Ep56: Rashid Khalidi on the hundred years' war on Palestine

At the time of recording this episode, we are on day 62 of Israel’s most recent war on Gaza. The situation is beyond horrific, as over 20,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed and 1.7 million have been displaced from their homes. Numerous international humanitarian laws have been broken as civialian areas, hospitals and schools have been attacked, and white phospherous has been used on civilian populations, with catastrophic impacts. 

On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Rashid Khalidi, author and historian about understanding the last 100 years, in an attempt to truly understand and uncover what is happening today.  We talk about the Balfour declaration of 1917, the end of British colonial rule in Palestine, the growth of the Israeli colonial project, the ways in which Palestinians have resisted, and so much more. 

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago. He is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He has written or co-edited ten books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, which we’ll be speaking about today. He has written over a hundred scholarly articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics, as well as opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune Vanguardia, The London Review of Books, and The Nation. Rashid Khalidi lived in Beirut, and was deeply engaged in Lebanese politics in the 70s, and during the Lebanese war of 1982. He has played an active role in peace talks and negotiations in the region in the 80s and 90s.

Buy The Hundred Years' War on Palestine here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-a-history-of-settler-colonial-conquest-and-resistance-rashid-i-khalidi/2901891?ean=9781781259344

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Transcript

Samia Aziz: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to The Diverse Bookshelf with me, Samia Aziz. On this show, I interview incredible authors doing a deep dive into important themes and issues while talking all things books. At the time of recording this episode, we are on day 62 of Israel's most recent war on Gaza. The situation is beyond horrific as over 20,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, and 1.7 million have been displaced from their homes. numerous international humanitarian laws have been broken. As civilian areas, hospitals and schools have been attacked, and white phosphorus has been used and civilian populations with catastrophic impacts. On today's episode, I'm speaking with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, author and historian about understanding the last 100 years in an attempt to truly understand and uncover what is happening today. We talk about the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The end of British colonial rule in Palestine, the growth of the Israeli colonial project, the ways in which Palestinians have resisted and so much more. Dr. Rashid Khalidi is Edward Saeed, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a BA from Yale University in 1970 and A D. Phil from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago, he has returned or CO edited 10 books including the 100 years war on Palestine, history of settler colonialism and resistance, which we'll be speaking about today. He's written over 100 scholarly articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics, as well as opinion pieces and the New York Times The Financial Times The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the London Review of Books, and the nation, Rasheed, Halladay lived in Beirut and was deeply engaged in Lebanese politics in the 70s. And during the Lebanese War of 1982. He's played an active role in peace talks and negotiations in the region in the 80s and 90s. And I'm so honoured. He's my guest today. Hi, Rashid. Thank you so much for joining me on the diverse bookshelf today. How are you?

Rashid Khalidi: 2:20

I'm okay.

Samia Aziz: 2:21

Yeah, I think that level of okay, the weightiness in your response, says more more than anything you could have actually said, apart from okay. I'm so grateful that you've made time to speak to me on the show today. And I think now more than ever, it is so important that we inform ourselves and educate ourselves about what is happening right now, in Palestine and in Gaza. But what has happened historically, in order to really understand what's happening today, and hopefully, where we go from here, and your book, The 100 Years war on Palestine, is such an education. And I think it does so much in tackling some of the myths that we've been hearing. And really helping people understand that this is not a new issue. And you know, you are a, you are a historian, and you've written a number of books, and countless articles and journal contributions and whatnot. But this is the first book that you've written that is somewhat personal. The book is semi autobiographical in there, you talk about your own life, you talk about people, you know, your family, your wife's family, what inspired you and what really made you add a personal element to this book that you've written that came out, actually now in 2020?

