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Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
Khalidi critically assesses the narratives that make up Palestinian history and identity and examines the ways in which the Palestinian national consciousness has come full circle.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Rashid Khalidi
26 books911 followersRashid 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.
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.
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March 25, 2015
Khalidi's purpose here is to argue that Palestinians indeed have a national identity. Ostensibly, this contention runs contrary to the commonplace saying that "Palestinian" is an essentially made-up designation, a merely negative Arab self-identification vis-a-vis Zionism, the "Other" without which no Palestinian identity would be possible. However, Khalidi concedes the point that this conventional wisdom is grounded in a kernel of truth. But that then proves too much, as he would turn the presuppositions inherent in this assessment of national identity on their head by asking, in the spirit of Benedict Anderson, "aren't all nationalities, thus?".
Indeed, the Palestinian claim to national consciousness is rather shaky, especially before the advent of the Zionist colonization scheme. Khalidi tries his best to locate its provenance in things like the long-held Arab regard for Jerusalem and its environs as 'holy' land. The Ottomans, who governed Palestine for four hundred years, slowly developed an administrative conception of Palestine as unique and separate from Syria or Lebanon. The bold proliferation of state education in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century did not leave Palestine untouched, and the few literati that were produced by it in Palestine did tend to become politically or intellectually (or both) engaged in Palestine, especially in the realm of print media. A number of newspapers were started, some in Palestine, but others more importantly in places like Beirut and Cairo, which spilled a copious amount of ink on the issue of Zionism. However, all of this makes for a very 'glued-together', tendentious picture of the emergence of Palestinian national consciousness that seems to go beyond the reality on the ground.
And, this is where Khalidi's thesis becomes tenuous. At the very most, the formation of Palestinian print media organs and the proliferation of rudimentary education was perhaps too little too late to give Palestinians enough 'runway space' to get a national identity off the ground before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Jewish immigration to Palestine reached floodlike proportions. At the very least, it is somewhat dubious, to my mind, that Palestinians would ever even have done so without the entrance of Jewish settlement in Palestine onto the scene, something that gave the locals a common enemy against which to unify and identify. Although Khalidi is at great pains to demonstrate that the nascent Palestinian education system and incipient print media existed "antecedently" to the arrival of Jewish colonizers, this can only be true by maybe a couple of decades, and at a very rudimentary level of development. Khalidi notes at quite a few times, based on his research of the newspaper primary source base he relies on, that even as waves of Jewish settlers were moving into Arab land, Arab editors decried the seeming inertia, disunity and fecklessness of the Arabs whose land was being gobbled up.
This brings us to the ineluctable conclusion that contradicts, and yet does not contradict, Khalidi's thesis: The emergence of Palestinian national consciousness appears to be precisely concomitant to the movement of Jews in force into Palestine. Khalidi pinpoints the true 'birth' of a coherent picture of "Palestinianness" at the period between the advent of the First World War and the beginnings of British occupation in Palestine in the early 1920s. Only then, after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the revelation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the exponential growth of the Jewish colonial population did Arabs suddenly react in a coherent and meaningful way indicative of a national consciousness. Even then, whether it was as "Palestinians" that they were reacting it up for debate. Khalidi readily accepts that not all Arab opposition to the Jews stemmed from a regional Palestinian fealty or nationalist impulse. Much of the opposition was grounded in religion and Islam's own troubled history with Judaism. Some of it was also based on pan-Arab nationalism, a longing to be united with Syria and Iraq, or even Lebanon, not a specific Palestinian nationalism. Sometimes it was just the sagacious perception that Zionism was a front for continued European imperialism in the Levant. In short, of the amount of opposition to Zionism that emanated from the Arabs in Palestine, only a fraction can be attributed to a feeling of "Palestinianness".
Khalidi closes on the sanguine and reasonable note that, even if the Palestinian national identity is somewhat contrived, it is no more synthetic than most other national identities and has enough cultural and political 'solvency', as it were, to merit investment in a national home. The world, for better or for worse, has decreed that the nation-state is the primary unit of human geopolitical organization and social structuring, and thus it is only reasonable that Palestinians should be granted the basic right to such an institution.
Indeed, the Palestinian claim to national consciousness is rather shaky, especially before the advent of the Zionist colonization scheme. Khalidi tries his best to locate its provenance in things like the long-held Arab regard for Jerusalem and its environs as 'holy' land. The Ottomans, who governed Palestine for four hundred years, slowly developed an administrative conception of Palestine as unique and separate from Syria or Lebanon. The bold proliferation of state education in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century did not leave Palestine untouched, and the few literati that were produced by it in Palestine did tend to become politically or intellectually (or both) engaged in Palestine, especially in the realm of print media. A number of newspapers were started, some in Palestine, but others more importantly in places like Beirut and Cairo, which spilled a copious amount of ink on the issue of Zionism. However, all of this makes for a very 'glued-together', tendentious picture of the emergence of Palestinian national consciousness that seems to go beyond the reality on the ground.
And, this is where Khalidi's thesis becomes tenuous. At the very most, the formation of Palestinian print media organs and the proliferation of rudimentary education was perhaps too little too late to give Palestinians enough 'runway space' to get a national identity off the ground before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Jewish immigration to Palestine reached floodlike proportions. At the very least, it is somewhat dubious, to my mind, that Palestinians would ever even have done so without the entrance of Jewish settlement in Palestine onto the scene, something that gave the locals a common enemy against which to unify and identify. Although Khalidi is at great pains to demonstrate that the nascent Palestinian education system and incipient print media existed "antecedently" to the arrival of Jewish colonizers, this can only be true by maybe a couple of decades, and at a very rudimentary level of development. Khalidi notes at quite a few times, based on his research of the newspaper primary source base he relies on, that even as waves of Jewish settlers were moving into Arab land, Arab editors decried the seeming inertia, disunity and fecklessness of the Arabs whose land was being gobbled up.
