“There is no such thing as the Palestinian people.”  - Golda Meir
 
Rashid Ismail Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.  
 
The editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalidi is also the author of a number of books on the Palestinian issue, among them, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906–1914, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, and his most recent one, Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, published in 2013.   
 
He has appeared on a number of U.S. and international Media outlets and has written for various publications.   In 1997, Palestinian Identity won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize for best book on the Middle East.   
 
In The Iron Cage, he wrote, “ If the Palestinian people are to exercise their inalieanble national rights, they must take the initiative and devise new forms and conceptions for the future, suitable to the situation in whch they find themselves, to their increasinging subjugation and dential of rights, to being, in efffect, captives of the powerful Israeli nation-state.”  
 
Here is the interview with Dr. Khalidi:
 
The Khalidis were an important family in Palestine.  Can you tell us a bit more about your family? 
 
We are a Jerusalem family.  Members of the family were part of the cultural life of Jerusalem, going back to several centuries. Many were religious figures. Many played a role in the religious court system of Jerusalem. Other played important roles in government and politics in Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries.   
 
When did they leave? 
 
The family never left.  Members of the family still live today in Jerusalem but, like all Palestinians, they are also scattered all over the world, all over the Arab world and the rest of the world.  Many still live in Palestine and many live in Jerusalem. 
 
In your new book, Brokers of Deceit,  you are critical of the Obama administration for giving up on the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? Can you elaborate?
 
I don’t say so much that the Obama administration gave up but that they have employed a long-standing approach, which is essentially that they followed the same line as other U.S. Presidents.  President Obama tried to effect minor changes by appointing Senator George Mitchell who was well-known for brining peace to Ireland and by bringing the IRA to the table.  Obama argued that going back to the 1967 borders was the basis for a settlement. He insisted that a halt to settlements by the Israelis would be a precondition for any talks. In the end, he was forced to back down on all his conditions.  The argument that I make in the book is that the approach in the last 35 years by all U.S. administrations has been flawed. It is based on an Israeli vision that denies the Palestinians full self-determination and equal rights. 
 
Can the Palestinian situation be compared to that of South Africa when it comes to building support in this country? 
 
The situation is very different from that of South Africa.  In the U.S. there was no powerful lobby supporting South Africa. You had the Reagan administration in its anti-Communist fervor supporting South Africa; you had many big corporations supporting the Apartheid regime but you did not have a powerful lobby in America made up of millions of Americans claiming that the Boers were right.  So the comparison with South Africa and the anti-apartheid movement in this country has to take those factors into account.  In addition to the usual elements in the Israeli lobby that are rooted in the Jewish community, there is a new element which is called Christian Zionism––the very powerful belief among many conservative Christians and evangelicals in particular that supporting Israel is some kind of religious duty.  But not all Christians feel this way. Any attempt to build a grassroots movement, which is a good thing, is an uphill battle.  There is no comparison.  There have been six generations during which the Zionist narrative has become rooted in the U.S. It has to do with utterly false information, involving “a land without a people for a people without a land,” and “the Jewish people who came to make the desert bloom.”  These ideas are profoundly false but most people believe that Israel was a desert before the Zionist pioneers arrived.  Most people in this country think they know something about Palestine but most of what they know is wrong. 
 
How do you see the future of the developments in the various Arab countries or what is referred to as the Arab spring, given the many problems that have appeared? What about Syria and the chance that the war will escalate to a regional war, with Israel’s recent strikes on a weapons depot?  
 
This is a vast question and a long topic. The Arab spring was long overdue but it will take many years, even decades, for the Arab world to move towards democracy, to find real solutions to problems instead of superficial solutions, which many people are now doing.  It is very complex and difficult and this process has just begun; it is nowhere near producing stable consitutional and democratic governments that really represent the people.  
 
I think the Syrian conflict is a dangerous regional conflict already.  Involving this terrible American-Iranian rivalry and a terrible Saudi-Iranian rivalry which has profound religious overtones;  I think that all parties are playing with fire.  The U.S. and Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia and Israel are playing with fire.  The whipping up of naked, vicious, racist and sectarian ideas is like a solvent; it will destroy everything in the region. It has already created awful tendencies and I think that a compromise in the Syrian civil war which is also a regional war as well as a proxy war is essential.   If this is not to develop, it will lead into something more destructive than the 15-year Lebanese war or the 10 years that followed the invasion of Iraq. It has the potential to be more destructive regionally and not just for Syria.  Lebanon was partically destroyed. Iraq is destroyed.  This will destroy generations of progress in Syria going back to the Ottoman era, the chance to build a modern economy and create institutions for a progressive society.  The war has the potential of an earthquake and I think all parties are acting irresponsibly and blindly.  Some form of a resolution, short of winner takes all, which will lead to the destruction of Syria and probably a regional earthquake, is necessary. 
 
