The Hundred Years War on Palestine

By Rashid Khalidi, 2021

This is the first history of Palestine that I have read from the Palestinian perspective. It persuasively undercuts the dominant Anglo-American ideology of Israel as a besieged rampart in a hostile land. Instead, it lays out an argument about the history of Israel as a European colonial settler project to control the region and deliberately suppress the history of the indigenous people of Palestine.

Khalidi writes with authority as a historian who, with his family members, has lived through the history and taken part in policy making about Palestine. He makes his arguments with reference to the key documents of the history, but the most memorable points are from his family’s life. His grandfather’s letters explaining that the land had been occupied for generations and his father’s advice to committees of the United Nations proved ineffective. His own stories of escaping Israeli bombardment in Beirut and deliberate massacre in Lebanese refugee camps make those political positions clear.

He also describes the defeats and the failures of the Palestinian leadership, overwhelmed by superior military power and repression in the “Arab Revolt” of 1937 to ’39 and again after 1948. The increasing isolation and weakness of the leadership, shut out of negotiations by colonialist powers, led to the radical street revolts in the 1950s and later the first and second Intifadas. With the leadership excluded, it’s not a surprise that Palestinians would take more hands-on, violent, action. What is more surprising is that these actions drew attention to the repression and led to increasing support for Palestinian people. The increasingly violent repression by the Israeli state, both in the Palestinian lands and in neighbouring territories, has only increased knowledge and sympathy for the Palestinian movement. Given this response, it is not a surprise that the Palestinian resistance would take more extreme actions, even knowing that intense repression would follow. Whether this is the strategy of Hamas in its October 7 attacks is not known – my first thought on hearing of it was, “What are they thinking? Don’t they know what this will cost?” – but the history can easily lead toward more violence.

While Andreas Malm in The Destruction of Palestine takes the position that the destruction of the imperialist Israeli state is necessary for a just resolution in the region, Khalidi takes a more nuanced view. “There are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other. Their mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights, including national rights, not withstanding the crucial historical differences between the two.” He thinks the positions of both Hamas and Fatah have been less successful than BDS and the student-lead oppositions and that a new long-term strategy should be based on education of US and other publics to oppose colonialism and inequality, and on build on Arab popular support instead of relying on compromised Arab governments.

Interestingly, Khalidi agrees with Malm that the root of the issue is not Zionist distortion of Anglo-American politics, but rather the self-interest of Britain and the USA. Both countries pursue their own interests when they occasionally conflict with Israeli desires. (Trump may be an exception, because his own self-interest is more prominent to him than the state’s self-interest.)

Khalidi’s position may be the more palatable, although I’m not sure it would be completely effective. Building support through education is essential, and the Arab street is likely more sympathetic than Arab governments. But forceful resistance – characterized as terrorism – is what brought about change in Algeria, Kenya, India, South Africa and other liberation movements. Colonialists do not readily give up what they control until it becomes too expensive to hold. (There are counter-examples – the Indigenous nations of Canada are slowly gaining economic and political power within a colonialist state through legal action, buttressed with occasional small-scale acts of resistance.)

Although the solution is not a clear or simple one, Khalidi’s book reveals a history of Palestine that helps understand a century of colonialism in the region and the impact of Zionist state-building and Anglo-American manipulation. It also offers a direction that is not based on more repression or violence.

The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth

By Andreas Malm, 2024

This an interesting book – really more of a lengthy pamphlet than a book – that I came across while reading Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years War on Palestine. It draws a parallel between the unlimited capacity for destruction and killing in Palestine with the equally unlimited capacity for destruction of the environment by fossil fuels. I was, and remain, sceptical that the parallel has much depth, but Malm does make many historical and rhetorical points that I found valuable.

Malm starts with a historical point that Khalidi does not raise: the links between Britain’s early development of steam ships and industrial power and its occupation of the Palestinian territories in the mid-18^th century. This establishes its control of transportation and coal in the eastern Mediterranean and later the Suez Canal, and of the oil industry in Iraq and Arabia. This control shifts to the United States after Britain is weakened in its wars against Germany. The USA and Britain support the establishment of Israel in the Palestinian lands in order to counter the rising Arab nationalism and control of oil. Negotiations over Israel, according to Malm, are designed to develop and control oil in the Middle East (and in the North Sea).

Malm argues that this self-interest in protecting supplies of both coal and oil, rather than any submission to a Zionist lobby, explains British and US policy in the Middle East. Thus, Anglo-American imperialist control of fossil fuels is destroying Palestine in the same way that it is destroying the environment. And seeing the Israeli state in this way as a creation and a tool of Western imperialism, to call for an end of the colonialist State of Israel is essential for ending imperialism in the Middle East and for establishing a Palestinian state. Malm perhaps leaves open the possibility of a non-imperialist Israeli state in Palestine, although only alongside an independent Palestinian state. It’s not at all clear, however, what such an Israeli state could be – certainly not an exclusively Jewish state, and what would be the need of a parallel multi-national state in Palestine?

Malm calls for support for the Palestinian resistance, even in their armed wings, arguing that the death of civilians is tragic, but justified when there is no other alternative. This makes a parallel with other historical liberation struggles, such as the violent revolutions in Haiti, Kenya, South Africa, and even the French and American Revolutions, which were characterized as bloodthirsty terrorism in their times. In the face of violent repression, violent resistance is inevitable. We do not criticize slaves for excesses of violence against their owners, we look at it as the direct outcome of the act of repression.

Malm also discusses the Palestinian parties and says that Hamas has moved from a religious to a nationalist political position, and is more open to collaboration than other factions in Palestine and neighbouring countries. In looking at the current policies of the State of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, one could easily conclude that the government is led by religious fanatics and opportunists more than the Palestinians are.

Malm says that it is an error to view a Zionist lobby as controlling Anglo-American policies in the Middle East – these are a direct result of national self-interest. This often coincides with Zionist interests, but when it does not, the national interests always prevail, as they have done when the US pushed for regional stability over Israel’s military objectives in Egypt, Syria and Iran. This is a compelling argument, and more persuasive than Malm’s parallels with the destruction of the environment. Fossil fuels are certainly destroying the Earth, but so are most capitalist economic policy. I’m not sure that tying that to the Palestinian liberation struggle adds much clarity.