...The maps are straightforward and scientific. Far less so is the historical and descriptive narrative that precedes them. Abu Sitta's narrative is unabashedly propagandistic and often factually wrong. His promotion of the Palestinian case is relentless and his vilification of Zionism and Israel merciless. And he does not shrink from chicanery and manipulation of the highest (or lowest) order. The devil is in the details, and when it comes to numbers Abu Sitta is quite a devil.

He is forever inflating and, correspondingly, deflating numbers--Arab and Jewish population figures, Arab and Jewish landholdings. The presumption seems to be that the fewer Jews or the less Jewish-owned land in Palestine at any given time, the less legitimate are the Jewish national claims. So on page eleven we find Abu Sitta asserting that the country's population in 1914-1915 consisted of 602,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christians, and 38,754 Jews. Past histories have asserted that there were between 60,000 and 85,000 Jews in Palestine at the time. Abu Sitta gives a reference for his "38,754"--page ten in Justin McCarthy's The Population of Palestine, a classic work on Palestine's demography during late Ottoman and British Mandate times. And, indeed, 38,754 appears in Table 1.4D in McCarthy. But then, on pages twenty-three and twenty-four, McCarthy re-calibrates the official Ottoman Government statistics, taking account of permanent "tourists," and so on--and concludes that "the total Jewish population of Palestine in 1914 was thus approximately 60,000."

Is this mistake a fluke? Did the Palestinian researcher simply overlook some relevant passages? I'm afraid not. The mendacity here is systematic...

...it is not only modern history that suffers through Abu Sitta's efforts to blacken Zionism and enhance the Palestinian case; the ancients, too, are dragged in. Longevity enhances territorial claims. Hence Abu Sitta asserts (as do the Palestinian Authority textbooks used in Gaza and the West Bank) that the Palestinian Arabs are the direct descendants of the Canaanite tribes conquered and suppressed by the Israelites back in the Second Millennium B.C.E. He writes, regarding Jerusalem, that "during all periods of history [starting with the Canaanites of 5000 years ago], and in spite of [sic] succession of rulers, the bulk of [sic] population remained the same stock." Abu Sitta is here positing a genealogical link between the Canaanites and the Arabs, so as to further the Palestinians' territorial claims.

Now it is quite possible, indeed it is probable, that "Canaanite" genes passed down the ages through the successive ethnic groups that inhabited the country to the Arab invaders in the seventh century. But to say that Cannanites and Palestinian Arabs are of the "same stock" is stretching it. If anything, it could be argued that the Hebrews or Israelites or Jews who conquered Palestine in the thirteenth century B.C.E. and lived in it more or less continuously down to the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. intermarried with the inhabitants they found in place and co-opted their genes. If any reached the Arabs, they necessarily reached them via the Jews (and other non-Arabs) who lived in the country down to the Arab invasion.

But a common gene pool is only one element, and not the most significant element, of peoplehood. Far more important are a shared language and culture, a common history and historical consciousness, and, often, a common religion. And to say that the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites in these respects is absurd. The Palestinians are Arabs, in their language, culture, religion, and history. Palestinians remember the battle of Ein Jalut and Saladin and the Crusades; they recall the glories of the Arab Middle Ages; some even lament the fall of Muslim Spain. But ask a Palestinian to name Canaanite or Philistine kings, and he will look at you as if you fell from Mars...