Description:

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone." Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at...

Review

Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is a singular achievement: a rigorous, deeply researched history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict told from a Palestinian perspective, woven through with the author's own family story spanning more than a century. Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, draws on untapped archival materials, family papers, personal memoirs, and first-person experiences to construct a narrative that reframes the conflict as fundamentally colonial in nature — a war waged against an indigenous population with the indispensable backing of great powers.

The book is structured around six pivotal "declarations of war" against the Palestinians: the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate era; the 1947-48 UN partition and the Nakba; the 1967 war and Security Council Resolution 242; the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; the Oslo Accords period from 1987-1995; and the era of the Gaza wars from 2000-2014. Each chapter anchors the macro-historical analysis in intimate family experience. We meet Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, the author's great-great-uncle and mayor of Jerusalem, who wrote a prescient warning to Theodor Herzl in 1899. We follow Dr. Husayn al-Khalidi, the author's uncle, exiled to the Seychelles by the British. We accompany the author himself through the 1982 siege of Beirut as Israeli bombs fall near his pregnant wife and young daughters.

What distinguishes this book from the vast literature on the conflict is Khalidi's insistence on placing Palestinian agency, experience, and perspective at the center of the narrative. He demonstrates convincingly that Palestinian national identity emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the same forces that produced other modern nationalisms, not merely as a reaction to Zionism. The Arabic press, memoirs, congress proceedings, and political organizing he documents paint a picture of a vibrant society repeatedly denied recognition by outside powers. The Balfour Declaration's notorious reference to the Arab majority as "existing non-Jewish communities" set the template for a century of erasure.

Khalidi is no hagiographer of the Palestinian leadership. He is withering about the failures of the traditional notable class, the PLO's strategic blunders, the catastrophe of the Oslo negotiations (in which he himself participated as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation), and the disastrous turn to suicide bombings during the Second Intifada. His account of the Oslo process is particularly devastating: the PLO envoys who negotiated in secret were "simply out of their league," and the resulting accords effectively enlisted the Palestinian Authority as a "subcontractor for the occupation." His critique of Yasser Arafat is measured but damning — a leader whose legendary maneuvering skills were useless against Israeli negotiators who "stuck grimly to their guns."

The book's treatment of the role of external powers is relentless. From Balfour's cynical 1919 memo acknowledging that the Allies had not made "a single statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong," through Alexander Haig's green light for the 1982 invasion, to the bipartisan American enabling of the wars on Gaza, Khalidi traces how great-power complicity has been the constant through every phase of the conflict. The chapter on the 1982 siege of Beirut, which Khalidi experienced firsthand, is the book's most harrowing section, culminating in the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the exposure of worthless American security guarantees.

Yet this is ultimately a work of measured historical scholarship, not polemic. Khalidi acknowledges that two peoples now exist in Palestine and that both possess national rights, however asymmetric their origins. His conclusion calls for a resolution grounded in absolute equality of rights while recognizing the formidable obstacles to achieving it. The book is a corrective of the first order — essential reading for anyone seeking to understand a conflict that remains inadequately grasped in the West.

Reviewed 2026-03-28

Notable Quotes

In the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.

Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi's 1899 letter to Theodor Herzl, warning of the consequences of the Zionist program for Palestine's indigenous inhabitants — colonialism, Zionism origins, Palestinian prescience, dispossession

We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country.

Herzl's 1895 diary entry revealing his early thinking about the colonization of Palestine and the removal of its indigenous population — Zionism, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, population transfer

The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the 'independent nation' of Palestine than in that of the 'independent nation' of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.

Lord Balfour's confidential 1919 memo to the British cabinet, candidly acknowledging the bad faith underlying Allied policy in Palestine — British imperialism, Balfour Declaration, colonial hypocrisy, self-determination

Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

Balfour's 1919 memo dismissing the Arab population of Palestine, whose 'desires and prejudices' he weighed against Zionist aspirations — colonialism, erasure, inequality, British policy

Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky's remarkably candid 1923 essay acknowledging the colonial nature of the Zionist project and the inevitability of Palestinian resistance — colonial honesty, Palestinian resistance, iron wall, settler-colonialism

Zionist colonisation can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population -- behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

Jabotinsky's 'iron wall' doctrine, which argued that only overwhelming force could overcome indigenous resistance to colonization — iron wall, military force, colonialism, Jabotinsky

There are plenty of cases of war being begun before it is declared.

Arthur James Balfour, quoted as the epigraph to Chapter 1, capturing the undeclared nature of the war launched against Palestinians by the 1917 declaration — Balfour Declaration, war, colonial aggression

A land without a people for a people without a land.

The slogan used by Christian supporters of Jewish settlement in Palestine and early Zionists, treating Palestine as terra nullius despite its substantial Arab population — erasure, colonialism, denial of Palestinian existence, Zionist mythology

Strangers in Our Own Land: Our Drowsiness and Their Alertness.

