The Palestine Exploration Fund, established in 1865, is the oldest organization created specifically for the study of the Levant. It helped to spur evangelical tourism to the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which in turn generated a huge array of literature that presented Palestine as a 'Holy Land', in which local populations were often portrayed as a simple appendix to well-known Biblical scenarios. In the first book focused on modern and contemporary Palestine to provide a top-down and a bottom-up perspective on the process of simplification of the region and its inhabitants under British influence, Lorenzo Kamel offers a comprehensive outlook based on primary sources from 17 archives that spans a variety of cultural and social boundaries, including local identities, land tenure, toponymy, religious and political charges, institutions and borders. By observing the historical dynamics through which a fluid region composed by different cultures and societies has been simplified, the author explores how perceptions of Palestine have been affected today.WINNER OF THE PALESTINE BOOK AWARD 2016

The Palestine Exploration Fund, established in 1865, is the oldest organization created specifically for the study of the Levant. It helped to spur evangelical tourism to the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which in turn generated a huge array of literature that presented Palestine as a 'Holy Land', in which local populations were often portrayed as a simple appendix to well-known Biblical scenarios. In the first book focused on modern and contemporary Palestine to provide a top-down and a bottom-up perspective on the process of simplification of the region and its inhabitants under British influence, Lorenzo Kamel offers a comprehensive outlook based on primary sources from 17 archives that spans a variety of cultural and social boundaries, including local identities, land tenure, toponymy, religious and political charges, institutions and borders. By observing the historical dynamics through which a fluid region composed by different cultures and societies has been simplified, the author explores how perceptions of Palestine have been affected today.WINNER OF THE PALESTINE BOOK AWARD 2016

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

For most of the twentieth century, considered opinion in the United States regarding Palestine has favored the inherent right of Jews to exist in the Holy Land. That Palestinians, as a native population, could claim the same right has been largely ignored. Kathleen Christison's controversial new book shows how the endurance of such assumptions, along with America's singular focus on Israel and general ignorance of the Palestinian point of view, has impeded a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Christison begins with the derogatory images of Arabs purveyed by Western travelers to the Middle East in the nineteenth century, including Mark Twain, who wrote that Palestine's inhabitants were "abject beggars by nature, instinct, and education." She demonstrates other elements that have influenced U.S. policymakers: American religious attitudes toward the Holy Land that legitimize the Jewish presence; sympathy for Jews derived from the Holocaust; a sense of cultural identity wherein Israelis are "like us" and Arabs distant aliens. She makes a forceful case that decades of negative portrayals of Palestinians have distorted U.S. policy, making it virtually impossible to promote resolutions based on equality and reciprocity between Palestinians and Israelis. Christison also challenges prevalent media images and emphasizes the importance of terminology: Two examples are the designation of who is a "terrorist" and the imposition of place names (which can pass judgment on ownership). Christison's thoughtful book raises a final disturbing question: If a broader frame of reference on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been employed, allowing a less warped public discourse, might not years of warfare have been avoided and steps toward peace achieved much earlier?

This compelling analysis of the modern Middle East - based on research in 19 archives and numerous languages - shows the transition from an internal history characterised by local realities that were plural and multidimensional, and where identities were flexible and hybrid, to a simplified history largely imagined and imposed by external actors. The author demonstrates how the once-heterogeneous identities of Middle Eastern peoples were sealed into a standardised and uniform version that persists to this day. He also sheds light on the efforts that peoples in the region - in the context of a new process of homogenisation of diversities - are exerting in order to get back into history, regaining possession of their multifaceted pasts.

During the era of Sultan Abdülhamid II, modern state institutions were established in Palestine, while national identities had not yet developed. Hamidian Palestine explores how the inhabitants of the Ottoman District of Jerusalem interacted with each other and how they organised their interests in a historical moment before ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ emerged as the central political categories in the country. Based on a wide range of Arabic, Turkish and Hebrew sources, the book examines the social and political relations of Palestinians from a wide variety of perspectives. By situating individual case studies within larger contexts such as modernisation, regionalisation and state-building, it allows Palestinian society to be compared with other local societies within the Ottoman Empire and beyond.