This brings us to the ineluctable conclusion that contradicts, and yet does not contradict, Khalidi's thesis: The emergence of Palestinian national consciousness appears to be precisely concomitant to the movement of Jews in force into Palestine. Khalidi pinpoints the true 'birth' of a coherent picture of "Palestinianness" at the period between the advent of the First World War and the beginnings of British occupation in Palestine in the early 1920s. Only then, after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the revelation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the exponential growth of the Jewish colonial population did Arabs suddenly react in a coherent and meaningful way indicative of a national consciousness. Even then, whether it was as "Palestinians" that they were reacting it up for debate. Khalidi readily accepts that not all Arab opposition to the Jews stemmed from a regional Palestinian fealty or nationalist impulse. Much of the opposition was grounded in religion and Islam's own troubled history with Judaism. Some of it was also based on pan-Arab nationalism, a longing to be united with Syria and Iraq, or even Lebanon, not a specific Palestinian nationalism. Sometimes it was just the sagacious perception that Zionism was a front for continued European imperialism in the Levant. In short, of the amount of opposition to Zionism that emanated from the Arabs in Palestine, only a fraction can be attributed to a feeling of "Palestinianness".
Khalidi closes on the sanguine and reasonable note that, even if the Palestinian national identity is somewhat contrived, it is no more synthetic than most other national identities and has enough cultural and political 'solvency', as it were, to merit investment in a national home. The world, for better or for worse, has decreed that the nation-state is the primary unit of human geopolitical organization and social structuring, and thus it is only reasonable that Palestinians should be granted the basic right to such an institution.
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June 13, 2011This is certainly a precise and well-done history. Whenever any informative document comes to me from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I'm immediately suspicious of the author's motives. But Khalidi is very up front about his position.
The history certainly provides a comprehensive account of Palestinian identity, and that's what it set out to do. It thoroughly debunks the bullshit notion that Palestinians don't exist, or that their identity is less authentic than the Jewish identity within the spatial context of Israel/Palestine. Also, it provides a glimpse into the Middle East conflict in the era preceding Israeli independence-- something rarely discussed in media accounts.
However, in its attempt to identify the development of Palestinian identity independent of Zionism, I really feel like Khalidi ignores the potent dialectical element. He's so adamant to defend Palestine as a positive rather than a negative identity that he glosses over a rather ugly implicit argument: that any Jewish settlement of any kind was fundamentally an act of colonization, and that Palestinians have an exclusively authentic and timeless claim to the state-space, an argument little more intellectually defensible than the right-wing argument that Mexicans are colonizing the U.S. If he sketched out the dialectic of Palestinian/Zionist interaction a bit more, I'd be a happier camper.
The history certainly provides a comprehensive account of Palestinian identity, and that's what it set out to do. It thoroughly debunks the bullshit notion that Palestinians don't exist, or that their identity is less authentic than the Jewish identity within the spatial context of Israel/Palestine. Also, it provides a glimpse into the Middle East conflict in the era preceding Israeli independence-- something rarely discussed in media accounts.
However, in its attempt to identify the development of Palestinian identity independent of Zionism, I really feel like Khalidi ignores the potent dialectical element. He's so adamant to defend Palestine as a positive rather than a negative identity that he glosses over a rather ugly implicit argument: that any Jewish settlement of any kind was fundamentally an act of colonization, and that Palestinians have an exclusively authentic and timeless claim to the state-space, an argument little more intellectually defensible than the right-wing argument that Mexicans are colonizing the U.S. If he sketched out the dialectic of Palestinian/Zionist interaction a bit more, I'd be a happier camper.
August 19, 2018
I came into this book as a potential "choir"-- I have always had a lot of respect for Khalidi, and have never really understood and much less sympathized with the idea that Palestinians are "not really a people" or that they need to justify their existence in some way.
Which is why it's odd that I come away from this book somewhat less convinced of Khalidi's point than at the outset.
The point of the books is very specific: elements of "Palestinian [national] Identity" can be traced back to the early 20th century, especially to the periods immediately before and immediately after WWI. He provides evidence primarily from newspapers and two prominent figures to support this.
Yet on two major points the book seems sorely lacking. First, he argues at various points in the book against the idea that Palestinian Identity is solely an outgrowth of opposition to Zionism (a frequent claim in anti-Palestinian circles, as if this identity is wholly invented to "poke Israel in the eye"), yet just about the only indicator of Palestinian national identity he brings involves opposition to Zionism in various forms. This seems a great disservice, though I am too ignorant to suggest what other elements he could have brought up (this is why I was reading the book in the first place).
Second, the historical emphasis of the book seems completely off. In a book of 209 pages, the first time he discusses Palestinian identity as distinct from other Arab and Muslim identities (first Ottoman, then Pan-Arab, and finally "South Syrian") is on page 165, and he ends this discussion on page 175, to be followed by a discussion of how this identity disappeared and reappeared in later decades. By his own account, up until the post-WWI period, Palestinian identity as a distinct one from the others mentioned did not coalesce into any kind of coherent movement. He does provide some examples of such a movement in those 10 pages, but it feels woefully inadequate.
