The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

by Rashid Khalidi

At a time when a lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis seems virtually unattainable, understanding the roots of their conflict is an essential step in restoring hope to the region. In The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi, one of the most respected historians and political observers of the Middle East, homes in on Palestinian politics and history.

The story of the Palestinian search to establish a state begins in the mandate period immediately following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the era of British control, when fledgling Arab states were established by the colonial powers with assurances of eventual independence. Mandatory Palestine was a place of real promise, with unusually high literacy rates among men and a relatively advanced economy. But the British had already begun to construct an iron cage to hem in the Palestinians and the Palestinian leadership made a series of errors including their overwhelming support of Hitler and the genocide of the Jews, that would eventually prove crippling to their dream of independence.

Genres: History, Middle East, Nonfiction, Politics, Israel, War, World History

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Rashid Ismail Khalidi (Arabic: رشيد إسماعيل خالدي; born 18 November 1948) is a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020, when he became co-editor with Sherene Seikaly.

He has authored a number of books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; has served as president of the Middle East Studies Association; and has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and the University of Chicago.

For his work on the Middle East, Professor Khalidi has received fellowships and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.

In October 2010, Khalidi delivered the annual Edward Said memorial lecture at the Palestine Center in Washington. He is the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Colombia University. On October 8, 2024, Khalidi retired from Columbia University citing the university's crackdown on pro-Palestinian student protests, which he had vocally supported, and the transformation of the university into a "hedge fund-cum-real estate operation, with a minor sideline in education" as reasons for his retirement.

Reviews

[Senior · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Israeli / Palestinian conflict is always in the newspapers and the US always supports Israel. I figured it couldn't be this black and white. After reading "Lawrence in Arabia" I wanted to read more about the Balfour Declaration and the origins of Israel. After some research, I turned to Rashid Khalidi for another point of view and how different it is. Khalidi is a Palestinian-Lebanese American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He also is known for serving as editor of the scholarly journal Journal of Palestine Studies. I read "the Iron Cage," "Brokers of Deceit,' Resurrecting Empire" and "Sowing Crisis." Each was meticulously researched and heavily footnoted. The footnotes led me to other books by other authors.

Conclusion: Britain and the US have been screwing the Palestinians since they first set foot in the Middle East and we continue to do so today. The US media shows only one side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and censors anyone who objects. Consider Rula Jabreal, a Palestinian raised in Jerusalem, a acclaimed journalist and a frequent guest on TV news shows until she challenged Bill Mahr's always mean-spirited criticism of her religion and until she pointed out to Chris Hayes MSNBC's biased coverage. She has since disappeared from TV in favor of less critical spokespeople.

Censorship is dangerous. Self-censorship is crazy. Break out of the "Exodus" view of history; read other points of view; draw your own conclusions.

[Phoenix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Only Fragments of Truth

In the Introduction (pp xxxiii) Khalidi claims that the invading Arab armies, except for Egypt, did not cross into the territory designated by the U.N. as Israel. So begins a series of dissembling remarks that permeates this book, Firstly one should note that all Arab armies including Palestinian supporters were a combined force, therefore the act of one was the act of all. Secondly one needs to remember that there were Jewish villages in the Arab designated portion of Partition and that these came under merciless attack as did the Jewish residents of what was supposedly to be an international city of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv was bombed from the air by Egypt on the very first day after Israel declared independence.

Much of the book hints at undercurrents between Palestinian factions but never quite identifying them, ignoring the fate of elements that were willing to accept the presence of Jews. . On pp8 Khalidi expresses the fear that a deeper (and more genuine) examination of history "can and indeed does lead to the denigration of the Palestinians, their society and their national movement as backward, inferior or non-existent". It is this setting of a "no go" zone which marks the difference between a genuine historian and a polemicist. For example he mentions the factional infighting between Palestinian clans, notably the Husaynis and the Nashabishis, but doesn't delve into the program of assassination and intimidation carried out by the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Hussayni against rival clans, nor does he consider the alliances between some of the clans and the Jews. This willful blindness is continued throughout the book

Not unexpectedly he uses the rather minor publication Falastin as being emblematic of Palestinian nationalism rather than the more popular Jerusalem based Suriya Janabiyya - (Southern Syria). He skips the all important 1920 Palestinian National Congress in Damascus which declared "We confirm what we have always said, that Palestine is an integral part of Syria. We demand that it remain so, and shall use all measures to the last drop of our blood and the last breath of our children to achieve this end." (Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War, pp97-98) He points out the disparity of investment in Palestine by Jews vs. non-Jews and the higher productivity of the Jewish sector of the economy, notes that Arab Palestine enjoyed a lesser but also healthy growth during the Depression but fails to connect this to the spinoff effects of Jewish and British investment.

Yet another place he dares not go is a deeper discussion as to the root causes of Palestinian violence. Thus he mentions the prior death of 133 Jews in the riots of 1929 but fails to note that the motivating factor was the planting of false rumors that Jews were trying to take over the Al Aqsa mosque. He then equivalences it to 116 Arab deaths at the hands of the British in the resulting crackdown over several months, if not years, as if to justify the former with the latter. He notes the increasing landlessness and unemployment among Palestinian peasantry without observing that it was part of a global phenomenon of urbanization and agricultural intensification that would have happened even without the in migration of Zionists. He uses scare quotes when referring to Palestinian "banditry" (pp133) yet admits it was practiced against all including Palestinian notables. He minimizes the Arab revolt of 1936-39 to a few short paragraphs yet this is possibly the most interesting period precisely because it shows a marked contrast between Zionist state building activity and Palestinian infighting.

Khalidi spends much of his effort disparaging the balance of Zionist representation and influence with the British while failing to reference that on the issue of primary importance to the Jews, that of migration, it was the Arab position that prevailed. Yet this mattered very little because in the end, when the British departed, the Zionists were ready with institutions of provisional government and the Palestinians were not.

Perhaps the most disappointing turn is the introduction of a blood libel accusation on pp133. "Some of the survivors (of Deir Yassin) were paraded through Jerusalem before being taken back to the village and shot". This aspect of the story is a complete fabrication - survivors were taken to Jerusalem and released. Exaggerations about Deir Yassin are a tradition in Khalidi's family His uncle, Husayn Khalidi, was along with Hazem Nusseibeh were told by the Mufti to lie about Deir Yassin. PBS Documentary: 50 years of War - about 15 minutes from the start. Hazem Nusseibeh later became a career Jordanian diplomat serving at the UN , and like the Khalidis, comes from a notable and influential Palestinian family.

(Nusseibeh) "I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story. He said "We will make the most of this" So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered. Pregnant women were raped. All sorts of attrocities. (Narr) Arab radio stations passed on the false reports ignoring the protests of witnesses. (These would be the survivors released in Jerusalem.) (Witness/Survivor) "We said there was no rape. He said we had to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews." (Nusseibeh) "This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they (falsely) heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin Palestinians fled in terror. They ran away from all our villages."

The 254 supposed deaths (as opposed to ~107 actual) described by Rashid Khalidi as a Red Cross figure originated as the falsified figure supplied by his uncle. Nor was the village defenseless - 36 of the attackers were wounded and 4 were killed including the commander of the attack. Also omitted from Khalidi's report was that 200 villagers were allowed to flee before the attack and that 70 women and children were taken to Jerusalem and released.

Arafat is now dead so it is safe to start criticizing him. If Palestinians were imprisoned in an iron cage then Arafat would be the lead jailer. Arafat's leadership is portrayed as being patriarchal and centered on a strong leader - in fact not that much different from other Arab regimes. Khalidi writes about internal and external assassinations within the Palestinian leadership and implicates but stops short of accusing Arafat of his crimes which include the assassination and intimidation of local village councils. Americans should know that Arafat was caught on tape ordering the assassination of PLO hostages U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and attache George Moore in Khartoum in 1973, a fact known by the CIA and every president since Richard Nixon. On pp 148 and 170 he blithely refers to Black September as "the Jordanian option". However the book does criticize the leadership's failure to create the functioning apparatus of a State both before Oslo. And he immodestly omits references to his own involvement or as a junior advisor to the year 2000 Camp David summit, dismissing the Israeli offer as "meager" when in fact it would have been a major move forward.

Again and again the practice of statehood takes a back seat to the ideology of perceived injustices.

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. These words were written by the poet Richard Lovelace, "The Poems of Richard Lovelace: Lucasta, Etc" some 400 years ago came to mind when I started reading "The Iron Cage". Khalidi is considered to be a (if not THE) leading Palestinian/American thinker so it is worthwhile to read what he is thinking. He accurately describes how the Palestinian nationalists have become prisoners of a mindset that defines itself in opposition to a successful nationalism (Zionism) rather than in terms of its own national goals. Instead of meeting Zionists with guns, suicide bombs and Qassams they should have met them with development, institution building and trade. It's still the only way out of a cycle of hate.

Lovelace's poem ends:

If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

[David M]

Admirably cool, sober-minded analysis. Published in 2006, in the aftermath of the second Intifada and after Israel's nominal "withdrawal" from Gaza and Hamas's electoral upset. Khalidi sees the prospects for Palestinian statehood as dim, and it's only gotten more so in the past 12 years.

Good discussion of two states versus one at the end. An important reality check. These days left-wing opinion seems to have shifted decisively in favor of one state. It's become a commonplace to say that the settlements have made two states impossible. While this is probably true, it's not clear how they've made a single democratic state more feasible. If the settlers are adamantly opposed to relocating to Israel's pre-67 borders, and the state won't compel them to, how is it supposed to be easier to convince them to dissolve Israel as a Jewish state and live as a minority within Palestine?

Of course some one-staters argue not that this will be easy but that it will become inevitable. Here is the estimable John Mearsheimer making that case. The moral burden of maintaining an apartheid regime will simply become too great, and Israel will have to finally submit to its own conscience, or that of the world. Apartheid and occupation will one day go too far and turn into their opposite, equal rights for all? a kind of dialectical reversal?

Well, maybe, but it's surely not inevitable. Now seems like an odd time to put much faith in the coercive power of conscience. Look at all the insane shit Israel has gotten away with doing to Gaza for the past decade (see Norman Finkelstein's Gaza: an Inquest into its Martyrdom). I don't think doing more insane shit in the short term will eventually make it more likely to stop doing any at all.

So, in conclusion, neither one state nor two states is particularly practical or feasible. Given that, I still think a single democratic state should be the horizon of one's activism and solidarity, with no illusions about it being in any way inevitable.

[Noor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Proud of myself of getting through this book so quickly--an analysis of why an independent Palestinian state failed to emerge out of the British occupation, unlike other Arab states in the region. Most discourse on Palestine today focuses on post-1948 history, yet so much of current events is the direct result of failures of the late 19th and early 20th century. I learned so much about Palestinian politics under British rule, about notable politicians from the time, as well as the shift from the social/nobles elites controlling the political factions to the young, working-class revolutionaries (described as a sartorial change, i.e. fez/tarbush -> kuffiye). Despite all that Khalidi is able to cover in this *pretty* short book, there is a lot left unsaid--the human aspect of Palestinian history was missing. It felt logical, historical, it made sense and everything was technically accurate, but like everything that is intended for Western audiences, he did not say too much.

Read for *** ********. guess what it is

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and well written. Another book to make up for my lack of world history education. The situation seemed dire at the time of writing, but now we are talking about bulldozing Palestine, getting rid of all the people, and turning it into a Riviera. Makes British imperialism seem downright civil.

[Kraychik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typical blame game from an anti-Israel mouthpiece for the former PLO. Still, one will learn a few things after reading this book. This book is ONLY worth reading in a broader context of other history books, because without reading Efraim Karsh, Benny Morris, Martin Gilbert, Bernard Lewis, Walter Laqueur, Albert Hourani,or memoirs/biographies from prominent Israeli political figures such as Ben-Gurion, Dayan, or Meir, you will not know relevant context that is deliberately ignored by Khalidi. Khalidi is not a man of integrity, but that doesn't mean this book is entirely useless. Khalidi is a lot like Edward Said in this sense. If you want to propagandise yourself, read this book. If you're looking for honest analysis, don't read this book without supplementing it with other readings on the relevant history.

[Ramin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book after hearing this Democracy Now program, which had a debate between Khalidi and Ali Abuminah from the Electronic Intifada:
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/2...

