Israel came into being as a result of a civil war during the last days of the British Mandate over Palestine. As the civil war gathered momentum the British abandoned the mandate with the approval of most of the rest of the world. The Israeli left knows this war as the war of Independence and the Arab Palestinians whether now Israeli citizens or stateless Palestinians as the 'Nakba' or 'disaster'.

In Gorenberg's book it is the war of Independence with its effective partition of mandatory Palestine without most of the Jewish religious sites and most of the Arabs with the exception of the Arab areas of the Galilee.

What frightens Gorenberg the most about the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria is that they contain most of the sites of Jewish religious significance and that they now also contain centers of Jewish religious population. He fears their existence more than he fears the Palestinian Arabs. The reason is quite simple: one is a distant neighbor and the other is too much like his own mother-in-law.

So the remaining areas of the stateless British Mandate for Palestine which Israel conquered in 1967 are referred to as being occupied territory. This serves both the interests of the Israeli left who don't want the Jewish religious sites nor the re-emergence of a strong religious sentiment among the Jewish people. It also serves the interests of the Palestinian Arabs who want to return to the days of 1948 when partition of the land on better terms for them was still available.

The Palestinian Arab viewpoint is that the entire area should be Islamic and Arab despite its large Jewish population. This is not well discussed. The idea that UN resolution 242 is effectively a return to the Peel commisions partition plan or the 1947 UN plan for partition plan is also not discussed. It is presented only as a preservation of the status quo of the 1949 armistice lines now disguised as being Israel and the rest as being occupied territory. This mis-reading of history maximizes the area of the partition for Palestinian Arabs without taking on additional Jewish religious sites. It also helps prevent the re-emergence of strong religious sentiment among the Jewish people in Israel.

As an Israeli it is a fun book to read, but understand that you are reading propaganda from a very interested party. A book on the same events from the standpoint of a Palestinian Arab or a religious Palestinian Jew would tell you an entirely different story.