Now, I have to be clear, because it is a central (perhaps the central) argument of the book: I am not saying that the presence of other identities in any way invalidates the Palestinian one. They can be complementary and overlapping. But there also has to be some sense of an independent identity for the term "Palestinian Identity" to even make sense, even as it draws on or interacts with these other identities. And in detailing that distinct identity, the book feels short, especially as it pays very little attention to such momentous occasions as the 1936-1939 revolt (its significance is mentioned but not much justified) or how leading figures before Arafat expressed this identity.
Lastly, while one can never and should never expect an author to be some kind of detached "objective observer", there were some biases in the text that were particularly distracting. Khalidi posits rural resistance to Zionism as an early indicator of Palestinian identity, and throughout the text consistently portrays resisters in a heroic light and (more importantly) any sympathetic views toward Zionism as a kind of betrayal. Typically this does not stray far from acceptable academic discourse, but one passage stood out (p.141): "Clearly, in spite of the alarm Zionism aroused among a large section of the Arab intelligentsia, such radical solutions were not yer seen to be necessary, nor perhaps was the time yet ripe for their propagation. We have nevertheless noted in the preceding chapter that in the countryside, the peasants themselves had begun to react violently to the seizure of what they understood to be their land by its new Zionist owners. [...] the literate upper classes were occasionally to show themselves to be ahead of the rest of Arab society in terms of perceptions, but lagging behind when it came to action and, with several notable exceptions, can thus be judged guilty of a certain degree of failure of leadership-- and, at the same time, unwillingness to follow the lead of the fellahin."
This comes immediately after a discussion of the major newspapers' unwillingness to support a variety of radical measures, both violent (armed resistance) and nonviolent (measures against the Ottomans or critiquing the land sale system). It doesn't seem that "can thus be judged guilty" is a statement that he is placing in the mouths of others, but rather something he is saying himself.
Now, I know that Khalidi is morally opposed to violence against civilians for political purposes. There shouldn't be any question of that. But it is hard not to read in this passage a criticism of the elite for not encouraging or participating in the violence against Jewish immigrants-- who, by his own account, for the most part bought and settled the land legally if problematically. This joins the overwhelmingly positive tone of his documenting the "resistance" of the fellahin, which often involved murder and persecution of the Jewish immigrants, to create a very problematic framing of that period of history, especially considering he ties it so strongly with Palestinian identity itself, which rather plays into the hands of anti-Palestinian critics.
There are many great observations and comments in the book that will be valuable to any reader, though particularly people already knowledgable about the conflict and the history of the area. Khalidi's scholarship is, as always, impressive and professional. But it seems to do a rather poor job of making his primary argument, seems to partially vindicate some of the views he set out to refute, and adds in a very problematic attitude toward violence to boot. As someone who came in very much looking forward to bolstering an already existing belief in the Palestinian national identity, I came away feeling that critics of that identity would gain more "ammo" from reading this book than if they didn't.
Which is why it's odd that I come away from this book somewhat less convinced of Khalidi's point than at the outset.
The point of the books is very specific: elements of "Palestinian [national] Identity" can be traced back to the early 20th century, especially to the periods immediately before and immediately after WWI. He provides evidence primarily from newspapers and two prominent figures to support this.
Yet on two major points the book seems sorely lacking. First, he argues at various points in the book against the idea that Palestinian Identity is solely an outgrowth of opposition to Zionism (a frequent claim in anti-Palestinian circles, as if this identity is wholly invented to "poke Israel in the eye"), yet just about the only indicator of Palestinian national identity he brings involves opposition to Zionism in various forms. This seems a great disservice, though I am too ignorant to suggest what other elements he could have brought up (this is why I was reading the book in the first place).
Second, the historical emphasis of the book seems completely off. In a book of 209 pages, the first time he discusses Palestinian identity as distinct from other Arab and Muslim identities (first Ottoman, then Pan-Arab, and finally "South Syrian") is on page 165, and he ends this discussion on page 175, to be followed by a discussion of how this identity disappeared and reappeared in later decades. By his own account, up until the post-WWI period, Palestinian identity as a distinct one from the others mentioned did not coalesce into any kind of coherent movement. He does provide some examples of such a movement in those 10 pages, but it feels woefully inadequate.
Now, I have to be clear, because it is a central (perhaps the central) argument of the book: I am not saying that the presence of other identities in any way invalidates the Palestinian one. They can be complementary and overlapping. But there also has to be some sense of an independent identity for the term "Palestinian Identity" to even make sense, even as it draws on or interacts with these other identities. And in detailing that distinct identity, the book feels short, especially as it pays very little attention to such momentous occasions as the 1936-1939 revolt (its significance is mentioned but not much justified) or how leading figures before Arafat expressed this identity.
Lastly, while one can never and should never expect an author to be some kind of detached "objective observer", there were some biases in the text that were particularly distracting. Khalidi posits rural resistance to Zionism as an early indicator of Palestinian identity, and throughout the text consistently portrays resisters in a heroic light and (more importantly) any sympathetic views toward Zionism as a kind of betrayal. Typically this does not stray far from acceptable academic discourse, but one passage stood out (p.141): "Clearly, in spite of the alarm Zionism aroused among a large section of the Arab intelligentsia, such radical solutions were not yer seen to be necessary, nor perhaps was the time yet ripe for their propagation. We have nevertheless noted in the preceding chapter that in the countryside, the peasants themselves had begun to react violently to the seizure of what they understood to be their land by its new Zionist owners. [...] the literate upper classes were occasionally to show themselves to be ahead of the rest of Arab society in terms of perceptions, but lagging behind when it came to action and, with several notable exceptions, can thus be judged guilty of a certain degree of failure of leadership-- and, at the same time, unwillingness to follow the lead of the fellahin."
