Guests
- Rashid KhalidiEdward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University.
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The United States and Israel earlier this month signed a deal allocating land for a permanent U.S. Embassy in West Jerusalem — years after a temporary embassy was established during Trump’s first term in office. Palestinian families have pleaded with the U.S. government to reconsider the embassy’s planned location, saying the site in the area known as the Allenby compound was unlawfully taken from them decades ago.
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, belongs to one of the families that has claims to the land. “So, here we have the U.S. government signing an agreement with the Israeli government to lease land the Israeli government has no right to, to which … we and many other families have title, in order to establish an illegal embassy in Jerusalem, which is in violation of repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
Khalidi also comments on the ongoing fight to save the centuries-old Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem, “one of the most sacred and holy sites to Muslims.” Israel has gradually taken over the cemetery, replacing it with a museum, parks and parking lots.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee speaking earlier this month about establishing the embassy in Jerusalem.
MIKE HUCKABEE: The United States not only recognizes Jerusalem as the eternal, indigenous and forever capital of the Jewish people, but also that the United States says that we’re going to do something about it, not just by recognizing it openly and verbally, but we’re going to plant our flag, our American flag, on the soil of Jerusalem for a permanent and a brand-new embassy compound that will serve as our mothership of diplomatic activities here in Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Can you talk about this agreement that was signed, Rashid, between the U.S. and Israel right before U.S. Independence Day — I think it was July 1st — the U.S. building its embassy in Jerusalem on land? Talk about who owns that land.
RASHID KHALIDI: A large number of Palestinians own that land, as private property or as waqf, inalienable Islamic endowments, including my own family, dozens of Jerusalem families, including dozens of U.S. citizens. So, here we have the U.S. government signing an agreement with the Israeli government to lease land the Israeli government has no right to, to which we have title, we and many other families have title, in order to establish an illegal embassy in Jerusalem, which is in violation of repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions. The United States should not have an embassy in Jerusalem in the first place. And to call it the “eternal, indigenous and forever capital” of Israel doesn’t change international law. That’s a violation of international law.
It’s also a violation of the property rights of the Palestinians, whose ownership of this land is attested right up to the end of the British mandate, when many members of these families were receiving rent from the British government, which had established a military compound there, the Allenby compound or the Allenby barracks. So, these families had repeatedly brought to the attention of previous American administrations the fact that this is our land. Israel has no right to it. The United States has no right to lease it from Israel. And right up until the Biden administration, there was a reluctance on the part of American governments, in spite of their unlimited support for Israel, to take this step, because it involved the United States leasing land that belonged to, among other things, American citizens. The private property, in other words, of Americans was being stolen by another government and then leased to the United States for use as an embassy.
We learned through Freedom of Information requests that under Biden, the State Department was considering the claims of the heirs, the heirs to the owners of these properties back in 1948, and including myself and my family and many, many other Jerusalem families, including, I repeat, multiple U.S. citizens, as well as Canadian, European and other citizens. And they were worried, clearly, about these Palestinian property claims, which are justified. I mean, we have done an enormous amount of research. We’ve gone through Ottoman, British, Israeli, Jordanian, Islamic court files, and we’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, in materials that we submitted again and again to the U.S. government, going back to the 1990s, that this is our land. Israel has no right to lease it to the United States. The United States has no right to lease it from Israel. We intend, the heirs of the property owners back in 1948 intend, to submit an updated request to the administration to explain why they have pivoted away from the hesitation of the Biden administration, right up to the end of its term, to go ahead with the lease of this property.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the Mamilla Cemetery, one of the two oldest Muslim burial sites in Jerusalem?
RASHID KHALIDI: Certainly. Another case of Israel trampling all over, in this case, one of the most sacred and holy sites to Muslims. This is a cemetery that was established probably in the 12th century. It includes warriors who fought with Salah ad-Din, Saladin, against the Crusaders. It includes members of almost every old Jerusalem family, including my own. Many, many of my ancestors are buried in that cemetery. And it has been chipped away at bit by bit, land taken over, turned into parks, parking lots, most nauseatingly, turned into a museum of tolerance over the remains of Muslim graves. The remains were removed. Nobody was ever told what happened to them.
So, the latest is an attempt to “develop,” quote-unquote, another part of this cemetery. And here, we have yet another case of, you know, where an Israeli grave was disturbed right up to 1967 by the Jordanians, the howling reaches the heavens. When one of the oldest Muslim cemeteries is repeatedly — in Jerusalem, is repeatedly desecrated, not a word, not a peep.
So, yeah, we have, on the one hand, this embassy issue, stolen land being leased by Israel to the United States, and we have, on the other hand, a case of one of the oldest — one of the oldest Muslim cemeteries in the world, and one of the two oldest in Jerusalem, being systematically desecrated over many, many decades. And what is apparently being planned is yet another desecration.
In both of these cases, the heirs are going to do something, as say the — in this case, the descendants of people buried in the cemetery are going to do something. We brought suit in Israel, and the Supreme Court did nothing, the Israeli Supreme Court. We’re going to examine what our options are as far as this latest desecration of the Mamilla Cemetery, just as the heirs to the Allenby barracks property, which Huckabee, whom many of us call “the Israeli ambassador to Israel” — he’s so, so deeply committed to every fabrication that Israel puts out. “Indigenous,” “eternal,” “forever capital,” all of these phrases that are churned out by the Israeli propaganda machine come dripping off his lips. So, we’re going to — we’re going to examine our options, and we will certainly submit a request to the administration to look into this.
AMY GOODMAN: Rashid, if you could end by talking about the shifting views on Israel in the United States, this poll that just came out showing Mahmood Mamdani — sorry, oh my gosh — showing Mayor Zohran Mamdani here in New York something like 44% popularity ratings compared to Netanyahu at 32%, and the shifting views of American Jews? The most recent, Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, where you also were a professor, and chief of staff of President Obama, giving a speech at University of Tel Aviv talking about Israel as a “pariah” nation.
RASHID KHALIDI: Right. Well, I think there’s been a seismic shift in American views of Israel over the past four or five years. It was — the biggest part of the shift was obviously triggered by the live-streamed genocide in Gaza, the fact that people were able to see with their own eyes what was actually happening, instead of the carefully curated, lying description that the Israeli government fed to complacent American journalists, who repeated it verbatim on CNN and in The New York Times and in other mainstream media. People were seeing for themselves that the lying liars of the mainstream media were not telling the truth and that what was happening was the slaughter of innocent civilians. And this has just shifted the views, not just of ordinary Americans —
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Rashid.
RASHID KHALIDI: Pardon me?
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
RASHID KHALIDI: It’s shifted the views of everybody — Jewish community, young people, old people, even young Republicans.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Rashid Khalidi, so much for joining us, Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.
I’ll be appearing virtually tonight in Montreal, Canada, at the Q&A following the screening of Democracy Now! — about Democracy Now!, Steal This Story, Please!
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