My people shall live: The autobiography of a revolutionary - Leila Khaled, George Hajjar (Ed.) (2024)

Palestinian Nationalism and the Anti-Colonial Struggle

Zionism and its Discontents, 2014

All large-scale historical processes can be divided into periods, characterized by crucial landmark events, developments and dates. These usually play a symbolic role but also serve as indicators of important shifts or new directions. Three such dates stand out in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The 2nd November 1917: the date of the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the Zionist movement's claim to a 'National Home' in Palestine, and committed Britain to facilitating its realization The 29th November 1947: the date of the UN Palestine partition resolution, which led to the establishment of the State of Israel in the following year and to the Palestinian Nakba (dispossession of hundreds of thousands who became stateless refugees) The 5th June 1967: the date of the war that led to Israel's expansion into its current boundaries, incorporating all of historical Palestine within its system of military and political control. These dates and the events with which they are associated did not create new realities from scratch, of course. Rather, building on existing trends, they served to consolidate pre-existing developments and to open up new historical possibilities. In particular they helped give rise to new patterns of settlement and resistance, and thus reshaped relations between the main protagonists of the evolving conflict. The Balfour Declaration was issued towards the end of the First World War, after Great Britain had gained control over much of Palestine and large areas of the Middle East that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. It followed 35 years of organized Jewish immigration and settlement activity in the country, which resulted in the consolidation of a small but growing Jewish community (known as the New Yishuv), spread over dozens of new rural settlements, towns and urban neighbourhoods. Although it made no reference to that community, its existence was an important contextual factor for the Declaration. It granted international legitimacy to the new Yishuv and facilitated its further growth under the leadership of the world Zionist movement. Together with the British Mandate for Palestine, officially inaugurated in 1920, it created a new political framework based on boundaries that define the territory to this day. In that way it made the incipient conflict between Jewish settlers and indigenous Palestinian-Arabs more sharply focused on the political future of the country. While Palestinian resistance to Jewish immigration and land settlement preceded the Declaration, going back to the late 19th century, the post-1917 period became crucial in shaping the conflict in its current form. It is also the necessary starting point for discussing the colonial/apartheid question and its relevance for Israel/Palestine. With the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the British takeover of Palestine, two new and related elements were introduced into the country: European imperial rule and a settler political project.

Edward W. Said-The Question of Palestine-Vintage (1980)

The question of Palestine

The Palestinian National Movement and the Anti-Colonial Struggle

The paper explores various aspects in the development of the Palestinian national movement, with a focus on the ways in which it has conceptualized its core political goals. In particular, it looks at the extent to which it can be regarded as an anti-colonial or anti-apartheid movement. Although the two are related, they have distinct features. An anti-colonial movement regards its struggle primarily as national liberation from external rule while an anti-apartheid movement aims primarily to transform relationships between internal forces. These concepts are regarded as ideal types or benchmarks, which allow concrete historical movements to combine elements of the two or shift focus over time. The discussion is divided into three periods, with 1917, 1947, 1967 and 1987 as key historical moments that shaped the nature of following developments. The first formative period saw the Palestinian national movement emerging as a unified force, which was defeated by the end of the period, in what became known as the Nakba. Its constituency – the Palestinian people – became fragmented into three main segments: refugees who lost their houses and were forced out of their homeland; residents of historical Palestine living under Arab rule, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Subsequent periods necessitate a separate – but thematically related – discussion of these segments. For each period and each segment the paper examines different conceptualizations of Palestinians as a national group indigenous to the country, and their evolving relations to Jewish settlers and – after 1948 – Israeli citizens. The focus of the discussion is on the extent to which the latter have been regarded as an external force to be defeated or pushed back (and perhaps even removed from the scene altogether), or rather as a force that is internal to the country, regardless of its origins, with which alliances may potentially be formed and a shared future may be envisaged.

Historical Consciousness, Fake News, and the Other

Public History Weekly

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History. 4 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. xxviii + 1554 pp. ****Award-winning title, 4 awards

The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History. 4 vols.

