Palestine is a small region of West Asia on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This region includes modern Israel and the State of Palestine. According to some, it also includes parts of northwestern Jordan. This region, which has been inhabited since as early as the third millennium BCE, sits at a geographical crossroads of religion, commerce, and culture. Palestine is perhaps best known as the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. Throughout history, many powers have fought to control this region, including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, and British.

Pappé’s book addresses the central event of Palestine’s modern history: The establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 and the implications that this event had for the large Arab population that was living there at the time. Beginning in the early 1900s, small groups of Zionist Jews began immigrating to Palestine, where they planned to create a Jewish nation-state. The Zionist Movement, which originated in Eastern Europe in the 1880s, was motivated by centuries of antisemitic persecution in the West. Zionists aimed to create a homeland where Jewish people would be free of such persecution. They chose Palestine as the site of this future nation-state because this region was the ancient home of the Jewish people, known in the Old Testament as Eretz Israel, the “Land of Israel.