Rashid Khalidi: 3:45

A couple of things. The first is that I was so it was so hard to take, the amount of misinformation that's in the public sphere, was so hard to listen to people who shouldn't have known better, repeating myths and half truths, and so on. And I wanted to speak to that with a book that was directed at a more general audience. And pretty much everything I've written. I mean, most of what I've written is monographs intended for other academics. So I've written some books that had were aimed at a general audience. And the second thing was that I kept being pressed especially by my son Ismail, but also by a by another relative, a cousin of mine to write a history of Palestine that was not dry and boring, and involved some of the personal things that they both knew that I knew about family things, historical things related to people I knew, and my own experiences, especially my son, especially Ismail kept urging me you tell us about these things that you experienced or that you saw or that your father told you or that your aunt's told you put these in a book for heaven's sakes, and that'll make it a better book and it'll make it a more approachable, more readable book. He and other people, especially my editor, helped to make it more accessible by constantly pressing me to bring in things of that nature, personal things or family things. I mean, I used a lot of family documents, I lost a lot, I used a lot of things that older relatives of mine had told me, things that I'd heard about my grandparents and I didn't I didn't know either of my father's parents. But my father had told me things, one of my older cousins, who knew them very, very well, he's only eight years old now would tell me stories about them. And I had met three of my aunts and I had actually interviewed, especially one of them, who's an important historical figure she was, she played a big role in Palestinian and Lebanese feminist movements. I interviewed her extensively. And I talked to her a lot and to two of my other edits. And I put a lot of that in the in the book, that kind of thing. My mother's my mother's reminiscences, my father's reminiscences. My wife's family, my wife's grandfather was the editor of a major newspaper. And so I used his memoirs, which actually, my sister in law has published now in French. So I use a lot of things that were related to me or to my family or to families that I knew, I used a memoir by someone named Yusuf Saya, whose widow, I know, whose son I taught, I mean, you know, things like that, that I was aware of, and that you wouldn't normally find in a history book maybe. And I hope that that and other personal aspects, make it both more approachable, and I hope more authoritative. I mean, when I talk about my experiences in Beirut, this is what I saw. This is what I and my wife and our two daughters lived through. When I talk about my experiences in the negotiations in 9192, or 93. This is what I saw. And I have the documents, and I didn't just, you know, spin out a bunch of reminiscences. In that chapter, for example, about the war, there's a great deal of documentation, based on research, I've done research that students have moved on.

Samia Aziz: 7:03

Well absolutely like the book itself, I think has about 40 pages of footnotes, like everything you say, you have, you have backed up with evidence, and you have detailed it. So I think, you know, if anyone listening, although you're talking about a book that is more accessible, that is more approachable, that is more personal. It is massively informative, and it's still the work of a historian. And I think that that really permeates and I completely agree in in the need for literature that is not so dry, that can still really inform and equip people with the information needed. I think, especially in the time that we're living at the moment, almost like the Zionist narrative and ideology and propaganda is so loud, and so blatant. I think the very least we can do is educate ourselves enough to differentiate between what is right, what is what is truth, and what is falsehood. And that I think, is the first step that you know, that we should be taking. You open the book with a really interesting in there in the introduction, you talk about this letter, that is between your great your great, great, great uncle, and Theodore Herzl who is actually the founding father of modern Zionism,

Rashid Khalidi: 8:23

Moden political zionism is one of his biases, yes.

Samia Aziz: 8:25

It feels a bit surreal to be reading about something that is like very prominent in your own life. And I just wondered if you could just tell us a little bit about that, because it was such a like a brilliant point to start the book because it it just explained so much as to where this all kind of began. Right?

Rashid Khalidi: 8:46

Well, the letter the exchange between this great great great uncle of mine, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, and Theodor Herzl was not, but I thought that it was the right way to start the book because I think it symbolises and crystallises. A lot of things that people really don't want to know or hear about about Palestine. Use of the Al kindI was a prominent figure in Ottoman politics in local and local society. He had been the mayor of Jerusalem. He had served as the deputy for Jerusalem in the first Ottoman parliament that was elected in 1877. He had taught in Germany, actually sorry, in Austria, in Vienna. He knew foreign languages he had studied and then he had taught in Vienna. So he was a worldly cosmopolitan figure, very experienced in Ottoman government and in diplomacy and in politics. And at same time he had been mayor of Jerusalem, he built the first modern road between Jaffa and Jerusalem. He was responsible as mayor for the building. So you know, he knew he knew the country. He also knew Zionism because he had lived in Vienna. And Theodor Herzl was a Viennese journalist so he...I don't know if he actually knew Herzl, but he certainly knew of Herzl. And from materials that he left in the Family Library, we knew that he was reading about Zionism and reading about Judaism. And so he wrote a letter to Hertzel alarmed at what he was seeing in Palestine in 1899, in which he told her so that he understood Zionism. He understood the connection of the Jewish people to Palestine, he understood the persecution of Jews in Europe. I mean, he lived in Europe, he knew how hateful anti anti anti semitism was in Europe, and in Vienna, his day, and in another parts of Europe. But he said there is a people here, already, he raised the problems that Zionism post, and he said, they won't be supplanted, they're not going to allow themselves to be pushed out. And he ends the letter for the sake of God leave Palestine alone. And I thought this was a I mean, first of all, it showed that people were aware that Zionism was a problem. In 1899, this is two years after the first Zionist Congress. This is before extensive Zionist settlement, and colonisation, there were there had been there had been Zionist colonisation. He was aware of it. But it's before it took on the dimensions that it took on after World War One and after the Balfour Declaration after the British took over. The other interesting aspect of the correspondence is Herzl's response, which is completely dismissive. And which raises a concern that Yusuf Diya al Khalidi had never raised, which is that the Zinus is intended to expel the Palestinians. He said, of course, you can be reassured we have no such intention. But he never mentioned that. Obviously, there's something in Herzl's mind that if you go to articles, diaries, you can see that he doesn't tend not so much to expel them to use the expression spirit, the penulis population across the frontiers discreetly. So, you know, he intended to do it, of course, peacefully, but he intended to get rid of the existing population. And I think it's extremely revealing. Both of the fact that people were aware of the of the danger that Zionism constituted to the Palestinians. And that Hertzel was, like most Zionist leaders after him completely dismissive of and if not contemptuous of the Palestinians. His response is a masterpiece of evasion, actually, and dissimulation.

