The outbreak of WWII and the Holocaust that ensued transformed the Palestine Question. This week considers the period after WWII (1948-1956) looking at the declaration of the Israeli state (‘al-Nakba’ or 'Catastrophe' for the Palestinians) and its aftermath, the Arab Cold War, and some general questions about history and historiography.

[LECTURE SLIDES]

Seminar Questions:

What strategies and tactics did various Zionist groups use after WWII to achieve Israeli statehood?

What were the major factors creating the Palestinian refugee problem?

What made Israeli revisionist historiography possible? If you were to imagine Arab revisionism, what would it be?

How did Cold War considerations shape American and British policies toward the Middle East in the 1950s?

How did American and British officials view Gamal Abd al-Nasser?

Readings:

Charles Smith, Palestine and the Arab Israeli Conflict (St. Martin's Press, 2016), pp. 162-217.

Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 142-184.

Recommended Readings:

Fredrik Meiton, Electrical Palestine: Capital and Technology from Empire to Nation (UCPress, 2019).

Irene L. Gendzier, Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015).

Samer Esmeir, 'Back to History and Judgement' Social Text (June 14, 2014).

Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmed H. Sa'idi eds., Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (Columbia University Press, 2007).

Ella Shohat, On the Arab Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements (Pluto Press, 2017).

Charles Anderson, “The Mandate and the Crisis of Palestinian Landlessness, 1929-1936”, Middle Eastern Studies, 2018, 54:2.