Palestine: A Personal History
Event Featuring:
Overview
In Palestine: A Personal History, author Karl Sabbagh chronicled the Palestinian experience from the 18th century to the creation of Israel in 1948. Sabbagh, of British and Palestinian descent, explained that one cannot understand the Palestinian people’s indignation over their situation until one correctly understands history. To personalize the history, the author wove in his own family narrative.
Event Summary
Mr. Sabbagh’s book, a collective history intertwined with personal anecdote, is the story of what he narrates as the Zionist quest to “[turn] an Arab country into a Jewish homeland.” In delineating the broader history, Mr. Sabbagh identified a number of influential figures in his own lineage, including the rather infamous right-hand man to King Daher al Omar and Napoleon’s translator in Egypt. As he shifted between the collective and the personal, Sabbagh sought to dispel “five myths,” detailed below, which he believed perpetuated the status quo.
Myth 1: “A Jewish right to the Holy Land is implicit in the Old Testament.” This notion dominated Western political thought throughout the first half of the 20th century and justified for many the creation of the Israeli state. However, according to Sabbagh, the Old Testament does speak of “The Land of Israel,” but recreating national boundaries as they might have been thousands of years ago is not an appropriate method of granting sovereignty in the modern world.
Myth 2: “Pre-20th century Palestine was largely Jewish.” On the contrary, Sabbagh stated that only roughly one in ten Palestinians was Jewish. Furthermore, the Palestinians enjoyed a unique identity, not to be indiscriminately grouped with neighboring Arabs. (Mr. Sabbagh provided Jewish sources regarding the issue whenever possible, as statistical discrepancies regarding Jewish presence exist among Zionists, advocates of Palestinian statehood, and neutral academics.)
Myth 3: “The British government engineered a one-state solution.” To disprove this contention, Mr. Sabbagh cited the Balfour Declaration, in which a state was promised to a group of individuals claiming to fully represent the rather fragmented Jewish people. Mr. Sabbagh believed that the Balfour Declaration was thrust upon the British government, which only consented with the mandate that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
Myth 4: “The world, or the United Nations, “gave” Palestine to the Jews.” Mr. Sabbagh countered that the UN Special Committee on Palestine issued a two-state final recommendation, in which Jews and Arabs would divide the land and Bethlehem and Jerusalem would remain neutral territory. Only a minority of committee members advocated a federated one-state solution.
Myth 5: “Palestinians voluntarily left their land.” Rather, the 700,000 refugees fled Palestine between 1947 and 1979 with the understanding, according to Sabbagh, that invading Arab armies would restore order and protect the Arab inhabitants from further Israeli aggression.
Mr. Sabbagh concluded by citing the concept of a modern-day Jewish author: Tel Aviv’s approach to the Palestinians is, “OK, we’ve suffered; you’ve suffered, let’s talk.” But Tel Aviv should say, “We’ve suffered and we’ve caused you to suffer — now let’s talk.” Mr. Sabbagh contended that the peace process would not be able advance until Israel acknowledged its hand in the injustices suffered by the Palestinians.
About this Event
Mr. Karl Sabbagh offered these remarks the Middle East Institute’s Boardman Room in Washington, DC on March 29, 2007.
Speaker Details
The son of a Palestinian father and a British mother, Mr. Sabbagh is currently a writer, journalist, and television producer in Britain. He has produced major documentaries for American and British broadcasters and has written for The Sunday Times, New Scientist, Guardian, Sunday Telegraph magazine, and Scientific American. Mr. Sabbagh is also the author of several books, including A Rum Affair, Power Into Art, and Dr Riemann's Zeros.
Attributions
This event summary was prepared by Cathleen Conley, an intern at the Middle East Institute. She is a second-year graduate student at the University of Denver earning a Masters in International Security. This summary was edited by Lindsey Ellis, fellow intern at the Middle East Institute, and a recent graduate of Middle East and Development Studies at the University of Arizona.
