Abstract:
Drawing on British and Palestinian sources, this lecture narrates the British invasion and conquest of Gaza in 1917. It frames the battles for Gaza not as a sideshow of the First World War but as the foundational moment in the colonization of Palestine, pointing to the ways in which the invasion and conquest were structurally linked to British colonial violence in Palestine after the war.
Biography
Laila Parsons is a professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies and the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. She is the author of The Druze between Palestine and Israel, 1947–1949 (2000) and numerous journal articles on the 1948 war, on rebel soldiers in the interwar period, and on British colonial rule in Palestine. Her most recent book, The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Independence, 1914–1948 (2016), was the recipient of the 2017 Palestine Book Award and the Society for Military History’s 2017 Distinguished Book Award. She is currently completing a book on the British occupation of Palestine, 1917-1948.
