While this book is couched in the quiet, objective language of scholarship, there's little doubt about the author's intentions: he has written a treatise for the cause of Palestinian refugees. Masalha details in activist language the Palestinian case: the "Zionists" created the refugee problem during the Israeli war of independence in 1948, and Israel has been in denial ever since. Masalha (Imperial Israel and the Palestinians
) displays a wide knowledge of the literature on the topic, and this allows him to make some valuable points: that Israel was built on the myth that Palestine was an empty land that needed settlement; that many Palestinians lost their homes in 1967, even though the 1948 refugees receive the most attention. But the author fails to display a nuanced understanding of both sides in the conflict—he fails to draw a distinction among the positions of various Israeli governments and different strands of Zionism. For example, he attributes one goal to all of Zionism in writing that in the 1967 victory, "Zionism at last had reached its aim of controlling the whole of Palestine." Ignoring Palestinian violence and its own national myths throughout, Masalha paints a complex situation in black-and-white, as when he dismisses the possibility that the refugees might have been better off assimilating into Arab countries rather than living for decades in squalid refugee camps and being used as diplomatic pawns by Arab nations. As a result, the author limits his readership to the already convinced. (Dec.)
