R.Khalidi, "Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness" Columbia University Press. NY 1997 309 pages

(Majallat Al-Dirassat Al-Filastiniya. 1998)

Various scholars of West Asian and North African history have concerned themselves with the origins of Arab nationalism and its relationship with Ottomanism prior to World War One which itself resulted in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Modern Turkey and the establishment of the Mandate system in Syria, and its ensuing partition. National awareness was the direct outcome of the "mandated nationhood" of this forced partition administered by Britain and France.

Rashid Khalidi’s book is an attempt to engage published scholarly and polemical works with the aim of establishing that Palestinian identity is not as insubstantial as it is made out to be by the skeptics, while providing a Palestinian national historical narrative based on Arabic sources. The author sets himself the task of exploring the interplay between the different narratives that make up Palestine history, in order to illuminate aspects of the identity of the Palestinians. Taking his cue from Anderson he utilises the local Palestinian Arabic press to show that Palestinian identity, at least among the educated elite, was well grounded by the end of the first decade of the mandate, contrary to mainstream Zionist historiographers who insist that Palestinian nationalism is a phenomenon of fairly recent origin and only arose as a specific response to Zionism.

While conceding the importance of Zionism in the formation of Palestinians identity - as the primary other faced by the Palestinians for much of this century- he tries to show that elements of attachment to Palestine antedate the Palestinians encounter with Zionism. He points out that the argument that Zionism was the main factor in provoking the emergence of Palestinian national identity ignores one key fact: that a universal process was unfolding in the Middle East during this period involving an increased identification with the new states created by the post World War One partitions. In every case this was based on the development of pre existing loyalties and the inception of new ones. Just as with the Palestinians, in every case these new identities can be shown to have been contingent, conjectural and dependent on circumstances rather than essential or primordial. As part of this process, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, all managed to develop their respective nation-state nationalisms "without the dubious benefit of a Zionist challenge".

Thus there is little doubt that this sense of identity emerged unevenly, in different ways among different groups and in different areas, and that it always co existed with other forms of identification such as religion or the extended family. He puts forward the interesting thesis that in the midst of momentous events, people undergo rapid change and transformation in the view of self and others, of history and of time and space. These shifts in situations of extreme political stress, could be seen as a watershed in terms of identity. Thus under the impact of rapid momentous and unsettling challenges during the period from the outset of World War One to some time early on in the British Mandate for Palestine, the sense of political and national identification of most politically conscious literate and urban Palestinians underwent a sequence of major transformation. The end result was a strong and growing identification with Palestine as the Arab residents of the country increasingly came in Benedict Anderson’s words to "imagine" themselves as part of a single political community with clear boundaries and rights to sovereignty.

He Attempts to place this phenomenon within a wider context; what he terms the universal process unfolding in the Middle East at the time. The inhabitants of the newly created states identified with the new political formations, and this he believes was based to some degree on the development of pre existing loyalties. Other Arabs, Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Lebanese, all managed to develop their respective nation states during the same period, without having the spur of a Zionist challenge. In the Palestinians case, the absence of a strong state, a state of their own, deprived them of access to formal state power and adversely affected the growth of Palestinian identity. Thus he argues that a Palestinian particularilist response would have emerged eventually irrespective of Zionism, and would have developed into a separate sense of Palestinian identity and ultimately a territorially based nation state nationalism. This was the logic of every other entity in the Eastern Arab world within the frontiers drawn by the Imperial powers without exception.

Khalidy summarises his argument on the formation of Palestinian identity by delineating four phases, starting with the pre World One period when the idea of Palestinian identity was restricted to a small circle, literate and urban based, and culminating in the events of 1948. Al Nakba itself was the cornerstone of identity formation. In the writers words, it proved a great leveler and a source of universally shared experience. Khalidi recognsies that it was those Palestinians outside Palestine, who first picked up the fallen banner of Palestinian nationalism after 1948 and rebuilt the national movement. Developments since the inception of the Oslo "peace process" lead him to believe that Palestinian identity has now become firmly established. Paradoxically, a recentring of Palestinian society is currently taking place alongside a redefinition of identity and it is now the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, who are in the process of endowing Palestinian identity with its content.