The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

It can be hard to pick up a book when you know you're going to watch the main characters go down a bad road, and especially hard when it ends with no end in sight. Such is the case with Khalidi's excellent study of the struggle for Palestinian statehood. From its origins during the British mandate to the settlements and divisions today, Khalidi's book examines almost 80 years of Palestinian political events. Despite the breadth of the story being told, the book is extremely succinct in the telling, and an accessible overview of the challenges they have faced and decisions they have made.

As an anarchist, I found this book somewhat challenging in its focus upon statehood as the ultimate goal of the Palestinian struggle. Throughout, the show more author's consideration is of how close the Palestinians came to achieving this goal and the failures thereof. There are certainly many benefits to statehood as opposed to the condition of stateless colonial domination faced by the Palestinians in the decades passed. However, alternatives to statehood and the establishment of centralized authority and monopoly of power are generally explored as either negatives or lesser modes of organization. While I enjoyed this book, the frame through which the story is told is somewhat limited. I don't know of any anarchist studies of the anticolonial struggle of the Palestinians, but I'll keep an eye out. show less

When I started reading this book, I wasn't very familiar with the details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I felt that the book was very argumentative and aggressive. After reading more books on the subject and coming back to this one to finish it, I didn't get that impression. It could be that from Ch.6 on his writing style changed, or it could be that I understood the issue more fully and had gotten over the idea that any attack on Israel is somehow inherently bad. Where did that idea come from anyway?

The Iron Cage is by no means light reading, but it's informative reading and a good supplement to a library of books on the Arab-Israeli / Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Don't let it be your first book on the subject, though.

Too much left wing bias, but need to keep reading these to stay balanced.