Recently the U.S. administration sold nearly one billion dollars of very sophisticated armaments to the Israeli government; Obama also visited Israel. What is the message here?
 
Most of those weapons are for use on a strategic level not for use against the Palestinians. The U.S. is committed, now even by law, to enabling Israel to obtain absolute military superiority against any combination of enemies. 
 
Even more than Saudi Arabia?
 
Israel has capalities that dwarf those of Saudi Arabia.   Saudi Arabia has never exhibited the capacity of using a fraction of the weapons it possesses.  It is buying protection when it buys weapons. It does not have the capabiliy to use its weapons effectively. Israel on the other hand manufactures and sells some of the most advanced weapons systems in the world. It doesnt just use them but knows how to make them. It exports them to counties like China and India by the billions of dollars.  So you have the two most advanced military technological powers in the world cooperating with each other to ensure Israel’s strategic hegenomy in certain areas. In a way it is a message to the Palestinians that the U.S supports occupation, settlements and the oppression of the Palestinian people.   
 
Israel was created in 1948 and President Truman pushed the recognition through the United Nations. Why would Israel object to a similar recognition of a Palestinian State? 

I think it reflects an attitude of superioritiy, that what Israel is entiteld to others are not.  Israel has this attitude in many regards; it has its own idea and defintion of security so much so that it infringes on the rights of others.  But others are not entitled to the same security; and similarly it acts in violation of international laws and resolutions. Of course, there are also the American enablers. I think it all basically reflects the view that there is only one people in what they call Eretz-Israel or in other words Palestine, or Palestine-Israel.  In this view, there is only one people which has genuine rights, and that is the Jewish people, and from that flows the view that Palestinians don’t have the same rights as Israeli Jews; that is the root of this idea of refusing recognition of a Palestinian State.  Many Israelis may accept the idea of a Palestinian State but for them it is a second-class state.   

 
You are not hopeful about a two-state solution? 
 
The two-state solution has many obstacles. One, Israel has acted systematically to create obstacles to the idea of a Palestinian State by continuing to build new settlements in the occupied land including in East Jerusalem, and it is fundamentally opposed to a relationship of equality for both. Israel doesn’t even allow the Palestinians to control the borders, Israel won’t allow them to control the air space. Even if it goes back to the 1967 lines, that is a partition by which almost 80 percent of the territory is occupied by Israel.  Twenty-two percent is Palestine.  Even that is further nibbled aways by various Israeli demands. You start off with an unequal partition. There are 6-7 million Israeli Jews and of 12 million Palestiniasn, half are refugees. Israel has made the two-state solution impossible.  I don’t see a reversal of Israel’s long standing policies. Anybody who is for a two-state solution should explain how that would be possible.  
 
When was the last time you went to Paletine? Did you go to Gaza? 
 
I went there a year ago but was not able to go to Gaza.
 
Where there problems for you?
 
The routine ones.   The ones you encounter when you are an Arab. 

Are you critical of the Palestinian leadership both in Ramallah and in Gaza? 

I couldn’t be more critical. I think they have utterly failed to represent the Palestinian people in both places. They have no vision and no strategy.  They are involved in partisan, selfish, petty conflicts which takes precedence over national interests. They are not worthy of being leaders of the Palestinian poeple. They should all abdicate. They have completely failed to put forward any kind of vision for liberation. I honestly think they are a hindrance to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinians need a consensus to end the divisions between them, both the physical and the political ones.  Some of the people are interested in the status quo because they benefit from it.  It is a tragedy for Palestinian people to have such poor leadership.

You are the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University?   What was his legacy?

Obviously it is a huge legacy.  He was an enormously important figure in his own field which was literature and culture. He was crucial in bringing the forgotten relationship between the West and the Middle East into public view. He was also a tireless advocate for Palestine.  I am not in the same field as he was.  I am a historian and he was a literary critic and a student of culture.  It is a great honor to be the Edward Said Professor.