Walid Khalidi, the revered Palestinian historian whose research helped document the Nakba and shaped generations of scholarship on Palestine, has died aged 100.
Khalidi, known as the “historian of the Palestinian cause”, died on Sunday in Massachusetts, United States, according to an obituary issued by the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS), a research center he co-founded in 1963.
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After the news, tributes from scholars, diplomats and Palestinian officials flooded social media, with Hussam Jomlat, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, posting on X that Khalidi was a “national treasure, keeper of memory and mentor for generations”.
Born in Jerusalem in 1925 to a prominent intellectual family, Khalidi received his early education in Ramallah before attending St. George’s School in Jerusalem.
He later graduated from Oxford University in 1951 and went on to enjoy a distinguished academic career, teaching political studies at the American University of Beirut until 1982, before being a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs.
Chronicling the Nakba
Khalidi is perhaps best known for his meticulous documentation of the destruction of Palestinian villages during the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948.
His landmark book All That Remains, published in 1992, describes how more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated during the first Arab-Israeli war and combines historical research, maps and testimonies to reconstruct the lives of the vanished communities.
IPS described Khalidi as a “pioneer in uncovering many long-hidden features that explain how the Zionist movement succeeded in conquering Palestine in 1948”. In the 1960s, he first exposed “its master plan for the occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of its people”.
Another important work by Khalidi, Before There Diaspora, used archival photographs to document Palestinian society before 1948, providing a rare visual record of daily life in cities and villages across the country.
Educational and diplomatic roles
After a teaching stint at Oxford, Khalidi spent decades at the American University of Beirut and co-founded the Institute for Palestine Studies, which grew into one of the leading research institutions devoted to Palestinian history, politics and society.
Khalidi later served as a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, lectured at institutions including Princeton University in the US, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Apart from education, he also played a role in Palestinian diplomacy.
After the 1967 war known as Naqsa, in which Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Khalidi turned to diplomacy.
He served as an adviser to the Iraqi delegation to the United Nations, then joined the Arab Summit delegation to the British government in 1983, and served as a special adviser to the Arab League Secretary General in the mid-1980s.
He was part of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.
Khalidi was a proponent of the two-state solution, writing in “Peaceful Coexistence with Israel” in Foreign Affairs in 1988 that a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders was “the only conceptual candidate for a historic compromise of this century-old conflict”.
Khalidi is synonymous with his beloved motherland
Tributes by Palestinian officials and scholars highlighted Khalidi’s role in shaping the historical understanding of Palestine.
Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, said in a post on X that Khalidi’s name was “synonymous with his beloved homeland of Palestine,” as he offered “heartfelt condolences to his family, the people of Palestine and all who knew him.”
The Institute for Palestine Studies described Khalidi as one of the most important historians of Palestine and said his work helped build the foundation for modern scholarship on Palestine.
Jehad Abusalim, policy analyst and author of Light in Gaza, wrote in X that Khalidi “dedicated his life to preserving Palestinian history,” adding that “his scholarship and research are a foundation that generations will continue to build on.”
For many historians, Khalidi’s legacy lies not only in his own scholarship, but also in the institutions he helped build and the generations of students and researchers he mentored.
At a time when most of Palestine’s historical records were in danger of being dispersed or lost, Khalidi devoted his career to documenting them.
His work ensured that the history of Palestinian society before and after 1948 would remain part of the global historical record.
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