In his introduction Dr. Mattar discusses the relative weakness of traditional Palestinian scholarship and the distortions that have resulted from the consequent Israeli domination of the field of historical studies. He notes that “Israeli and Palestinian scholars are so overwhelmed by emotional and ideological considerations, be it antipathy or sympathy, that they are unable to write objectively.” In an effort to overcome this problem of bias, intentional or not, he selected most of his contributors from the generation of scholars who have come to the fore since the early 1970s and who have produced pioneering studies that have filled in some of the gaps in our knowledge of the Palestinians and the Palestine problem.

The book is about the Palestinian people, and one-third of the entries are biographies. The reader will find these most useful in providing a deeper insight into the backgrounds of modern Palestinian leaders. There are also detailed studies of economic and social issues – land, water, population, religion, refugees, art, literature and folklore, among others – as well as historical episodes and the people and entities that dominated them, from the British Mandate to the PFLP. The reader will find thumbing through these pages a pleasant educational exercise; those who need a reference work on Palestine will find it essential.

The non-biographical studies in the book contain a great many useful facts. Justin McCarthy’s article on population is sobering. He puts male life expectancy at birth in the Palestine of 1860 at 22 years; on the West Bank today it is 70 years. Accordingly, the number of Palestinians west of the Jordan has risen from 411,000 in 1860 to 3,787,000 in 2000, and to 8,454,000 worldwide. Of these, according to Don Peretz’s article on the refugees, as of June 30, 1999, there were 3,635,592 registered with UNRWA, of whom only about one-third were in camps. About half of those were in Jordan.

Sharif el-Musa contributes a nine-page article on water, with a map showing the aquifiers and groundwater flows on the West Bank. He paints a somber picture of the limited quantities of water available and of its unequal distribution between Israelis and Arabs. Assuming that the population growth rates reflected in the previous paragraph continue, it is clear that the water problem will be unbearable 20 years from now unless there is some radical innovation to increase the total supply.

Salim Tamari’s 13-page article on society discusses the impact of the many changes imposed by external forces on the autonomous peasantry and urban elites of Palestine. His discussion of factionalism, inherent conservatism and the impact of the first intifada makes an understanding of the current intifada easier.

Michael Fischbach’s article on land details how the Israelis have been able to use legislation and aspects of the Ottoman, Mandatory and Jordanian land-ownership systems to seize property from Palestinians in the occupied territories as well as in Israel itself. He notes that approximately 51 percent of the 160,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel after 1948 were declared “absentees” and their property confiscated. Similarly, by the mid-1980s, 50 percent of the land in the West Bank was under Israeli control. Fischbach comments that:

control of the land proved the ultimate arbiter of power in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.... The vast amount of land in Palestine obtained by Israel through conquest ...Israel’s stubborn refusal to return it to the Palestinians, and the transformation of the conquered land’s demography through Jewish settlements have shattered Palestinian society and frustrated Palestinian goals of creating some kind of state on a portion of historic Palestine.

As with anything written on the subject of Palestine, there will be points of contention and disagreement. Charles D. Smith, for instance, writes that in 1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had “decided to approach Israel on its own terms, those of a separate peace, which could serve his interests (p. 27).” This common view is strongly contested by former Egyptian officials, who maintain that Sadat went to Jerusalem and then Camp David intent on obtaining a comprehensive settlement, even though his seriousness in that respect was discounted by the Americans and Israelis at the time (see The October War, a Retrospective, Richard Parker, editor, University Press of Florida, 2001, p. 333.)

Similarly, Mattar points out that Benny Morris and Nur Masalha in their contributions both agree that an expulsion of Palestinians took place in 1948, but not about why and how many. He says that he has tried neither to reconcile the inconsistencies nor to get between his colleagues, but rather thinks that the variety of voices and interpretations not only reflects the scholarship in the field but also enriches it and stimulates further research. He believes that the result is to make this encyclopedia the most reliable, balanced and scholarly reference work on modern Palestinian history to date.

This is a serious piece of scholarship. Inevitably, some will quarrel about what is included or left out – the population statistic one is looking for may well be absent and one may question a date or fact here and there – but it is a calm and orderly study of highly contentious issues, and that is a welcome note in the current frenzied period. I recommend it highly.