This comes immediately after a discussion of the major newspapers' unwillingness to support a variety of radical measures, both violent (armed resistance) and nonviolent (measures against the Ottomans or critiquing the land sale system). It doesn't seem that "can thus be judged guilty" is a statement that he is placing in the mouths of others, but rather something he is saying himself.
Now, I know that Khalidi is morally opposed to violence against civilians for political purposes. There shouldn't be any question of that. But it is hard not to read in this passage a criticism of the elite for not encouraging or participating in the violence against Jewish immigrants-- who, by his own account, for the most part bought and settled the land legally if problematically. This joins the overwhelmingly positive tone of his documenting the "resistance" of the fellahin, which often involved murder and persecution of the Jewish immigrants, to create a very problematic framing of that period of history, especially considering he ties it so strongly with Palestinian identity itself, which rather plays into the hands of anti-Palestinian critics.
There are many great observations and comments in the book that will be valuable to any reader, though particularly people already knowledgable about the conflict and the history of the area. Khalidi's scholarship is, as always, impressive and professional. But it seems to do a rather poor job of making his primary argument, seems to partially vindicate some of the views he set out to refute, and adds in a very problematic attitude toward violence to boot. As someone who came in very much looking forward to bolstering an already existing belief in the Palestinian national identity, I came away feeling that critics of that identity would gain more "ammo" from reading this book than if they didn't.
May 11, 2022
Careful in analysis. Not making premature conclusions, verifying every single statement a million times. Great example of scholarship.
January 9, 2011
For someone from outside of the field, this offered me a good overview of not only the history and development of a Palestinian identity, but also of how contemporary (well... a decade ago) discussions on the topic relate to that history. In particular, I liked Khalidi's analysis of Pan-Arabism, and how it lingered (lingers!) in Western discourse beyond its actual force as a political agenda in the Middle East.
There is a central tension in the book that I felt went unresolved, however. Khalidi opens his argument siding with historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, for whom the very concept of nationality is invented tradition and imagined community. However, Khalidi also wants to emphasis the legitimacy of Palestinian identity by arguing for its relative longevity and that it is not merely defined by its relationship to Israel. I can sympathize with both of Khalidi's aims. But I craved a meditation on why nationality and national identity, while invented and imaginary, are also real and legitimate. I recall that Marilyn Ivy's book on the construction of tradition in modern Japan gave a this issue its due. Maybe this history could borrow a little from anthropology.
There is a central tension in the book that I felt went unresolved, however. Khalidi opens his argument siding with historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, for whom the very concept of nationality is invented tradition and imagined community. However, Khalidi also wants to emphasis the legitimacy of Palestinian identity by arguing for its relative longevity and that it is not merely defined by its relationship to Israel. I can sympathize with both of Khalidi's aims. But I craved a meditation on why nationality and national identity, while invented and imaginary, are also real and legitimate. I recall that Marilyn Ivy's book on the construction of tradition in modern Japan gave a this issue its due. Maybe this history could borrow a little from anthropology.
October 24, 2021
spineless propaganda. khalidi doesnt understand judaism and is more content blaming the jews than trying to understand the failure of the palestinian leadership. i could not find any mention of the british.
January 9, 2022
A disappointing book, which seems to suggest the lack of a state is why the Palestinians did not have a strong national identity, but does not seem to consider that perhaps the reverse is the case: that they didn’t have a strong identity, and so never fought for a state? Whether their identity was strong or weak, new or old, it doesn't mean the people on the ground don't deserve fair treatment. They do. But this book focuses on finding an old Palestinian identity which predates Zionism, and showing historical proof for it. Its great efforts yield thin results, which surprised me and mainly made me skeptical of all the book's arguments. You would not need such intense efforts to find or define the identities of, say, Swedes, Thais, the French, the Jews, Japanese, Native Americans, Scots, and so on.
Some other, scattered thoughts:
A quote from the book, and an example (for me at least) of how the author gets things backwards, of how his presentation of history does not quite add up. He says:
“the 'sequence of Palestinian defeats before May 15, 1948 is little known… [and] these crushing defeats ended any hopes that the Arab state called for in General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, which provided for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, would ever come into being. Instead the Arab state was strangled at birth...'”
It was a truly curious thing to read. The author himself explains that the Jews accepted the partition offered in Resolution 181, and that the Arabs loudly and firmly rejected it. Their rejection led to the fighting. But somehow, in his telling, it is not the Arab rejection of 181 that led to 181's failure? Rather, he is saying, the failure was caused by the Arab loss in the fight—which they themselves began—to try and prevent 181 from ever actually happening?
Page 22, the author suggests that one proof of identity is that if Palestinians didn’t have an identity, they’d have been absorbed by their neighbors after 1948. Perhaps so, but another explanation is that their leaders and their neighbors kept them apart on purpose, treating them as a political tool in the fight to against Israel. And how did that contribute to the identity? How much of the identity was rooted in this artificial separation and in utter rejection of Israel, in the insistence that Arab redemption could come only at the cost of the violent destruction of Israel? These ideas aren't dealt with at all, in the book. It would have been interesting for the author to discuss them, to hear them shaded with his own understanding.
As with another book of his ('The Iron Cage'), Khalidi does not seem to see or look for the simpler explanations that exist for the problems he describes. Why did the Arabs of Palestine not get the state proposed in Resolution 181? Because they rejected the Resolution and then fought violently against it. Why did they reject it and fight against it? Because they refused to accept any right of Jews, on any part of the land at all. Their rejection, then and now, is the root of their circumstances. Then as now, they predicated their success on the failure and humiliation of Israel, leaving little if any room for compromise. He himself, on every page and in his very tone, speaks of Arabs as the only people who could ever possibly have any legitimate claim at all, and of Jews only ever as 'colonizers', totally illegitimate in their every endeavor. This is wrong and a fundamental misunderstanding. In making it, the author accidentally helps explain the root of the conflict.
