The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017: Summary & Key Insights

The story begins with Britain’s imperial ambition at the height of World War I. When I examine the Balfour Declaration, I see not a simple diplomatic statement but a document drenched in colonial arrogance. Britain promised a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine—a land that was already inhabited by an indigenous population. This was the first act in a sustained campaign that viewed Palestinians as incidental, as a population to be managed or displaced. The declaration ignored the people living there, reducing them to 'non-Jewish communities.' That omission was deliberate. It encapsulated a worldview that would drive policy for decades—one where colonial power arrogates the right to allocate land and determine destiny.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Britain carried out the practical mechanisms of that promise: facilitating Zionist immigration, transferring land ownership, policing resistance, and suppressing dissent. Palestinians protested, organized strikes, and petitioned the British government, insisting that their rights be recognized. Their appeals were systematically disregarded. In these episodes, we see the formation of the Palestine war’s first battlefield—a struggle fought not only on the ground but in the very language of legality and legitimacy.

Looking back, I view 1917 not merely as a date in history, but as the ideological foundation of a century-long process. It institutionalized a hierarchy of belonging, where Palestinians were deemed illegitimate in their own homeland. The Balfour Declaration thus inaugurated the historical arc of settler colonialism under the guise of humanitarianism and progress. By exposing its underlying logic, we unmask the continuity that runs through every subsequent stage of the 'war on Palestine.'

Under British rule, Palestine was transformed both administratively and demographically. From Jerusalem to Jaffa, the British Mandate operated as a colonial apparatus designed to implement the Balfour Declaration while maintaining an illusion of civil governance. I describe in the book how the Mandate’s dual commitments—to 'protect all inhabitants' while supporting Zionist settlement—were impossible to reconcile. The contradiction was not accidental; it was structural. Britain functioned as a patron of Zionism, training the bureaucracy, police, and military systems that would later be taken over by Israel.

This period also witnessed the emergence of modern Palestinian nationalism. Writers, teachers, and activists organized to resist both foreign rule and land displacement. Revolts in the 1930s demonstrated that Palestinians understood their struggle in terms of self-determination and anti-colonial resistance, mirroring movements in India, Egypt, and beyond. Yet each uprising was crushed by superior force. British aircraft bombed villages; administrative orders silenced dissent; new legal codes criminalized assembly.

In writing about this era, I underscore its lasting significance: the Mandate was not simply an interlude between Ottoman rule and Israeli statehood, but the laboratory in which the dispossession of Palestine was systematized. The policies, maps, and censuses created then would serve as instruments of domination long after 1948. And yet, amid oppression, Palestinians built schools, newspapers, and institutions that preserved their identity. That persistence became the cornerstone of future resistance.