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Palestine

A Four Thousand Year History

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Palestine

By: Nur Masalha
Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
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Summary

This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.

Starting with the earliest references in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, Nur Masalha explores how Palestine and its Palestinian identity have evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Drawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, Masalha shows how Palestine's multicultural past has been distorted and mythologized by Biblical lore and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the process, Masalha reveals that the concept of Palestine, contrary to accepted belief, is not a modern invention or one constructed in opposition to Israel, but rooted firmly in ancient past. Palestine represents the authoritative account of the country's history.

©2018 Nur Masalha (P)2021 Tantor Europe Israel & Palestine Middle East Modern Religious Studies Palestine History
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It's extremely thorough, and apart from being unclear sometimes when it's a quote or the main text being read the narration is good. My only criticism is that it can get very repetitive as the author reiterates certain things every time they come up. By the time it gets to the chapter on Israelis renaming things and talks about the Rockefeller Museum being originally the Palestinian Archaeological Museum, it's already told you it was renamed *every single time* it discusses any item currently stored there or person who worked there. And Ben-Gurion is seldom referred to as anything shorter than "Defence Minister and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of modern Israel". The latter chapters in particular are still very informative though, so I'd still recommend it.

Exhaustive

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A great book of the history of Palestinian peoples across the ages. The final chapters detail the cultural appropriations that produced a national Israeli identity out of a diverse group of Jewish people that had entirely different cultural and ethnic origins, with Zionism as the glue to this project.

Eye opening, erudite history

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I wanted to know a bit more about Palestine, lots of history in detail in this book, it's a very complicated country always has been.

complicated

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Huge amount of detail that I will not remember but this did did not detract from the information

My understanding of the current situation in Palestine

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A hard one to rate, this, largely because I'm not sure there's anything new here. But then, that's basically the whole point.

The premise - which is really pretty much impossible to argue with - is that Palestine / Israel has been continuously populated for thousands of years, with substantial continuity of population, language, place names, and culture. Up until the last century, that is. Even the name Palestine (and its variants - remember the Biblical Philistines?) has proved remarkably resilient.

In addition, as the final couple of chapters detail, there is little hard historical or archaeological evidence for an established Jewish presence on the area, even back when the old Kingdom of Israel was meant to have existed. And, finally, the founders of the Zionist project kinda knew this - albeit I suspect they would have claimed that this evidence was deliberately destroyed - and so set out to create their own historical and cultural myths.

None of this should, really, be controversial. The fact that it has become so is doubtless why the author spends so long laying out quite granular, fairly repetitive examples of how something called Palestine (or similar, as much of the emphasis is on the evolution and continuity of etymology) was acknowledged by observers, travellers, and others throughout history.

This means much of the books is effectively made up of what amounts to lists of references - and in some cases, actual lists. Which makes it rather less engaging than I'd hoped - but a potentially very useful reference book.

It's also reminded me that I've still not read Edward Said's classic book on Palestine, written over 40 years ago now. Maybe one for later in the year.

Interesting, compelling, necessary, but sadly not that engaging

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