The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017

In Chapter 5, Khalidi covers two important events: the First Intifada and the Oslo accords. The First Intifada (1987-1993) represents a sustained series of uprisings by the Palestinians in Israel and Israeli-occupied territories. Two reasons explain the uprising. First, Palestinians remained frustrated over Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and West Bank. This occupation was approaching 20 years. Second, Palestinians continued to face injustices and systemic discrimination by the Israeli government and security forces. As one example, Palestinians could not fly their flag without fear of fines, jail time, or beatings.

Khalidi focuses on how Palestinians began to finally shift the narrative battle surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their favor. Khalidi attributes this success to two reasons. First, Israel’s response to the intifada was heavy-handed and disproportionate. News outlets around the world telegraphed “images of heavily armed soldiers brutalizing teenage Palestinian protestors” (169). The global community saw these images for years due to the length of the intifada. Khalidi underscores that there was an eight-to-one casualty ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli. Minors represented nearly one-quarter of the total Palestinian death count. These images helped the global community see the conditions Palestinians faced at the hands of Israeli government and security forces.