Read for Book Club June/July 2024 for a read related to current events. We discussed the paradox of selecting a history book given our voted on topic, but context is extremely important for understanding how and why we are here, and Palestine is not an area I'm familiar with.

I appreciate that Dr. Khalidi opted to focus on six key events to structure this book around (a comprehensive history of everything would be greater than the <300 pages of this volume, and would likely meander) with extensive footnotes that went beyond mere citations but also evaluated the sources themselves (and additional reading if interested in specifics). He blends familial history with historical events (partially because he and family members have been involved in diplomacy in some capacity or another for well over a century) and I'm reminded of The Chinese in America: A Narrative History for weaving the personal with historical and how it's impossible to separate when it directly affects you and yours.

The most striking thing to me is the obvious settler-colonial nature of Zionism and how out-of-time it feels in the the 20th/21st century versus previous imperial expansions. But by this point, there are generations of Israelis who've been born and raised in the area, as well as generations of Palestinian refugees displaced from ancestral spaces. Israel's strikes are absurdly disproportionate in conflicts and through today, the death toll ratio demonstrates who the aggressors are (especially if you break it down into civilians vs military casualties).

Khalidi is also critical of Palestinian leadership's efficacy in both the regional Arab world and global stage, and the United States' ambivalence towards aiding civilians.