糖心破解版

Rashid Khalidi, an outstanding Palestinian historian, was in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in 1982 as Israeli forces approached. Driving through explosions, his first destination was a kindergarten. After picking up his two daughters, Khalidi waited at home for his wife to return. Life under a long siege was about to begin.

This is a scene depicted in the book. Khalidi's major work, Under Siege, is a masterpiece chronicling the entire course of the Lebanon Invasion. My first encounter with Khalidi's work was through this very book. Learning that he had written a comprehensive history of the Palestinian issue piqued my interest. The translation work began in collaboration with Dr. Kensuke Yamamoto of the University of Shizuoka, who had quickly recognized the book's significance, and Dr. Miyuki Kaneshiro of Nagoya Gakuin University.
 
In 1917, the British government made a promise that became famous in modern history. It was a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to the Jewish Baron Rothschild, known as the “Balfour Declaration.” It expressed a favorable opinion toward the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. This act is famously remembered as an episode of Britain's disgraceful diplomacy during World War I. Jews inspired by Zionism, an ideology and movement aimed at building a Jewish homeland in Palestine, became even more determined to head for Palestine. Among the Palestinians who sent letters of protest to Theodor Herzl, a prominent Zionist leader, was Yusef Diya al-Khalidi, Khalidi's ancestor. Memories of the Khalidi family are intertwined with the century-long Palestinian question.
 
What is distinctive about this book is that, starting with the Six-Day War of 1967, Khalidi himself was present in the scene of history, and the details of the time are depicted in fine detail without detracting from the larger flow of a hundred years of history. Khalidi was on the scene when the ceasefire resolution for the Six-Day War was debated in the UN General Assembly and in the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference of 1991. When the Oslo Accords of 1993 led to the start of Palestinian interim self-rule, he unreservedly depicted the attitudes of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, which seem overly optimistic in hindsight.
 
The October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent brutal Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip are not directly addressed in this book. However, the long fuse that led to the worst humanitarian crisis in Gaza is depicted within its pages. On American university campuses, students concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza raised their voices with protests. Among the many videos circulating on social media were scenes of Khalidi addressing students on the ground. Even on these pages, readers will be able to hear his voice.
 

(Written by SUZUKI Hiroyuki, Project Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2025)