(Oh and, on page 144, a typical sentence: "As with the identity of other peoples of many other Arab countries (and indeed other countries) in the modern period, we have seen that the case of Palestinian identity is complicated by the difficulty of explaining its interrelation with broad, powerful, transnational foci of identity, in particular Arabism and Islam, and with other potent regional and local loyalties." — Sentences like this really made a 200-page book seem much longer than it was.)
Some other, scattered thoughts:
A quote from the book, and an example (for me at least) of how the author gets things backwards, of how his presentation of history does not quite add up. He says:
“the 'sequence of Palestinian defeats before May 15, 1948 is little known… [and] these crushing defeats ended any hopes that the Arab state called for in General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, which provided for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, would ever come into being. Instead the Arab state was strangled at birth...'”
It was a truly curious thing to read. The author himself explains that the Jews accepted the partition offered in Resolution 181, and that the Arabs loudly and firmly rejected it. Their rejection led to the fighting. But somehow, in his telling, it is not the Arab rejection of 181 that led to 181's failure? Rather, he is saying, the failure was caused by the Arab loss in the fight—which they themselves began—to try and prevent 181 from ever actually happening?
Page 22, the author suggests that one proof of identity is that if Palestinians didn’t have an identity, they’d have been absorbed by their neighbors after 1948. Perhaps so, but another explanation is that their leaders and their neighbors kept them apart on purpose, treating them as a political tool in the fight to against Israel. And how did that contribute to the identity? How much of the identity was rooted in this artificial separation and in utter rejection of Israel, in the insistence that Arab redemption could come only at the cost of the violent destruction of Israel? These ideas aren't dealt with at all, in the book. It would have been interesting for the author to discuss them, to hear them shaded with his own understanding.
As with another book of his ('The Iron Cage'), Khalidi does not seem to see or look for the simpler explanations that exist for the problems he describes. Why did the Arabs of Palestine not get the state proposed in Resolution 181? Because they rejected the Resolution and then fought violently against it. Why did they reject it and fight against it? Because they refused to accept any right of Jews, on any part of the land at all. Their rejection, then and now, is the root of their circumstances. Then as now, they predicated their success on the failure and humiliation of Israel, leaving little if any room for compromise. He himself, on every page and in his very tone, speaks of Arabs as the only people who could ever possibly have any legitimate claim at all, and of Jews only ever as 'colonizers', totally illegitimate in their every endeavor. This is wrong and a fundamental misunderstanding. In making it, the author accidentally helps explain the root of the conflict.
(Oh and, on page 144, a typical sentence: "As with the identity of other peoples of many other Arab countries (and indeed other countries) in the modern period, we have seen that the case of Palestinian identity is complicated by the difficulty of explaining its interrelation with broad, powerful, transnational foci of identity, in particular Arabism and Islam, and with other potent regional and local loyalties." — Sentences like this really made a 200-page book seem much longer than it was.)
November 7, 2014
A very good examination of the development of Palestinian identity, focusing first on the Ottoman period of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and then the early years of the British Mandate. I especially appreciate Khalidi's research in the Palestinian and wider Syrian press of the period. As I started the book I was a little wary. Some reviews suggested that Khalidi focused too much on Palestinian identity as "independent" or as a "positive" and overlooked its dialectical nature as it relates to Zionism. I'm not seeing any such shortcoming. Khalidi goes into a good bit of detail in terms of Ottoman and Mandate politics and shows the editorial banter in the Arab press as well as its focus on opposition to Zionism. He shows that Palestinian identity is a mixture of complex factors, but its relation to Zionism is certainly a part of that mix.
July 20, 2024
Antes de hacer mi reseña, quiero ser claro: leo y critico este libro como sionista. No pretenderé no tener sesgo, creo que la ilusión de poder ser totalmente neutral acaba siendo dañina en la mayoría de las veces, y mucho más conductiva al fanatismo sin saberlo.
Habiendo dicho lo anterior, quiero remarcar tres aspectos del libro que me llamaron la atención. Khalidi hace dos afirmaciones sobre lo que trata de hacer su texto: demostrar que la identidad nacional palestina es real, existiendo paralelamente a todas las otras identidades nacionales y probar que el desarrollo de esa identidad no fue primariamente en oposición al sionismo. Hace un gran trabajo para comprobar la primera, pero la narrativa del libro no me convence de la segunda.
Es lógico que existe una identidad nacional Palestina, que conecta a sus sujetos tanto mediante símbolos como experiencias, tan real como la de cualquier estado-nación del mundo. El autor hace bien en señalar que todos los otros nacionalismos árabes, e incluso el sionismo, que son aceptados como legítimos por la mayoría de la gente, surgieron a la par que el nacionalismo palestino.
