Iron Cage

In chapter one of The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi sets the stage for the premise of his book, by examining the conflicting evidence of the Palestinians’ plight. In order to do so, the narrative begins in 1948, following the eviction of more than half of the Arab Palestinian population as a result of the Arab – Israel conflict of that year. Khalidi goes on to enumerate a few of the respective differing Arab and Israel accounts of how it was that a people that once constituted the majority of the population of a land, became the minority. Revisionist Israeli historians have attempted to debunk traditional accounts that absolve Israel of any wrongdoing, such as the notion that Palestinians attacked the yishuv first, by looking at the newly opened Israeli, American, and British archives. Although Khalidi is appreciative of the latest attempts of objectivity, the author goes on to claim that Israeli revisionists continue to provide shortsighted narratives, because of an inability to incorporate Arab sources to the reinterpretations. Furthermore, Khalidi castigates Arab interpretations of the conflict as well, by noting the over emphasis they put on external causes, such as the superiority of the Israeli armed forces, or the alliance between Israel and Transjordan. Although Khalidi noticeably acknowledges many of the claims from both sides, his conclusion is nevertheless, that not enough attention has been paid to the internal reasons why Palestine as a nation has failed.
The waning pages of the first chapter moreover, are devoted to discrediting attempts to compare Palestinians and Israelis on an even keel. The reader is presented with factual evidence that makes the case that the yishuv, because of external backing from Zionists and the British, held a comparative advantage over Palestinians. Subsequently, Palestinians whom by and large resided in sporadic settlements, developed weaker and less cohesive military and economic structures then their nascent