It was a fascinating book, although a bit dry in parts. It is a very detailed and well-researched history of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, and the reasons for the Palestinians' continual failure to achieve it. Khalidi doesn't downplay the significance of external forces, but focuses on the Palestinians themselves (especially the leadership and the various groups and movements), because their story has been ignored.

[Taighe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise overview of the conflict, focused on Palestine. Would highly recommend this book to someone with knowledge of the conflict’a history, as it does not dive into the details of key events, but rather explains what was going on within Palestine and within Palestinian leadership at the time.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immediately after 400 years of Ottoman direct rule ended, the British and Zionists kept Arab Palestine from becoming a sovereign state. Palestinians were neither mentioned in the Balfour Declaration, nor the Mandate for Palestine, “and were referred to only as “non-Jewish communities”. In addition, the British before WWII “explicitly refrained from mentioning either the Palestinians as a people or their national self-determination. By contrast, the Jewish minority of the population was so recognized.” Of the 750,000 Palestinians “expelled from or forced to flee the areas that became Israel” during the Nakba, around half had to leave “before the formal establishment of Israel.”

“The British and Zionists made efforts to play Palestinian leaders off against one another in order to exacerbate old rivalries, or create new ones as part of a strategy of divide and rule. That some of these rivalries existed before the British arrived is unquestionable, as is the fact that the Ottomans consistently played one notable faction off against the other.”

Settler-Colonialism hits Palestine to Take Its Land by Force: “If dividing the Palestinians failed, it would be necessary for Britain to have recourse to massive force.” Zionist leader Jabotinsky wrote in 1925, “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain a garrison on your behalf. ‘’’Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.” “It was therefore a vital objective of the British to keep the Palestinians from uniting against them and their policy of support for Zionism in order to prevent or at least delay the INEVITABLE backlash against this policy.” “The anger expressed by Palestinian public opinion at the unchecked expansion, with British support, of the Zionist project grew exponentially in the mid-1930s.” The Jews who previously lived in Palestine under Ottoman rule, “were generally on good terms with their Arab neighbors.”

Before the blatant final solution of settler-colonialism began, “the problem of peasant dispossession by Zionist land-purchase became acute.” Buying Arab land could only go so far in displacing Palestinians; at some point settler-colonial force would be necessary as Zionist leaders knew only a fool voluntarily and permanently gives their cherished home and business to strangers. 1936 was the year of the six-month Palestinian general strike and armed revolt that followed. It was “the longest anticolonial strike of its kind until that point in history, and perhaps the longest ever.” “Hundreds of (Palestinian) homes were blown up (perhaps as many as 2,000), crops were destroyed, and over one hundred rebels were summarily executed simply for possession of firearms, or even ammunition.”

I’ve read/reviewed 28 Israel/Palestine books so far and this was the FIRST that dared tell the reader that the Lehi was the exact same group as the Stern Gang – the British simply called the Lehi (led by Yitzhak Shamir) the Stern Gang. Thank you Rashid, for clearing it up and also mentioning how the Palestinian’s leader, the mufti, had a wartime alliance with the Nazis.

Zionists are No Stranger to Assassinating Palestinians: They assassinated the following PLO leaders between 1968 and 1991: Abu ‘Ali Iyyad, Ghassan Kanafani, Sa’id Hamami, Abu Yusef al-Jajjar, Kamal Nasser, Kamal ‘Adwan, Majid Abu Sharar, Abu Hassan Salameh, Brig. Gen. Sa’d Sayil (Abu al-Walid), ‘Isam Sirtawi, Abu Jihad, Abu al-Hol, and Abu Iyyad.

“As late as 1948, Jewish-owned land in Palestine amounted to only about 7 percent of the country’s total land area.” “Most leaders of the Zionist movement eventually came to understand that the only means to create a state in Palestine with institutions whose nature would be determined, and fully controlled, by a Jewish minority, was to engage in what today is called ethnic cleansing. The bland term ‘transfer’ was the Orwellian euphemism employed at that time to describe what amounted to politicide.”

This was an ok book – I MUCH preferred Rashid’s “The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine” – read that first instead. I’m giving this two-star book three stars because it IS tackling the Israel/Palestine subject that most Facebook liberals never have the balls to study. Give me a progressive any day. I had to read this book in case it was all that and a bag of chips, but as you see, I barely learned one and a half pages of usable info and most of the book was a hard-to-follow story of the history of the PLO, Fatah, PA, and Hamas - and about how the Palestinians never really had a chance with both Zionists and the well-financed British relentlessly keeping Palestinians from any kind of self-determination. Palestinians couldn’t get statehood because of the bully (Britain) that took over from the Ottomans after WWI. Balfour was a known anti-Semitic bigot who apparently hated Arabs even more than he hated the Jews, and so he shamelessly stole from Peter to pay Paul. Basically: “Here, let me give you what belongs to someone else and even though they did NOTHING to deserve losing what is presently theirs. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

Not necessarily a book I'd recommend for those just starting to learn about the history of Palestine, but I thought it was an interesting read. Occasionally a little dense, but not overly so (especially when compared to other works on the subject) and I appreciated the look at all the many contributing factors to this ongoing struggle.

[Amélie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled to follow at first as it's meant for readers who already know a lot about the history of Palestine, but actually found it really insightful - though also tragic to read at a time when statehood for Palestinians seems ever further away.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a book from the Palestinian perspective: he cuts the Palestinians a lot of slack, and the Jews none.  And he is in general dismissive of Jews, painting them as just an obstacle to Palestinian Arab nationalism (in a mirror of opposing histories he would no doubt disdain, which paint Arabs as mere obstacles to Zionism.) So the book may be valuable as an example of the Palestinian narrative and how some of them see themselves, but it helps to have context when reading it.  At the least, it helps to remember that this is an incomplete presentation of history, not sufficient by itself to understand things.  (I don't think the writer would suggest otherwise, but it seems important for a reader to know before reading.)

