By Rashid Khalidi
A review by Steve Halpern
The news media in this country portrays the conflict between the government in the state of Israel and the Palestinian people as one unending and seemingly unsolvable disagreement. Rashid Khalidi portrays this same conflict as a hundred years war against the indigenous people of the state of Israel who are known as Palestinians. While I’ve read many books on this topic, my opinion is that Khalidi’s history of this conflict is the most comprehensive and informative.
Khalidi has a unique perspective to this subject. His family has been involved in the struggle against the colonization of Palestine since the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Khalidi lived in various areas of the Middle East for much of his life. He and his family experienced the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in 1982. He was one of the Palestinian negotiators to the Oslo Accords that were signed in 1993.
Perhaps the best way to summarize Khalidi’s book is to list the timeline of the colonization of the nation that was once known as Palestine.
1917—The signing of the Balfour Declaration—In 1917 Palestine was a colony of Britain. At that time Jewish people consisted of about six percent of the population.
At this same time, there was a Zionist movement that was demanding a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine to counter the anti-Semitic acts against Jews in the world. We might keep in mind, that at this time the majority of the Jewish diaspora opposed Zionism and favored a struggle to protest anti-Semitism wherever it arose. Clearly Jewish people did not want to uproot their lives and move to a nation that was overwhelmingly occupied by people who were not Jewish.
Under those conditions the secretary of state of foreign affairs in Britain, Lord Balfour, issued the following sentence:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
So, with these few words, the British government approved of the mass displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine and the colonization of Jewish people who, at that time, lived mostly in Eastern Europe. This declaration also ignored the over two-thousand year history of the various nationalities who had lived on Palestinian land.
To fully appreciate the imperial arrogance of this declaration, we might present an analogy. Imagine if the world’s super-power endorsed a plan to remove the people of London from their homes and replace them with people who lived in another part of the world. This is how many Palestinians, who were not mentioned in the Balfour Declaration, viewed this document.
The British suppression of the 1936-1939 Palestinian uprising—Palestinians had endured the colonization of their homeland by Turkey and then Britain for decades. The disgust with their colonizers erupted in a general strike of Palestinians in the year 1936. That general strike developed into an armed revolt in 1937.
The British responded to those uprisings by mobilizing 100,000 soldiers, along with armored vehicles and aircraft, to confront Palestinian resistance. Khalidi argued that 10% of the male Palestinian population were either killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled by the British during those years.
This British repression of Palestinian aspirations paved the way for the Zionist movement to colonize Palestine. In the words of the fascist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky: “Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.”
The 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, otherwise known as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe—In the year 1947 the United Nations General Assembly, in effect, agreed with the ideas expressed in the Balfour Declaration. This called for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Palestinian sectors.
The establishment of the state of Israel received much international support because of the Nazi holocaust of six-million Jews. While the political movement known as Zionism had little support before the Nazi concentration camps, this idea became very popular after the Second World War. However, the idea that Palestinians would be expelled from their homeland was not known to much of the world at that time.
I happen to be Jewish and attended Hebrew school until the age of thirteen. While the state of Israel was routinely glorified in that school, I only learned of the word Palestinian when I was nineteen years old.
The fascist Zionist organizations of the Stern Gang and the Irun carried out a terrorist policy of murdering Palestinians in an effort to remove them from their homeland. These efforts were made possible with massive British support. Without that support the Israeli colonists would have not been able to overcome Palestinian resistance.
As a result, about 80 percent of the Palestinian people or a population of 1.3 million were forced to leave their homeland and made refugees. The effect on Rashid Khalidi’s family was typical of many Palestinian families. Khalidi has cousins in several Arab countries, many European nations, as well as the United States.
The 1967 War— By 1967 the United States had become the primary supporter of the state of Israel. U.S. aid to Israel created a military imbalance in the Middle East that allowed Israel to defeat the armed forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in six days. Khalidi reported that in 1967 he was living in New York City where he viewed the near unanimity of the support for the continued Israeli colonization of Palestine.
The advancing Israeli armed forces were supported by the United Nations resolution SC 242. This allowed for the further expansion of Israeli territory on the Palestinian homeland.
The former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir rationalized the theft of Palestinian land with her seemingly insane statement: “there were no such thing as Palestinians... They do not exist.”
As Palestinian national resistance developed, the Israeli Mossad began to carry out a systematic and covert campaign to assassinate Palestinian leaders. This campaign had an effect of weakening Palestinian resistance.
The Israeli War Against Lebanon—Lebanon was one of the nations where Palestinians became refugees. This was where the Palestine Liberation Organization had its headquarters.
The Israeli armed forces formed an alliance with a rightwing Lebanese organization known as the Phalangists. Because of this support these Phalangists had from both Israel and the United States, they carried out a series of raids on Palestinian villages where thousands were murdered.
Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State of the United States during this largely one-sided war. His goal was to “break the back” of the Palestinians. In this effort Kissinger recruited the government of Syria to back the war against Palestinians.
