The New Palestinian Narrative

American-born Mideast scholar Rashid Khalidi comes from one of Jerusalem's most prominent Palestinian families — a family of historians. Like millions of Americans, he looks out on the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict with anguish and dismay.

Now, Khalidi has picked up the tools of his trade — history — to ask why the Palestinians have ended up without an independent state of their own.

History is a minefield in the Middle East — a battleground itself. This is Palestinian history — tough on a people's adversaries, and tough on Palestinians themselves. A search in the past for clues to the future.

Hear a conversation with Rashid Khalidi as he rereads and rethinks Palestinian history.

"I think to some extent the book reflects both of those perspectives: my own reading as a historian, as someone who is steeped in this, of some of these received versions of history, and my understanding of things that I have actually seen myself... I was in the chamber of the Security Council when the ceasefire resolution was adopted in June 1967. I was actually sitting there watching..." Rashid Khalidi

Guests:

Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood"

Tom Segev, columnist for Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and author of "One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate."