Israel’s Reliance on the Greatest Powers in World History

With Professor Rashid Khalidi

The timing for today’s interview, I think, needs no introduction. Professor Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, details Israel’s long history of relying on outside powers to build a Jewish state: first, the British, and later, of course, the U.S. That record reveals the sizable influence outside forces have to end the violence unfolding in Palestine (and now Lebanon). Public opinion shifting against Israel suggests to Professor Khalidi that “both sides are almost fated to have to figure out how to reconcile,” though as you’ll see, that’s not exactly a source of hope for him right now.

Professor Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020. He was also president of the Middle East Studies Association and has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and the University of Chicago. Professor Khalidi has authored several books including, most recently, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, the subject of our conversation today.

A condensed transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity, is below. You can also listen to the podcast audio:

Just a couple of New Yawkas

Ben: From one New Yorker to another, if I interrupt you today, please feel free to say, “Hey, I’m talkin’ here!”

Let’s begin where your book begins. What was Palestine like before Zionism?

RK: In the mid-1800s, Palestine was pretty underdeveloped, but things were changing rapidly by the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Railways were built, modern education was starting, and there was a massive export of things like oranges to Europe. Society was changing quickly, with modern ports, sewage systems, piped water, and electricity. 

So, it was a place in transition. All of this was happening under Ottoman rule, which had been in place for centuries. One feature of that rule was the co-optation of local elites, a process common throughout the empire. In Palestine, this elite class—people involved in government, law, or commerce—dominated local society and politics until 1948.

Ben: Catching us up to that point a bit, after World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed—swiftly. Can you talk about what you call the “disconcerting prospect” of Palestine shifting from Ottoman to British control?

RK: Right. I mean, the Ottoman Empire lasted for 600 years, one of the longest empires in modern history. For people in the region, its disappearance was a massive shock because it was all they had ever known for generations. Amid World War I, there was disease, the Armenian genocide, and hundreds of thousands more war-related casualties. 

In this traumatic situation, foreign troops began occupying Palestine—in this case, the British, who’d always had ambitions of taking over bits and pieces of the Ottoman Empire. 

Ben: Then came the Balfour Declaration. How did one sentence alter the course of history?

RK: I really start The Hundred Years’ War with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Of course, there was Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, and friction between the two before, but the Balfour Declaration marks the moment when the British Empire officially became the sponsor of the Zionist project. 

And that’s the thing people often don’t understand. The British Empire—the greatest power in world history up to that point—decided to implant a colony under its control, to serve its interests, in Palestine. The declaration stated that “His Majesty's Government” favored “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” a pledge that the British cabinet crafted with the intention of creating a Jewish state. Key figures like Winston Churchill, Balfour, and Lloyd George made it clear to Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist movement, that they intended to make this happen.

The Balfour Declaration became the foundation of British policy in Palestine, and it was later incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which governed the region until 1948. The Palestinians understood what was happening—they were being displaced by a colonial power that had a plan to hand over their land to another group.

Ben: Balfour wasn’t exactly a champion of justice elsewhere. He earned the nickname “Bloody Balfour” when serving as Britain’s chief secretary in Ireland.

RK: Yes, the British left Ireland at just about the same time they were going to Palestine. When the British took control of Palestine, they transferred half of their security forces from the Royal Irish Constabulary to the Palestine Gendarmerie, so the same people who had been suppressing the Irish were now enforcing British rule in Palestine. 

And Balfour, ironically, who had been Prime Minister before becoming Foreign Secretary, was also behind the 1905 Aliens Act, which was designed to keep destitute Jewish refugees fleeing Tsarist pogroms out of Britain.

Ben: At a certain point, the colonial power backing Zionism shifted from Britain to the United States. Can you talk about how and why the transition occurred?

RK: Sure. During the Palestinian revolt of 1936-39, Britain realized it couldn't sustain the 100,000 soldiers it took to suppress the Palestinian rebellion. So they made some concessions to the Palestinians, which outraged the Zionists, who felt betrayed. They intended to create, by hook or by crook, a Jewish majority.

So the Zionists needed a new sponsor, and they quickly pivoted to the United States and the Soviet Union, which paid off almost immediately. By the end of World War II, President Truman was pushing for more Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the Soviets were backing the partition plan, which meant international support for a Jewish state in an overwhelmingly Arab country. 

This shift is of world historical importance. It reflected an extraordinarily competent diplomatic effort by the Zionists, which they’d spent decades preparing for.

Ben: The U.S. role solidified during the Cold War, especially during Vietnam. Can you explain why?

RK: The Cold War was a big reason why the United States became Israel's main patron. Initially, Israel fought its wars in 1956 and 1967 with British and French weapons. But by the 1960s, the U.S. began seeing Israel as a strategic ally in the Cold War, especially against perceived Soviet proxies in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. As U.S. involvement in Vietnam grew—and the U.S. was not doing well in Vietnam—so did the perception of Israel as a reliable ally. 

