The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017

This review is going to be far shorter than it deserves, because the review I know I wrote a year ago has disappeared into the void. Khalidi is a distinguished professor of Palestinian history and politics, descended from an important family. Starting before the Balfour Declaration and ending just before everything got much worse after October 7th, he chronicles the destruction and forging of the Palestinian people.

Everyone, especially the first generation of Zionists, knew that a Jewish state in Palestine would require the removal of the inconvenient local population. I know the American Reform version of the story: plucky underdogs coming from the camps to defeat the combined might of five Arab armies and make their own state.

Khalidi has the Palestinian version, with footnotes, and contrary to myth, Zionist forces were often stronger and comprehensively more organized than their Palestinian opponents. Zionists used a savvy combination of diplomacy and political organization, along with strategic application of violence, to achieve their ends. Prior to 1948, there was no single Palestinian voice to offer an alternative to the Jewish Agency for Israel. The Arab armies were much weaker than their paper strength. Jordan and Egypt were notably commanded by British officers, who had private orders not to fight too hard.

The Nabka, the expulsion of Palestinians from the 1948 borders, was a catastrophe for the locals, but also served to forge political ties. Palestinian leadership since 1948 has not exactly covered itself in glory, swerving between radical Marxism and radical Islam, and often engaging in fruitless terrorism campaigns. Conversely, Israel has used overwhelming firepower against Palestinians, from Lebanon to Gaza to the West Bank. A particularly iconic moment in the book has Khalidi and his family sheltering from American supplied F-16 jets dropping American supplied 2000 lbs bombs on Lebanon in 1982. Khalidi definitely doesn’t like Israelis or American Jews, but he has very obvious reasons not to, and is far from a conspiratorial antisemite.

Whatever Palestinians have done: guerrilla warfare, terrorism, peaceful protest, diplomatic negotiation, economic integration, their situation has gotten steadily worse. The horrific irony is that the actions of the state of Israel have turned “people who lived in Palestine” into The Palestinian People, a national movement that is never going to give up their dream of return.

I don’t know how the story ends, but it won’t get better with anybody pretending that their side is innocent and only the other has blood on their hands.