The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

Summary, part 1

Introduction

Khalidi opens The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine with a description of both his time living in Jerusalem and his family’s connection to the city from founding a local library to political affiliations. He then goes on to introduce Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, his great-great-great uncle. Yusuf Diya pursued both Islamic and Western education and became an accomplished scholar. He was familiar with Zionism — a movement founded by Theodor Herzl — and would write about Zionism’s impacts on Palestine as early as 1895. 

Yusuf Diya “knew perfectly well that there was no way to reconcile Zionism’s claims on Palestine and its explicit aim of Jewish statehood and sovereignty there with rights and well-being of the country’s indigenous inhabitants” (p. 4).  

One of Yusuf Diya’s many writings included a letter to Herzl, where he stressed that Palestine was already populated and should be left alone. Herzl ignored Yusuf Diya’s main points and instead recounted his belief that Jewish immigration would benefit the people of Palestine. Khalidi, however, posits that the idea of immigration as a benefit to the indigenous population is a guiding principle in colonization more broadly.

After World War I, Palestinian society began to be dismantled by the first wave of large-scale immigration of European Jewish settlers, as supported by the newly established British Mandate. This migration instigated what was the Great 1936-1939 Arab Revolt against British rule, in which 14-17% of the Palestinian population was killed — a grim testament to the overwhelming power of British forces. As this was going on, there was a massive wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine, raising the Jewish population from 18% to 31%. This migration, Khalidi argues, laid the groundwork necessary “for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine” (p. 8).

This leads Khalidi to arrive at the book’s thesis:

“The modern history of Palestine can best be understood [...]as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will” (p. 9).

Khalidi notes that while the conflict over Palestine is both colonial and national in nature, this book will focus more on its colonial dimension since that aspect has been under-appreciated. 

He also remarks that literature about Palestine has been “riddled with historical errors, misrepresentations, and sometimes outright bigotry” (p. 10-11), which this work intends to correct. Examples of such misrepresentation include the Zionist slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” which implies Palestine is not occupied when indeed it already is, as well as the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which never acknowledged the existence or presence of Palestinians. 

Khalidi concludes by clarifying that this book is not a survey of Palestinian history. Rather, it focuses on six critical moments, six historical turning points, each with a corresponding chapter, and highlights the colonial nature of the war on Palestine, as well as the “indispensable role of external powers in waging it” (p. 14).