A handful of examples, almost randomly picked, of things he says that don't add up, or are partially true in ways that could mislead a reader:

- He insists multiple times that the British denied the Arabs an equivalent to the Jewish Agency. But at the same time he also writes, multiple times, that the British offered the Arabs exactly that. The condition was that the Arabs accept some — any — rights of Jews in the land. In his telling, the Arabs said no, over and over — they refused to accept any Jewish rights at all. He makes it seem like requesting any acceptance of any Jewish rights at all meant the British offers for an Arab Agency were fake, or unserious. Somehow he tries to make this Arab intransigence seem like an example of the British being unfair.

- Professor Khalidi keeps saying things like the Jews "had" education and they "had" a central command and they "had" a national identity.  But they didn’t just "have" these things. Jews "had" education because they valued it and built it up, school by school. They "had" a central command because they were fighting for their very existence, and so they had to find ways to set aside internal rivalries and fight together, to survive. They "had" a national identity because of millennia of peoplehood tied to this land. Khalidi seems almost petulant, like he thinks it's not fair that the Jews "had" these things while the Palestinians didn't. At times it seems almost like he blames Jews for working together or for building schools, as if these were not options available to Arabs.

- He elides a lot of events that are pretty important to understanding this history.  For example, at one point he casually mentions all the Mizrahi Jews coming to Israel after its independence.  If you didn't already know their history and read only this book, you'd think these folks were mean colonialists whose primary intention was to oppress Arabs.  They were in actuality literal refugees, literally robbed and run out from Arab lands. But in this book, these 600-800,000 people are just a minor detail and just another obstacle for Khalidi to wave away. There is no understanding of Israel as refuge, no sense of Jewish connection to the land.

All that said, this book does show how the Arabs of Palestine were poorly served by their own leadership (infighting among the Notable families of which he writes so much; the Mufti literally allying with the literal Nazis during WWII!), and by seemingly every outside Arab power, who either used them or disregarded their interests. It's a sad history, and reading Khalidi's book can build empathy and understanding.  But if you don’t know the stuff he leaves out, you'll be left confused about what happened and why.

[Prem · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a hard book to read. Not simply because it's a thorough, academic work but because the egoistic and imperialist causes that have such severe repercussions for the Palestinian people are laid bare here. This is uniquely presented as emanating not just from Israel and the US, but the Palestinian leadership too, at the cost of the common people. The historical research is meticulously done, and for the most part, explained with clarity. There is a vast cache of important information to be gleaned here, but it'd help to have a good amount of background on this complex conflict, or you'll spend half your reading time looking up relevant information, like I did.
My issue with this book, however, is that for what is ostensibly a scholarly work, there were some parts that made me uncomfortable with their coded linguistic biases. The Holocaust and subsequent exodus of Jews are often passed off as 'events,' undercutting the gravity of what happened. And the way some of the historical barrage is framed comes off as the author being annoyed that the Zionists found a 'convenient' excuse for mass migration towards 'Palestinian lands' - these sections comes off as apathetic at best, and echoing anti Semitic conspiracies at worst. A lot of this is softened or balanced in the later chapters (which also feels tonally inconsistent), but the initial sourness lingered. Further, the Islamist component of Palestinian nationalism is severely underplayed, which comes off as deliberately disingenuous.
Nevertheless, this is an important read to understand an inescapable part of the modern world that is critical to understand, so the world may not repeat the mistakes made.

[Becca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh where to begin.
I wouldn't really classify this author as a historian so much as polemicist.
I suppose it is telling of "his-" story- being just that, a story.
Other reviewers have enumerated the glaring disparity in Khalidi's discussion of certain events.
Omitting events from your book does not in fact erase them from history.

To consider this a scholarly history would be kind of like calling Howard Stern a journalist: Yes, he offers facts, but they're assembled in such a way as to suffocate any potential for dissent or rational evaluation.

Khalidi also flips/flops in his opinions. He wants the Middle East left to resolve their own issues, but then blames America for not intervening and doing more to help resolve issues in the Middle East, and then tells America to back off again, but maybe intervene just to make sure everyone is being fair. Well, which one is it?

[Cyrus Colah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not read any significant material on the Arab-Zionist conflict prior to this book. It served as a good introduction, exploring concepts in considerable, well-researched depth while being fairly short and reasonably unbiased. In order to accomplish this, the book limited its scope to the fairly narrow question of “why has Palestine been unsuccessful in establishing itself as a nation?”

The book is structured as an answer to this question, rather than as a chronological history of Palestine. Because I had not read any literature on this subject before, its non-chronological scheme was difficult at first, but I caught on and was able to form a mental timeline as I continued reading. Due to the limited scope of the book, I definitely require further reading (planning to look into Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims).

A significant portion of the book is discussion, rather than simply telling facts, which I found very useful and enjoyable. In general, the book was well written and the author seemed to have an extremely deep understanding of these issues.

[Tom Manning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very important book from Rashid Khalidi focusing on Palestinian leadership during the British Mandate period and with Yasser Arafat/the PLO in the decades that followed.

[Stephen Heiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good book for those who want to read a more scholarly overview of what things have looked like from the side of the Palestinians from the time of the Mandate until 2006, when the book was released. If you want a video review I broke the book into two parts, before 1948 and after:

https://youtu.be/05PBBs4a0Dw

https://youtu.be/iNIU2Lzuv2Y

Khalidi has a lot of sources for his work and the end notes provide a bibliography that is worth the book alone.

Read this to understand why the Palestinians are not only victims, but have had agency at various times over the last 100 years. Khalidi looks at that agency and asks difficult and challenging questions.