Samia Aziz: 12:17

Yeah. I mean, when I was reading it in your book, it really kind of made me almost chuckle because, you know, now we kind of have this idea that sometimes people will just expose themselves, like they, they tell you something that you didn't even ask of them, they, they let you know what they're planning without you even without you even thinking that that is something that could happen. You is just being asked, and you just leave Palestine alone. And he was like, Yeah, well, of course, we wouldn't expel the Palestinians. It just feels so also actually really shocking, that like to know that it's, it's not an ideology that has sort of morphed over time. And it's not something that has like expanded into what we see as today. It actually, this is what it has always been,

Rashid Khalidi: 13:03

I mean, it had to have been. He writes a book called there, Der Judenstaat, the state of the, of the Jewish state. He writes another book called Altneuland - we're talking about Herzl now, which there are almost no Arabs. So it's imaginary. This was a country which he knew was inhabited by Arabs, he was not. He was not foolish. He was informed he had visited Palestine Hertzel. Actually, he visited Palestine after this letter, but he knew. At the same time, it's perfectly clear that if you talk about establishing a Jewish state, in an overwhelmingly Arab majority land, you're planning to change fundamentally change the demography, demography of that country, it is a necessary component of Zionism. If it was established in a completely empty place, which is at least sort of refers to he says, I mean, in principle, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The problem is where you want to implement it, which is here, and we are here. And, of course, Hertzel was aware of that in his own way, and other Zionist leaders were aware of it in their own ways, and they chose to ally and to ignore that and to obfuscate that and to obscure that and to lie about that. Because otherwise people will said, Well, wait a minute, you're setting up for this incredible confrontation with the existing population. This is not an innocent plan just to save the Jewish people, which, of course, in a certain sense, it was, but it's not innocent, in the sense that you have to have malign intentions for this population. Absolutely. That's what this exchange brings.

Samia Aziz: 14:34

So I mean, over over time, I have read over and I have heard a number of Zionist leaders and thinkers make the claim that there is no such thing as a Palestinian in those in those your words. And I wanted to ask you to reflect on that because for me, I mean, my understanding is that there's there's a belief that the people who are living in Palestine were not considered Palestinian, they were considered a lot of them were Muslim. So they will consider to be Arab and the belief that if you're Muslim, that fundamentally you, you hail from Saudi Arabia. There was not this, not like an acceptance of the Palestinian people were people within that own right. But to me, it doesn't really make sense. But I have heard it and I have read it over time. We have we have heard this, and you just, you're just like, Well, look, they're there. But I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on where exactly that statement comes from.

