It is exceedingly difficult, given the breadth of the question of Palestine, to distill a century of history into a single monograph. It is yet more difficult to do so in a way that is both academically rigorous and profoundly approachable to those unfamiliar with this history. In Understanding Israel/Palestine, Eve Spangler succeeds in the face of these challenges, producing a remarkable resource that everyone from neophytes to experts will find compelling. Spangler seamlessly weaves detailed historical analysis and theoretical framing with contemporary experiences and observations gained from years of leading student groups on trips through Palestine/Israel. Historical events that may otherwise seem dry or distant are brought vividly into the present day as Spangler narrates the consequences of these events for the daily lives of Palestinians and Israelis. The result is an impressive work that fulfils the calls of Spangler's interlocutors to “tell our story” (p. 5) and, in doing so, relates, in tireless and captivating detail, the story of the wider Palestine question.

While its historical and theoretical foundations make it an engrossing read for those familiar with the topic, the book's primary targets are those who know little about Israel/Palestine. For Spangler, the book is a “call to action” (p. 7)—one that employs a human rights framework and argues that a just peace in Israel/Palestine requires the participation of those beyond Middle East experts. She notes that necessary and challenging conversations about Palestine among nonexperts are often foreclosed by claims that the conflict is simply too complicated for the lay person to understand. However, Spangler does not flatten out the very real complexity of the issue in the service of approachability. Rather, she offers, explains and evaluates various theoretical frames that enable readers to understand and interpret what may seem at first a dizzying array of facts, actors, and events. Furthermore, recognizing that many of these nonexpert readers may be predisposed towards sympathy for Zionism due to hegemonic representations of Israel, Spangler picks apart the assumptions, deliberate absences, and historical inaccuracies that pervade dominant narratives about Israel/Palestine. Furthermore, in constituting these theoretical frameworks, defining important concepts and laying out this history, Spangler draws not only on academic literature but also a wide variety of thinkers, poets, writers, philosophers, and the experience of everyday individuals. This diversity of sources and perspectives brings the issue close to home for readers who might otherwise feel disconnected from Israel/Palestine. And the book leaves its audience very well placed to take part in the conversations Spangler sees as so necessary for peace going forward.

The book is split into four parts, divided further into eleven chapters and two appendices. Part 1 contains the first four chapters of the book. Chapter 1, the introduction, lays out background information on the conflict, the major players and the historical period under scrutiny. Chapter 2 is situated in the present day and draws on Spangler's years of leading university students on fact-finding trips to the region, illustrating the current conditions produced by the history she later relates. These stories vividly detail the consequences of settlement building, checkpoints, and military occupation by describing Spangler and her students’ own encounters with those whose daily lives are shaped by these realities. Chapter 3 outlines the core theoretical concepts of human rights, race, and nation. Spangler does this by summarizing some of the history and scholarship of each concept, pairing this analysis with clear and relatable examples and finally studying each concept's usefulness for understanding Israel/Palestine. Chapter 4 recounts the history and foundation of the Zionist movement. Spangler begins her history with Zionism not to argue that Palestinian peoplehood arose only in reaction to Zionism, as many of Israel's defenders claim. Rather, she begins with Zionism because the contemporary conflict must be traced to Zionism's emergence: “absent Zionism, there would be no Palestinian-Israeli struggle as we know today” (p. 97).

Part 2 is primarily historical, with four chapters each covering a different period. Chapter 5 traces pre-1948 imperialist involvement in Palestine, Zionist settlement, and the Palestinian resistance these interventions prompted. It culminates by describing the UN partition plan and the ensuing Nakba. Chapter 6 covers Israel's early state period, including its efforts to create a new Zionist Jewish national identity, and the situation of the Palestinians, newly divided between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and neighboring Arab states. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the 1967 June War. Chapter 7 covers the beginning of the occupation, the rise of Palestinian guerilla resistance, the expansion of Israeli settlements and concludes with the First Intifada. Chapter 8 describes the peace process and its failures, the accompanying rise of Hamas and the emergence of the Second Intifada in 2000 before considering more recent moves like the Palestinian Authority's efforts to gain international recognition and the reemerging conversation around a one-state solution.

Part 3 contains the book's final three chapters. Chapter 9 presents four frames through which the conflict has been understood and analyzed: Israeli self-defense, genocide, Apartheid and settler-colonialism. While readers unfamiliar with the topic might find some of these terms shocking or inflammatory, Spangler takes a clear-eyed approach to each, evaluating their analytical strengths and weakness and demonstrating convincingly that settler-colonialism is the most compelling lens through which to understand the history of the conflict. Most significantly, the settler-colonial frame clearly links Zionists’ pre-1948 history of settlement with Israel's post-1967 settlement project as a single seamless story. This framework therefore illustrates that the conflict stems not from Israel's post-1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories but rather arises from Zionism itself and its drive to “claim all of the land with none of the (Palestinian) people” (p. 262). Chapter 10, therefore, returns to the question of Zionism, evaluating its impact on Palestinian society, its failures in its own goals of ensuring Jewish safety, and its limitations in facing emerging global issues like climate change and globalization. Chapter 11 offers some hope for the future based on an embrace of the human rights framework and relates some successes of movements like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Finally, Part 4 contains a timeline of major events and study questions for each chapter.

If one aspect of the issue is given slightly short shrift in Understanding Israel/Palestine, it is the history and contemporary experiences of Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora. Because the book is steeped, and understandably so, in Spangler's extensive experience traversing historic Palestine, it is not hugely surprising that Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan receive comparatively less focus. However, in considering the direction of the conflict moving forward, ensuing editions of the book would benefit from more detail on these refugees, many of whom have experienced multiple displacements since 1948. This omission, however, does not take away from the sterling quality and achievement of the overall work. As a book “written for readers who know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important, but who do not know much about it” (p. 4) and as a call to action towards a just peace in Palestine, Understanding Israel/Palestine not only meets but exceeds its goals. Spangler's rigorous scholarship, years of experience and carefully considered, thorough, and convincing arguments result in a vital resource for experts and non-experts alike.