About the Author

Distinguished historian Dr. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and coeditor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. His writing has appeared in major publications and he has been a guest on national public affairs shows. He is the author of seven books about the Middle East, among them the award-winning Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage.

Khalidi’s new book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, is the first general account of the Palestinians’ century-long struggle told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Born in New York City, Dr. Khalidi is a Palestinian American descended from a prominent Jerusalem family. This latest work draws on archival materials and the reports of generations of family members – judges, scholars, diplomats, and writers, including himself – who were present at key events in the long war on Palestinians.

About the Book

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, former mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to transform Palestine into a Jewish state, wrote a letter aimed at Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. He told Herzl that Palestine had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement, and warned of the perils ahead. “In the name of God, let Palestine be left alone,” he wrote. With this letter and Herzl’s patronizing reply, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, Rashid Khalidi, begins his story of the struggle for the land of Palestine that has continued for over a century.

Accepted interpretations of the Palestine/Israel conflict often describe the struggle as a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. Khalidi demonstrates that the war has always been colonial in nature, a war waged against the native population first by the Zionist movement and then by Israel, all the while backed by Britain and the United States. Khalidi highlights crucial episodes in this long colonial campaign, from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from the war of 1967 to Israel’s recent assaults on Gaza. This background is essential for a true understanding of the struggle for Palestine today, as the Israeli government talks of expanding territorial annexations and Israel faces the choice of apartheid or a single, bi-national state.

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In this important and original history, Khalidi points to the resistance of Palestinians in the face of the heaviest of odds and offers an illuminating new view of an ongoing conflict – one that has reached a new defining moment.

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