1967 was really the watershed. After the war, under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. began supplying Israel with its most advanced weapons and, later, after the 1973 war, billions of dollars in military aid. What Henry Kissinger then did, under Presidents Nixon and Ford, was start pushing for negotiations with Egypt. Kissinger's goal was to realign Egypt from the Soviet camp to the American one, which he succeeded in doing when brokering peace between Israel and Egypt after the 1973 war. 

So Kissinger got to say the U.S. won the Cold War in the Middle East. He also began an American diplomatic practice of sidelining Palestinians. He pretended, as American diplomats have ever since, that if you could solve problems between Arab states and Israel, you’ve solved everything, and the Palestine issue is secondary.

This mindset persists, with figures like Netanyahu framing Palestinian resistance as mere terrorism rather than a legitimate political struggle.

Ben: I know you’re quite critical of Palestinian leadership, too.

RK: Yes. It’s a big topic, but I’ve been especially critical of Palestinians’ lack of a strategic vision. 

In the past, the PLO had a vision of a secular, democratic Palestine where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could coexist. This vision gained support in the Global South but didn’t resonate with Israelis or the West, who were committed to the idea of a Jewish state. The PLO eventually shifted to a strategy of nonviolence and statehood within the reduced 1967 borders.

That strategy led to the Oslo Accords in 1993 but really, it’s gotten Palestinians nowhere. It’s a flawed strategy, which ignores the fact that Israel and the U.S. have never truly accepted the idea of Palestinian sovereignty, self-determination, and independence. They’ve just accepted modified forms of occupation. 

On the other hand, I would also fault the United States and the Israelis for systematically putting a brick wall in front of any effort by the Palestinians to achieve statehood and self-determination. Related, the Israelis helped create Hamas. When the Israelis militarily occupied the Gaza Strip beginning in the late 1960s, they favored the Islamic movement as a tool to use against the PLO, and out of that tactic Hamas formed in 1987. 

For a while, a lot of the Israeli intelligence people who pioneered that policy continued to say, well, you know, even though Hamas is carrying out attacks on us, it’s better to have the Palestinians divided. And in fact, that was the policy of Netanyahu right up until October 7th: a divided Palestinian leadership is in our interest. 

Ben: How do you perceive what's going on today within the broader scope of the history we've discussed? 

RK: You're asking me to assess a war that's not over, and I see no prospect for it ending. But what can we say with certainty?

You can say October 7th was one of the worst military defeats in Israel’s history, and the devastation unleashed on Gaza has few parallels since World War II in terms of the devastation of a civilian population. You can talk about the apparently genocidal intent of attacks on water treatment plants, sewage systems, and electricity—about the tens of thousands of people killed, most of whom are civilians. You can talk about the failure of the Israelis to force Gazans out because the Egyptians and the Jordanians would not go along with Israel’s ethnic cleansing (even though Secretary of State Antony Blinken pleaded with them to in one of the most disgraceful episodes in American history).

More than that is hard to say, though I do think the war has not been a very good thing for Israel. Israel’s actions have severely damaged its international standing. Global support, especially in the Global South, has plummeted, and even in the West, public opinion is shifting against Israel.

Within Israel itself, the war has deepened existing divisions. The military-security establishment wants the war to end, while the political leadership seems intent on continuing. Israel’s military security elites consider the war in Gaza to be something that should be stopped now. They consider a war with Lebanon to be a catastrophe in the making and a wider war with Iran to be an apocalyptic scenario. I don't often agree with the Israeli generals, but they’re right on this.

Ben: You document a few different ways that settler-colonial projects have historically ended: the elimination or full subjugation of the native population, the defeat and expulsion of the colonizer, or reconciliation. Which do you think is likeliest in this context?

RK: I think both sides are almost fated to have to figure out how to reconcile. This project has always depended on external support. Because the behavior of Israel's leaders has severely eroded that external support, there’s renewed potential for change.

Israel is completely dependent on the United States and Western Europe, its biggest trading partner. The arms come from the U.S. The vetoes come from the three Western members of the Security Council. If the needle ever shifts with the elites in the West, then the Israelis have to adjust. They have no choice. 

But that’s not a source of hope for me. American elites are extraordinarily glacial in shifting from their deeply ingrained positions. I mean, look at how long it took to end the Vietnam War and Iraq War, long after public opinion had shifted against them. So to expect American leaders to shift on something that has all of these reinforcing factors at play—the Holocaust, antisemitism, the Jewish biblical connection to the land of Israel—well, that's really hard to do.

Still, I don’t think either side can eliminate the other, despite grim fantasies suggesting otherwise. In my opinion, Israelis and Palestinians having to figure out some way to live with each other is likelier than it seems.