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

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses ethnic cleansing, war crimes, the Holocaust, and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism and xenophobia.

“Herzl, the acknowledged leader of the growing movement he had founded, had paid his sole visit to Palestine in 1898, timing it to coincide with that of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. He had already begun to give thought to some of the issues involved in the colonization of Palestine writing in his diary in 1895:

‘We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly.’”

This passage is significant for two reasons. First, it is one example of how Khalidi puts together his story. He combines conventional tools of historians, documents found in his family archives, and stories passed down through generations of family members. This diary also represents a primary source, meaning it was written by people in the time period that Khalidi discusses in the opening chapter. Second, Khalidi uses this letter to support his assertion of the colonial nature of the Zionist movement. In this diary entry, Herzl calls for the removal of the indigenous people of Palestine, which is a tactic used by colonizers.

“Coming to his main purpose, Yusuf Diya said soberly that whatever the merits of Zionism, the ‘brutal force of circumstances had to be taken into account.’ The most important of them were that ‘Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others.’”

In the Introduction, Khalidi focuses on the letter his great-great-great uncle, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, wrote to Theodor Herzl. In the letter, Yusuf Diya emphasizes that while he has great respect for Herzl, Judaism, and Jewish people, the Zionist movement should leave Palestine alone. Yusuf Diya underscores that indigenous people occupied the land. These indigenous people would not allow another group to try and forcibly remove them. To Khalidi, Yusuf Diya’s letter is prophetic. Yusuf Diya warns that trying to remove Palestinians from their land would cause deep unrest, conflict, and harm to well-established Jewish communities throughout the Middle East.