1979 Camp David Egypt-Israeli so-called peace treaty—Faced with the U.S. supported defeat of the PLO in Lebanon, the Israeli government of Menachem Begin felt free to negotiate a so-called peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. These discussions did not include representatives of the Palestinians and were destined to be a complete failure. This agreement was brokered by the administration of the U.S. President James Carter.
The Carter Administration was adamant about excluding the Palestinians from these talks. At that time Andrew Young, who had been a leader of the civil rights movement, was the United States representative at the United Nations. When Young merely had a discussion with the PLO, he was terminated from that position.
This treaty secured Israeli control of the occupied territories and removed Egypt from supporting the Palestinians.
The war against Lebanon continued—With the so-called peace agreement with Egypt in hand, the Israeli government felt free to accelerate its war against Lebanon. This meant that with the support of the United States, Israel bombed defenseless Palestinian refugee camps indiscriminately. This was a flagrant violation of Article 25, Annex to the Hague Convention adopted in 1899.
In the end, the PLO negotiated a withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982. The PLO’s only demand was that the remaining Palestinians in Lebanon would be protected. After the PLO left Lebanon, the Israeli air force carried out bombing raids that caused 500 casualties.
At this point, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig was the one who supervised the crucial support Israel needed to conduct their genocidal war.
The Palestinian Intifada—Although the PLO had been defeated in Lebanon after a determined resistance, the demand for Palestinian human rights continued. Starting in 1987 an uprising of young and old Palestinians erupted in the occupied territories. Around the world the news media published photos of Palestinian children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks.
Since the tanks failed to quell the uprising, Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the construction of batons that he felt would be effective to, “break their bones.” These batons were then used to break the bones of thousands of Palestinians. For Israel, the use of these batons was important because when the news media reported on Palestinian deaths, the Israeli government felt this was not good for their public relations.
Because of this Intifada, the world began to see the struggle of Palestinians as being a biblical David going up against a heavily armed Goliath.
The Oslo Accords—Largely because of the changing perception of Israel in the world, a new set of negotiations were organized. This time the Palestinians were included. However, as with the history of the war against Palestinians, the Israeli government had all the advantages.
The PLO was also weakened because of the fact that it did not oppose the Saddam Hussein organized Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Although Kuwait was not a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, many Palestinians had lived in that country and managed to make a living. This position further isolated the PLO.
As a result of the Oslo Accords, the PLO recognized the state of Israel. Israel, for the first time accepted the fact that there were indeed a Palestinian people, and that the PLO represented their interests.
Ironically, during those same years that Israel was negotiating with the PLO, the Israeli government was also giving significant support to the organization known a Hamas. The support to Hamas was a deliberate attempt to splinter Palestinian resistance.
Rashid Khalidi argued that agreeing to the Oslo Accords was a mistake made by the PLO. Before this agreement, Palestinians were allowed to travel throughout Israel. After Oslo, Palestinian movement was curtailed by a series of checkpoints. Palestinians might have to wait hours at these checkpoints before being allowed to enter Israel.
Before the Oslo Accords the Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem was an important part of the occupied West Bank. After Oslo, Palestinians needed to go through checkpoints in order to enter East Jerusalem.
Before Oslo, there was no wall separating Jews from Palestinians. After Oslo, Israeli settlements in the West Bank mushroomed, and now 11% of the Israeli population lives in the occupied West Bank. Today a wall, along with electrified wires separate Israel from the Occupied Territories.
Before Oslo, Israeli wars were primarily against the neighboring nations of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. After Oslo, Israel conducted several wars against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
These wars were exacerbated by the firing of missiles by the organization Hamas into Israeli civilian areas. Because of U.S. support, those missiles only were responsible for a relatively small number of deaths, but there was no excuse for firing missiles into civilian areas.
Hamas made the mistake of rationalizing the missile firings with the fact that the peaceful negotiations did nothing for the Palestinians. So, they made the mistaken rationalization that they needed to fire rockets into civilian areas. Those actions only intensified the conflict. However, Hamas won elections in the occupied Gaza Strip, largely because of the PLO failure in the Oslo Accords.
Rashid Khalidi quoted an Israeli official who stated the goal of the Israeli government in the Oslo Accords. He argued that he wanted the PLO to resemble the Phalangists in Lebanon and become a repressive force against the Palestinians.
President Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the century.”—Rachid Khalidi quoted the late Palestinian writer Edward Said who explained how the exploitation of Palestinians is unique. “This a unique colonialism that we’ve been subjected to where they have no use for us. The best Palestinian for them is either dead or gone. It’s not that they want to exploit us, or that they need to keep us there in the way of Algeria or South Africa as a subclass.”
This statement underscores the theme of the hundred years of war against Palestinians from the Balfour Declaration to Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century.” That so-called deal would merely intensify the worsening conditions for Palestinians in what was once their homeland.
As in the past, the Arabic governments in the nations surrounding Israel have joined together to betray the interests of Palestinians. They are asking Palestinians to, in effect, commit suicide and participate in this charade, falsely claiming to promote peace in the region. However, the Palestinian people are not going away.
What is a Marxist viewpoint on the Middle East?
