This course offers a broad introduction to Palestine, from the nineteenth century to the present day. How did Zionism take root under the British Empire, and how did Palestinians resist? What were the waves of forced displacement that transformed the region, and how has the liberation movement endured? From the entrenchment of settler colonialism to Israel's ongoing genocide, these lectures trace the connections between empire, displacement and resistance — and ask what Palestine means for how we understand justice and liberation today.
Led by Dr Hazem Jamjoum, a Palestinian cultural historian, archivist, and editor based in London, the course draws on decades of scholarship and organising to place Palestine at the centre of global struggles against colonialism and for liberation.
Lecture 1: Palestinians, Zionism & Empire
We start in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with an overview of how the land of Palestine figured for the people who inhabited the region, and for those imagining, visiting and hoping to conquer it from afar. A major part of the discussion revolves around collective identity formation in the ‘Age of Empire.’
Lecture 2: Imperial Occupation, Zionist Colonisation: The British Mandate
When Palestine comes under British imperial control after WWI, having promised to establish a Zionist-controlled in the form of the 1917 Balfour Declaration homeland there The beginnings and development of the Palestine liberation movement, from the 1920s through to the late 1940s, and the entrenchment of Zionist settler colonialism under the British Empire.
Lecture 3: From the 1936 Revolution to the Nakba
The 1930s and early 1940s mark the historic high point of systematic racist violence against Jewish Europeans, leading to waves of mass migration of Jews seeking safety. In this session we examine the ways in which this combined with the antisemitic immigration policies of ‘Western democracies’ that sought to funnel these refugees to Palestine. The session follows the outbreak of the 1936 Palestinian General Strike leading to the Revolution of 1936-1939, and the ways that British imperial repression of the Palestinian uprising paved the way for the Zionist conquest of Palestine in the late 1940s.
Lecture 4: In the Wake of the Nakba
This session offers an overview of the decades between the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 wave of Israeli military conquests. The focus of the first part of the session is on Palestinian refugees, their plight and their work to get organised to take back their lands and livelihoods; the second part focuses on the Palestinians who managed to remain and came under Israeli occupation in 1948.
Lecture 5: The Ongoing Nakba and the Long Intifada (1967-2000s)
This session covers the development of Israel’s regime of domination over Palestinians after its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, and Palestinian resistance movements in the first three decades of the occupation. The last part of the session focuses on the 1990s ‘peace process’ and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and the roles they served in the Israeli political and military strategy of coupling the use of mass incarceration of Palestinians while also forcibly displacing Palestinians from their agricultural lands into overcrowded Palestinian urban areas that the Israeli army has transformed into open air prisons.
Lecture 6: Palestine and the Global Resurgence of Fascism
Thinking through some of the global, and globally local, relationships between Palestine and the world, especially in light of Israel’s ongoing genocide, and their implications for current and future political realities, and the powers and movements that work to shape them.
Complete the course and get the chance to join a live online session with Hazem on ....
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