Introductory Lecture: Palestine and Palestinians Pre October 7th

I will be offering a series of informal lectures on Palestine and the Palestinian people, beginning on Saturday January 24th. It will be an abbreviated version of a semester length course I taught for years at Sonoma State University entitled “Israel, the Palestinians and US Foreign Policy.” Since October 7th, 2023, many of us have been overwhelmed by reports of the magnitude of the death tolls of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of essentially the entirety of the physical infrastructure of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli armed forces which continues to this day.

I will attempt to discuss and connect the signal events of Palestinian history – from the rise of Political Zionism and the Balfour Declaration through to the UN Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 and on through the wars of 1956, 1967, 1973 and then the uprisings, the intifadas, of the 1980s and 2000s. People with a limited background on this history will surely benefit, but I believe that even those with a significant familiarity with the Palestinian experience will benefit from some of the unique perspectives that will be presented.