After a brief pause, Israel is now looking to expand ground operations across the Gaza Strip. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.”
Palestinian civilians are stuck in a dire situation. And already, global media and public attention on the Middle East seems to be declining. To understand what might happen next, FP’s Ravi Agrawal spoke with Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab affairs at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance. He was briefly an advisor to Palestinian negotiators in the 1990s.
Rashid Khalidi on whether Palestinians resent Hamas for the destruction Israel has wrought on Gaza.
Watch Khalidi’s answer when asked what Israel’s response should have been to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
Are Palestinians missing a Mahatma Ghandi? Rashid Khalidi thinks it’s a dead-end alley to go down because no Palestinian leader has been capable of articulating a clear strategy.
Are Arab States abandoning the Palestinian cause? Khalidi differentiates between the Arab public and their governments, which he calls either absolute autocracies or military dictatorships.
Rashid Khalidi gives the Biden administration an F minus for its handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Watch to find out why.
Rashid Khalidi
Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies, Columbia University
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. He is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and was the president of the Middle East Studies Association, as well as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 (2020) and Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013).
Host
Ravi Agrawal
Editor in chief, Foreign Policy
Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the host of FP Live, and a regular world affairs analyst on TV and radio. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in full-time roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy.