The Iron Cage: The Story Of The Palestinian Struggle For Statehood

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

Product Description

A timely and compelling examination of the Palestinian dilemma, named one of the 100 best books of the year by Publishers Weekly

In Resurrecting Empire, Rashid Khalidi dissected the failures of colonial policy over the entire span of the modern history of the Middle East, predicted the meltdown in Iraq that we are now witnessing with increasing horror, and offered viable alternatives for achieving peace in the region. His newest book, The Iron Cage, hones in on Palestinian politics and history. Once again Khalidi draws on a wealth of experience and scholarship to elucidate the current conflict, using history to provide a clear-eyed view of the situation today.

The story of the Palestinian search to establish a state begins in the era of British control over Palestine and stretches between the two world wars, when colonial control of the region became increasingly unpopular and power began to shift toward the United States. In this crucial period, and in the years immediately following World War II, Palestinian leaders were unable to achieve the long-cherished goal of establishing an independent statea critical failure that throws a bright light on the efforts of the Palestinians to create a state in the many decades since 1948. By frankly discussing the reasons behind this failure, Khalidi offers a much-needed perspective for anyone concerned about peace in the Middle East.

Rashid Khalidi is a historians historian. The Iron Cage is his most accomplished effort to date . . . Magisterial in scope, meticulous in its attention to detail, and decidedly dispassionate in its analysis, The Iron Cage is destined to be a benchmark of its genre. Joel Schalit, Tikkun

At heart a historical essay, an effort to decide why the Palestinians . . . have failed to achieve an independent state. Steven Erlanger, New York Times

Khalidi, tackling historical amnesia, brilliantly analyses the structural handicap which hobbled the Palestinians throughout 30 years of British rule . . . Khalidi restores the Palestinians to something more than victims, acknowledging that for all their disadvantages, they have played their role and can (and must) still do so to determine their own fate. Ian Black, Guardian

Khalidi uses history to provide a clear-eyed view of the region and assess the prospects for peace. He strives successfully for even-handedness. Anthony Lewis, author of Gideons Trumpet and Make No Law

. . . we have to open a dialogue with Hamasnot to embrace it, but to lay out a gradual pathway that will bring it into relations with Israel. As Rashid Khalidi, Columbia Universitys Palestinian expert and author of The Iron Cage points out: If we let the Palestinian Authority be destroyed, and then we keep Hamas isolatedeven though it won a democratic election that we sponsoredwe will end up with the hard boys, the gangs you see today on the streets of Gaza, who respond to no authority at all. New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman

Rate Points :4.0
Binding :Paperback
Label :Beacon Press
Manufacturer :Beacon Press
ProductGroup :Book
Studio :Beacon Press
Publisher :Beacon Press
EAN :9780807003091
Price :$15.00USD
Lowest Price :$7.99USD
Customer ReviewsNot a unique predicament
Rating Point :4 Helpful Point :1
Most analysis of the Palestinian failure to achieve nationhood suggests that this is a unique predicament, and looks at flaws within the Palestinian leadership, the Palestinian organizing, the Palestinian strategies used, etc, to explain this "failure," and often to to justify the Israeli atrocities--as if a weakness of the part of the victim ever justified abuse.
Even one of the reviews posted here states that, with the exception of Palestine, "most countries have achieved national independence." Such analysis fails to take into consideration that there are entire continents, namely the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, as well as Australia, along with New Zealand, and various colonized islands around the globe, where the indigenous peoples have NOT achieved national independence.
As such, the plight of the Palestinians is not a unique predicament, it is one manifestation among many that historical and scholarly academic discourses can be so distorted and short-sighted as to blind themselves to half the world.
Possibly the main difference between Palestinians and Indigenous peoples of other countries, and even entire continents, is that the Palestinians have achieved an international recognition of the validity of their struggle for, and right to, nationhood. This is indeed a great accomplishment, considering the immense international pressure to invalidate that claim--beginning with the denial that the Palestinians actually exist as a people, let alone need to have a nation.

The Origins of Apartheid in Israel and Palestine
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :6
In the 1980s, Israels "new historians" challenged a Zionist narrative that had been publicly unquestioned in Israel and the United States. Among these historians and those of us who have followed their work, Israel could never again be viewed as an underdog David challenged by an Arab Goliath. Since then, much of the debate among those who are increasingly critical of Israels actions has instead addressed the problem of whether this biblical metaphor should in fact be turned on its head. Although there has for decades been much evidence to support this argument, three recent, well-researched books have made it virtually uncontroversial to assert that the post-World War I Zionist movement, sponsored by superpowers Britain and the U.S. (and indeed by the Soviet Union immediately after World War II), should no more be seen as the underdog than we now see British or Spanish colonialists in relation to Native Americans. In turn, Palestinians can no more be sensibly called anti-Semitic than indigenous Americans can be called "anti-European."

These three books evoke the essence of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict with metaphors of confinement, separation, and exclusion: the "iron cage," the "iron wall," and the "glass wall." In The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Palestinian-American Professor Rashid Khalidi documents British support for a Jewish national movement in Palestine since World War I, and opposition to a Palestinian national movement, most violently during the revolt of 1936-39. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, by which the British ruled from 1923-1948, endorsed a "national home" for the Jewish people while never citing the Palestinians by name. Thus, "the (90%) Arab majority was effectively ignored as a national and political entity."

