The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

Summary, part 4

Chapter 3

The Third Declaration of War, 1967

In June 1967, Khalidi was in Manhattan going to the UN building as the Six-Day War was taking place when he saw people soliciting contributions for Israel’s military. Israel’s military was far superior to those of the Arab states, but the myth that Israel was a tiny, vulnerable country facing existential threat prevailed. 

The UN Security Council ordered comprehensive ceasefires on June 6 and 7, which were ignored by Israeli forces that entered Syria. On Friday, June 9, 1967 — the fifth day of the way — “Israeli forces decisively defeated Egyptian and Jordanian armies and occupied the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Arab East Jerusalem” (p. 99). Also on that day, the UN Security Council began its meeting at 12:30 pm, with a ceasefire resolution passing at 1:30 pm. The resolution unusually called on the UN Secretary-General to “arrange immediate compliance” and report back within two hours (p. 100). According to Khalidi’s father, the delay was due to the Americans wanting to give Israel a little more time to achieve victory.

“What we had witnessed that day was evidence of a new Middle Eastern axis in action — the armored spearheads on the ground were Israeli, while the diplomatic cover was American. It is an axis that is still in place today, over half a century later” (p. 101).

To further prove this point, Khalidi notes that before June 1967, Israel had received the green light from the US to launch a preemptive attack on the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

On November 22, 1967, the UN Security Council passed resolution SC 242, which Khalidi views as the third declaration of war. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, US administrations under Truman and Eisenhower advocated for concessions from Israel, including the return of homes to the displaced Palestinian population. However, these efforts were rebuffed by Israel’s administration under its first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. 

By 1967, the Middle East found itself embroiled in the dynamics of the Arab Cold War, intersecting with the broader global Cold War but with distinct regional dynamics at play. Khalidi delves into the sociopolitical and personal factors that precipitated the 1967 Six-Day War and the shift in US foreign policy. While President John F. Kennedy had visited Palestine and was less susceptible to pressures applied by Israel’s supporters, his successor, Lydon B. Johnson, had a longstanding affinity for Israel and Zionism, as was reflected in his choice of close friends and advisors. Israel wanted American approval for its 1967 strike, and they got it.

The significance of SC 242 cannot be overstated in Khalidi's analysis. While it stressed the inadmissibility of acquiring territory through war, its linkage of Israeli withdrawal to peace treaties with Arab states fundamentally altered the narrative. Notably, the resolution's omission of any mention of Palestine or Palestinians became fodder for Israel's negationist narrative, epitomized by Prime Minister Golda Meir's assertion in 1969 that Palestinians simply did not exist. With SC 242, the UN was walking away from its commitment to the rights of Palestinians to return to their homes and obtain compensation as established in General Assembly Resolution 194 in December 1948. SC 242 also exclusively focused on the 1967 war, making it impossible to acknowledge that the underlying issues stemmed from the 1948 war. SC 242 became the “benchmark for resolving the entire conflict” but remains unimplemented (p. 107). 

Khalidi adds that SC 242 exacerbated the tensions between Israel and Palestine by framing the conflict as a state-by-state problem. Israel wanted to divide its enemies and deal with them one by one, which the US also wanted to do to prevent Arab unity. But to most in the Arab world, the “stark contrast between Arab normalization with Israel and the misery that its colonization and occupation inflicted on the Palestinians inevitably undermined any faith in an American-sponsored peace process” (p. 108).

For all the harm SC 242 did, it also revived the national Palestinian movement. Writers and poets like Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish, Emile Habibi, Fadwa Touwan, and Tawfiq Zayyad worked to “reshape a sense of Palestinian identity and purpose that had been tested by the Nakba and the barren years that followed” (p. 109). Kanafani was the most prominent prose writer and the most widely translated. He was also a prolific journalist who was assassinated in a car bombing by the Mossad  — Israel’s national intelligence agency — in 1972 along with his 17-year-old niece Lamis Najm.