Rashid Khalidi: 15:37

I mean, it comes out of ignorance. And it comes also out of a desire to pretend that this is the land for the expression, people without a land for land with that. In other words, you're not replacing somebody. There's nobody there. It's a terra nullius. I mean, that's the ideological, but it's also driven by ignorance. There was no Israeli people in at night. Yeah, most protected Zionism until sometime in the mid 20th century. They did not think of themselves in modern nation state terms. Nor did most people in most of the world in the 19th century. And this is certainly true of the Arab world. I mean, it's based of a gross ignorance of how nationalism develops, and what nationalism is, people believe the myths of nationalism, you know, the French have been there since verse in gender acts, and since John levar, no, no. Modern French nationhood is a product of late 18th, late 19th and 20th centuries. So we're all nationalisms, people felt themselves in religious terms, people saw themselves in dynastic terms, you were an ottoman subject, you're a Habsburg subject, you may have had a language. And you may have seen yourself as a Czech, or you may have seen yourself as a Slovak or as a Hungarian, or as an Austrian. That was peoplehood. That did not define your national status, because there was no such thing as a nation state in most parts of the world until the 19th and 20th centuries, that's certainly true in the Middle East. It's also true Zionism dynamism creates the idea of a modern nation state, in the midst of a people who saw themselves essentially in religious terms. So was there a Jewish people? Of course, that was, but was that a people that demanded to live in a nation state under sovereign authority only of Jews? No, no, nobody believed that. And in fact, the idea of speeding up the Messianic return to Zionism, which is designed to the land of Israel, was opposed by the entire religious establishment; rabbinical establishment, it was blasphemy. This was something that would happen in God's time, the return of the Jewish people, it was not something that a hartsel or a Weitzman was supposed to accelerate. And in fact, religious authorities were generally quite anti Zionist until sometime in the mid 20th century among most Jewish communities. So this idea of peoplehood existed, you know, the idea of there's an Arab people, or the idea that the Turks have an ethnic identity, those things existed, of course before, but Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, they existed as places, people in Palestine believe they lived in Palestine, but was their national identity subsumed within Palestine? No, it wasn't to be very frank, it wasn't there was a sense of Palestinian identity. Even before all you have newspapers, like Philistine, which is the paper founded my my, my wife's grandfather, Palestine. So the place the sense of the place, the sense of identity is there, but this as the exclusive national identity, that's a new way. That's a 19th, late 19th, early 20th century idea, actually, among Zionists, as among Palestinians or Lebanese or Jordanians or other peoples in the Arab world, those modern senses of national identity come on top of existing senses of peoplehood. But Egyptian saw themselves as part of a Muslim Ummah, for themselves as part of the Ottoman Empire. They didn't think of themselves as we are Egyptians, and therefore we have to live in an Egyptian nation state that actually only arises in the 1880s. Must have been must Missouri in Egypt for the Egyptians, that's an 18. It almost doesn't exist before. And the same is true, really all over this region, and also for Jews. I mean, the irony is Zionists are claiming Palestine didn't exist. Well, Israel didn't exist either. The idea of Israel as a nation state didn't exist, Israel as a people, yes, it didn't. The idea of Arabs as peoples of other peoples that those existed, but that your political identity should be shaped by that No. Most cases your political identity is shaped either by dynastic or by religious or politics or by both.

Samia Aziz: 19:51

Yeah, that's really interesting. But if, if the concept of a nation state came late into the 20th century, even in the face of the newly accepting what nation states are, for Israelis or Zionists is to turn around and say, even though we know what a nation state is, or we know what political identity is, even in the face of that, there is no such thing as a Palestinian.

Rashid Khalidi: 20:22

They don't look at the history and they don't want to look at it. You have these conferences in Palestine in 1990 1920. You want to say where Palestinians? are, they're putting forward petitions to the League of Nations, or to the peace conference in Paris, or to the British government? Where they assert we're Palestinians. I mean, what do you want more than that? They don't. Ignorance, I say, complete ignorance and malevolence, a desire not to see the other because that's seen as contradicting your existence. I mean, Palestinians have the same problem with Israelis. Well, they're settlers, just of course, they're settlers, but settler colonial projects produce national entities eventually, I live in one I live in the United States. There's an American settler colonial project. I mean, you can hold you know, you can you can walk and chew gum at the same time. A lot of people don't want to understand that.

Samia Aziz: 21:14

Yeah. And actually, like on the on the use of the word like a colonial project, or colonial power or clear your state. I think it's really important that we start to use that more to explain what Israel is, and it made you do it, you talk about it so well, in the book, actually. And I think there's a part of us that feels like but we're kind of living in a post colonial world, in the sense that at least in British Empire is kind of falling apart now. And you know, we've seen decolonization in that sense. But there seems to be a reluctance to use that to use the word brain. But as you describe it in your book, it's not an opinion, it's a fact. And if you can just quickly just explain exactly why we should be calling is right as it is, which is a colonial project

