Rashid Khalidi: Israel has created a nightmare for itself
JVL Introduction
In this long but important interview Rashid Khalidi raises a number of issues including the value and success of BDS, the changing attitudes towards Israel, the weakness and mistakes of Palestinian leaders past and present. Among many other works, Khalidi wrote “The Hundred Years War on Palestine” in 2020 that has been updated to include the reality and impact of the early months of the post October 7th attacks on Gaza, which we would thoroughly recommend.
Khalidi is highly critical of the US and Israel but still condemns the violence meted out during the attack into Israel on October 7th and here he also voices criticism of suicide bombings in the past even while recognising the context.
When asked what he wishes Israelis understood, he says he wishes that they understood “something that’s very hard for them to grasp: how the Palestinians and the rest of the world see the situation. It’s seen from the beginning as an attempt to create a Jewish state in an Arab country. This is not some innocent bunch of refugees arriving in their ancestral homeland and suddenly being attacked by wild men and women. They arrive and do things that generate everything that follows; their very arrival and the structures with which they arrive create the conflict.”
LL
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Sat 30 Nov 2024. Read the original here.
Rashid Khalidi: 'Israel Has Created a Nightmare Scenario for Itself. The Clock Is Ticking'
The story isn’t Hamas, religion or terrorism. Rashid Khalidi, the preeminent Palestinian intellectual of our time, is convinced that the Israelis simply don’t understand the conflict – living in a ‘bubble of false consciousness’
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I agree with Kahlidi that anyone who’s lived much of their life in a country shouldn’t be evicted from that country, even in an attempt to right previous wrongs.
I do wonder, though, what percentage of Israelis are NEW Israelis (people resident for no longer than 7 years) with dual nationality? Would these fairly new immigrants actively welcome INVITATIONS from the governments of their previous home countries – plus taxpayer-funded financial help – to return IF they choose to do so?
If at least a percentage of the immigrants now illegally settled on Palestinian land beyond Israel’s 1967 borders return to their previous homes, it’d be a little easier for the dispossessed Palestinians to regain their properties and villages without conflict. There are currently about 500, 000 Israelis living on recently stolen land.
The morality of a “returns” scheme such as this depends entirely on the newish immigrants being able to decide freely for themselves – without coercion by any group – whether to stay in Israel or return whence they came.
Bad, self-centred and racist decisions made by our own forebears laid the foundation for the genocide now taking place in Palestine. We ought now to try to mitigate the damage we’ve done, by freely taking back our own citizens and helping them with the costs of resettlement.
We’ll hate paying the costs of righting the wrongs our nations have done – but these costs pale into insignificance if one assesses the harms done to so many other groups (the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and Israelis).