In tribute to Walid Khalidi: the historian of Palestine

JVL Introduction

Walid Khalidi’s death at 100 years old merits commemoration and we are publishing this piece from Al Jazeera. You may also be interested to read the obituary on the “historian of Palestine” in Mondoweiss.

“Walid Khalidi may be remembered as the diplomatic gentleman-scholar who became one of Palestine’s greatest historians. But he was also a teacher, a leader, and a pioneer whose life was entirely devoted to and consumed by the question of Palestine.”

It was Khalidi who wrote “about “Plan Dalet,” which he called the “master plan” to expel the Palestinian people en masse — well before the revisionist school of Israeli historians gradually revealed what Walid Khalidi had shown the world in the 1950s.” He wrote many other books “documenting the Nakba, such as From Haven to Conquest, Before Their Diaspora, and All That Remains, which provide an encyclopedic Palestinian narrative of our history, essential elements of any library on Palestine.”

He is not so well known outside academic and Arab circles but his contribution to scholarship, to history and to diplomacy are enormous.

LL

This article was originally published by Al Jazeera on Mon 9 Mar 2026. Read the original here.