Palestine and Israel: One Land, Two Stories

To understand the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it reached its current state, one must start by granting both sides their historical agency. For Zionists until 1948 and Israelis after that date, the motivating question has been how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish land. For Palestinian Arabs, in turn, the question has been how to resist a group of people who seek to make all the critical decisions over their lives. By exploring motivations, methods, and outcomes on both sides, this course invites a nuanced and critical understanding of a historical process that is all too often presented in unilateral and grossly distorted ways.

The first half of the course explores the Zionist-Israeli arc, from the so-called “transfer idea” to the 1948 war and the subsequent efforts of the Israeli state to maintain a Jewish-majority population through policies such as the confiscation of Palestinian land, home demolition, property destruction, and deportation. The second half turns to the Palestinian arc, from Arab objections against Zionism in the Ottoman Parliament to the struggle against the British occupation of Palestine and its Zionist policies, from armed resistance following the 1948 war to nonviolent efforts culminating in the first Intifada, from the Oslo Accords and their breakdown to the ensuing conflict up to this day.

Image: Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Peace Flag for the Holy Land, 1990.

About the instructor

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  Zachary J. Foster

  Historian whose research explores the idea of Palestine as well as the origins of Palestinian identity in the 19th century.