Biden buys book on Israel-Palestine conflict by critical historian

Khalidi’s book that was published in 2020 offers and critical and a considered controversial analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where he accuses Israel of conducting a “colonialist war against the native Palestinians.”

According to Khalidi’s book, modern Palestinian history can best be understood as a colonialist war to force them out of their homeland. Khalidi, a short summery of the book says, the war was first forged by the Zionist movement and later by the state of Israel but with the backing of the United States and Great Britain, the superpowers of the time.

Khalidi was also critical of president elect Donald Trump who in his first term in office, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, calling his policies discriminatory of the Palestinians.

He said the conflicts between settlers and indigenous people always end in one of three ways: By complete defeat of the indigenous population, as was the case in north America, by the colonialists being pushed out, as was in Algeria or by reconciliation and compromise, as was the case in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid regime, in Zimbabwe and Ireland.

He wrote that the popular resistance – as he calls the Palestinian conflict – will continue and praised the first intifada as an extraordinary example of an uprising against oppression that can be considered the first victory of the Palestinians in the colonialist war that began in 1917.

The second intifada, that resulted in the construction of the partition wall between the West Bank and Israel, Khalidi the greatest failure of the Palestinian national movement.