A paradigm shift in the hundred years’ war on Palestine?
Palestinians take control of an Israeli tank after crossing the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip on 7 October 2023
Rashid Khalidi’s talk delivered on 16 November 2023, at Columbia University:
Six weeks ago, this talk would have had a different title and offered somewhat different content. I would then have given the historical background to the present moment via the framework laid out in my book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance. This book explains events in Palestine since 1917 as resulting from a war waged on the indigenous Palestinian population over different stages by a variety of great powers that were allied with the Zionist movement – a movement that was both settler colonialist and nationalist. These powers were later allied with the Israeli nation-state that grew out of that movement.
I still see that framework as the best way to explain the history of the past century and more. Thus, this is not an age-old conflict between Arabs and Jews, and it has not been going on since time immemorial. It is an entirely recent product of the irruption of imperialism into the Middle East and of the rise of modern nation-state nationalisms, both Arab and Jewish. Moreover, this war was not just one between Zionism and Israel on one side and the Palestinians on the other, with the latter occasionally supported by Arab and other actors. It always involved the massive intervention of the great powers on the side of the Zionist movement and Israel: Britain until World War II, and the U.S. and other powers since then. These great powers were never neutral, were never honest brokers, but were and are active parties to this war on the side of Israel. Given these facts, far from there being an equivalence between the two sides, this has been a war between colonizer and colonized, between oppressor and oppressed, and there has always been a vast imbalance between the two sides in Palestine in favor of Zionism and Israel.
However, while I think that framework has been reinforced over the past six weeks by the muscular level of U.S. participation and the relatively limited nature of that of Iran and the Arab states, we may be seeing a paradigm shift because of new elements that have appeared since October 7. What I am about to put forward is highly tentative. As a historian, I am reluctant to predict how events might develop. But, in light of the course of this war over more than a century, it is clear that new elements have appeared that may possibly indicate that this war is entering a new phase. I want to single out five of these elements.
I. The first is the Israel death toll of over 1,200, the third highest in the country’s history. Over 800 Israeli civilians were killed, as well as over 350 army and police personnel, all in the space of little more than a single day. 64 Israeli soldiers have been killed since then. This is probably the highest Israeli civilian death toll ever [719 civilians were killed in the second intifada over four years; most of Israel’s 6,000 killed in 1948, its highest death toll in any war, were soldiers]. Israeli military and police casualties, combined with those incurred since the ground invasion started several weeks ago, have already gone well over 400. This will soon approach the number of Israeli soldiers killed during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon [when over 450 were killed].
The current Palestinian death toll of over 11,500, like that of Israel, is not yet a final one, and will be increased by high rates of preventable death from disease, infant mortality, and other causes, as well as the probable addition of most of the 2,700 people who are missing.