Rashid Khalidi: 22:01

Well, to start, because that's how early Zionists saw it. I mean, to be very blunt. Colonialism only goes into becoming takes on a bad odour after World War Two, with the decolonization project in India, in other parts of the formerly colonised world, as the European powers are forced to release their hold. Until that time, colonialism is a good thing. Colonialism is accepted. And settler colonialism where superior races take over places from inferior races is the way of the world. And Europeans saw themselves as having the right to do things to non Europeans, including taking their place, if necessary, sometimes to rule over them, as in India or Egypt, and sometimes to take their place. Zionism fits into that mind frame. They saw themselves as the original masters of the land, but they saw themselves as coming as Europeans to take over this land from this backward population, and to transform it into what it once had been IE, ancient is and they use that term freely. So one of the major land purchase agencies is called the Jewish colonisation agency. This is not an anti semitic slur by a bunch of anti Israel, bigots. This is what they call themselves. You have you have Hertzel, the founder of modern political Zionism, saying, you know, we will we will create a wall for Europe against the barbarism of Asia. I mean, he believed and thought in colonial terms, and they operated as colonists, they talked about these these places as colonies, they talked about themselves as settlers. So that was the self view of the Zionist project right up to World War Two. Now they had a falling out with the British in 1939. Then they then started posing as anti colonial, we fought the British for four or five years. Of course, they had helped the British fight the Palestinians for 20 years before that, but nevermind, it continued to have that settler colonial name. What is what does that look colonialism? It's replacing one population with another population and taking their land. Okay, you have, you know, regular pith helmet colonialism, where the colonial power comes in and rules over another people, Egypt, India, Nigeria, you're not bringing an English population to replace the Indians. You're not bringing an English population to replace the Nigerians, in Canada, in Australia, in the United States, in the 13 colonies in New Zealand, Algeria, and so on, you are bringing in a European population to replace as much as possible the indigenous population, sometimes completely as almost completely. Canada, United States, Australia, sometimes only to a certain extent, Algeria. And that's Zionism is a settler colonial project. In that sense, it means to in the words of one of the early Zionist leaders Vladimir Jabotinsky, transform Palestine, into the land of Israel, and it does that both demographically and in terms of control of land, etc. Colonialism is all about setting up legal regimes where you can take over the land and squeezing the people into either smaller and smaller spaces in the indigenous population or pushing them up, which is what Israel has been doing systematically ever since 1948. They expelled 750,000 People in the Nakba of 1948, they expel another 250,000 people after the 1967 War, and we see them squeezing the population of Gaza into smaller and smaller parts of Gaza, the Gaza Strip and possibly attempting to expel them, from the Gaza strip into Egypt, there certainly was thinking along those lines, and there still apparently is some thinking along those lines. So the point is, there is that continuity, in terms of demography, and in terms of land, not only before 1948, but also in terms of how Israel treated, the areas that it took over in 1948, there would have been 900 or 950,000 Arabs, in the 78% of Palestine, that the Israeli army ends up in control of 600,000 Jews and 950,000 Arabs, it wouldn't have been a Jewish state, you had to push them out. And they did. So you ended up with about 100-150,000 Arabs and 650,000 Jews by the end of the war. And then you bring in as much immigrants as you can and you change the population. So it's those demographic and land and they stole all the land by the way, almost all everything that was left behind becomes absentee property, the state takes it over custodian of absentee property. And the existing Palestinian communities are squeezed into smaller and smaller space and much of their land is appropriate. So that's what that's how settler colonialism works and how it worked in the western plains in the United States. It's out worked in Australia, legal stratagems, whereby control of land is transferred from the native population to the to the settler population, demographic pressure to decrease the indigenous population and increase the settler. I mean, if you don't see Israel in that way, you're not seeing reality, in my view. This is not a - what's the word- a theory. It is the only possible explanation in my view of the whole process of settler colonialism. Zionism is different than other settler colonial projects for multiple reasons. First of all, it has its own independent national ambitions. You know, most settlers come as an extension of the population and the sovereignty of the mother country. French settlers don't go to Algeria to set up a French Algeria, they go to Algeria to set up to extend France as and the same with English settlers. They came to North America for that reason. We are here on behalf of the crown. And we are here as an extension of the population of the United of Britain, Great Britain. And that's true with all colonial ventures except Zionism. Zionism had its own independent national ambitions. So it's quite different. The means in the method or settler colonial, the ambitions are quite different. I mean, they're in a transactional, transactional relationship with the imperial power, which is Britain, whereas most colonial populations are there as just they're sent out by the by the by the mother country, and the mother country protects them and extended sovereignty through them. So it's fundamentally different in many, many ways. There's also the biblical connection. I mean, there is a connection between the Jewish people and Judaism and Palestine historic connection and Judaism begins there. There have always been Jews living there. So it is obviously fundamentally different than say South Africa are different than say, Algeria in multiple respects, even though it shares some of the common common characteristics, demographic, land, expropriation, and mentalities.

Samia Aziz: 28:50

Yeah. I mean, so, the last point you just made about it being different because it's not like an extension of an existing nation that wants to like expand territorially, which is true, because there is no beginning country of Judaism.

