The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017

In Chapter 2, Khalidi examines the second declaration of war on Palestinians: the 1947-8 Nakba. Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic. This conflict resulted in the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.

Several key events led up to this conflict. First, David Ben-Gurion, a dominant political figure in the Zionist movement (who would go on to help found the modern state of Israel and serve as the country’s first prime minister), called for turning the entire territory of Palestine into a Jewish nation-state. He made this proclamation in 1942 at a conference in New York City, which was then the city with the largest Jewish population. American politicians supported this proclamation, in part because of the destruction of the European Jewish population by Nazis during the Holocaust.

The formation of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry of 1946 represents the second event. British and US governments created this committee to examine the situation of Jewish survivors in Europe after the Holocaust and the challenges associated with their resettlement in Palestine. American and Zionist leaders wanted the Jewish people to emigrate immediately to Palestine. Palestinian leaders, including the historian Albert Hourani, argued that the creation of a Jewish state would commit an injustice against the Palestinians by removing them from their homeland and sow discontent throughout the Arab world. British government officials sided with the Palestinians. Khalidi notes that “the committee ignored the case made by the Arabs and the preference of the British government” (62).

The third event is the formation of the UN Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) in 1947. This United Nation’s proposal recommended the establishment of two separate states for the Jewish and Arab communities at the end of the British mandate. This partition was more favorable to the Jewish community since it allocated more land to them. The Jewish community still represented the minority population in Palestine. The UN adopted this proposal as Resolution 181.

These three events led to the unfolding of the Nakba. During the Nakba, Israel became a country. There were two stages to the Nakba. In the first stage, the Israeli military conquered and depopulated Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem, and other large Arab urban centers in Palestine. The Israelis called this operation Plan Dalet. The operation removed 300,000 Palestinians from their home. The second stage occurred when the Israeli army defeated the Arab armies. After this defeat, the Israelis expelled 400,000 more Palestinians from their homes. These Palestinians became refugees in the surrounding countries (Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon) and other parts of Palestine still under Arab control (the West Bank and Gaza).

The Nakba transformed the Middle East. Palestinian refugees taxed the Arab countries’ limited relief capabilities, destabilizing these already weak, newly independent countries. The Arab states’ inability to protect Palestine during the Nakba highlighted their own weaknesses against the Israeli military. Arab leaders hesitated to take further action in support of the Palestinian cause because of this humiliation.

Palestinians continue to be expelled from their homeland, leading Khalidi to argue that “the Nakba can be understood as an ongoing process” (75). He emphasizes that the Nakba was inevitable since “there would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception” (76). Khalidi argues that the Israelis committed ethnic cleansing during the Nakba. The Nakba had profound impacts on Palestinian society, serving as a collective trauma still reverberating today.

Khalidi also documents how various actors were complicit in the Zionist movement’s (and then Israeli government) goal to deny Palestinians a nation-state. Arab leaders, most notably King Abdullah of Transjordan (which became modern-day Jordan), represent one example. King Abdullah, who was an ally of Great Britain, wanted Palestinians to come under Jordanian control at the end of World War II. He annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1949, granting Jordanian citizenship to Palestinians living in these territories. During the Nakba, King Abdullah also refused to send reinforcements to the Palestinians, which resulted in Israel conquering Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Documents also demonstrate that King Abdullah held secret negotiations with Israel. A Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah in 1951 as he was leaving a mosque in Jerusalem as a result of his “fealty to the hated British colonial masters, his opposition to Palestinian independence, and his widely rumored contacts with the Zionists” (84).

Khalidi tells a story about his father, Ismail Raghib al-Khalidi. Ismail was going to Amman to speak with King Abdullah at the behest of the Arab American Institute. The Institute’s goal was to raise awareness about the Palestinian cause. Ismail served as the Institute’s secretary. His brother, Dr. Husayn Fakhri al-Khalidi (discussed in Chapter 1), knew that Ismail was going to Amman. Dr. Husayn tasked Ismail with telling King Abdullah that the Palestinians did not want to be part of Jordan. King Abdullah reacted poorly to this message. Khalidi recounts later in the chapter that his father, “who had experienced Abdullah’s attitude firsthand, refused to accept a Jordanian passport after his British Palestine Mandate passport expired” (84).

After the Nakba, some Palestinians tried to take up arms against Israel, leading to the emergence of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement in 1959 (which today is known as Fatah). Khalidi underscores that Palestinians refused to comply with their displacement and dispossession. However, Khalidi also argues that Palestinian leadership played a role in crippling the Palestinian national movement. He focuses on the establishment of the Arab Office by several Arab states, whose goal was to make the Palestinian cause better known around the world. Khalidi expresses great respect for the men involved in the Arab Office. This group put together Albert Hourani’s testimony to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Unfortunately, infighting hampered the group. They were unable to raise awareness for a Palestinian nation-state.