The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine BY RASHID KHALIDI, METROPOLITAN BOOKS, HENRY HOLT AND CO., 319 PAGES, S39.99

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, former mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to transform Palestine into a Jewish state, wrote a letter aimed at Theodor Herzl, the leading Zionist of the 19th century. In this letter he pointed out that Palestine had an indigenous population who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “In the name of God, leave Palestine alone.”

In this book, Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s grandnephew and professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, presents the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Traditional interpretations of the conflict tend to describe a clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. Drawing on archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—-judges, scholars, diplomats and writers—-who were present at key events, this book argues that the conflict has always been colonial in nature, waged against the native population, first by the Zionist movement, then by Israel, backed first by Britain then by the United States. Khalidi highlights crucial episodes in what he views as a long colonial campaign, from the Balfour Declaration in 1917, to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, to the war of 1967 and beyond.

Herzl’s Response

In Herzl’s response to Yusuf Diya, the Zionist leader assured him that the arrival of European Jews in Palestine would improve life for the indigenous population because of Jewish “intelligence” and financial acumen. He declared, “No one can doubt that the well-being of the entire country would be the happy result.” Herzl’s response concealed Zionism’s real intentions. Khalidi writes: “Most revealingly, the letter addresses a consideration Yusuf Diya had not even raised. ‘You see another difficulty, Excellency, in the existence of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. But who would think of sending them away?’” In fact, Herzl wrote in his diary of his plan to “spirit” the country’s population “discreetly” across the borders.

It is clear, writes Khalidi, that “Herzl grasped the importance of ‘disappearing’ the native population of Palestine in order for Zionism to succeed. Moreover, the 1901 charter that he co-drafted for the Jewish- Ottoman Land Company includes the same principle of the removal of the inhabitants of Palestine to ‘other provinces and territories of the Ottoman Empire.’ ...With the smug self-assurance so common to nineteenth century Europeans, Herzl offered the preposterous inducement, that the occupation, and ultimately the usurpation of their land by strangers would benefit the people of that country. Herzl’s thinking...appears to have been based on the assumption that the Arabs could ultimately be bribed or fooled into ignoring what the Zionist movement actually intended for Palestine.”

The existing Jewish population in Palestine was ultra-Orthodox and were not in any way supportive of Zionism. Khalidi describes them: “...a large proportion of Jews living in Palestine were still culturally quite similar to and lived reasonably comfortably alongside city-dwelling Muslims and Christians. They were mostly ultra-Orthodox and non-Zionist mizrahi (eastern) or Sephardic (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain), urbanites of Middle Eastern origin who often spoke Arabic or Turkish...in spite of marked religious differences between them and their neighbors, they were not foreigners, nor were they Europeans or settlers: they were, they saw themselves, and were seen as Jews who were part of the indigenous Muslim majority society. Moreover, some young European Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Palestine at this time, including such ardent Zionists as David Ben- Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (one became prime minister and the other the president of Israel) even took Ottoman nationality, studied in Istanbul, and learned Arabic and Turkish.”

Zionism and European Colonialism

Zionism has many characteristics of European colonialism, but there are also important differences, which has caused the conflict to be viewed by many as one between two national entities. In this connection, Khalidi notes that, “Underlying this feature...was the profound resonance for Jews, and also for many Christians, of their biblical connection to the historic land of Israel. Expertly woven into modern political Zionism, this resonance has become integral to it. A late-nineteenth century colonial-national movement thus adorned itself with a biblical coat that was powerfully attractive to Bible-reading Protestants in Great Britain and the United States, blinding them to the modernity of Zionism and to its colonial nature...”

In Khalidi’s view, “There is no reason that what has happened in Palestine for over a century cannot be understood as both and a national conflict. But our concern here is its colonial nature, as this aspect has been as underappreciated as it is central, even though those qualities, typical of other colonial campaigns are everywhere in the modern history of Palestine. ...As in North America, the colonization of Palestine —-like that of South Africa, Australia, Algeria and parts of East Africa—-was meant to yield a white European settler colony.”

The basic thesis of this book is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is best understood as a war of colonial conquest, similar to those of other settlement movements of the nineteenth century. Khalidi points to the early Zionist slogan, “A land without people for a people without a land” which discounted the presence of the estimated 700,000 Palestinians already there. Consolidating this colonial settler paradigm was the 1948 Israeli war of Independence—-or the. “Nakba” (Catastrophe) as viewed by Palestinians. Israel seized control of nearly 80 per cent of the land that constituted the British Mandate. This was followed by the expulsion or flight of a similar percentage of its indigenous Arab population. Khalidi argues that Israeli settlers were emulating the model of earlier settler groups. After the 1967 war and the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, things got even worse for Palestinians.