Rashid Khalidi pointed out that in the year 2018 the Israeli Knesset declared in the Constitution that Israel is a “Jewish state” and that anyone who is not Jewish is a second-class citizen. Khalidi argued that this perspective must be reversed if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East.
The workers throughout the world have learned through numerous experiences that basic equality among people is a necessity for humanity. The question remains: What is the strategy to achieve genuine peace and equality in the Middle East?
Abram Leon was a Marxist who was born in Warsaw, Poland, lived in Belgium, and executed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp at the age of twenty-six. He wrote a history of Jewish people titled: The Jewish Question. Although Leon never lived to see the establishment of the state of Israel, he clearly understood the theoretical bankruptcy of the Zionist movement.
Leon argued that anti-Semitism is a product of capitalism. During the feudal epoch, Jews were defended by royal families who used the Jewish community as merchants and money lenders. With the advent of capitalism, Jews became scapegoats for the continual war against working people in the continuous drive to maximize profits.
The development of the nation-states of the world was a result of capitalist expansion. The establishment of the state of Israel came about because of the deterioration of capitalism. One of the signs of this deterioration was the murder of about one third of the Jewish population in the world by the Nazis.
The British colonialists used the Jewish community to divide the people of the Middle East just as they promoted divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, and Pakistanis and Indians in Asia.
Given this reality, Leon made the following observation: “One must be stricken with an incurable judicial cretinism to believe that the creation of a small Jewish state in Palestine can change anything at all in the situation of Jews throughout the world, especially in the present period.” The seventy-year history of the state of Israel, along with the increasing anti-Semitic acts mean that these words of Abram Leon have never been truer.
Leon also argued that since anti-Semitism is a product of the capitalist system, that system needs to be replaced in order to advance the genuine interests of both Jews and Palestinians. How would this happen?
In their Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that the capitalist system has a “disease.” That disease is the crisis of “overproduction.”
We viewed the effects of this “disease” in the depression of the 1930s and the stock market crash of 2008. These events don’t make sense to rational people. If people are willing to work and there are available commodities, why do millions of people see their jobs eliminated, and then have difficulties finding equivalent employment?
Because of the routine functioning of capitalism, corporations are obsessed with cutting costs and selling more and more commodities. This means that sooner or later workers do not purchase the commodities capitalists are selling. When people aren’t buying a sufficient number of commodities, capitalists are not gouging out profits, and they have no reason to invest. The effect is recessions and then depressions.
Understanding this reality, we can see that the routine billion-dollar gifts Israel receives from the United States will one day come to an end. When this happens, the Israeli economy will not be able to sustain itself. So, what is to be done about this reality?
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party that organized the Russian Revolution. Before that revolution, Czarist Russia was known as a “prison-house of nations.” Many different nations experienced routine discrimination.
Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks needed to support the unconditional liberation of all these nations. Failing to do this would mean that the Russian Revolution would have been an impossibility. The name of the new nation established by the Bolsheviks was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This name reflected the fact that the new revolutionary government supported the unconditional liberation of all the nations in the USSR.
Today I believe that all Israeli citizens need to understand that the only way for them to escape the horrors of capitalism and anti-Semitism is to support the unconditional liberation of Palestinians.
For various reasons, the Russian Revolution was betrayed by Joseph Stalin. Stalin organized to murder the entire leadership of the revolution. One of those leaders was Leon Trotsky, who Stalin initially exiled from the USSR.
Trotsky needed to find a nation that would give him asylum. He argued that the right of asylum needs to be supported by workers in every nation in the world.
After their expulsion from their homeland, Palestinians lived in many nations. Although this was clearly not the preferred option, living abroad allowed the Palestinian diaspora to survive.
Today Israeli law states that Jews all over the world have a right to Israeli citizenship. As Abram Leon argued, that reality has done nothing to reverse anti-Semitism in the world. As long as Israel is used as a repressive force against Palestinians, Jewish people will never have a meaningful homeland in that nation.
A few months before the Russian Revolution, Lenin was living in exile in Switzerland where he gave a speech. He argued that he didn’t think that the Russian Revolution would happen in his lifetime. As we know, that is exactly what did happen. Why?
Millions of Russian soldiers were being murdered in a senseless war against Germany. The Russian people experienced starvation conditions in a nation that had vast areas of fertile farmland. Under those conditions, the Russian people began to understand that they needed to think differently about politics, and under the leadership of the Bolsheviks they did what had been viewed as unthinkable, and took power away from both the Czar and the capitalists.
Today the United States gives more financial and military aid to the state of Israel than any other nation in the world. We can ask the question: Why does the U.S. give so much aid to a nation of seven million people?
In my opinion the answer to this question flows from the fact that all corporations in the world are completely dependent on a continuous flow of oil. The nation of Israel is located in the middle of the region where most of the oil is located.
Because of the nature of capitalism, both Israelis and Palestinians will go through a time where they will need to think differently about politics. I have confidence that they have the potential to make the entire Middle East a place where the human dignity of all workers and farmers becomes the absolute priority.