"However, there were only seven independent Arab states in 1948 (some hardly independent, and some hardly states in any meaningful sense of the word), two of which, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, did not even have regular armies and no means of getting any armed forces they might have had to Palestine. Beyond this, of the five Arab regular armies, one (that of Lebanon) never crossed the international frontier with Palestine, two (those of Iraq and Transjordan) scrupulously refrained from crossing the frontiers of the Jewish state laid down in the United Nations partition plan as per secret Jordaninan understandings with both Britain and the Zionist leadership and thus never 'invaded' Israel, and one (that of Syria) made only minor inroads across the new Israeli state's frontiers. The only serious and long-lasting incursion into the territory of hte Jewish state as laid down under the partition plan was that of the Egyptian army. Meanwhile, the fiercest fighting during hte 1948 war took place with the Jordanian army during multiple Israeli offensives into areas assigned by the UN to the Arab state, or into the UN-prescribed corpus separatum around Jerusalem." (xxxiii)

"At the beginning of 1948, Arabs constituted an absolute majority of the population of Palestine...approximately 1.4 million out of 2 million people...Arabs owned nearly 90 percent of the country's privately owned land." (p. 1)

"[I]f a state with a Jewish majority controlling the bulk of the land was to be created in Palestine, a country with a massive Arab majority with uncontested legal claim to the lion's share of privately owned land, the expulsion of a large part of this majority and the seizure of their land were absolutely necessary. This fact was the basis of the extraordinary discussions among mainstream Zionist leaders in the 1920s and 1930s (always in private, so as not to reveal to unfriendly ears the true intentions of the movement) concerning the 'transfer' of the Arab population outside the frontiers of mandatory Palestine, meaning their removal from the country. This was a fantastic concept at best, and a sinister one at worst, since it was manifestly clear to all concerned that the Palestinians had no intention of allowing themselves to be 'transferred' out of their own country, and that if they were to be made to leave, massive force would be required." (p. 5)

"The very term 'transfer,' still occasionally used in Israeli public discourse, is an Orwellian euphemism for the violent removal of a people from a country, in order to create new demographic, and therefore national, realities. It is what today would be called 'ethnic cleansing,' but that is a term that is rarely applied to what happened in 1948, most parties to the discussion inside Israel favoring 'transfer' or some other sanitized and neutral designation." (p. 5)

"[T]he League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, constituting the entire legal basis for the British regime erected in their country...explicitly refrained from mentioning either the Palestinians as a people or their national self-determination." (p. 32)

"Acceptance of the Mandate by the Palestinians would thus have meant their recognition of the privileged national rights of the Jewish community in what they saw as their own country, and formal acceptance of their own legally subordinate position, indeed of their nonexistence as a people." (p. 33)

(quoting Foreign Secretary Balfour) "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." (p. 36)

(quoting Ze'ev Jabotinksy) "If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for hte land, or find a benefactor who will maintain a garrison on your behalf...Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces." (p. 72)

"The involvement of so many educated Palestinian members of the country's elite in the British mandatory administration was ultimately highly damaging to Palestinian unity..." (p. 85)

"An entire quarter of the Old City of Jaffa was dynamited (under the rubric of 'urban renewal') after the British failed to bring it under control." (p. 107)

"[E]ach major Arab state came to follow its own line and to seek to serve its own interests, generally with disadvantageous consequences for the Palestinians." (p. 124)

"April 9, 1948, Irgun and Lehi forces, backed by Hagana artillery, took the neighboring village of Deir Yasin, and after several hours of fighting killed many of its surviving inhabitants, blowing up their homes...the most detailed and careful study of the massacre gives the names of 100 persons killed, 75 of them children, women, and the elderly." (p. 133)

"Far from being able to dream of a state of their own, they were now faced with an existential test of whether they would be able to remain together as a people." (p. 135)

"Palestinians, in other words, were required by the United States and Israel to cease their resistance to an illegal occupation as a precondition for being allowed to negotiate for an end to that occupation." (p. 156)

"Palestine, not a state, not sovereign, and under occupation, has thus been one of the first Arab countries with the exception of Lebanon to witness a democratic change of government in the wake of the January 2006 elections." (p. 159)

"Nearly twenty years after the PLO had begun moving toward a two-state solution, and nearly four years after the 1988 Palestinian declaration of statehood and independence, it transpired that almost nothing had been done to prepare for hte moment when independence actually had to be negotiated, and statehood prepared. The contrast with the diplomatic efforts of the Jewish Agency, the para-state that paved the way for the creation of Israel, could not have been more striking — nor could the similarity to the poorly coordinated diplomatic efforts of the Palestinians before 1948." (p. 160)

"[T]he revival in the salience of the Palestinians was mainly the result of the cohesiveness, persistence, and perseverance of Palestinian society and the Palestinian people, their steadfastness and their stubborn refusal to cease to exist in the face of the extraordinary pressures on them to disappear." (p. 165)

"This narrative sees the Israelis as the continuing victims of those they have decisively defeated, dispossessed, and dispersed, although they have been victorious in every military conflict they have engaged in over the nearly sixty years of existence of their state." (p. 183)

"[I]n the 1920s, Zionist leaders expected, and were given to believe confidentially by many of their official British interlocutors, that the entire country of Palestine would and should eventually become a Jewish state, even though they generally confined themselves in public to the ambiguous term 'Jewish national home.' In their public statements these leaders gave little attention to the formal place to be given to the Arabs in the Palestine/Israel of the future, except perhaps as a tolerated minority after Jews had eventually become a majority in the country as a result of unrestricted immigration." (p. 187)

(quoting Ze'ev Jabotinsky) "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs." (p. 187)

"[A]s late as 1948, Jewish-owned land in Palestine amounted to only about 7 percent of the country's total land area (and only 10.6 percent of its privately owned land, including much of the country's best arable land), that the vast bulk of the country's privately owned land and much of its urban property was in Arab hands, and that Arabs constituted a 65 percent majority of the country's population." (p. 188)

"The Palestinians would ideally do Israel this favor by forgetting their lost homes and property, their homeland, and what had been done to them, and simply melting into the surrounding Arab countries, where many of them now resided as exiles." (p. 190)

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Americans are typically impatient with the insistence on historical claims, especially by the debating sides in Mid-East conflicts. Who cares about history, we tend to think; what matters is now. No doubt there's some value to that position. However, Khalidi's book makes a very strong case for why nobody can really understand the current ordeal of Palestinians in Israel without learning about the British Mandate nearly 100 years ago.

Khalidi is typically pigeon-holed as being way on the left of Middle East scholarship, but this is a strikingly restrained and even-handed historical account of the ongoing failure to find a lasting solution to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Any reader approaching this work with an open mind must come away with grave misgivings about how the conflict has been framed.

Indeed, Khalidi does not lavish blame on Israelis, but laments historical circumstances (above all, the political aftermath of the Holocaust) that have made it nearly impossible to have a rational conversation on the subject or to raise questions about Israeli policies without being labeled anti-Semitic.

Khalidi has criticisms for Palestinian and Israeli leadership alike. However, his most valuable contribution for relatively unsavvy American readers is the early history he provides of Palestine under the British mandate. When one reads this history with an open heart and mind, it's difficult not to come away with a great deal of sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.

