How Early Western Mapping of Palestine impacts us today
JVL Introduction
Tony Greenstein has written this review for Mondoweiss about Tom Suarez’s new book: Palestine Mapped: From the River to the Sea in Early Geographic Thought from Interlink Publishing which we are pleased to post here.
Suarez starts from 2,000 years ago, long before Zionism. Greenstein notes that he “gives short shrift to the years 1600-1800, other than to establish the rise of proto-Zionist ideology.” During this period, European mapping of Palestine was “biblically orientated… in stark contrast to Europe’s mapping of the rest of the world, which was a quest for the latest, the most accurate.” Suarez warns that those of us who support the rights of Palestinian people often fall into the trap set by this western “Holy Land” framing.
On this site you can see comments from many other leading scholars and analysts as well as some sample pages with fascinating illustrations.
Greenstein strongly recommends the book, saying: “…it is hard to imagine anyone with Suárez’s background on the Palestinian issue who is so experienced in the history of cartography. It strikes me that this might be a book that can bring the Palestinian issue to a wider audience: Everyone, it seems, loves old maps, and perhaps this book is the perfect Trojan Horse gift for acquaintances who believe they are fair-minded but can’t quite make the break from Israel.”
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Sun 26 Jul 2026. Read the original here.
Book Review: How the West’s earliest mapping of Palestine continues to shape its understanding of Zionism today
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Thanks Tony and JVL for a fascinating review of such an important book.
One of the many UK initiatives underway is to persuade public and school libraries to include Palestinian voices and perspectives. Such books are as rarely included on library bookshelves as books with (or by) non-white, disabled or frail elderly individuals used to be when I was younger.
Could we use Tony’s review to email or our local libraries with the request that they buy this book?
Thanks Tony and JVL. Palestinians are pushed out of their land literally and metaphorically. The ‘Arab invaders’ trope is always used as an argument to undermine Palestinians, not helped in some ways by how Arab genealogy, which is fictitious, works.