April 3, 2009

The Paradox of Palestinian Nationalism

To the Editor:

Although not a historian of the Near East, nor a political analyst per se, as a non-Arab from Iran with a diverse ethno-religious heritage, I found the essay "Rashid Khalidi's Balancing Act" (The Chronicle Review, March 6) informatively thorough and cautiously optimistic for an era when the distant cousins of Jews and Palestinians might live together peacefully.

Just as the emergence of nationalism beyond feudalism in Africa and Asia was an outcome of Eurocentric