Sin embargo, creo que el autor se aleja de su objetivo de desligar la identidad palestina del sionismo. Ejemplos de un par de autores que concibieron una tierra y un pueblo palestino antes que el asentamiento sionista no son suficientes para sostener su afirmación. Más allá de esto, la mayor parte del libro se enfoca en las reacciones de la sociedad palestina hacia el sionismo y las experiencias vividas por sus sujetos a causa de este. Esto tiene que ver, de acuerdo a la admisión explícita de Khalidi, con el hecho de que la educación palestina y los medios impresos existían antes de la llegada de los pioneros judíos, pero solo por un par de décadas y de manera rudimentaria. Eso no invalida su identidad o aspiraciones nacionales, pero sí juega en contra de la tesis de Khalidi. En el contexto del libro, es indudable que el sionismo fue un catalizador para la formación de una conciencia nacional palestina, en respuesta a en respuesta a la inmigración judía masiva, eventos como la Declaración Balfour y el Acuerdo Sykes-Picot y posteriormente, la Guerra de los Seis Días. Asimismo, el libro niega en repetidas ocasiones algo que admite una sola vez, en la p. 166, que mucha parte de la oposición al sionismo de parte del mundo palestino, corresponde a una visión nacionalista y exclusivista de la identidad árabe: “The same notes of defiance are struck even after the paper’s closure by the British. In the first issue after it was reopened, in November 1919, one article commented on news from Paris regarding the likely partition of Syria, arguing that “we are residents of Southern Syria, we do not want partition, we want an independent Syria, and we are against Zionist immigration.”67 A second article, reporting a public speech by Sir Herbert Samuel at the London Opera House on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, categorically stated that the Arab nation had awakened from its sleep, and that “our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must remain Arab.””
En relación con mi calificación, la falla en poder comprobar que uno de los elementos principales de la identidad palestina es la oposición al sionismo le quita una estrella al libro. La otra estrella no se la doy por algo mucho más grave: aunque no es el Khalidi poco serio de The Hundred Years War on Palestine que se enfoca en vilificar al sionismo mediante selección selectiva, su tratamiento del mismo sigue dejando mucho que desear. Desde la generalización de los israelíes que hace en la p. 5, citando un ficticio momento de sanitización moral: “Its core is that Israelis, many of them descended from victims of persecution, pogroms, and concentration camps, have themselves been mistreating another people. We thus find that the sins done to the fathers have morally desensitized the sons to their sins toward others, and have even sometimes been used to justify these sins” hasta las caracterizaciones de mala fe que hace en la p. 189, pretendiendo que fue la sociedad palestina la quien abrió las puertas a perseguidos en la antesala Holocausto en vez del movimiento sionista (con oposición de los movimientos nacionales palestinos de la época): “This discontent was accentuated by economic distress in the early 1930s as the worldwide depression hit Palestine, and by the impact of rapidly mounting Jewish immigration as Nazi persecution drove thousands of Jews escaping from Europe to seek refuge in Palestine, at a time when most of the countries of the world shut their doors to them. In the year 1935 alone, at the height of this flood of refugees from Hitler’s persecution, more than 60,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, a number equal to the entire Jewish population of the country only twenty years earlier”. Es posible que esto se deba al malentendido (si se le puede llamar así) que tiene el autor sobre las intenciones del sionismo: en la
p. 82 dice que “Zionism, Ruhi al-Khalidi argued, grew out of a radically new reading of the Torah, the Talmud, and medieval and modern Jewish writings which calls upon the Jews “to return to Palestine and stresses that worldly and religious happiness consist in possessing Zion and ruling it.” In hindsight, these seem perfectly straightforward conclusions, and indeed much of al-Khalidi’s work (like the earlier essay on the subject by Najib Nassar99) is buttressed with sections from a long article on Zionism translated from the Encyclopedia Judaica.” Hay un pequeño problema con esto, y es que el sionismo nace como un proyecto secular (nada que ver con lecturas del Talmud o la Torah) que busca un lugar seguro para los judíos escapando del creciente antisemitismo.
En conclusión, recomiendo el libro para entender las diferentes manifestaciones de la identidad palestina, particularmente para el periodo previo a 1967. Las fuentes son de calidad y el texto es en su mayor parte interesante. Sin embargo, la vilificación total del sionismo y la poca justificación a su propia tesis le quitan seriedad a un gran trabajo académico.
Habiendo dicho lo anterior, quiero remarcar tres aspectos del libro que me llamaron la atención. Khalidi hace dos afirmaciones sobre lo que trata de hacer su texto: demostrar que la identidad nacional palestina es real, existiendo paralelamente a todas las otras identidades nacionales y probar que el desarrollo de esa identidad no fue primariamente en oposición al sionismo. Hace un gran trabajo para comprobar la primera, pero la narrativa del libro no me convence de la segunda.
Es lógico que existe una identidad nacional Palestina, que conecta a sus sujetos tanto mediante símbolos como experiencias, tan real como la de cualquier estado-nación del mundo. El autor hace bien en señalar que todos los otros nacionalismos árabes, e incluso el sionismo, que son aceptados como legítimos por la mayoría de la gente, surgieron a la par que el nacionalismo palestino.
Sin embargo, creo que el autor se aleja de su objetivo de desligar la identidad palestina del sionismo. Ejemplos de un par de autores que concibieron una tierra y un pueblo palestino antes que el asentamiento sionista no son suficientes para sostener su afirmación. Más allá de esto, la mayor parte del libro se enfoca en las reacciones de la sociedad palestina hacia el sionismo y las experiencias vividas por sus sujetos a causa de este. Esto tiene que ver, de acuerdo a la admisión explícita de Khalidi, con el hecho de que la educación palestina y los medios impresos existían antes de la llegada de los pioneros judíos, pero solo por un par de décadas y de manera rudimentaria. Eso no invalida su identidad o aspiraciones nacionales, pero sí juega en contra de la tesis de Khalidi. En el contexto del libro, es indudable que el sionismo fue un catalizador para la formación de una conciencia nacional palestina, en respuesta a en respuesta a la inmigración judía masiva, eventos como la Declaración Balfour y el Acuerdo Sykes-Picot y posteriormente, la Guerra de los Seis Días. Asimismo, el libro niega en repetidas ocasiones algo que admite una sola vez, en la p. 166, que mucha parte de la oposición al sionismo de parte del mundo palestino, corresponde a una visión nacionalista y exclusivista de la identidad árabe: “The same notes of defiance are struck even after the paper’s closure by the British. In the first issue after it was reopened, in November 1919, one article commented on news from Paris regarding the likely partition of Syria, arguing that “we are residents of Southern Syria, we do not want partition, we want an independent Syria, and we are against Zionist immigration.”67 A second article, reporting a public speech by Sir Herbert Samuel at the London Opera House on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, categorically stated that the Arab nation had awakened from its sleep, and that “our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must remain Arab.””