This favoritism was reflected in the brutal suppression of the Palestinian revolt, which effectively decimated Palestinian leadership and resistance thereafter. It was also reflected in the passivity with which Britain responded after World War II both to Zionist terrorism against the British administration, and to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which began well before the end of the mandate in May 1948. It has long been conventional Israeli wisdom that the Zionist movement had to confront both a British Goliath and an Arab Goliath, all in the wake of the Holocaust. It is clear that the Zionist David allied itself with the British Goliath, not only overwhelming a Palestinian national movement with profound internal problems, but violently "transferring" over 700,000 Palestinians with relatively little resistance.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Papp has documented the violent expulsion of the Palestinians from the end of 1947 into 1949. It has long been established that the Palestinians fled not in response to "Arab broadcasts," but to violent intimidation by Jewish forces, including unprovoked massacres. Based on Papps meticulous research, it is now clear that this ethnic cleansing was premeditated, not retaliatory, and half completed before the feeble intervention of Arab armies in May of 1948. "Official Israeli historiography describes April 1948 as a turning point. . . . If there was a turning point in April, it was the shift from sporadic attacks and counter-attacks on the Palestinian civilian population toward the systematic mega-operation of ethnic cleansing that now followed." This ethnic cleansing was based on a belief among Israeli leaders that an "iron wall" would be required to separate a Jews from Palestinians, who were understood then as now to pose not a military but demographic threat to a Jewish state.

This demographic threat is addressed by Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in the Arab Israeli city of Nazareth, in Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. The 150,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 are now over 1 million, over 20% of the population, a percentage that increases due to their high birthrate. This presents a problem for a Jewish state that has used a harshly and "legal" discriminatory "glass wall" between its Arab and Jewish citizens that is "needed to cloak the contradictions inherent in the concept of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." These contradictions have been exposed recently by Israeli attacks on unarmed Palestinian civilians during the outbreak of the intifada in 2000, by increasing and unwarranted suspicion of the loyalty of historically quiescent Arab Israelis who demand social equality, and by increasing calls for expulsion by popular right-wing politicians. All of this has resulted in plans to re-draw borders in order to transfer as many as a quarter of Israels Palestinian citizens to a future Palestinian state, an outcome in no way supported by those effected.

Metaphors of separation, confinement, and exclusion are made literally concrete by the separation wall that has been built inside the occupied West Bank. While largely invisible to Israelis, in areas where visible to Israelis it has been, according to Cook, "painted with murals on the Israeli side, reimagining the view that was now missing while making sure that it was empty of the Palestinian villages that could be seen before its construction." Papp adds that also eliminated are "the people who live in them."

Tell It To the Smear Artists
Rating Point :4 Helpful Point :8
The McCain campaign has basically tried to ruin this mans life in order to pick up a few votes in Florida. And they did so by systematically lying about his work, not to mention his affiliations. This kind of McCarthyism has no place in America. Im buying Rashid Khalidis book as a way of pushing back, and letting the smear merchants know that their bile will not work this time.

Bile approved by John McCain.

Great research, shocking editing
Rating Point :4 Helpful Point :4
I really enjoyed this account of Palestinian history, but it was a struggle to overcome the first two chapters of poor editing (though otherwise well researched). The book provided me with a greater understanding of the Palestinian struggle, its failures, the contributions -both external (Zionism, European and US collaboration)- & internal (a lack of experience in state-running and the resulting chaos & infighting). I had read Fisk and Pappes accounts of the Oslo accords and their stranglehold on the Palestinian way of life, but Khalidi provided even further insider knowledge into how everyday life has been controlled and restricted with breathtaking similarities to apartheid. The cynical nature of pre-talk agreements between Israel and the US prior to coming to the tables with whatever Palestinian delegation was sent (usually the wrong one) ensured that Israel was starting the debate on a far superior footing to an already muted Palestinian delegation. "Iron Cage" does do justice to the manner in which Palestinians now live, to Europe, Zionists (not world Jewry as is constantly falsely claimed), and the USs eternal shame.

A Corrective Lense
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :8
It is no secret that American media--controlled by corporate interests throughout the world--is highly selective and biased in its reportage of international issues that impact us every day. The Iron Cage, along with The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New and Revised Edition, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, and others, provide a carefully documented and refreshing perspective on the current core issue of the Middle-East. They are a sorely needed corrective lense for the media distortions called "news".

Similar Item

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History

Meticulously researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Norman G. Finkelstein exposes the corruption of scholarship and

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

In this controversial new book, a prominent Israeli historian at Haifa University revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord during the War of Independe

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

PRESIDENT CARTERS COURAGEOUS ASSESSMENT OF WHAT MUST BE DONE TO BRING PERMANENT PEACE TO ISRAEL WITH DIGNITY AND JUSTICE TO PALESTINEAmazon.com ReviewThe crowning achievement of Jimmy Carters presidency was the Camp David Accords between Isra

Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

The Israel Lobby, by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Book