Displaced Palestinians

Khalidi contends that vital to the “settler-colonial enterprise has been an Israeli effort to sever the link of displaced Palestinians to their homeland. “the comforting idea,” he writes, “that the old will die and the young will forget”—-a remark attributed to David Ben-Gurion...expresses one of the deepest aspirations of Israeli leaders after 1948.”

In the years after 1948, Khalidi points out, Israel has regularly characterized the Palestinian opponents of their displacement as “terrorists. The world, he notes, has largely ignored the Zionist terrorism which led to the creation of Israel. There was a regular assassination of British officials by the Stern gang, such as the 1944 murder of Lord Moyne, the resident minister in Egypt, and was followed by a sustained campaign of violence against British troops and administrators in Palestine. This culminated in the 1946 blowing up of the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem with the loss of 96 lives.

Among those displaced in 1948 were, Khalidi writes, “...my grandparents, who had to leave their Atallah al-Rish home where my father and most of his siblings were born. Initially my grandfather, now eighty five years old and frail, stubbornly refused to leave the house. After his sons took most of the family to shelter in Jerusalem and Nablus, he remained there alone for several weeks. Fearing for his safety, a family friend from Jaffa ventured to the house during a lull in the fighting to retrieve him. He left unwillingly, lamenting that he could not take his books with him. Neither he nor his children ever saw their home again. The ruins of my grandfather’s large stone house still stand abandoned on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.”

Palestine is Transformed

The 1948 war, notes Khalidi, “transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—-a majority Arab country—-into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority. This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception.”

Those Palestinians who managed to remain Israel after 1948 became second class citizens. Until 1966, most Palestinians lived under strict martial law and much of their land was seized, along with that of those who had been forced from the country and were now refugees. Khalidi makes the case that, “This stolen land, an expropriation deemed legal by the Israeli state, including the bulk of the country’s arable areas, was given to Jewish settlements or the Israel Lands Authority, or placed under the control of the Jewish National Fund, whose discriminatory charter prescribed that such property could only be used ‘for the benefit of the Jewish people.’ This provision meant that dispossessed Arab owners could neither buy back nor lease what had once been their property, nor could any other non-Jew. “

These moves, Khalidi points out, “...were crucial to the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a Jewish one, since only about 6 per cent of Palestinian land had been Jewish-owned prior to 1948. The Arab population inside Israel, isolated by military and travel restrictions, was also cut off from other Palestinians and from the rest of the Arab world. Accustomed to being a substantial majority in their own country and region, they suddenly had to make their way as a despised minority in a hostile environment as subjects of a Jewish polity that never defined itself as a state of all its citizens. ...Most significantly, the martial regime under which the Palestinians lived, granted the Israeli military near-unlimited authority to control the minutiae of their lives.”

U.N. Resolution 242

After the 1967 war, the United Nations passed Resolution 242, demanding that Israel return to its pre-war borders. Khalidi points out that while SC42 is generally regarded as the basis for future Arab-Israeli peace talks, for the Palestinians it was more complex. Nowhere in the resolution are they referred to by name—-they are merely ‘refugees’—-while a return to the 1967 borders meant the world was accepting their 1948 expulsion. Khalidi argues that each subsequent diplomatic “breakthrough” in the region has served to further marginalize the Palestinians. The 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt meant that the Palestinians had lost a key ally in the region. The 1993 0slo Accords, he states, served to co-opt the Palestinian leadership—-of whom he is highly critical—-and confine the Palestinians into small enclaves under Israeli control.

There is much in this book about Khalidi’s role as an adviser to Palestinians during the Madrid Conference of 1991 that led to the Oslo Accords. He was originally skeptical of the peace process and now regards it as an illusion. He describes meetings he had with Yasser Arafat in which he warned about Israeli control of the occupied territories. He characterizes leading American peace processors as biased in behalf of Israel and has urged the Palestinians to stop regarding the United States as an honest broker in negotiations.

In 1917, he writes, “Arthur James Balfour stated that in Palestine, the British government did not ‘propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.’ The great powers were committed to Zionism, he continued, ‘and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’ One hundred years later, President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying, ‘We took Jerusalem off the table, so we don’t have to talk about it anymore.’ Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu, ‘You won one point, and you’ll give up some points later on in the negotiations, if it ever takes place.’ I don’t know that it will ever take place.’ The center of the Palestinians’ history, identity, culture, and worship was thus summarily disposed of without even the pretense of consulting their wishes.”

