the liberation that the Palestinian people deserve.”

Afterthought [01/28/2024].  Just to clarify what I think:

Prof. Khalidi’s book is not objective.  It is a lawyer’s brief, which downplays arguments and facts that support the other side, but it is a convincing brief.  He makes the case that Palestinian Arabs are the victims of a historic injustice, and that we US Americans need to understand that, but correcting that injustice may not be possible.

My wish is for a peace acceptable to both sides.  I don’t see any path to that peace.

One should not give up hope, but I can’t foresee any likely future for the Holy Land that does not involve more dead children and weeping women.  

I object to the U.S. government providing weapons, money and intelligence to enable the Israeli government to engage in mass killing of civilians, and I deny that I need to provide a solution to Israel’s security problem in order to have standing to make that objection.

I think a terrible retribution is coming, both for Israel and the United States, when countries we’ve targeted will have the power to do to us what we’ve been doing to them.  I don’t think committing more atrocities will stave off that retribution or make it any less dreadful.

LINKS

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi review – conquest and resistance by Matthew Hughes for The Guardian.

The War on History by Benny Morris for the Jewish Review of Books.

Is There Any Way to End the Israel-Palestine Conflict? by Scott Anderson for The New York Times.

Tags: History of Israel and Palestine, Israel and Palestine, Palestine, Palestine and Israel, Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, Zionism