Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) - the leader of the emerging Zionist movement - had made his only visit to Palestine in 1898, at the same time that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859-1941) visited it.

Herzl began formulating his ideas on some of the issues of settlement of Palestine, writing in his diary in 1895, “We must kindly take over private property in the areas assigned to us. We must encourage the poor people beyond the borders to find work in the countries of asylum and not give them any job opportunity in our country. "The landowners will be on our side. Policies to seize land and displace the poor must be implemented with caution and caution.

And in his book "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A Story of Settler Colonialism and Resistance" recently published in its Arabic version by the Arab Science Publishers;

The Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi - who is a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University - focused on 6 events that he considered represent a shift in the conflict over Palestine.

Al-Khalidi works as director of the School of International and Domestic Affairs of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and the late Professor Edward Said held the chair of Arab Studies at the University of "Colombia" (Colombia), and was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation in the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993, and from the most famous His books, "Palestinian Identity: A Modern National Building."

These six events begin, according to the author, with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which determined the fate of Palestine, then the Nakba War in 1948, followed by Security Council Resolution No. 242 of 1967, then the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, then the Oslo Peace Agreement of 1993, through Ariel Sharon's visit to Jerusalem in 2000, leading to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and its repeated wars against the people of the Strip in the first decade of the 21st century.

The original copy of the book "The Hundred Years' War against Palestine: The Story of Settler Colonialism and Resistance", published 2020 (Al-Jazeera)

Dismantling the social structure in Palestine

The author says that these stages shed light on the colonial nature of the 100-year war on Palestine, and the indispensable role of external forces - according to the author - in waging these wars.

Al-Khalidi asserts that this colonial settlement model was established in the 1948 war, by calling it the Palestinian “al-Nakba,” or by calling it the Israeli “War of Independence,” by controlling nearly 80% of the Palestinian lands.

The writer says, "I told this story partly through the experiences of Palestinians who lived this war and many of them belong to my family."

The book relies on academic research, but it also has a personal dimension that is usually excluded in academic history, as Al-Khalidi relied on a group of untapped archive materials in addition to the reports of generations of Al-Khalidi family members, mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats and journalists, in addition to a large number of manuscripts in The library of his great-grandfather, Hajj Ragheb al-Khalidi, which includes more than 1,200 manuscripts and about two thousand books, most of which are in Arabic (some in Persian and Ottoman Turkish).

Destroying Palestine

The author says that this book is not a "tearful depiction" of the past 100 years of the history of Palestine, nor is it an excerpt from the criticism written by Rabbi and historian Salo Baron (1895-1989), as he describes the spirit of Jewish historical writings in the nineteenth century.

Khalidi explains, "The Palestinians were accused by sympathizers of those who persecuted them of being preoccupied with the feeling that they were victims, and in fact the Palestinians faced difficult and sometimes impossible conditions, just like all the indigenous local residents who faced colonial wars.

And the author showed that the Palestinians had suffered repeated defeats, and were often scattered, and they did not have good leadership.

This does not mean that the Palestinians have sometimes not succeeded in overcoming these difficulties, or that at other times they have not been able to make better decisions, he explains.

For his part, Professor Khaled Al-Hroub, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Northwestern University, said, "The Palestinian leaders have made serious mistakes, the most important of which is - in my estimation - the attempt to differentiate between the British presence and the Zionist project and appeal to the British as if they were an honest party and not involved in the destruction of Palestine from the beginning." .

The author says, "However, we cannot ignore the international and imperialist powers that allied against the Palestinians, whose extent is often neglected and underestimated, and whose extent the Palestinians were able - despite them - to show flexibility and steadfastness that deserves praise."

In turn, Al-Hroub points out - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that "the conflict over Palestine from the beginning is a multidimensional colonial conflict; imperial, settler, and religious, and these three characteristics are still strongly present in the heart of this conflict until the present moment," as he put it.

Orange oranges

The author considers that at the beginning of the twentieth - and before the Zionist colonialism had any significant impact on Palestine - new ideas spread and expanded the scope of modern education and learning to read and write.

The landscape of large areas of Palestine also changed, and orange groves spread everywhere.

Al-Khalidi asserts that large areas of agricultural land fell "under the control of absentee owners, many of whom lived in Beirut or Damascus at the expense of farmers and small landowners."