Colonialism in a Post-Colonial Age

The U.S., Khalidi declares, has been “trying to do the impossible: impose a colonial reality on Palestine in a post-colonial age. Eqbal Ahmad summed it up: ‘August 1947 marked the beginning of decolonization, when British rule in India ended. It was in those days of hope and fulfillment that the colonization of Palestine occurred. Thus, at the dawn of decolonization, we were returned to the earliest, most intense form of colonial menace...exclusivist settler colonialism.’ In other circumstances or in another era, replacing the indigenous population might have been feasible, especially in light of the long-standing and deep religious link felt by Jews to the land in question—-if this were the eighteenth or nineteenth century, if the Palestinians were as few as the Zionist settlers or as fully decimated as the native peoples of Australasia and North America. The longevity of the Palestinians’ resistance to their dispossession, however, indicates that the Zionist movement, in the words of the late historian Tony Judt, ‘arrived too late’. as it ‘imported a characteristically late nineteenth century separatist project into a world that has moved on.

Many prominent Israelis, Khalidi points out, are concerned about Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and are dubious about its claim that it can be both “Jewish” and “democratic.” Imagining scholars looking back one hundred years from now, historian Zeev Sternhell asked: “When exactly did the Israelis understand that their cruelty toward the non-Jews in their grip in the Occupied Territories, their determination to break the Palestinians’ hopes for independence, or their refusal to offer asylum to African refugees began to undermine the moral legitimacy of their national existence.”

“Deal of the Century”

Today, Palestinians confront circumstances more daunting than perhaps any time since 1917. “With his election,” writes Khalidi, “Donald Trump began pursuit of what he called ‘the deal of the century,’ purportedly aimed at a conclusive resolution of the conflict. Closing the deal has so far involved dispensing with decades of bedrock U.S. policies, outsourcing strategic planning to Israel, and pouring contempt on the Palestinians. Inauspiciously, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman (his bankruptcy lawyer and a longtime financial supporter of the Jewish settler movement), spoke of an ‘alleged occupation’ and demanded that the State Department stop using the term. In one interview, he declared that Israel has the ‘right’ to annex “some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.’ Jason Greenblatt, for over two years envoy for Israel-Palestine negotiations (previously Trump’s real estate lawyer and also a donor to Israeli right-wing causes). Stated the West Bank settlements ‘are not an obstacle to peace,’ rejected the use of the term ‘occupation’ in a meeting with EU envoys and endorsed Friedman’s views regarding annexation.”

With these two pronouncements, the Trump Administration unilaterally took issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, which Israel is treaty bound to negotiate with the Palestinians, off the table. As well as reversing decades of American policy, the Trump Administration rejected an entire body of international law. What Trump has done, Khalidi argues, is fully accept “Israel’s stand on the vital issue of Jerusalem and did so without any quid pro quo from Israel and without any acknowledgement of Palestinian demands for recognition of the city as the capital of Palestine. Equally important, by implication, Trump endorsed Israel’s expansive definition of ‘unified Jerusalem,’ including the extensive Arab areas in and around the city appropriated by Israel since 1967. Although the administration stated that actual borders were still to be negotiated, its proclamation meant in effect that there was nothing left to negotiate.”

Money in Return For Derogation of Rights

What the future holds for Israel and the Palestinians is difficult to predict. There are, however, some examples from history that may be relevant, Khalidi provides this assessment: “With the establishment of Israel, Zionism did succeed in fashioning a potent national movement and a thriving new people in Palestine. But it could not fully supplant the country’s original population, which is what would have been necessary for the ultimate triumph of Zionism. Settler-colonial confrontations with indigenous peoples have only ended in one of three ways: with the elimination or full subjugation of the native population, as in North America; with the defeat or expulsion of the colonizer, as in Algeria, which is extremely rare; or with the abandonment of colonial supremacy, in the context of compromise and reconciliation, as in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ireland.”

American public opinion, Khalidi shows, is moving away from Israel as a result of its more than 50-year occupation and plans for annexation. A poll released by the Brookings Institution in December 2016 showed that 60 per cent of Democrats and 46 per cent of all Americans supported sanctions against Israel over its construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Most Democrats (55 per cent) believed Israel “has too much influence on U.S. politics and policies and is a strategic burden.” Subsequent polls show Americans continuing to move in this direction. There is, however, a deep partisan divide, with Republicans, particularly Evangelicals, supporting Israel’s maximalist demands. Thus far, there has been little apparent change in the formulation of U.S. policy.

Evidence For A Re-Evaluation of Western Views

This book combines scholarship, personal and family experience and an appreciation of the concerns of the contending parties. It puts Zionism in the context of other colonial-settler movements, something which many Americans may not have previously considered. The Israeli historian Avi Shlaim declares that Rashid Khalidi “presents compelling evidence for a re- evaluation of the conventional Western view of the subject.” The Israeli understanding of the events which led to the establishment of the state are well known to Americans. Now, Rashid Khalidi has provided another perspective which is much needed if we are to understand what has really happened in Palestine during the past hundred years.* ALLAN C. BROWNFELD