A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians
from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events
and family history
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call
to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore
Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their
own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, in the name of
God, let Palestine be left alone. Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's
great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of
the conflict told from