Rashid Khalidi: 29:13

Yeah, there's no mother country.

Samia Aziz: 29:14

But obviously, like, there has been historically - which is why the Balfour Declaration was even signed in 1917 - support and sympathy for a Jewish national home, right, like a Jewish state. And this is obviously like, way before the Second World War in the Holocaust. Right. So and I know a lot of people sort of catch on to the Holocaust as being a reason or like, you know, this is why the Jewish just just exactly what we're talking about, like 40-50 years before that, right. 30-40 years before that. What exactly why, yeah, why exactly. Was there so much support for a Jewish state back in the early 20th century?

Rashid Khalidi: 29:58

Good question. First of all, there is no mother country. That's correct. But there is a metropole, or in colonial Endeavour has to have a metropole. The metropole is the United States and Western Europe is now has always been. And that's why Herzl shops the idea around to the German Kaiser, and to the French, and to the Ottoman Sultan, he needed a backer, a sponsor, a metropole for this colonial project. Finally, Weissman finds that metropole, in England, in the British government, during World War One. Why is there sympathy for this idea in Britain? Two basic reasons that really important one is strategic. But the other sort of other important subsidiary reason is religious. In Britain, among British Protestants, there was a awakening, it's called, there was a religious revival in the early 19th century, which you see to this day among Christian evangelicals in the West, who saw the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel as a duty incumbent on Christians in order to speed the coming of the Messiah. And you know, people like Lord Shaftesbury and other prominent English figures in the early 19th century, are advocating this idea. So the idea has a religious if you want route in Christian in a certain modern interpretation of by Protestants, evangelical Protestants have their own religion has nothing to do with Judaism. It has nothing to do with Jews, actually, they are an instrument to bring the Messiah close.

Samia Aziz: 31:31

We have actually, actually in that, in that sort of religious viewpoint, that that is actually the downfall of the Jewish people anyway, and that they will be sent to Hell.

Rashid Khalidi: 31:44

Yeah, they will either accept Christianity or burn in hell. Yes. That's not the point. Let's get let's get to the other most important reason, the most important reason for the British was strategic. All before the Balfour Declaration, at least a decade before the British had become concerned with two things, two strategic factors, the vulnerability of Egypt to attack from the east. Why is Egypt important? It has the Suez Canal, it's the connection with the Indian Empire, and Britain's East African and Southeast Asian empires. It's absolutely vital to the British Empire. And they, their their become aware from 1905 1906 of the vulnerability of Egypt, to potential attack from the east, and they must protect the Eastern frontier of Egypt. In fact, Egypt was attacked from the eastern World War One, they were right, they did need a buffer. And so for them Palestine is a necessary buffer. So that's the first factor. The second strategic factor is they become aware in 1909, at 10, of the fact that the shortest land connection between the Gulf and the Mediterranean runs through Palestine. In other words, the talk in that period is of a railway. And later on, when the British take control of that area, that's what they're doing in the Sykes picot agreement. If you look at the site speaker agreements of World War One, there's this stretch of land running across from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, the British want to control that from much, much earlier. for strategic reasons, they control the shortest sea routes of the Suez Canal, they want to control the shortest land route between the Mediterranean and the Gulf, and therefore, between their possessions in Europe and the Middle East, and between their possessions in Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Africa. Eventually, they build a pipeline, air bases, and a road running from Haifa, across the muscle to execute that vision. And they control that entire area through Jordan and through Iraq and Palestine between the wars. So those are the real reasons why they see Palestine in the words and the Zionist project in the words of an English colonial official, as a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of hostile Arabs. So for them, it's an anchor for their strategic needs. And it's an outpost, a settler colonial outpost in the middle of a hostile population, like the Ulster plantation was for the kings of England and for the later on British case. And that's, I mean, this is Ronald Storrs is the military governor of Jerusalem. He puts that in his memoirs. That's his term. It's a high term.

Samia Aziz: 34:23

Yeah. So 1917 was kind of like obviously Britain. So Britain that way. The first shock was that Britain kind of took control over Palestine, and then decided that they were going to allow or permit Jewish populations to move into Palestine encouraged permit. Absolutely, yeah. And then obviously Britain didn't stay in control. Britain left in 1948. My question to you is when they left in 1948, what was that like, because I know Britain, leaving its colonies has been absolutely chaotic and bloody, and ill thought out. And if you could just talk us through what exactly happened in in Palestine when they left.