En relación con mi calificación, la falla en poder comprobar que uno de los elementos principales de la identidad palestina es la oposición al sionismo le quita una estrella al libro. La otra estrella no se la doy por algo mucho más grave: aunque no es el Khalidi poco serio de The Hundred Years War on Palestine que se enfoca en vilificar al sionismo mediante selección selectiva, su tratamiento del mismo sigue dejando mucho que desear. Desde la generalización de los israelíes que hace en la p. 5, citando un ficticio momento de sanitización moral: “Its core is that Israelis, many of them descended from victims of persecution, pogroms, and concentration camps, have themselves been mistreating another people. We thus find that the sins done to the fathers have morally desensitized the sons to their sins toward others, and have even sometimes been used to justify these sins” hasta las caracterizaciones de mala fe que hace en la p. 189, pretendiendo que fue la sociedad palestina la quien abrió las puertas a perseguidos en la antesala Holocausto en vez del movimiento sionista (con oposición de los movimientos nacionales palestinos de la época): “This discontent was accentuated by economic distress in the early 1930s as the worldwide depression hit Palestine, and by the impact of rapidly mounting Jewish immigration as Nazi persecution drove thousands of Jews escaping from Europe to seek refuge in Palestine, at a time when most of the countries of the world shut their doors to them. In the year 1935 alone, at the height of this flood of refugees from Hitler’s persecution, more than 60,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, a number equal to the entire Jewish population of the country only twenty years earlier”. Es posible que esto se deba al malentendido (si se le puede llamar así) que tiene el autor sobre las intenciones del sionismo: en la
p. 82 dice que “Zionism, Ruhi al-Khalidi argued, grew out of a radically new reading of the Torah, the Talmud, and medieval and modern Jewish writings which calls upon the Jews “to return to Palestine and stresses that worldly and religious happiness consist in possessing Zion and ruling it.” In hindsight, these seem perfectly straightforward conclusions, and indeed much of al-Khalidi’s work (like the earlier essay on the subject by Najib Nassar99) is buttressed with sections from a long article on Zionism translated from the Encyclopedia Judaica.” Hay un pequeño problema con esto, y es que el sionismo nace como un proyecto secular (nada que ver con lecturas del Talmud o la Torah) que busca un lugar seguro para los judíos escapando del creciente antisemitismo.
En conclusión, recomiendo el libro para entender las diferentes manifestaciones de la identidad palestina, particularmente para el periodo previo a 1967. Las fuentes son de calidad y el texto es en su mayor parte interesante. Sin embargo, la vilificación total del sionismo y la poca justificación a su propia tesis le quitan seriedad a un gran trabajo académico.
June 8, 2007
Proves how Palestinians have always existed even though some Israelis would have you believe otherwise.
January 18, 2025
really an outstanding and essential work for understanding the development of Palestinian nationalism. its coverage of early Zionist settlement helps illuminate some of the critical and early years of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. there’s some extensive discussion of scholarly work to read further into as well, including some untranslated works in Arabic, so this book can serve as a launchpad for deeper research.
I particularly like Khalidi’s explicit rejection of ideological framings of the conflict. he is just as willing to critique Zionist historiography as he is Palestinian nationalist writing, Panarabist writing, and Panislamist thinking. one gets the sense that this is a serious scholar unafraid to confront dizzying complexity, and unwilling to collapse nuance in service of political ends.
I didn’t notice any glaring red flags from this work, nor did I see many misrepresentations. maybe I’m just not versed enough in early Zionist history, but I could really only find one inaccuracy in this work. on page 190, Khalidi asserts in a paragraph that the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 “obtained no lasting concessions from the British, who in a 1939 White Paper promised limits on Jewish immigration, which proved impossible to implement in light of the revelation of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.”
this struck me as a serious error. the British did in fact enforce the White Paper up until 1948, going as far as to intern Holocaust survivors on Cyprus and deny them entry into Palestine. members of the Yishuv, like the Irgun, violently fought the British over this White Paper.
since the quote in question was part of a single paragraph, I don’t think it besmirches the whole work. there is far more content to concern yourself with, and this anecdote has no bearing on Khalidi’s thesis. though I mention the anecdote to correct it,I stress that this book is the best treatment of Palestinians that I’ve so far read from a Palestinian. it is well worth reading for anyone interested in the region.
I particularly like Khalidi’s explicit rejection of ideological framings of the conflict. he is just as willing to critique Zionist historiography as he is Palestinian nationalist writing, Panarabist writing, and Panislamist thinking. one gets the sense that this is a serious scholar unafraid to confront dizzying complexity, and unwilling to collapse nuance in service of political ends.
