IAS Book Launch: The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

The last century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been one of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood, and denial of history. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi’s powerful response. Drawing on his family’s experiences and archives, and those of other Palestinians, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms.

Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi shows how the nascent nationalism of the Palestinians confronted a project to take over their homeland, which early Zionists freely admitted was a colonial one. This marked the first phase of an ongoing war, supported by the great powers, directed against the Palestinians. The different stages of this conflict resulted in the Nakba of 1948 — the Palestinian term for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of them from their homeland —the Six Day War, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the two intifadas, and successive attacks on the Gaza Strip.

In this landmark history that offers an original, illuminating and personal view of the conflict, Professor Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets, and resistance leaders with his own memories as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 siege. His analysis of Palestinian resistance to colonisation exposes the decisions and movements that secured victories as well as the mistakes and miscalculations that contributed to defeats.

This book is published by Profile Books.

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