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

The focus of Chapter 3 is the 1967 Six-Day War, or the third declaration of war against the Palestinians. Prior to the start of the war, Palestinian militant groups based in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan attacked Israel. In response, Israel attacked several targets in these Arab countries, killing civilians. Several Arab nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, formed an alliance with intentions of attacking Israel. Israel pre-emptively responded, launching the Six-Day War with American approval. Israel decimated Arab defenses and captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. In November 1967, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which called for the “withdrawal [by Israel] from territories occupied’ in the 1967 war” (105). Most of this resolution remains unimplemented. Palestinians still fight for control of these territories (apart from the Sinai Peninsula which was returned to Egypt in 1979).

The document outlining Resolution 242 did not refer to Palestinians specifically but instead to a refugee problem. Resolution 242 enabled extreme Israeli leaders to perpetuate the myth that Palestinians do not exist and the only issue is Arab countries’ refusal to accept Israel as a sovereign nation-state. Resolution 242 also took away more territory from Palestinians, expanding Israel’s borders. Khalidi suggests that this resolution led to a new era of erasure and myth-making in regards to the conflict.

While the situation for Palestinians was pretty dire in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Khalidi points out one silver-lining: the Palestinians reacquired the “permission to narrate” (118) leading to a cultural and political renaissance. Khalidi witnessed this renaissance while living in Beirut, Lebanon. Writers and poets’ stories of systemic discrimination and injustice spread to the Arab public, garnering great support for the Palestinian cause. Israeli officials saw these writers and poets as threats, in part because they upended the status quo. To try and suppress this Palestinian narrative, Israeli government officials assassinated several Palestinian artists and writers. To Khalidi, these assassinations underscore the colonial roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like other colonizers, Israeli government officials understood how intertwined art is with identity and culture. Thus, Israeli officials were trying to render Palestinians invisible again by killing the artists and writers at the heart of the Palestinian cultural and political renaissance.

The humiliation of the Arab countries in the Six-Day War sparked a revitalization of Palestinians viewing themselves as key actors in the war on Palestine. Two groups emerged: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Fatah. The former combines Marxist-Leninist ideology with Arab nationalism, whereas the latter is nonideological and focused primarily on the Palestinian cause. Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat, is considered the more moderate of the two organizations. The Arab League (an organization of Arab countries including Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) also founded their own organization, called the Palestine Liberation Organization, in 1964 in an attempt “to co-opt and control the rising tide of Palestinian nationalist fervor” (116). Militant Palestinians took over the group, making Arafat chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. He remained in this position until his death in 2004.

The PLO never posed a military threat to Israeli forces. Khalidi argues that diplomacy in the late 1960s and 1970s represents the group’s biggest success. The PLO achieved diplomatic recognition in the UN Security Council and was able to build coalitions that could counter the veto vote of the US. The Arab League also recognized the PLO as the only representative of the Palestinian people in 1974. However, Khalidi explores how PLO leadership hurt the Palestinian cause in two critical ways. First, the PLO did not invest enough resources, personnel, or time into diplomatic activities. Second, the PLO failed to understand their two target audiences: Israel and the US. Khalidi presents his own first-hand account to support his assertions. He was part of the Palestine National Council, a US-based group, who tried to convince Arafat to devote resources to swaying American public opinion to the Palestinian side. Khalidi recounts how Arafat halted the conversation so that he could speak with the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front “who caused great damage to the Palestinian cause” (121). Khalidi’s experience reinforced that Arafat was uninterested in trying to change global perceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This lack of interest by PLO leadership continues to harm the Palestinian cause today.

The PLO’s stance on a Palestinian nation-state evolved. Initially, the group wanted to “return the Palestinian people to their homeland, restore their rights, and oust those whom they saw as usurpers” (123). They mediated their stance by calling for a single democratic state for both Palestinians and Jewish people. Finally, they also floated the idea of a two-state solution, whereby Palestinians and Israelis each had their separate states. Khalidi suggests that two key events led to the PLO being willing to moderate their stance on a Palestinian nation-state: Israeli assassinations of key Palestinian leaders and the eruption of the 15-year Lebanese civil war which included direct attacks on the PLO in Lebanon.

Khalidi also provides many details on the role played by the US before, during, and after the Six-Day War. One person that Khalidi focuses on is American diplomat Henry Kissinger, who some consider to be a war criminal because his machinations potentially led to the deaths of millions around the world. Khalidi does not paint Kissinger’s actions in the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in a favorable light. He notes that “Kissinger sought only to contain the Palestine issue, prevent it from interfering with his diplomacy, and render it manageable, if necessary by the use of force exerted by a range of proxies” (132).

Kissinger was not a good faith actor in the region. While he negotiated the terms of a Syrian-led invasion against Palestinians, he also held covert talks with the PLO. Kissinger also helped negotiate the US-Israel Memorandum of Agreement (1975). This pledge was supposed to prevent the US from recognizing or negotiating with the PLO until the PLO agreed to terms set by the Israelis. The US did occasionally negotiate with the PLO despite this pledge. To show their displeasure, the Israelis tried to assassinate John Gunther Dean who was the lead American diplomat in these negotiations. Dean himself presented Khalidi with evidence that Israel was behind the attempts to kill him.