As Khalidi points out, in 1918, when Palestine along with much of the rest of the levant suddenly fell under European protectorate, Palestine had at least as much reason to hope for eventual postcolonial statehood as any neighboring people. Indeed. the Palestinian people were at least as educated and otherwise coherent as a people as the residents of what would become Jordan, Iraq and Syria. The difference, which led to their doom, was that the Palestinians were so unfortunate as to reside in the territory identified as the biblical homeland of the Jews. The British proceeded to administer Palestine through policies that today would be described as ethnic cleansing. The Mandate constitution itself is breathtakingly transparent in this regard-- the purpose of the Mandate was to transform Palestine into a majority Jewish state by preferential policies that would make it increasingly difficult for Arabs to continue to live there. When this was not enough, the Mandate engaged in forced relocation. The Palestinians were dispossessed because Britain decided they would prefer a Jewish state in region; then the Holocaust made this overtly colonial policy politically irresistable. Whereas Iraq, Syria and Jordan became nation-states, Palestine became a series of imperilled reservations within a Jewish state.

The appropriate frame for thinking about Palestine is as something akin to a Native American reservation. Many American readers will acknowledge how profoundly we destroyed Native American civilizations and then relegated the survivors to highly imperilled and damaged communities. Imagine that the apocalypse turning them from the majority to the minority happened within living memory. Then imagine that we built walls around those settlements, restricted the survivors' access to travel, political and other human rights. Imagine that non-Natives were allowed to build and take over businesses inside the Reservations.

Khalidi acknowledges that Palestinians have made numerous mistakes in how to deal with the situation thrust upon them. However, he insists appropriately that from the Mandate on, their options have been profoundly constrained and the opportunities for progress limited. Khalidi offers no easy solutions, but he does offer a valuable corrective to prevailing American assumptions about the conflict.

[Benjamin Ables · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Iron Cage” as its' subtitle pronounces, is Rashid Khalidi's historical examination of the Palestinians' struggle to establish a state of their own. The book is written exclusively from a Palestinian perspective, however it is forthcoming in its' criticism of Palestinian shortcomings when appropriate.

The title of the book is Khalidi's analogy for the restrictions imposed upon the leaders of the original Palestinian independence movement, by their British overseers, as they sought to parallel their Jewish counterparts' civic ascension. This occurred during the British mandate period. It also marks the origination of Palestinian state-building failures, unfortunately at the most decisive point in the region's tumultuous history. In essence, Khalidi makes the argument, corroborated by historical evidence, that at no point following the capitulation of the Ottoman empire, did the Palestinians ever possess the supposed guaranteed right of “self-determination”.

Most students of Middle East history are well versed in the events that transpired following Israel's formal Independence in 1948. Countless works have been written chronologically detailing them at length. Khalidi on the other hand examines these pivotal events strictly through the lenses of the Palestinians; while along the way elucidating the reasons behind their many failures. Israeli intransigence, western interventionism, Arab incohesion, and a lack of leadership among the Palestinians to include such groups as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) are recurring themes throughout.

Like any literature written about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this book will be perceived accordingly depending on the reader. Khalidi can be overly verbose making this book difficult to consume at times; however like many books on the subject, it is an absolute necessity for one looking to develop a better understanding of the forces at play in arguably the most strategically important region in the world today.

[Bradley Farless · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I wasn't very familiar with the details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I felt that the book was very argumentative and aggressive. After reading more books on the subject and coming back to this one to finish it, I didn't get that impression. It could be that from Ch.6 on his writing style changed, or it could be that I understood the issue more fully and had gotten over the idea that any attack on Israel is somehow inherently bad. Where did that idea come from anyway?

The Iron Cage is by no means light reading, but it's informative reading and a good supplement to a library of books on the Arab-Israeli / Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Don't let it be your first book on the subject, though.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, great writing, great introduction to the Palestinian perspective of the Arab Israeli conflict (perspective as in how they experienced it - this book isn't a polemic).

But he doesn't do a good job of fulfilling his objective, to develop a social history of Mandate Palestine. The text is still overwhelmingly a political history that rotates around the Zionist threat. He should include more specifics about popular events & demonstrations, and more about everyday life, and less about the conflicts of the Notables.

Also, while the counterfactual section (after his discussion of the 1939 White Paper) is engaging, its relative bulk in this short work will leave students wondering why waste the space. It would fit just fine in a longer text, though.

[Coralie • spellboundchapters]

This book taught me a lot, and I appreciate how it didn’t just blame Israel for everything but also looked into what Palestinian leaders did wrong.
However, this was at times so hard to read. First of all, because there was a looot of info dump, and it was very political focused. But also I found the writing style to be quite hard to understand at times. I don’t know if it’s a translation issue or if it’s similar in the original text.
I’d recommend this to people that already have knowledge about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. If you’re starting to seek informations about it, it is not the best place to start.

[Vaile · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history of the Palestinian state building struggle written from, for once, the narrative of a Palestinian. While at times blatantly biased, Khalidi does a good job of remaining mostly true to the reality of the situation the failure of not only the West and the Zionists, but also Arabs and Palestinian leaders. A good read for someone who is interested in a narrative that is rarely presented in main stream media.

[Jory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific, well-researched, history of Palestinian history in the last 100 years -- with a particular ownership and focus on places where Palestinians messed up (so that it's not all external blame on Israel, the British, the UN, and the US). Reading this right now with my 11th/12th graders, and while they were slow to like it at the start ("it's too textbook-y!"), they all are learning so much from it, and most of them love and respect Khalidi now. :)

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and researched. Obvious bias towards the Palestinians so probably not the best book to start with if you're new to the subject.

However, if you already have somewhat of a grasp on the issue this book does bring up a lot of new and interesting points.

