The Hundred year's War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Khalidi - B

              The author is a highly-regarded professor at Columbia University, and the scion of a family of Jerusalem-based scholars going back generations. Indeed, an ancestor warned Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, that the objective of settling in Palestine would never succeed because there were indigenous people already there. Herzl, who visited Palestine once, ignored the warning. Herzl believed that the poor people of Palestine should be dispersed elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. "Starting after World War I, the dismantling of the indigenous Palestinian society was set in motion by the large-scale immigration of European Jewish settlers supported by the newly established British Mandate authorities, who helped them build the autonomous structure of a Zionist para-state." The premise of this book is that"the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population..."

             Arabs, Christians, and Jews lived amicably in Palestine as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. World War I brought hundreds of thousands of deaths through conscription, starvation and plague. After 400 years of Ottoman sovereignty , Palestine was occupied by a European power, one which had previously approved the creation "of a national home for the Jewish people."  Anti-Zionist riots took place in the 1920's. Throughout the Muslim world, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq achieved independence - but not Palestine. The League of Nations confirmed the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration in 1922, and the Jewish Agency was granted quasi-governmental status. "The British treated the Palestinians with the same contemptuous condescension they lavished on the subject peoples from Hong Kong to Jamaica." The Jewish population grew after the rise of Nazism in 1933 bringing educated, skilled people and their wealth to Palestine. The Palestinians reacted violently in 1936 with a six-month general strike that led to a three year revolt, that required 100,000 British troops to quell. By the beginning of WWII, the die was cast. Palestine was on the road to becoming Israel.

               After the war, the US backed the Zionist cause.  The UN, led by America and the USSR, voted to create a Jewish state in late 1947.  The following May, Israel declared its independence,  and the US immediately recognized the new country. In the ensuing fighting, 80% of the Arabs lost their homes and 720,000 became refugees. "The ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country" transformed Palestine into Israel. The approximately  160,000 Palestinians who remained lost their land and homes and were subject to martial law for the next two decades. Almost a decade later, in 1956, when Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, the Israelis took advantage of the opportunity to wreak violence once again on the local Arabs.

                 In a mere six days in 1967, Israel destroyed three air forces and armies, and occupied the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The Six-Day War saw the United States fully supportive of Israel. In response, there was a reemergence of Palestinian nationalism throughout the diaspora. The Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PLO and Fatah appeared in the late sixties. Their ascent vastly complicated the politics of the Middle East. The front line states, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria wanted to contain them, but the Palestinians engaged in disruptive terroristic activities. Israel and Jordan, backed by the US pushed back. Indeed in September of 1970, Jordan expelled the PLO. The US helped Syria attack the PLO in 1976.

                        In pursuit of the PLO, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. There were 50,000 casualties before a cease fire was declared after ten weeks. Thomas Friedman described the Israeli bombing as "indiscriminate" before the NYT editors removed the offending characterization.  The US fully supported and supplied the offensive. Having provoked the Israelis with constant acts of terror, the PLO "found itself bereft of support from many of its traditional allies." The PLO left Lebanon for half a dozen Arab countries. Israel occupied Beirut, even though it had promised not to.  Afterwards, the Israeli judiciary castigated the country's leaders for the needless state sponsored massacres that took place in the Palestinian refugee camps. 

                       An unintended consequence of 1982 was a resurgence of nationalism in the Occupied Territories that led to the Intifada (uprising) in late 1987. It was a spontaneous "bottom up campaign of resistance," and led to worldwide sympathy and support for the two-state solution. A serious attempt to solve the Palestine problem was made by Jim Baker, who had a healthy skepticism of the Israelis, but it failed after Clinton defeated Bush in 1992. At Oslo, Israel agreed to the return of the PLO to the Occupied Territories, and a limited role for the Palestine Authority. However, virtually nothing had  changed for the better in the day to day life of the Palestinians. Indeed, matters deteriorated as travel between Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza became more restricted. The Second Intifada erupted in 2000. This century has seen an uptick in violence after Hamas took over Gaza and has been sporadically fighting with the IDF for years. Obama made an attempt at forcing Israel's hand in peace talks, but was unable to overcome America's traditional support for Israel.

                   Reconciling the needs and desires of two peoples connected to the same place and upholding the ideals of democracy appears to be beyond anyone's vision. The Trump administration reversed  American policies by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It also negotiated with the Gulf States to recognize Israel and completely ignored the Palestinians. It is only the fact that the plight of the Palestinians is very important to the vast majority of Arabs that keeps the issue alive, and resolving it favorably with due consideration of Palestinian rights is not on the horizon.

                   The essence of this book is that Israel has never had the moral high ground that we in the US believed they occupied. Indeed, "complaisant American public opinion" is a foundation of the state of Israel. I've read three reviews of this book. The one somewhat critical was in the NYTimes, and it doesn't disagree, but describes the author's hope for a resolution recognizing the Palestinians as "fanciful." As for me, I think the author makes a compelling case against the British for deeming it within their remit to tell the rest of the world how to live and for completely dismissing the Palestinians; against the Israelis for intending to eliminate the Palestinians from their world and for their extensive use of violence; and against the US for supporting and supplying the Israeli war machine.