Rashid Khalidi: 35:17

Ironically, when the British leave many places they leave chaos and partition India, obviously, Cyprus, obviously, Ireland, obviously and Palestine, obviously, in many cases, these are partitions that they themselves carry out. In the case of Palestine, it was the United Nations that carried, the British decided to leave Palestine in 1948, because there's been a rebellion against them by the Arabs in the late 30s. And then there was a rebellion against them by the Zionists after 1939. And they've, they're about to lose their Indian empire in 1947. And they decided they're leaving India, by this point, they cannot maintain control of India. And that was the logic behind Palestine in the first instance, to control the route to India, you don't have India, the route to India has a different meaning. And it had no capability to sustain their position, they're given their diminished post World War Two position economically, militarily, and so on. So they give it up for strategic reasons for economic reasons, because they're war weary. And they handed over the United Nations, the United Nations partition is that country, which at that point has an absolute Arab majority of over 65%. And they give most of that country to the Jewish minority for a Jewish. So, a population which believed that under the United Nations Charter, and under the covenant of the League of Nations, they had a right to self determination is being called told no, you do not have the right of self determination in your country. Indeed, a minority in your country is going to get most of it. And the Palestinians obviously rejected that, for understandable reasons, and that are overwhelmed by the power, the design of the military power that the Zinus had built up with the aid of the British starting in the 1930s, and which they turned against the British briefly, but which they then use with full force against the Palestinians. And the result of that was the Nakba, the flight portion of three quarters of a million Palestinians from from Palestine before and during the 1948 War.

Samia Aziz: 37:19

Yeah, so historically, obviously, or how did the Palestinians react to one the in sort of 1917 when you know, Jewish people were being encouraged to move into Palestine. But also then later on, as these were formalised, and they were people forced out? How over time have Palestinians reacted and resisted?

Rashid Khalidi: 37:42

They reacted against the British and the Zionists in the interwar period, first of all, mainly by boycotts and demonstrations and petitions and, and processions and letters and delegations, completely fruitlessly and eventually, they rose up in revolt. But the British suppress that revolt mercilessly, as the British always did everywhere, killing wounding, imprisoning, and exiling between 14 and 17% of the Palestinian adult male population that crushed the Palestinians, their leadership was dispersed, either exiled or killed or imprisoned, and they never really recovered from the British crashing of their 36 to 39 revolt. They were therefore in a very weak position. When partition took place. conflict began between the two communities and eventually the Zionist overwhelmed them. At that point, hundreds of 1000s of refugees have been driven out by May 15 1948. When the mandate end left in the State of Israel was established. The city of Jaffa had fallen to the Zionists and people had been expelled 70,000 people, the city of Haifa had fallen to the Zionists and 60 or 70,000 people had been expelled. Other cities had fallen and many, many 10s of villages. And so you already had two or 300,000 people, probably more than 300,000 people who had been expelled arriving panellists and destitute in capitals. And the Arab countries responded and sent troops into Palestine who were eventually defeated by Israel. And so you ended up having a refugee population of three quarters of a million scattered around either host countries like Lebanon, Syria and Jordan North living inside Palestine. Some of them became the Gaza Strip, and some of them in the West Bank. And they responded to that eventually by a revival of their national movement, but much later in the 1960s and 70s.

Samia Aziz: 39:31

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, one of the sort of arguments or, or one of the things that we get told a lot is that, you know, like, Palestine has not been historically open to peace talks and agreements, and as you've been involved in peace talks over the years as well, and I wondered if you could just shed light on actually what, what has been the case historically?

Rashid Khalidi: 39:55

Well, the expression we are often you often hear is the Palestinians rejected generous offers and walked away and didn't want peace, which is absolute balderdash. It's complete and utter nonsense if by a generous offer, you mean the offer of a sovereign, independent, viable contiguous Palestinian state that was never on offer. Now the United Nations offered an Arab state, which was less than half of the country, the Jewish state under partition would have been 55% of the country, the Arab state would have been 42%. And then there would have been an international corpus, separate them in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. But in the talks with the Israelis, which the Palestinians did engage in, from 1991, right up to the early 2000s. There were several Israeli offers made, were they generous offers? Well, Robin said, the Palestinians will get we will offer the Palestinians less than a state. This is his last speech before the Israeli Knesset in 1990 95. Just before he was assassinated, the Palestinians will get less than the state, and we will control the Jordan River Valley, which means we will, Israel will maintain control over that. So no sovereignty, no statehood. I mean, you'd have a Bantu stand, you'd have an autonomous zone, you could call it whatever you want, under Israeli security control, and under Israeli effective Israeli sovereignty. So that was not a generous offer. From an Israeli point of view, it might have been a generous offer. But then when the Palestinian point of view were sovereign people, we should have sovereignty, we are the equal to, you know, we're gonna get a subordinate status to you. Well, that's what the Palestinians already had. And that's all that Israel ever offered. In fact, later on, there were negotiations at Camp David in 2000, another Israeli prime minister, made an offer, which again, on various issues was not generous there. Each of these representative will move forward of the Israeli position, but to but to categorise it as generous is an arrogant and condescending view of the Palestinians, the Palestinians should accept whatever they are lucky enough to get an inferior people, we will have complete sovereignty, and you can have reduced salary. Well, that's not generous, sorry, generous will be in equal the country on a basis of equality.

