Rashid Khalidi
speaker
73 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Rashid Khalidi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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The short answer is no, I wouldn't attempt it. I mean, I'm obliged with new editions of my book that are published in different countries to write. update it with a forward or an afterward. And that's a very difficult job because it's shifting sands. You're standing in a river that's always moving. So, it's almost impossible to do.
The forwards that I wrote six months ago for three or four foreign translations are outdated already, which is why I try to avoid predicting the future and I try to avoid writing about the present as much as I can. I'm always asked to do that. And so I hesitate about starting on October 7th. I mean, it is a cataclysmic event. Heaven knows. It's led to enormous changes in the Middle East.
So it's going to be a marker for historians for a very long time to come. But I think the antecedents are as important as the sequels.
I think that... A distinction probably is important about who decided on this and who knew about this and what the people who decided on it thought.
I have a sense, I may be wrong, I'm not in Gaza, I'm not in touch with these people, I really don't know, but I have a sense that the people in Gaza, the military leadership in Gaza, planned and decided on this on the basis of an estimation of the situation that wasn't shared either, I think, entirely with the rest of the Hamas leadership outside.
or with their putative allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, or with the Iranians. And everything that the Iranians and Hezbollah have done and said ever since that reinforces this view. They were not taken into the confidence of the people who decided on this. I'm not sure about the rest of the Hamas leadership.
The second thing is I think they had a misestimation of the regional situation, that they could spark something, which I think they thought would lead to a regional cataclysm, whatever.
Well, I think they thought everybody else would join in with them. I believe that that's what they thought. I have some evidence for that. But I, you know, let's wait. We'll see. The people in Qatar and Turkey and Lebanon will talk sooner or later and we'll know.
And the Iranians have already pretty much made it clear and the Hezbollah made it pretty clear that they weren't taken into anybody's confidence and they weren't, you know, party to this decision. I don't think they shared the expectations that the people, the military people in Gaza had. And I think they thought there would be an uprising across Palestine.
I think they thought that their allies would join in. I think they believed in this rhetoric of an axis of resistance. And I think that they misestimated. To put it very blunt. Hezbollah did join in a day later. Yes. The next day. But again, look at how they joined in. They didn't cross the border.
You know, some people have said that the Palestinians are now bereft and don't have any allies. I was never a believer. in the idea that what called itself the Axis, or what the Iranians and their friends called the Axis of Resistance, was designed to support the Palestinians. I mean, it did in some respects support one faction of the Palestinians, Hamas and other groups.
But to the extent to which it even existed as a real coalition of interests, it was designed by Iran to protect the Iranian regime, to protect Iran. And Hezbollah were willing allies in this, as were, inshallah, in Yemen. They bought into the project, and they had their own objectives, each one of those three actors, which had very little to do, in fact, in my view, with Palestine.
I mean, governments all over the world have used the Palestinian cause in different ways, and at the same time have sometimes rendered assistance to the Palestinians. But Iran was doing this for Iran, the regime's sake, and for Iran's national interests.
And I think this idea that Palestinians are bereft of allies assumes that they had people who were doing things for their interest, which I don't think was true. I honestly do not think it's true. And the way in which Hezbollah behaved, they sacrificed a great deal. I'm not denigrating them. But they attacked Israel in an entirely limited fashion. They didn't cross the border.
They tried to avoid attacking civilian targets. They may have killed 50 people in 14 months, civilians in Israel. They were clearly trying to target Israeli military installations and Israeli strategic targets and not kill civilians.
Unlike what Israel did in Gaza, does in Gaza, and did and is doing in Lebanon, and may apparently be doing now in Syria, where they attack military and civilian targets indiscriminately. There was a dosage to what they were trying to do. In other words, they weren't part of the project, in my view. They hadn't bought on to whatever it was that the military leadership in Gaza had planned for them.
They had to. They felt they had to. You know, their commitment to Palestine obliged them to do that. They had no choice. The Iranians were obliged to do that. I don't think the Iranians wanted to get involved in a war with Israel. They're terrified of Israel. as is every country around Israel, by the way, and have been for decades.
Since 1948, in fact, Arab countries have been scared of Israel, most other countries. You know, Israel has bombed seven Arab capitals. Most of the wars have been fought on Arab soil. Arab governments are very afraid of Israel, and I think Iran is afraid of Israel, with good reason, I would add.
And ethnic cleansing. They all go together. You boot the population out, you occupy, and then you settle.
Well, first of all, the Palestinian movement is fragmented. There is no unified Palestinian national movement. There are two discredited factions, neither of which, it appears to me today, has a viable strategy. So the Palestinian National Movement, for the better part of two decades, has been, in my view, in terrible shape. It's in just as bad or worse shape today.
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