Professor Walid Khalidi, the pre-eminent Palestinian historian and pre-eminent historian of Palestine, has passed away at the age of 100.
Eulogies for centenarians typically recall the accomplishments achieved during the prime of their lives and conclude with a few words about how much they enjoyed travel or gardening or time with the grandchildren during their retirement, until advanced age took its inevitable toll.
Not so Professor Khalidi, who remained active until his final days, completing his memoirs in a race against time. Eagerly awaited, these will most unfortunately be published posthumously.
I had the privilege of knowing Professor Khalidi since the early 1980s, and he was invariably generous with his time, knowledge, encouragement, and sage advice. Although I was never a student of his, and did not meet with him regularly, I consider him a mentor without equal.
I was and remain in awe of not only Professor Khalidi’s pioneering scholarship but also his erudition, precision, commitment, passion for justice, wit, and work ethic.
But above all his phenomenal recall and memory. I last encountered Professor Khalidi in March of last year, when he kindly invited me to dinner while I was visiting Boston, his home since the late 1970s. Just shy of 100, and physically weakened but by no means defeated, he conversed effortlessly for an entire evening.
A question about an incident in Palestine during the mid-1920s – I cannot even remember which – elicited a response of some ten to fifteen minutes that can only be described as an extraordinarily rich tapestry of detail, context, and analysis. He spoke as if he was physically there, a guide explaining what his visitor was looking at, its significance, and what else the visitor should be looking for to truly understand not only what they are viewing but why they asked about it.
To give an indication of Professor Khalidi’s influence, I was several months later contacted by an Israeli historian who is conducting research about a major hasbara campaign conducted by the Israeli state several decades ago. The historian’s research led them to conclude that the main impetus for this campaign was to discredit Professor Khalidi’s pioneering scholarship on a particular topic, and nip it in the bud before it gained further traction.
Last year I was asked to contribute a short essay on the occasion of Professor Khalidi’s 100th birthday. I reproduce it below:
The enormity of Walid Khalidi’s contribution is perhaps best summarized with the observation that a recognition of his status as the pre-eminent scholar of the Question of Palestine does insufficient justice to the role he has played.
During his extraordinarily rich and now also extraordinarily lengthy career, Walid Khalidi additionally established vital institutions and launched indispensable publications, each constructed on solid foundations that allowed them to withstand the challenges that brought a premature end to so many of their counterparts; distinguished himself as a leading advocate for the Palestinian people, possessed not only of encyclopedic knowledge but also of great eloquence and fluency with respect to both the written and spoken word; and never shied away from taking a position others would have readily eschewed. The latter was most prominent in his resignation from Oxford University in 1956 to register his protest at Britain’s leading role in the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt, but also in his willingness to publicly make the case for a historic compromise with Israel as early as the 1970s, when it had only limited currency.
Works produced by Khalidi invariably became timeless classics. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948, which he compiled and edited, accompanied by a lengthy introduction, and published by the Institute for Palestine Studies in 1971, remains – despite the voluminous scholarship published in the decades since – the essential reference work for understanding the origins of the Palestine Question, the development of the Zionist project, and the trajectory from the First Zionist Conference in 1897 to the Nakba of 1948. Khalidi’s pithy characterization of the British Mandate as Zionism’s “British Shield” remains the most concise description of London’s role in this entire affair.
Khalidi’s seminal articles on the Fall of Haifa, Plan Dalet, and other aspects of the Nakba, typically published in the Journal of Palestine Studies which he founded, similarly remain invaluable works of reference for understanding this period and the enormity of what transpired.
Khalidi’s next major project, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, also published by IPS, enabled generations of Palestinians to learn about the villages from which they hailed and had been dispossessed. The volume, the result of years of effort by a dedicated team of researchers and fieldworkers, included not only vital historical and other information about each village, but also details on how these were erased from the map.
I mentioned above that Professor Khalidi was an early advocate of a historic compromise, better known as a two-state settlement. It reflected his understanding of the existential geopolitical challenges confronting the Palestinian people, and the limited opportunities Palestinian struggle and diplomacy had as a result. Nevertheless, he was also consistently clear that Israel had to be presented with an alternative to a negotiated solution. I recall in particular a lecture he delivered in Washington, DC in the late 1980s, in which he stated that Israel needed to be confronted with a choice between “historic compromise or unremitting strife”. Had the Palestinian leadership taken his message to heart, it might have succeeded in achieving a historic compromise.
As it happens, the prospect of such a settlement has long since passed. As Professor Khalidi was perhaps the first to note, Israel has since October 2023 killed more Palestinians than it has during the preceding century of Zionist colonization and occupation. And once again the Palestinians, as he so often emphasized, face the twin challenges of both the Zionist project and the abdication of responsibility by Arab governments.