I am currently reading From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. This is one I started a long time ago but never finished. I am picking up where I left off.
The book essentially refutes much of the conventional wisdom on the conflict in "Palestine." She is not a historian, but a journalist. She did a lot of research for this and sites many original sources. As I am not a Historian, I am going to try to be skeptical of this book, but I am an empty slate on this history.
Here is a quote from a recent section I read:
"The disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be 'settled Arab indigenes for a thousand years" were in fact a "heteroeneous" community with no 'Palestinian' identity, and according to an official British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either: 'The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin.... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; else where they are of the most mixed race.'
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