8/12/2019 Zaman - Review of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

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8/12/2019 Zaman - Review of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

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Al Nakhlah

The Fletcher School Al Nakhlah Tufts University

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from a majority population, who owned 90 percentof private land, to an embattled minority, many ofwhom were forced to flee and continue to live asrefugees in neighboring states.

Khalidi attributes this event, the al nakbawhenhalf of Palestines Arab majority were expelledfrom their land, to a combination of Britishduplicity and Palestinian complicity. Decades before the establishment of the state of Israel, theBritish Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfourstated in 1919, Zionism, be it right or wrong, good

or bad, is rooted in age-longtraditions, in present needs,in future hopes, of fargreater import than thedesires and prejudices of the700,000 Arabs who nowinhabit that ancient land.

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Khalidi uses this statementfrom Balfours confidential

1919 memo and other remarks in a similar vein toshatter the illusion that Britain played a neutral,intermediary role in the Mandate.

In fact, Britain pursued the same divide andrule communitarian policies in Palestine that itdid in other areas under its colonial rule, such asIndia or Egypt. Britain co-opted Jerusalemsleading Palestinian families and created newstructures of power to prevent the Palestiniansfrom forming their own national institutions. Thesingle most illuminating section of The Iron Cage details the British invention of new Islamicinstitutions in Palestine. As with Anglo-Muhammadan Law drafted and enacted in India,

these new institutions nominally upheld tradition but actually had no precedent in that countryshistory, or indeed in the entirety of Islamichistory.

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For example, the British created a Sharia court system and network of religious charities thatdid not exist in Ottoman times. Khalidi argues thatthe creation of these structures showed how theBritish could only view colonized cultures asmotivated by religion over nation.

Most significantly, the British created the newposition of Grand Mufti of Palestine, endowingthe role with a power and prestige thatcontradicted Islamic law and custom. Traditionally,this role offered prestige but no power over other

muftis. In Islamic jurisprudence, a qadi judges caseswhile a mufti just advises. Khalidi devotes asubstantial portion of his book to the young HajjAmin al-Husayni, Britains unlikely choice ofmufti, and scion of one of Jerusalems mostprominent and wealthy families. The selection ofal-Husayni as mufti involved an implicitagreement whereby Palestinian elites would notcriticize the Mandate and the incipient Jewish statethat prevented the possibility of any form of top-

down opposition. Al-Husayni did not have thereligious education or background usuallyrequired for such a position and he did not havethe charisma or public persona to lead the masses.

The British also chose al-Husayni because hisolder relative, Musa Kazim al-Husayni, the formermayor of Jerusalem, represented the majoropposition to the British. By appointing his relative,the British undermined Musas legitimacy andwaged a micro version of divide and rule withinthe same family. Khalidi clearly presents theGrand Mufti as a cautionary tale to the currentPalestinian leadership. Later in his career, al-Husayni did defy the British but not in a way that benefited the Palestinian people. He achievedgreat notoriety and opprobrium by leavingPalestine for Germany and supporting the Naziregime. Although Khalidi blames al-Husayni andthe British for empowering him, he does gloss overthis later chapter in the Grand Muftis life.

The nature of Palestines political andreligious institutions at this time differed fromthose of Arab colonial and postcolonial neighborssuch as Syria or Egypt. Far from an Arabnationalist, al-Husayni was the only leader at thistime in the region whose legitimacy derived froma religious institution, albeit one which derivedfrom an invented tradition. Khalidi argues that,however disorganized, the Wafd in Egypt or theNational Bloc in Syria agitated for nationhood. ThePalestinian mufti, on the other hand, had noincentive to support a nationalist movement thatcould weaken his unique leadership position.

Palestine did nurture populist movements before 1948, but even these emerged too late as thePalestinians had already trapped themselves inthe fiendish iron cage of the books title. Khalidiargues that the British fashioned this iron cage byreducing the Palestinians to religious andcommunitarian entities, while recognizing andfacilitating the Israeli claims to statehood. However,he does not blame the British solely for stuntingPalestinian leadership. Through a series ofilluminating statistics and anecdotes, Khalidicompares Mandate-era Palestinians to their Araband Israeli counterparts, a task that Khalidi callscomparing the incomparable. The yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine, enjoyed immensetransnational political and financial support, whileArabs in Palestine clearly lagged behind in termsof educational and economic gain. The influx of Jewish settlers from Europe further exacerbatedthese disparities. Still, Palestinians in the Mandatecompared favorably to other Arab states in terms ofliteracy, health, and socioeconomic status butKhalidi contends they could not parlay thesestrengths into escaping the iron cage fashioned by both the British and Palestinian leadership.

Khalidi does notforesee state

sovereignty for thePalestinians in the near

future

8/12/2019 Zaman - Review of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

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Spring 2007

The Fletcher School Al Nakhlah Tufts University

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According to Khalidis analysis, the trend offlawed Palestinian leadership continues to thepresent day. In particular, he blames Yasser Arafatfor personalizing the struggle for a Palestinianstate to such an extent that his own agenda becameconflated with the Palestinian peoples aims.Outlining the repercussions of pre-Mandatepolitics on contemporary Palestine, Khalidiremains remarkably silent on the 1970s and1980sthe era before Arafats expulsion fromBeirut. Khalidi does not appear optimistic about apost-Arafat Palestine because, after almost sixtyyears and the de-colonization of most of the world,Palestine remains stateless and without aconsensus on what a potential state structure mightlook like.

To Khalidi, current U.S. foreign policy onlyexemplifies how obdurate the iron cage has become. The U.S. exhorts democracy in the MiddleEast but does not sufficiently appreciate thedemocratic elections recently held in Palestine. Thelast chapter of The Iron Cage examines a newPalestinian dilemma. With the almost unanimoussupport of the international community for a two-state solution, the Palestinian leadership mustdecide upon an appropriate structure for anindependent Palestine co-existing alongside anindependent Israel. Khalidi does not foresee statesovereignty for the Palestinians in the near future.He paints a dour future with no imminent escapefrom the iron cage. Caught in a potential two-stateconfiguration bound by an increasingly powerfulIsraeli state, the Palestinian people must formulatenew and innovative solutions that take into accountthis new reality as well as the lessons of the past.

Khalidi cites the lack of understandingenshrined in competing narratives of victimhoodas the major roadblock to peace between Israel andPalestine. In his final plea to the current Palestinianleadership, Khalidis voice changes from thecareful Columbia University scholar to the publicintellectual who, as a long-time advisor to thePalestinian leadership, seems to palpably feel thefrustrations and continued failures of Palestine. Inthis role, he resembles Edward Said, anotherColumbia scholar and Palestinian intellectualwhose name is present in Khalidis title. Moreover,like the shamed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Khalidi belongs to a renowned family of notables.Consequently, he evokes more than foreign policyor national security when he states that U.S., Israeli,and Palestinian leadership must shed theirhistorical amnesia and look honestly at what hashappened in this small land over the pastcenturyand especially at how repeatedly forcingthe Palestinians intoan iron cage, has brought,and ultimately can bring, no lasting good toanyone.

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The views and opinions expressed in articles are strictlythe authors own, and do not necessarily represent thoseof Al Nakhlah, its Advisory and Editorial Boards, or theProgram for Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization(SWAIC) at The Fletcher School.

8/12/2019 Zaman - Review of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

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Al Nakhlah

The Fletcher School Al Nakhlah Tufts University

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Work Cited

1

Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. (Boston: Beacon Press,2006), 36.

2

Ibid, 55.