Militant groups that arose in the 1950s had a significant impact in the Middle East, playing roles that triggered the 1956 and 1967 wars. After 1956, they worked to reestablish Palestinians as a regional force to represent their rights and interests, which culminated in two trends. First, led by the Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN), which later birthed the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), these factions prioritized the Palestinian cause over broader Arab nationalism. The PFLP gained traction among students, the educated, and the middle class, drawing support from those aligned with leftist ideologies. Secondly, a Kuwait-based group established in 1959 and known as Fatah emerged with a non-ideological stance advocating for immediate Palestinian action. Fatah's inclusive approach propelled it to become the largest political faction, with an unwavering focus solely on the Palestinian struggle. The Arab League, under Egypt's leadership, established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 to co-opt and regulate the burgeoning Palestinian nationalist fervor. However, militant Palestinian factions eventually assumed control of the PLO, sidelining Egypt's influence.

The Arab League, under Egypt’s leadership, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964 (p. 116). However, militant Palestinian groups took over the PLO and sidelined Egypt’s leadership. Despite this, the PLO was still recognized by the Arab League as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO, according to Khalidi,  had its struggles in that it failed to devote sufficient energy, talent, and resources to diplomacy and information. 

In Khalidi’s view, the PLO was trapped in a dilemma: “How could it achieve Palestinian national aspirations through participation in a Middle East settlement when the internationally recognized terms for such a settlement, SC 242, negated these aspirations?” (p. 122). He goes on to write that “in order to be recognized, the Palestinians were required to accept an international formula designed to negate their existence” (p. 123).

The PLO thus adopted its National Charter in 1964, which declared that Palestine was an Arab country “where national rights belonged only to those residing there before 1917 and their descendants,” thus tying liberation with the reversal of everything since the Balfour Declaration (p. 123). The PLO’s objectives changed when Fatah and other resistance groups took over the PLO in 1968. Now, the PLO wanted a single Palestinian state where Palestinians and Jews could live side by side. This became widely accepted among Palestinians, but achieved “little traction with most Israelis and failed to convince many in the West” (p. 124). Regional circumstances and global pressures caused the PLO to change its objectives again, and this time, call for what was essentially a two-state solution (i.e. an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian state).

For Israel, the emergence of Palestinian nationalist movements was not welcome. Khalidi recounts that the Zionist perspective is that “the name Palestine and the very existence of the Palestinians constituted a mortal threat to Israel” (p. 117). Meanwhile, in the US, some progress was being made with the Palestinian cause after 1967, thanks to Palestinian-American academics who were presenting the Palestinian narrative on college campuses, independent media, and other sectors of public opinion.

As all of this was ongoing, Israel would continue to carry out further “punishing attacks” on Syria and Lebanon (p. 122). Also, the Mossadwould assassinate Palestinian leaders and cadres like PLO spokesman Kamal Nasser and Fatah leaders Kamal ‘Adwan and Abu Yusuf Najjar. Khalidi describes assassinations as a “central element in Israel’s ambition to transform the entire country, from the river to the sea, from an Arab to a Jewish one” (p. 127). Israel justified these assassinations by saying they were “necessary protection against terrorists, who would kill if not killed first” (p. 127), but many of those killed “were intellectuals and advocates for the Palestine cause, rather than military personnel” (p. 128). Khalidi says, “these were not ‘terrorists,’ but the most prominent voices of a national movement, voices Israel was determined to stifle” (p. 128).

The assassinations of Nasser, ‘Adwan, and Najjar in Lebanon in April 1973 were shortly followed by an armed confrontation with the Lebanese army where the air force “strafed the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in the southern suburbs of Beirut” (p. 128).  At the time, Khalidi was living in Beirut with his wife, Mona, while he was working on his dissertation and later began teaching at the Lebanese University and the American University of Beirut. Along with his friends, who were Palestinian graduate students and residents of Tal al-Za’tar, they opened the first preschool in the camp.