Editor (with Spencer Tucker et al.), author of 14 short articles, editor/compiler of Vol. 4 (Documents Volume). [“Adenauer. Konrad,” 1:32-34; “Bevin, Ernest” (with Chris Tudda), 1:214-216; “Dulles, John Foster,” 1:308-309; “Eisenhower, Dwight David,” 1:329-331; “France, Middle East Policy,” 1:370-374; “Johnson, Lyndon Baines,” 2:555-557; “Kissinger, Henry Alfred,” 2: 584-586; “Lloyd, Selwyn,” 2:644-645; “Marshall, George Catlett,” 2:666-668; “Nixon, Richard Milhous,” 2:740-742; “Reagan, Ronald Wilson,” 3:852-854; “Rogers, William Pierce,” 3:874-875; “Roosevelt, Franklin Delano,” 3:876-878; “Shultz, George Pratt,” 3:921-923] Named Outstanding Reference Source, 2008, by RUSA-American Library Association; Distinguished Achievement Award for Social Studies Instruction (Reference Category), June 2009; Editors’ Choice, 2008, Booklist; Best Reference Choice, 2008, Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. This exhaustive work offers readers at multiple levels key insights into the military, political, social, cultural, and religious origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. • With more than 750 alphabetically organized entries covering everything from important people, places, and events to a wide range of social and cultural topics―each entry featuring cross references and suggestions for further reading • A separate documents volume offering an unprecedented collection of more than 150 essential primary sources • Over 500 images, including maps, photographs, and illustrations • A comprehensive introductory overview by retired general Anthony Zinni

Pappé, Ilan A History of Modern Palestine; One Land, Two Peoples Cambridge University Press (2006)

Cambridge University Press, 2006

Foreword: The idea of this book germinated in my Haifa University class entitled ‘The history of the Palestine conflict’. Very alert and eager Palestinian and Jewish students demanded again and again a narrative of their country’s history that did not repeat the known versions of the two conflicting parties; one that respected the other, included those who are not part of the story, and above all was more hopeful about the future. I began writing the book in the twilight of the Oslo Agreement and found it difficult to comply with the last request. But then I realized that, by then, industrious researchers had already provided us with new perspectives on Palestine, but they were never presented in one narrative. What these novel approaches had in common was that they attempted to tell the story of the people and the land, and not just that of high politics, dogmatic ideologies or rehearsed national narratives. The fact that the students, Palestinians and Jews, wanted to hear the story told from a humanist, and not nationalist, ethnic or religious, per- spective was itself a hopeful sign for the future. It is this perspective that dictates the tone of this book, It is a narrative of those in Palestine who were brutalized and victimized by human follies well known from many other parts in the world. The abusive power used by people against other people in the name of one ideology or another is condemned in this book for being the source of much evil and few blessings. These human ambi- tions wrought invasions, occupations, expulsions, discrimination and racism on Palestine. The heroes of this book are therefore the victims of these calamities: women, children, peasants, workers, ordinary city dwellers, peaceniks, human rights activists. The ‘villains’ to a certain extent are the arrogant generals, the greedy politicians, the cynical statesmen and the misogynist men. Many of the victims were, and still are, the indige- nous people of Palestine, the Palestinians; but many of them also belong to the community of the newcomers, now evolving into a second genera- tion of natives, the Jews. We are constantly warned that we should not be slaves of our history and memory. This book is written with the view that in order to perform this liberation act in Israel and Palestine, you need first to rewrite, indeed salvage, a history that was erased and forgotten. The violent symbolic and real exclusion of people from the hegemonic narrative of the past is the source of the violence of the present. Various historians who came directly from the forgotten and marginalized communities in Palestine provided with their original and pioneering works the bricks with which I could attempt the present project of redrawing the historical picture of Palestine. This is done not for the sake of intellectual curiosity, but out of a wish to disseminate a more expanded narrative of what happened in a country that never ceases, to the great dismay of its inhabitants, to capture the global headlines, even if its population does not exceed that of London or New York and its territory is smaller than that of any of the Great Lakes of North America. It is both an introduction to those interested for the first time in the country – if there are still such fortunate persons – and a suggestion for an alternative narrative for those who think, quite understandably, that they have read everything they need to know of the torn and tortured land of Palestine.

The ‘‘Camp David Consensus’’: Ideas, Intellectuals, and the Division of Labor in Egypt’s Foreign Policy toward Israel1

The Single State Solution Vision, Obstacles and Dilemmas of a Re-Emergent Alternative in Flux

From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of "Peace", 2019

'Palestine and the Palestinians in British Political Elite Discourse: From "The Palestine Problem" to "The Two-State Solution,"' International Relations

This article examines how the Palestinians have been represented in British political elite discourse between 1915 and 2015 as an exploration into the role of such discourse in framing the identity and thence shaping the fate of a community or people seeking national independence. It also makes some observations about the significance of political violence or war in bringing about paradigm shifts in the discourse. The analysis reveals that the way the British depicted the Palestinian Arabs and their cause has changed over time, but at no point did the discourse identify independent statehood for the Palestinians as a central or stand-alone objective of policy