TAMANNA DAHIYA
A Review of Iron Cage: A Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press, 2007
Rashid Khalidi's book 'Iron Cage' is a masterpiece that offers answers to some very prevalent questions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rashid Khalidi is an established author and Palestinian scholar who has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict and remains closely tied to the conflict having lived and covered various facets of the conflict like the Lebanese civil war and the Oslo Peace processes, Khalidi has first-hand experience to offer while covering this topic.
In his previous book, ‘Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness’, Khalidi explores the conscious, artificial, strong and awakened sense of Palestinian Nationalism which was a vocal enough force in demanding a nationhood linked with their identity. Iron Cage picks up from this note and explicitly explains why this awakened sense of nationalism and identity did not materialise in a nation-state today.
The title of the book is very important in extrapolating the plight of the Palestinians. The Iron cage is a metaphor for all the political, social, economic and military obstructions created for the Palestinians by the multiple actors with stakes in this conflict.
The book begins with an introduction wherein Rashid Khalidi elucidates the role of western powers in distorting the indigenous politics of the Middle Eastern region. Khalidi draws parallels between the British control of the Palestinian elite by offering them piece-meal positions in constructed ranks for loyalty and the American tactic of fostering the Muslim brotherhood and other Islamist outfits which serve as a “counter-weight to anti-American forces” till today.
Furthermore, the author also incorporates major debates around the question of settler colonialism, imperialism, identity curation as well as mandate governance. His views on investigating the role of the British through “the Communitarian Paradigm: Invented Religious Institutions” are extremely thought-provoking as it enables one to draw comparisons to British tactics of colonialism across the world. The destruction of national unity, orchestrating indigenous rivalries and parochial imbroglios based on local identities was something that the British tried in colonies across India, Palestine, Egypt. To exemplify, Khalidi talks of the removal of Musa Kassim al-Huseyni and his replacement by a al-Nashbibi to spark the existing rivalry between these two powerful families amongst the Palestinian national leadership.
The author does not give a chronological narration of events but rather critically examines the varying thematic narratives that were constructed or floated around by different actors during major developments of this conflict. The importance of such an approach makes you contemplate the alternate course this conflict could have taken and its global ramifications. To exemplify, the author writes about the prevailing Zionist narratives in the twentieth century. The hardliners under Jabotinsky who saw Israelis and Palestinians as anti-thesis of each other and the rather moderate line under Martin Buber and Judah Magnes who called for a "bi-national state” because they saw the expulsion and abject denial of Arab rights as “inherent injustice.” makes the reader aware of alternative realities which could have altered the face of this international conflict greatly. This is a different approach from many other writers like Ben White who focus on the Israeli establishment as a strong anti-Palestinian right wing “black-box” entity and do not disintegrate it into the various narratives. Ben White in his book “Palestinians in Israel” portrays Israel as a state with ethnocratic elements focused on its hatred for Palestinians. While, Khalidi opens the black box and goes into all possible details that make up the Israeli debate.
His style of writing is very crucial as even though he extrapolates the diabolic plight of the Palestinians through his balanced writing he does not engage in blatant victim-blaming. This is in contrast to Ben White’s account of ‘Palestinians in Israel’ which places Palestinians and Israeli on opposite sides of history, former as a victim of the latter’s aggression and ethnocratic exclusion.
After the war of 1948, the Nakba or the Palestinian catastrophe has been covered factually in great detail but what makes Khalidi’s work substantial is his coverage of social facts constructed by the other side. Khalidi writes, the state of Israel engaged in construction of certain truths to debunk the Palestinians as an anti-thesis of their existence. Two very prominent narratives of the state of Israel, as covered by the author are the “David-Goliath” narrative and the “Victims of Victims” narrative popularised by Edward Said. The author quotes official statements of the state like “They intended to drive us into the sea” and “we were attacked by seven Arab armies” to justify the heroic narrative that the state of Israel subscribed to justify its strict policy towards the Palestinians. Secondly, the “state cleared its own conscience” through the portrayal of the Arabs as “victims of their own dispossession.” Khalidi calls these constructed narratives “state produced myths” which became existing realities for many of the newly immigrated Jews in Israel.
Through Khalidis references one gets a deeper insight into this narrative as he expands on multiple sources which furthered the same opinion and thereby impacted a large audience. Khalidi calls this the “blame-the-victim school” which finds its proponents in eminent personalities like erstwhile Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban’s “Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Subsequently, the author sheds light on a very different perspective on the ten year “Peace Process” between the Arabs and the Jews, one that comes from within the iron cage. The ten-year peace process was a pacifying stunt from Israel which not only illegally expanded its settlements to almost double the amount but also strengthened its illegal occupation regime by expanding infrastructure and services in this illegally occupied area.
Thus, Khalidi concludes that the Palestinians were not only placed in the iron cage by the imperial powers but also kept there because of the persistent infighting and fractures within their own leadership.
The sources used by the author are highly authentic and reliable. The author has cited a wide spectrum of writers and academics on both, Palestinian as well as Jewish sides of the conflict which makes his approach a fairly balanced and unbiased one. Khalidi draws from works of other notable scholars like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Edward Said and Tariq Ali. Khalidi has also referred to works of George Orwell on colonialism in the Indian subcontinent.
This book does a detailed, unbiased and dexterous job at exploring the nuances of the Palestinian National Movement with valid comparative narratives that draw on the social history of the existing factual realities and help us indigenize the relevant topic. It is a perfect guide to anyone who wants an unbiased understanding of a perplexing conflict that continues to dominate the current course of history.