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

In Chapter 5, Khalidi covers two important events: the First Intifada and the Oslo accords. The First Intifada (1987-1993) represents a sustained series of uprisings by the Palestinians in Israel and Israeli-occupied territories. Two reasons explain the uprising. First, Palestinians remained frustrated over Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and West Bank. This occupation was approaching 20 years. Second, Palestinians continued to face injustices and systemic discrimination by the Israeli government and security forces. As one example, Palestinians could not fly their flag without fear of fines, jail time, or beatings.

Khalidi focuses on how Palestinians began to finally shift the narrative battle surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their favor. Khalidi attributes this success to two reasons. First, Israel’s response to the intifada was heavy-handed and disproportionate. News outlets around the world telegraphed “images of heavily armed soldiers brutalizing teenage Palestinian protestors” (169). The global community saw these images for years due to the length of the intifada. Khalidi underscores that there was an eight-to-one casualty ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli. Minors represented nearly one-quarter of the total Palestinian death count. These images helped the global community see the conditions Palestinians faced at the hands of Israeli government and security forces.

Second, the intifada was a grassroots movement. The campaign also involved large segments of Palestinian society, including women who had generally been left out of conventional male-dominated Palestinian politics. The intifada employed many nonviolent, civil efforts including refusal to pay taxes, work in Israeli settlements, and drive cars with Israeli license plates and strikes. Khalidi acknowledges that protests sometimes turned violent, although he places blame on Israeli soldiers who used live ammunition and rubber bullets on nonviolent protestors. Khalidi notes that “its unifying effect and largely successful avoidance of firearms and explosives […] helped to make its appeal widely heard internationally, leading to a profound and lasting positive impact on both Israeli and world public opinion” (174).

Khalidi expresses great frustration with the PLO’s “short-sightedness and limited strategic vision” (175). During the intifada, the PLO tried to take control of the movement, which was problematic for two reasons. First, the PLO did not understand what life was like for Palestinians living in Israel or Israeli-occupied territories. They had been in exile too long in Tunisia. The PLO leadership were also jealous of the intifada leaders given how successful the uprising had been for Palestinians (most PLO-initiated conflicts failed). This jealousy resulted in the PLO being unwilling to listen to the intifada leaders.

Second, the PLO never fully understood the role of the US in the war against Palestinians. Most PLO leaders remained ill-informed about the country and its leaders. When they were in the US, they rarely made public appearances and did not engage with American media outlets or groups. This behavior stood in stark contrast to Israeli leaders who engaged with all these groups. The PLO, like other Arab leaders, also believed that a personal appeal over long-standing relations to a US official could solve their problems.

During the intifada, the US and USSR sponsored a peace conference in 1991 in Madrid in the hope of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference was fraught from the beginning. To Khalidi, the peace conference humiliated Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians received unequal treatment. The US and Israel barred the PLO from participating in the conference. At this time, the PLO led the Palestinian national movement from exile in Tunisia. Palestinians could also not serve as independent delegates. Instead, they were part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. Khalidi was one such delegate. Israelis also barred two Palestinian delegates from participating in the talks because they were from Jerusalem. Israelis worried that their inclusion would legitimize Palestine’s claims to Jerusalem. None of the delegates knew about the 1975 US-Israel Memorandum of Agreement or secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO occurring during the peace conference.

Khalidi suggests that the US is not an impartial arbitrator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To support this assertion, he describes his very different interactions with two US diplomats. James Baker represents the first. He was one of the only diplomats willing to ignore the 1975 US-Israel Memorandum of Agreement, partly because of his close relationship with then US President George H. W. Bush. Baker publicly confronted the Israeli government during the peace conference, stating, “[w]hen you’re serious about peace, call us” (189). Baker pushed for Palestinian involvement in the process. However, he was one of the only American diplomats at the time willing to say any of these things. Dennis Ross replaced Baker in these negotiations. In contrast, Ross was firmly on the side of the Israelis. Khalidi notes that Ross “accepted Israel’s stated public positions as the limit of what was admissible in terms of US policy” (191). To Khalidi, the fact that there are more Rosses than Bakers in the US government means that the US will never be a fair negotiator.

The peace conference culminated with the signing of the Declaration of Principles, or Oslo I, in 1993. This agreement did not treat Israelis and Palestinians equally. The PLO recognized Israel as a nation-state, yet Israel only recognized the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Israel refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Palestinians. Israelis also allowed Arafat and the PLO to return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and establish limited self-government for Palestinians. Khalidi argues that Arafat simply moved to another gilded cage because Israel still held all the power.

Israelis and Palestinians signed Oslo II or the Interim Agreement in 1995. This agreement solidified Israel’s control over occupied Palestinian territories. Because Israel controlled entry and exit points to the territories as well as the roads connecting them, they were able to restrict Palestinian movement. Israel also maintained their presence in some parts of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. To Khalidi, “the Oslo Accords in effect constituted another internationally sanctioned American-Israeli declaration of war on the Palestinians” (206). He firmly believes that the Palestinians should have rejected both agreements.