[Yas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book. an insightful account about the circumstances,constraints and nature of the choices the Palestinians found themselves in, and how they dealt rightly or wrongly given their abilities and awareness of their own situation and that of colonial powers.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PALESTINIAN SCHOLAR LOOKS AT THEIR HISTORY, AND THEIR EFFORTS

Rashid Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian, Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of Columbia's Middle East Institute and School of International and Public Affairs. He is also the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2006 book, “This book examines the failure of the Palestinians to establish an independent state before 1948… and the impact of that failure in the years thereafter… [and] the effort of the Palestinians to achieve independence in their homeland. The ongoing war in Gaza and Lebanon illustrates once again how intimately this effort is intertwined with regional and international factors… This book raises other questions as well: Is a historical study of why something occurred---or in this case did not occur---justified because it sheds light on apparent similarities with events that are currently taking place? Or are these two failures in state building---one in the past and the other ongoing---completely unrelated, as is any attempt to examine them in relation to one another an historical error, not to say an abuse of history?” (Pg. ix-xi)

He continues, “this study … is important, first, because Palestinian history has significance in its own right. It is a hidden history, one that is obscured, at least in the West, by the riveting and tragic narrative of modern Jewish history… I hope secondly … to ascribe agency to the Palestinians. I therefore seek to avoid seeing them either as no more than helpless victims … [or] as driven solely by self-destructive tendencies and uncontrollable dissension… This is not to say that the Palestinians were not facing an uphill struggle… Palestinian society and politics were most definitely divided and faction-ridden… But the Palestinians … were far from helpless, and often faced a range of choices… I hope thirdly to show that the unfortunate case of Palestine illustrates strikingly the long-term perils and pitfalls of great powers following shortsighted policies that … are not consonant with international laws and legitimacy… because of its commitment to Zionism, Great Britain constructed a mandatory regime in Palestine that was … in contravention of the Covenant of the League of Nations and its… pledges of independence to the Arabs.” (Pg. xxix-xxxi)

He goes on, “Because of the disparity in the Palestinian and Israeli archival sources, I am obliged to take an approach that prevents this from becoming a revisionist history. Revisionist history… by the Israeli new historians, depends largely on archival revelations to upset established narratives… in so doing, they found ample support for a number of arguments about the 1947-1949 fighting, such as the fact that most refugees were forced to leave their homes in 1948, that had previously been put forward by Arab historians, but that were ignored outside an extremely restricted circle…. The archival situation could not be more different on the Palestinian side… there is no Palestinian state to maintain a Palestinian state archive. Beyond this, more than half of the Arab population of Palestine fled or were driven from their homes … As a result, there is no central repository of Palestinian records, and a vast quantity of private Palestinian archival material… has been either irretrievably lost or was carried off by Israel… There is, however, a plethora of scattered archival and other documentary sources that can be used to piece together the Palestinian side of what happened in 1948.” (Pg. xxxv-xxxv)

He wrote in the first chapter, “What were the causes for this debacle… that has been inscribed in Palestinian memory as ‘al-Nakba’ (the catastrophe)? The traditional Israeli narrative of these events ascribes responsibility almost entirely to the Arabs, claiming that the Arab leaders told the Palestinians to flee and denying that Israel bore any responsibility for the flight of the refugees. Israel’s new historians… have shown these claims to be groundless… while in a few areas they were urged by the Palestinian leadership to evacuate their homes for their safety… most Palestinians left because they were forced to do so eiĺther by direct Israeli attacks … or due to conditions of extreme insecurity. Far from telling them to leave, by April 1948 the Palestinian leadership and the Arab government were so horrified by the flood of refugees that both made fruitless efforts to stem the flow.” (Pg. 3-4)

He continues, “Another basis … is the claim that the Palestinians attacked the … Jewish community in Palestine before 1948… and that the flight of the refugees was simply a by-product of a war that the Arabs had started and lost. This argument simplistically … blurs the vital distinction between a first stage of civil war… and a second one, the war between the new Israeli army and the armies of several Arab states that entered Palestine after May 14… This argument furthermore ignores the fact that in many cases Palestinians were driven out of areas where there was no fighting… and that the vast majority were not allowed to return to their homes even after the fighting was over. Most importantly, it ignores a basic fact… that if a state with a Jewish majority … was to be created in Palestine, a country with a massive Arab majority with uncontested legal claim to the lion’s share of privately owned land, the expulsion of a large part of this majority and the seizure of their land were absolutely necessary.” (Pg. 4)

He acknowledges, “There is little question that Palestinian society suffered from deep internal divisions in the decades before 1948, and that these divisions contributed to the debacle of that year… Thus Palestinian society was divided, but the differences among the elite on which most observers focused may have been less important … than others, between generations, between the urban and rural populations, between classes, and between the educated and the illiterate. In any case, it is futile to try to explain the collapse of Palestinian society … by means of a simplistic analysis … Such an exercise … indeed does lead to the denigration of the Palestinians… as backward, inferior…” (Pg. 7-8) Later, he adds, “as the climactic decade of the 30s went on… the Palestinians certainly fell short of the high standards of political cohesion and advanced political organization exhibited by the Zionist movement.” (Pg. 30)

He observes, “the sense of Palestinian identity that emerged… included elements of Ottoman, Arab, Islamic and Christian, local Palestinian, and European ideologies and thought. While a certain synthesis of these elements eventually emerged… Palestinian politics nevertheless remained considerably less homogeneous ideologically than politics within the Yishuv.” (Pg. 18-19)

He notes, “Most of the Arab countries immediately surrounding Palestine received their independence only a few years before Israel did, and by 1948 already possessed relatively complex governmental structures with many of the features of an independent state… Although Palestine was in this important respect highly dissimilar to these newly independent Arab countries… Such a comparison can help us understand why Palestinian society was less successful than other, otherwise similar, Arab societies in meeting the challenges of the mandatory period, although the Palestinians obviously faced challenges of a completely different order than those facing their Arab neighbors.” (Pg. 23) Later, he adds, “the position of Britain in many of its colonies … were predicated on the assumption that in each of these countries there was a people … ‘in emergence,’ with the eventual right to independence and statehood… In the case of Palestine, however, this national existence was explicitly recognized only for the Zionists… the Palestinians were… denied the same recognition.” (Pg. 40-41)

He observes, “A Question remains: Why were the Palestinians unable to create such an independent structure, notwithstanding British obstruction and nonrecognition? … The Indian independence movement did it … successfully via the Congress party during the [1910s and 1920s] …This is a crucial question… Palestinian notables were for far too long unable to find a means to disentangle themselves and their people from the legal and constitutional constraints that Great Britain had forged for them. They could never get out of that iron case fashioned by their British Masters.” (Pg. 46-47)

