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Book Review: Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

2007; Indiana University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/isr.2007.12.2.164

1527-201X

Yoav Gelber,

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

Reviewed by: The Iron Cage: The Story Of The Palestinian Struggle For Statehood Yoav Gelber (bio) Rashid Khalidi , The Iron Cage: The Story Of The Palestinian Struggle For Statehood, Beacon Press, Boston 2006, xlii + 281 pages Rashid Khalidi's new book is hard to define. It is neither a historical study nor a political or ideological essay. Basically, it is an apology. Khalidi attempts to exonerate the Palestinians from their failure to achieve their national goals in the twentieth century and their continuing fiasco in the succeeding century. In doing so, he blames everyone else but the Palestinians—Zionism, Israel, Britain, the United States, France, the Soviet Union, and the Arab States—as well as the old and new Palestinian leaderships (in terms of before and after 1948) as if they were distinct from their people. Ostensibly, he does not conceal the Palestinians' follies. On the contrary, he discusses many of them in depth—but always he finds someone else who bears the ultimate responsibility for them. The author declares that his intention is not an archival study. He refers his readers to a variety of secondary sources of diverse reliability and weight, larger than the usual choice of Palestinian writers but still highly selective. His archival sources are a few reports of the French consuls in Jerusalem and the High Commissioner in Beirut to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. He uses them mainly to describe the talks between Arab delegations and British ministers in 1922 and 1930, according to what the Arab participants told the consuls when they returned to Jerusalem. This is an odd way to portray an interaction that was recorded in the British files as well as in Arab written reports. The French reports could serve as a supplement, with the due reservations, but certainly not as a sole and authoritative source. The book's point of departure is that being a victim is equal to being just, and triumph necessarily implies that the triumphant is wrong. Hence, Khalidi repeats endlessly that the Palestinians have been victims of all the above-mentioned factors and implies that their sacrifices pardon their follies. However, repeating it, even endlessly, still does not make it true. In the introduction, Khalidi mainly addresses American public opinion and tries to explain to the Americans how wrong they were to—support [End Page 164] Israel and on Middle Eastern affairs generally. He blames them for cultivating Muslim fundamentalism against the Soviets, and then cracking down on it in the wake of 9/11. According to this theory, the Israelis are guilty of building up Hamas against the Fatah. Khalidi also finds parallels between the American encouragement of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan and the nomination of Hajj Amin al-Husayni by the British as Mufti of Jerusalem and chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council. The comparison is strange: which enemy of Britain did the British hope the Mufti would fight? However, mixing up propaganda, peculiar interpretations, and odd comparisons with true and penetrating observations, some of them original and others borrowed with or without credit, is typical throughout the book. Khalidi's long list of grievances that have been inflicted on the Palestinians begins with the alleged promises by the British in the MacMahon—Sharif Hussayn correspondence in 1915 to include Palestine in an Arab independent kingdom, and ends with President Bush's Road Map. In the first chapter, "Arab Society in Mandatory Palestine", the author works hard to convince the reader that the Palestinians are incomparable with the Yishuv society. The analysis is generally sound, but redundant—no one has claimed that the Yishuv's modern, mostly European society was inferior to the Palestinian one, even militarily. There are no miracles in war. The stronger wins, and the war of 1948 was no exception to this rule. Khalidi and other Palestinian historians, as well as their Israeli comrades, break into open doors when they claim that the Israelis were superior in manpower and equipment during the war. Ben-Gurion himself said it during the war and after. Yet, during one critical month the balance of power turned in favor of the Arab armies—from their invasion to the first truce. Khalidi...