3 March 2024
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British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
Palestine: Memory, Identity, Resistance
BRICUP Seminar Series 2023-4
All seminars are on-line events, and take place at 18.00-19.30 London time. They consist of a presentation by the guest lecturer, an exchange with a discussant, and then questions and contributions.
Two years after the end of the First World War, Britain’s control of Palestine was legitimised by the Mandate granted by the League of Nations. That Mandate lasted until Britain withdrew in 1948, the year of the Nakba – the expulsion of the majority of Palestinians from their land by Zionist forces, and the formation of Israel as a state recognised by the United Nations. In the Balfour declaration of 1917, Britain had promised such a ‘national home for the Jews’ in Palestine, and during the mandate period over 100,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine.
In Ireland, a year after the end of the First World War, Irish Republicans won the election of 1918. In the face of British intransigence, the Irish War of Independence against British rule began in 1919, and lasted until ended by the Treaty of 1921. At the insistence of the British, however, this Treaty carved out of Ulster’s nine counties the six which had a Protestant majority, and were thus likely to remain loyal to the British Empire. Acceptance of the Treaty by the majority of deputies in the Irish Parliament (the Dáil Éireann) divided Irish Republicans, and led to a civil war that lasted until 1923.
Professor Khalidi will consider what can be learned from a comparison between Britain’s Imperial policy in Palestine and its Imperial designs in the case of Ireland.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Colombia University, New York. He is the joint editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was the sole editor from 2002-2020.
Professor Khalidi is the author, inter alia, of The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Metropolitan, 2020), Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon, 2013), Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Beacon, 2009), The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Beacon, 2006), Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon, 2004), and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Colombia, 1993). Closely related to his work on British policy towards Ireland and Palestine after the First World War, is one of his earlier books, British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (Ithaca, 1980).