He states, “the British… proceeded … to construct an entirely new communitarian system that denied national rights to the Arabs while preserving them for the Jews. What this meant… was the creation in Palestine of ‘Islamic’ institutions that had no precedent in that country’s history… Among them was the Supreme Muslim Council… This entirely new body was given a variety of duties…” (Pg. 55) In the 1930s, “We are left with a picture of a Palestinian elite that was hopelessly divided internally, and many of whose most prominent members had a variety of more or less entangling connections to the British overlords of the country, while some had links to the Zionists as well.” (Pg. 80)

He asks, “Could the Palestinians have improved their situation by accepting some British proposals, whether for a legislative council or an Arab Agency?... any such body… would undoubtedly have had little impact on changing the nature of the pro-Zionist policies followed by the British in Palestine… Nevertheless, any elected representation… would have given the elected Palestinian representatives an incontestable legitimacy, and an unparalleled platform from which to make their case… As to whether the Palestinians would have benefited had they adopted entirely different and more militant tactics earlier on during the Mandate period, the answer… seems to be an affirmative one… In the end, however, because things happened as they did, the Palestinians ended the 1930s in a particularly disadvantageous position… The horrors of Nazi persecution… only steeled the determination of Zionists and their supporters everywhere…” (Pg. 120-122)

He points out, “for many decades, most Palestinian political activity would take place outside Palestine rather than inside it. The reasons for this had to do with the policies of the three states [Israel, Jordan, Egypt] that controlled the territory of the former Mandate for Palestine… Among the now dispersed Palestinians, scattered in tents in refugee camps or in rented accommodations… a new generation of political activists took the stage, and soon found themselves forced to operate farther because of controls on their activities by three states.” (Pg. 136)

He asserts, “It is true that to [Yasser] Arafat (and to his fellow founders of Fateh) goes much of the credit for reviving the Palestinian cause in the two decades immediately following the debacle of 1948… The ascendancy in the 1950s and 1960s of the leaders of Fateh, along with the rise of other competing militant groups, represented a thoroughgoing generational change and a striking alteration in the image presented by those who represented the Palestinians.” (Pg. 140-141)

He notes, “In 2006, over a dozen years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, it was abundantly clear that this transformation had not taken place, and indeed did not seem at all likely in the near term. Outside of Palestine, the hollow shell of the PLO currently exists in a nearly moribund state; in certain crucially important respects it barely continues to function. It has failed to provide many needed services to the refugee camp residents…” (Pg. 151) But later, he adds, “The PLO certainly deserves credit … for at least three major achievements… The first was to create a vehicle for the achievement of their national aims that was universally accepted among … the Palestinian people… A second… was to parlay this acceptance … of the PLO as their representative into recognition by the Arab states… The third major success… was to recognize the ultimate futility of exile politics, and to … shift the center of gravity … to the occupied territories.” (Pg. 165-169)

He concludes, “if the Palestinian people are to exercise their inalienable national rights, they must… devise new forms and conceptions for the future… It is hoped that these forms will be more imaginative, more comprehensive, and more effective than those what have gone before, and that they will produce a more successful leadership.” (Pg. 217)

This book will be of great interest to those seeking a Palestinian explanation and interpretation of the history and political developments of the Palestinians.

[Robert Kraybill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Iron Cage focuses on the failings of the Palestinian leadership over 9 decades from 1917. It acknowledges the difficult hand they were dealt but also highlights ways in which different decisions by Palestinian leadership could have led to different and better outcomes for all sides.

It appears to me to be a balanced account without bias toward the Palestinian side vis a vis the Israelis. If any bias is apparent, it is against the PLO in favor of the Palestinian diaspora of which the author is a part.

I learned an incredible amount about the different factions within the Palestinian camp -- particularly in the years between 1917 and 1948. As the book focuses on the Palestinians, it necessarily gives only a partial view of the Israeli perspective, which is shown primarily through its impact on the Palestinians. Similarly, this is not a primer on the historical events that have shaped Palestine and Israel. The book taught me a lot I did not know about these events, but only tangentially as it related to the actions and reactions of the Palestinian leadership.

All-in-all, an excellent account as far as it goes; but it left me wanting to read Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 for more detail on the historical events.

[Lila Hornsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely an important read for anyone looking to understand the history of the conflict. After turning to multiple sources that were not suiting what I was looking for, this was a good fit. It gives an in-depth lesson of the terrible treatment of Palestinians and their long lasting struggle achieve statehood. It is really important to learn about this to help and support Palestine. Especially with what is going on currently. The book covers a lot of the role of Britain in this conflict and this quote sums it all up, “The preferred posture of the greatest power of the age was to pose as the impartial external actor, doing its levelheaded, rational, civilized best to restrain the savage passions of the wild and brutish locals. One cannot read the memoirs or many of the official reports of British officials in mandatory Palestine an entity that in its then-current form the British themselves had created, and that was riven by political conflicts they themselves had fostered without being repeatedly struck by this tone of innocent wonderment at a bizarre and often tragic sequence of events for which these officials rarely if ever acknowledged the slightest responsibility.” If not this book, I highly suggest the author’s newer publication which I believe came out in 2020. It also gives great perspective on why Palestinians need our support, now more than ever.

[Youssef ElNahas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rashid Khalidi is an American-Palestinian professor of Modern Arab Studies at the University of Colombia. He is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, was present at some of the Arab-Israeli peace talks held in Washington in the 1990s and has written multiple books and articles on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including The Iron Cage.

The book attempts to provide an explanation for the failure of Palestinian leadership to establish a much-coveted independent state (a fact frankly acknowledged by Khalidi) by looking at the historical context surrounding it. It goes back to the roots of the conflict with the establishment of the British Mandate of Palestine and the war in 1948 up to the present day. The book recognises and discusses the role external players, namely Britain and the United States, have had as a barrier to Palestinian Statehood; but also focuses on the internal workings of Palestine itself and its various political entities and leadership, an outlook that is usually downplayed or completely ignored when analysing the conflict.

As a Palestinian, the author is much less biased than I expected and attempts to be objective by offering criticisms of both the Palestinian and Israeli leadership.