Palestina

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call for a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter to Theodor Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the dangers ahead and ended his note by saying: "In the name of God, let Palestine be left alone". Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's great-great-grandson, begins this sweeping story, the first comprehensive account of the conflict told from a Palestinian perspective. Palestine: One Hundred Years of Colonialism and Resistance questions the usual interpretations of the conflict. Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war against the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then by Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the time. He highlights the key episodes of this colonial campaign, from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and significant, Palestine: One Hundred Years of Colonialism and Resistance offers an illuminating new vision of a conflict that continues to this day.