Almost 20 years ago, I worked for a company that developed history curriculum for K-12 students. I came onboard at the time they were finishing up a unit entitled The Modern Middle East. The bulk of the curriculum had been developed and finalized, but I was given the task of working with the lead teacher on a lesson concerning different groups’ perspectives on the Arab-Israel conflict. More specifically, what each group advocated for in terms of a territorial “solution” to the conflict. Looking back on it now, I am a little ashamed of that lesson. Having students represent the different groups’ land division proposals now seems disrespectful, though I know the teacher developers were just trying to find a way to engage high school students around a very complex and overwhelming topic.
I recalled this time in my life as I read Rashid Khalidi’s brilliant book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonization and Resistance, 1917-2017. I had long wanted to read a history book about the conflict, but some works are very dense and hard for me to get a handle on. Khalidi’s book was extremely accessible without sparing any of the complexity. In light of the current ethnic cleansing/genocide of the Palestinian people, this book is more important than ever. (It was published in 2020, before the most recent conflict.)
Khalidi divides the book into chapters that cover each of the wars in chronological order. He begins by talking about the roots of the colonial Zionist project in the late 1800s, and then dives into the first declaration of war from 1917-1939. The last period of war he covers takes place from 2000-2014. In each chapter, he goes into great detail about each stage of Jewish settlement and Palestinian resistance. The displacement, oppression, and disproportionate violence the indigenous Arabic population faced (and continues to face) is outlined in stark terms.
Khalidi does an amazing job of bringing together all the history and perspectives, including critiques of how Palestinian and other Arab leaders handled certain aspects of the struggle. A great deal of the book, though, lays out the suffering of the Palestinian people. The horror and violence of these endless wars, and also the United States’ role in the violence, made this a hard book to read. I felt a mixture of heartbreak and anger the further along I got in the book. I highly recommend this book if you want to educate yourself on the history and issues.
In 2002, I went to the Dodge Poetry Festival. Among the poets featured was the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali. He recited his poetry in his native language, which was then translated by Peter Cole, who worked closely with Taha in publishing one of his poetry books. Lines of his poetry were graffitied around Israel in the past–he was truly a poet of the people. Here is the end of one of his poems, that seems apt:
After we die,
and the weary heart
has lowered its final eyelid
on all that we’ve done,
and on all that we’ve longed for,
on all that we dreamt of,
all we’ve desired
or felt,
hate will be
the first thing
to putrefy
within us.