In April 1975, Khalidi and Mona were having lunch at Tal al-Za’tar at a friend’s parents’ house when they were warned of an incident on the road leading to the camp. As they left, they saw a small bus at an awkward angle, which had just been ambushed by Phalangist militia. All 27 passengers on the bus were killed, indicating a brutal retaliation for a shooting at a nearby Maronite church. This tragic event marked the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, which would continue until 1990, during which Palestinian refugee camps and population centers faced frequent attacks. Following this initial incident, Khalidi and his friends were unable to return to Tal al-Za’tar, which was later overrun by Lebanese Forces supported covertly by Israel. This takeover resulted in a horrific massacre in August of 1976 that killed 2,000 people, including two teachers from the preschool they had established. 

The Lebanese Civil War had various actors, with the Lebanese Maronite Christians representing a significant faction that opposed the PLO. The Syrian government considered the region a "vital strategic arena" and aimed to assert dominance (p. 130). Israel's interest in the conflict was to: (1) establish new alliances in Lebanon, (2) extend its influence, and (3) diminish the power of Syria and its allies while also countering the threat posed by Palestinian nationalism.

The US played a role in supporting Israel's objectives in Lebanon under various administrations, from Nixon to Reagan. US involvement in the conflict included approving a Syrian military campaign against the PLO in Lebanon. Additionally, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger worked with American allies to suppress the Palestinian movement. Despite a September 1975 agreement prohibiting direct recognition or negotiation with the PLO until they acknowledged Israel's right to exist, Kissinger also engaged in covert talks with the PLO for at least four years.

The bilateral Camp David process, which culminated in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, was structured by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to marginalize the PLO, promote the uninterrupted colonization of territories occupied in 1967, and essentially put the Palestinian issue on hold. While Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the United States made minor protests about ignoring the Palestinian question, the treaty resulted in the restoration of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and it shifted Egypt away from Soviet influence.

The agreement signaled the U.S. alignment with the harshest aspects of Israel's stance on Palestinian rights. Begin's treaty with Egypt ensured no interference with the Likud's expansionist vision, effectively eliminating discussions about key issues like Palestinian sovereignty, statehood, Jerusalem, refugees, and control over land, water, and airspace. Although occasional American and Egyptian protests against continued colonization of the Occupied Territories were voiced, these were largely ineffective. Through this treaty, the Camp David process entrenched the Israeli strategy of freezing out Palestinian interests, allowing for continued colonization while maintaining peace with Egypt.

Conditions became worse for Palestinians in the wake of the 1979 peace treaty. The Lebanese Civil War was exhausting its people and debilitating the PLO, where the PLO was facing Israeli, Syrian, and Lebanese armies, as well as Lebanese militias supported by Israel, the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Despite all of this, the PLO was still standing and was the strongest force in parts of Lebanon that weren’t in the hands of foreign armies or proxies.

The agreement signaled the U.S. alignment with the harshest aspects of Israel's stance on Palestinian rights. Begin's treaty with Egypt ensured no interference with the Likud's expansionist vision, effectively eliminating discussions about key issues like Palestinian sovereignty, statehood, Jerusalem, refugees, and control over land, water, and airspace. Although occasional American and Egyptian protests against continued colonization of the Occupied Territories were voiced, these were largely ineffective. Through this treaty, the Camp David process entrenched the Israeli strategy of freezing out Palestinian interests, allowing for continued colonization while maintaining peace with Egypt.

Conditions became worse for Palestinians in the wake of the 1979 peace treaty. The Lebanese Civil War was exhausting its people and debilitating the PLO, where the PLO was facing Israeli, Syrian, and Lebanese armies, as well as Lebanese militias supported by Israel, the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Despite all of this, the PLO was still standing and was the strongest force in parts of Lebanon that weren’t in the hands of foreign armies or proxies.