Walid Khalidi, historian of the Palestinian cause, dies aged 100 

Walid Khalidi, the venerated Palestinian historian whose research helped document the Nakba and shaped generations of scholarship on Palestine, has died aged 100.

Khalidi, dubbed “the historian of the Palestinian cause”, passed away on Sunday in Massachusetts in the United States, according to an obituary issued by the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) – the research centre that he co-founded in 1963.

Following the news, tributes from scholars, diplomats and Palestinian officials flooded social media, with Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, calling Khalidi “a national treasure, a guardian of memory, and a mentor to generations” in a post on X.

Born in Jerusalem in 1925 into a prominent intellectual family, Khalidi received his early education in Ramallah before attending St George’s School in Jerusalem.

He later graduated from the University of Oxford in 1951 and went on to enjoy an illustrious academic career, teaching political studies at the American University of Beirut until 1982, before becoming a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs.

Chronicling the Nakba

Khalidi was perhaps best known for his meticulous documentation of the destruction of Palestinian villages during the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948.

His landmark book All That Remains, published in 1992, catalogued how more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated during the first Arab-Israeli war and combined historical research, maps and testimonies to reconstruct the lives of communities that had disappeared.

The IPS described Khalidi as a “pioneer in uncovering many long-concealed features that explained how the Zionist movement succeeded in occupying Palestine in 1948”, adding that in the 1960s, he was the first to reveal “its master plan for the occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of its people, known as ‘Plan Dalet’”.

Another major work by Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, used archival photographs to document Palestinian society before 1948, offering a rare visual record of daily life in cities and villages across the country.

Academic and diplomatic roles

After a period teaching 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 organisations dedicated 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.

Beyond academia, he also played a role in Palestinian diplomacy.

After the 1967 war, which later became known as the Naksa, in which Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Khalidi moved towards diplomacy.

He served as an adviser to the Iraqi delegation to the United Nations, later joined an Arab Summit delegation to the British government in 1983, and, in the mid-1980s, served as a special adviser to the Arab League secretary-general.

He was also part of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference.

Khalidi was a proponent of a two-state solution, writing in Foreign Affairs in 1988 that a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in “peaceful coexistence alongside Israel” was “the only conceptual candidate for a historical compromise of this century-old conflict”.

Khalidi is ‘synonymous with his beloved homeland’

Tributes from Palestinian officials and scholars highlighted Khalidi’s role in shaping the historical understanding of Palestine.

Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, said in a post on X  that Khalidi’s name was “synonymous with his beloved homeland, Palestine” as he offered  “heartfelt condolences to his family, to the people of Palestine, and to all who knew him”.

The Institute for Palestine Studies described Khalidi as one of the most prominent 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 on X that Khalidi had “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 much of Palestine’s historical record risked being scattered or lost, Khalidi devoted his career to documenting it.

His work ensured that the history of Palestinian society before and after 1948 would remain part of the global historical record.