I didn’t notice any glaring red flags from this work, nor did I see many misrepresentations. maybe I’m just not versed enough in early Zionist history, but I could really only find one inaccuracy in this work. on page 190, Khalidi asserts in a paragraph that the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 “obtained no lasting concessions from the British, who in a 1939 White Paper promised limits on Jewish immigration, which proved impossible to implement in light of the revelation of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.”
this struck me as a serious error. the British did in fact enforce the White Paper up until 1948, going as far as to intern Holocaust survivors on Cyprus and deny them entry into Palestine. members of the Yishuv, like the Irgun, violently fought the British over this White Paper.
since the quote in question was part of a single paragraph, I don’t think it besmirches the whole work. there is far more content to concern yourself with, and this anecdote has no bearing on Khalidi’s thesis. though I mention the anecdote to correct it,I stress that this book is the best treatment of Palestinians that I’ve so far read from a Palestinian. it is well worth reading for anyone interested in the region.
March 26, 2025
In this book, Khalidi uses his access to an extensive collection of newspapers and other publications from the late Ottoman period through WWII (in part through the library his family, one of the leading families among Palestinians, maintained in Jerusalem) to trace the development of Palestinian identity and how it intersected with other identities (pan-Arab, Ottoman, regional, family, etc.) through this period. The rigor and extensive footnoting was much appreciated in his approach to topics rife with polemic and propaganda and less investigated by the historian's grunt work of reading primary sources. Khalidi supplements his theses with indirect conclusions based on additional evidence from the period. There is also a final chapter that takes Palestinian history through the much more documented period of history that extends to the 1990s when this was first published. This work is of value to anyone wishing to understand the roots of the present-day Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
August 29, 2024
Excellent book. Khalidi does a very good job explaining the specific circumstances how and why Palestinian Arab nationalism and national identity developed in the early 20th century, driven on the one hand by the struggle with Zionism, but also other forces unrelated to it (fall of the Ottoman Empire, a “holy land” religious identity, rise of nationalisms). He is obviously not a completely unbiased and unpassionate observer, but that makes the book a better read and he doesn’t shy away from biting criticism of Palestinian leaders or elites.
June 15, 2021
(3.5 stars) read this after recently reading Nur Masalha's "Four Thousand Year History of Palestine" so this was slightly redundant for me. I always love Rashid Khalidi's thoughts, opinions, and scholarship though so I would still recommend it.
August 19, 2025
palestine unit. kinda massive. i understand why people don't fully buy the identity but i think khalidi is making a more nuanced point about the forces that mold national identity and the double standards we maintain for what makes that identity valid.
hist 307
hist 307
November 20, 2018
I found some parts of this book to be extremely interesting, but then some parts to be extremely repetitive and boring. I’d say 6 or 7 out of 10.
July 4, 2024
Need to read a more contemporary perspective now (why did this take me so long to read)
October 1, 2024
informative, radical, and passionate
March 27, 2024
I have to say I was surprised by this book, as it turned to be substantially more academic and sleuthing than I anticipated. Particularly, my understanding of the Palestinian assertion of identity preceding the Zionism was somewhat crude.
"Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness" by Rashid Khalidi is a fascinating, tour-de-force of early Palestinian and Arabic literature that expands on the question: "What did the Palestinians think of themselves?"
According to Khalidi, genesis of Palestinian identity cannot be solely attributed to the Balfour Declaration; rather, preliminary indications of its formation can be traced back to at least a decade before the outbreak of the First World War. This identity was, however, nuanced, with individuals identifying themselves through a prism of multifaceted affiliations – including Ottoman allegiance and their local municipal origins (such as Jeruselum or Haifa). Yet, irrefutably, these identities were inextricably linked to Palestine as their homeland; particularly when faced when the threat of Zionism. It was never clear to me that these identities coalesced into a single "Palestinian" people however, that appeared to come much later.
Khalidi executes a meticulous kind of history that, to my surprise, drew on a massive amount of primary sources in Arabic. As such, this book particularly addresses some of the narratives which have hitherto oversimplified the Palestinian narrative, portraying them as a monolithic entity through time. I highly recommend this.
"Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness" by Rashid Khalidi is a fascinating, tour-de-force of early Palestinian and Arabic literature that expands on the question: "What did the Palestinians think of themselves?"
According to Khalidi, genesis of Palestinian identity cannot be solely attributed to the Balfour Declaration; rather, preliminary indications of its formation can be traced back to at least a decade before the outbreak of the First World War. This identity was, however, nuanced, with individuals identifying themselves through a prism of multifaceted affiliations – including Ottoman allegiance and their local municipal origins (such as Jeruselum or Haifa). Yet, irrefutably, these identities were inextricably linked to Palestine as their homeland; particularly when faced when the threat of Zionism. It was never clear to me that these identities coalesced into a single "Palestinian" people however, that appeared to come much later.
Khalidi executes a meticulous kind of history that, to my surprise, drew on a massive amount of primary sources in Arabic. As such, this book particularly addresses some of the narratives which have hitherto oversimplified the Palestinian narrative, portraying them as a monolithic entity through time. I highly recommend this.
March 13, 2014
A very informative book about how the Palestinian national identity was formed thorough time. He has a depth of knowledge about the history of the period from pre WWI on. I also found him giving a balanced picture of all sides of the issues of the time - US, Russia, British, French, Israel,Saudi, Jordanian, Lebanon and other Middle East countries - though he clearly feels strongly about the outcome to date of the struggle.
February 18, 2014
This guy repeats himself too much. I could have read just the last two chapters. They include everything else in the previous chapters. The first three chapters read like an introduction, an introduction to an introduction, and another introduction. The chapter on the newspapers was way too drawn out and repetitive and the important points were summarized in the later chapters as well.
Read
April 30, 2007technically, um, still haven't read it yet!
July 11, 2025
heavy history book. a lot has changed since this book was published but worth the read. learned a fuck ton
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