Title of a 1929 editorial by 'Isa al-'Isa in the newspaper Filastin, warning Palestinians that they were being outpaced by Zionist organization and settlement — Palestinian identity, early warning, journalism, dispossession

Don't you understand? The Americans are giving the Israelis a little more time.

The author's father, Ismail al-Khalidi, explaining why Ambassador Goldberg sought an adjournment during the June 1967 UN Security Council debate, as Israel continued its advance into Syria — US-Israel alliance, 1967 war, UN diplomacy, complicity

There were no such thing as Palestinians. They did not exist.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's 1969 declaration, which Khalidi describes as taking 'the negation characteristic of a settler-colonial project to the highest possible level' — denial of existence, erasure, settler-colonialism, negation

I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.

President Harry Truman's blunt 1945 explanation to American diplomats who warned that pro-Zionist policy would harm US interests in the Arab world — US domestic politics, Zionist influence, realpolitik, Palestinian invisibility

Haig was lying. Sharon was lying.

US envoy Philip Habib's assessment, shared with Khalidi, of the deception by both Israel and the US Secretary of State that underpinned the 1982 invasion of Lebanon — 1982 war, deception, US complicity, Lebanon

So we'll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them.

Defense Minister Ariel Sharon telling US Ambassador Morris Draper about supposed Palestinian 'terrorists' in Beirut, even as LF militias were carrying out the Sabra and Shatila massacre — Sabra and Shatila, Sharon, brutality, US diplomacy failure

The use of force, including beatings, undoubtedly has brought about the impact we wanted -- strengthening the population's fear of the Israel Defense Forces.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin's 'break bones' policy during the First Intifada, acknowledging the deliberate use of brutality to suppress Palestinian resistance — First Intifada, state violence, occupation, Rabin

This is a unique colonialism that we've been subjected to where they have no use for us. The best Palestinian for them is either dead or gone. It's not that they want to exploit us, or that they need to keep us there in the way of Algeria or South Africa as a subclass.

Edward Said's observation on the distinctive character of Palestinian colonization, where the settlers sought not to exploit the natives but to replace them entirely — settler-colonialism, elimination, Edward Said, dispossession

Yasser Arafat has a choice. He can be a Lahd or a super-Lahd.

Major General Shlomo Gazit, Rabin's collaborator, comparing Arafat to Antoine Lahd, the Lebanese commander of Israel's proxy militia, revealing the true purpose of the Oslo security arrangements — Oslo Accords, subcontracting occupation, PA security cooperation, colonialism

An instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.

Edward Said's characterization of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, which Khalidi endorsed after seeing how the PLO's Oslo negotiators had failed to secure adequate terms — Oslo Accords, Palestinian surrender, Edward Said, negotiations failure

What happened in the Dahiya quarter will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.

Major General Gadi Eizenkot articulating the Dahiya doctrine in 2008, which became the blueprint for Israel's devastating attacks on Gaza — Dahiya doctrine, disproportionate force, war crimes, Gaza

The hope is that they over time can become capable of governing.

Jared Kushner's 2019 remarks about Palestinians, drawing on what Khalidi identifies as the 'classic colonialist lexicon' to cast doubt on Palestinian self-governance — Trump era, colonialism, condescension, deal of the century

He does not have the right of self-determination because he is not the proprietor of the land. I want him as a resident because of my honesty, as he was born here, he lives here, and I would never tell him to leave. I regret to say it, but they suffer from one major defect: they were not born Jews.

Likud Knesset member Miki Zohar connecting land rights exclusively to Jewish peoplehood, embodying what Khalidi identifies as Zionism's 'blood and soil' Central European nationalism — Jewish supremacy, inequality, nation-state law, discrimination

When exactly did the Israelis understand that their cruelty towards the non-Jews in their grip in the Occupied Territories, their determination to break the Palestinians' hopes for independence, or their refusal to offer asylum to African refugees began to undermine the moral legitimacy of their national existence?

Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell's question, imagining how future scholars will judge Israel's treatment of Palestinians — moral legitimacy, Israeli self-criticism, occupation, equality

The Palestinian people, whose resistance to colonialism has involved an uphill battle, should not expect quick results. They have shown unusual patience, perseverance, and steadfastness in defending their rights, which is the main reason that their cause is still alive.

Khalidi's conclusion, calling for a long-term reassessment of strategy while acknowledging Palestinian resilience over a century of struggle — resilience, sumud, long-term strategy, Palestinian resistance

A central paradox of 1967 is that by defeating the Arabs, Israel resurrected the Palestinians.

Khalidi quoting a seasoned observer on how Israel's crushing 1967 military victory paradoxically sparked a revival of Palestinian national consciousness and resistance — 1967 war, paradox, Palestinian revival, national consciousness