Al-Khalidi's book translated into Arabic by Amer Sheikhouni, and the translation was issued by the Arab Science House Publishers (Al-Jazeera)

Rashid Khalidi concludes that before World War I (1914-1918) many perceptive Palestinians recognized the dangers of the Zionist movement and considered it a threat. However, the Balfour Declaration (1917) - issued by British Foreign Secretary James Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) - introduced a frightening element of During the British takeover of Jerusalem and the formalization of the British colonial power.

Professor Khaled Al-Harb said, "The burden of the joint British-Zionist colonial project was immeasurably greater than the ability of the Palestinians to confront even if they possessed the best field commanders at the time."

Al-Hroub added that "the Balfour Act of 1917 was transformed into an international formula that was adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, and accordingly, the international function of British colonialism in Palestine became the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, and all the major countries supported this mandate and its function."

Parallel state

Historian Rashid al-Khalidi pointed out that the Zionist project had become supported by an "iron wall" that was indispensable to British military power.

He says it is certain that political identities developed in Palestine before the war in line with global changes and the development of the Ottoman Empire.

After that, Jewish immigration from different parts of the world to Palestine followed.

Al-Khalidi monitors the dangers of Jewish immigration to Palestine, saying, "The deposition of the local Palestinian community began with a large immigration of European settlers, supported by the new British mandate authorities that helped them establish a parallel Zionist state structure."

He confirms that this led "to an increase in the percentage of the Jewish population in Palestine from 18% in 1932 to more than 31% in 1939, which provided the critical population mass, as this was accompanied by a military force emerging and supported by Europe and the United States of America, to implement the ethnic cleansing that was subjected to The Palestinians in 1948, when more than half of the Arab population was expelled from the country at the time, first by the Zionist guerrillas, and then by the Israeli army, which completed the military and political victory of Zionism.

In his speech, Professor Khaled Al-Hroub says, "Certainly the great Jewish immigration and Britain’s facilitation of it have affected a major demographic, economic and military transformation in Palestine, a cradle for war and the plight of the Palestinians." 1936-1939, during which 10% of adult Arab males were killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. "

Biblical coat

The author Rashid Khalidi placed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within the framework of a colonial war waged against the indigenous people by several parties to force them to surrender their country to another people by force and against their will.

Al-Khalidi says, "Thus, a national colonial movement from the late nineteenth century decorated itself with a biblical coat that was very attractive to Protestants who recite the Bible in Great Britain and the United States of America." From which did their religion originate? "

In turn, he shows the wars "in the heart of the British and American Protestant movement, the Christian Zionist movement emerged, which was active in the East and Palestine since the first half of the nineteenth century and called for the return of the Jews to Palestine. Century, almost half a century before the emergence of Zionism by Theodor Herzl.

Al-Hroub added, "Accordingly, Zionism was born in a very favorable religious and political environment, as the call for the return of the Jews to Palestine had supporters in the major European capitals; London, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and each of these capitals had different agendas to support this call and not necessarily support it." Issued from religious conviction. "

Forged History

The author believes that the pejorative speech presented by Theodore Herzl and other Zionist leaders did not differ from the speech of their European colleagues.

"Herzl wrote that the Jewish state would be part of a defensive wall of Europe in Asia, a forward citadel of civilization against barbarism," Khalidi added.

In this context, the author compares what happened in Palestine to other places in the world, saying that the colonization of Palestine was like the colonization of North America, South Africa, Australia, Algeria and other parts of East Africa.

For his part, Al-Hroub asserts that the “Hundred Years War” was not and is still not confined to the military dimension. Rather, it includes uprooting the Palestinians from their land, erasing their history and rewriting a history of Palestine that is forged and cut off from its people who inherited it over a period of 4 millennia. "It is massive and supported by influential American parties, which aims to deny the Palestinian presence not only politically, but also its identities and culture."

Rashid Khalidi's book constitutes an opportunity for accountability and review of the complex reality that the Palestinian cause has come to in its various dimensions and aspects after a century of war on the Palestinians that ended with former US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying, "We removed Jerusalem from the negotiating table, and we should not talk about it anymore." . The author, who lives in the West, also seeks to chart a way forward amid the cycle of Israeli occupation and Western intervention in favor of Israel.