Samia Aziz: 42:16

Absolutely. And I just wondered if we could take a moment and just to talk very briefly, about the labelling of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. And we don't need to go into the history of like, how it's evolved over time. But I'm actually really intrigued by the use of the word because it seems like and I think you do you do you? I mean, I've heard you speak about this before as well, like, we're very quick to label groups as terrorist organisations or, you know, with terrorist agendas, right, but we don't do the same. We don't apply it to states.

Rashid Khalidi: 42:48

I mean, that's what I think sums it up, you know, if the targeting of civilians is categorised as terrorism, then both state actors and non state actors have to have to operate according to the same standard. I personally would use terms like violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I think you can argue, if you accept international humanitarian law, you don't have to. And it didn't exist before World War Two. I mean, it's created as in response to World War Two. So what happened in World War Two, maybe world war crimes, Hiroshima, Dresden, that war didn't exist. It's created in response to the horrors of over the Holocaust and, and some of the other things. It's the term terrorist is a loaded ideological term, essentially used by states to describe their non state actors, violations of international humanitarian law, which involves any attack on a noncombatant noncombatant and someone who's not carrying a weapon. And I would argue that those are the terms. That's the terminology that should be used violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes. And that case, you apply the same standard to both what Israel does and what Hamas does. And I think you can see targeting of civilians on the one side, and you can see target and civilians on the other side, but you have to use the same standard. If this is terrorism, then that's that, and I think it's an ideological term used only by one side, to diminish and to - what's the word- demonise its opponents. I mean, is the bombing of a Shuja'ee was 2000 pound bombs that kills 100 people in order to kill one palace, one one member of Hamas? Disproportionate which is the which is the standard in terms of international humanitarian law? Obviously, it is. Well, that's a war crime is the killing of Israeli civilians, with no military purpose visible would that would also be a war crime. If you accept international humanitarian law, you don't have to. I personally do. I think that that is a standard that to which both states and non state actors should be held. That's my own personal view.

Samia Aziz: 44:58

Yeah, absolutely. On the issue of the violation of international humanitarian law, we're seeing so much of it. At the moment in Gaza, we're seeing the use of white phosphorus. We're seeing the targeting of civilian locations and hospitals and schools. And it feels an honour obviously, like it is it is being labelled by the UN and other agencies, almost in those times, and often in those times as well. But it feels right now, like, it's just words being thrown around. Yeah, unfortunately, that's true, unfortunately, what do you think? Do you think that there will be a time that it's not too far away, that like this might be addressed? Because I don't want to, like historically, I don't want to think like, oh, like 100 years from now. There will be like a retrospective, like trial of Israel, what we're going to do 100 years from now, when everything's been able to obliterate it. Do you think, what do you think in terms of like the short to medium term in terms of like hope?

Rashid Khalidi: 45:58

I mean, you've asked me a question. I can't answer I mean, a story and I can't predict the future and I won't have the balance of power globally, today is such as the United States can prevent certain things and can't prevent certain things in the United States is completely aligned with Israel on this and many other things. So the possibilities are limited. However, there are there is an international criminal court and there's an International Court of Justice, and they're not entirely subject to the influence of the United States and Israel. I think you would need a much more forceful prosecution than has been the case up till now because of the feebleness of the Palestinian Authority. Its complete fecklessness, its subordination to and control by Israel to a very large extent, those are all reasons why this hasn't been pursued as pursued as it should be. And also, because I don't think an international consensus is developed yet around if it were to develop, and were to isolate the United States as I think it could. I think things might change, but that depends on a lot of ifs.

Samia Aziz: 46:56

Yeah, thank you so much for your time, Rashid.

Rashid Khalidi: 46:59

You're very Thank you very well. Okay. Thank you.

Samia Aziz: 47:02

Thank you. Rashid. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been so interesting, and also really hopeful as well. And I really hope that people pick up your book to learn more and really understand the 100 years war on Palestine and that I really hope we see an end to it.