Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

The situation in the Middle East remains beyond complicated. It's volatile and it's deadly.

The fall of Assad's regime in Syria removes a brutal tyrant from the region and also removes one of Iran's

key allies. Israel greatly damaged another Iran ally, Hezbollah and Lebanon, before they agreed

to a ceasefire.

How these developments will affect the war in Gaza is impossible to predict.

But today I'm going to talk to two people who have thought very deeply about the

conflict and the way it resonates around the world. Later this hour, I'll speak with Adam Kersh

of the Wall Street Journal. But first, I'm joined by Rashid Khalid, a professor of Middle Eastern

and Arab Studies, and to my mind, the best historian of Palestinian history in English.

Recently, President Biden was seen coming out of a bookstore in Nantucket,

carrying Khalid's 20-20 book The Hundred Years War on Palestine, to which Khalidhi remarked,

it's four years too late.

So let's start from not the beginning of things, obviously, this is a, years too late.

So let's start from not the beginning of things.

Obviously, this is a story that's been going on and on and on.

But how do you go about writing a history of this period?

Would you even attempt it?

The short answer is no.

I wouldn't attempt it.

...