Too many times, we learn only one side of a story. I believe it’s important to be informed of all perspectives before I make any judgment. In the case of the many Arab-Israeli conflicts since the early 1900s, I’ve mostly learned the Israeli side, beginning with the Holocaust and the creation of an Israeli state in 1947-48. So when I saw The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, I decided it was time to learn “the rest of the story.”
As early as the late 1870’s there was talk of a Zionist sovereign state in the Middle East. But there was a problem: the land the Zionists would claim as their own was inhabited by the citizens of Palestine, who had lived there for hundreds of years.
No big deal, said the Zionists. “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…denying it employment in our own country.” (Khalidi, p 4).
Ummm…our own country? The country that was the Palestinian’s homeland?
Let me say right here that the Zionists did not represent the opinion of all Jews. In the early twentieth century, according to Khalidi, the majority of Jews living in Palestine “were still culturally quite similar to and lived reasonably comfortably alongside…Muslims and Christians.” These were “mostly ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews.” (p 19)
But—with the help of Great Britain and the Balfour Decision in 1917—the Zionists established a Jewish state, “reclaiming” the land from the Palestinians. The Palestinians and Israeli Jews have been warring ever since.
Rashid Khalidi, a well-respected historian and expert on Palestine, describes the situation from the perspective of not only a native Palestinian, but also one whose family was directly involved in the conflicts. Although this gives him a personal stake in the issues, I think for the most part he sticks to the facts.
Once the state of Israel was established, Palestinians were treated as second-class citizens with few or no rights. Khalidi likens it to the European settlements of North America: the native Americans were seen as something less than human that needed to be exterminated to make room for the entitled Europeans. The Israelis did their best to force the Palestinians out of Israel and Gaza and into other Arab countries, making them a people without a country. The Palestinians fought back, although at first their actions were weak and naïve at best. When the PLO was formed, that changed, and this is where Khalidi–and, perhaps the Palestinians–begins to lose my support.
Throughout my reading this book, one thought kept nagging me: How does any of this justify the recent behavior of Hamas in Gaza? Since its decision to banish them in the early 20th century, the Israelis have attacked the Palestinians with sophisticated weaponry (supplied first by Great Britain and then the US) that the Palestinians lacked, and until the second half of the 20th century the Israeli army outnumbered the poorly organized Palestinians. One might argue that the PLO, and later Hamas—who consider themselves the “more militant Islamist alternative to the PLO”—had no other choice but violence. That doesn’t sit right with me.
Khalidi’s conclusion is that the only viable solution is for both sides to agree on complete equality for Palestinians and Jews. (his book was published in 2020, three years before the most recent conflict, and I wonder if that has affected his conclusion.) That might be the ideal answer but how is that going to happen when each side is hell-bent on exterminating one another?
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is much more detailed than I’ve described here: it’s a challenge to summarize the complexities of the situation and I urge anyone who wants to understand more about Palestinian history, to read Khalidi’s book. You can also find a more comprehensive review here.
Susannah Willey Writes 