Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 Book

I have to begin with a confession. Many years ago, I visited the abandoned Arab village of Ma'alul, which was not far from my kibbutz. Other than a mosque and two churches, which were in ruins, only the foundations of the houses remained in the midst of a pine forest planted by the Jewish National Fund. The most extraordinary find, however, was a row of immense prickly pears -- and then I realized that rows of prickly pears (sabras in Hebrew, from the Arab word), were signs of former Arab villages. I began keeping track of all the rows of prickly pears I saw in my travels in Israel. After a month, I was so depressed that I realized I could not continue to follow what Benvenisti would call the buried and obliterated history of Arab Palestine. So I am, in many ways, Benvenisti's perfect reader, certainly someone who had already begun that exploration into Israel's/Palestine's past that he so thoroughly explains.
This book is about the history and obliteration of the Palestinian Arab landscape from the topography of Israel and from its historical narrative. It is not about Israel's wars but their aftermath, although Benvenisti does describe the initial period of the War of Independence when Arab villages were blown up mostly for military reasons and the latter part of the War, when after the great exodus of the Arabs, the Jewish leaders realized that a State with a minimum of Arabs was a possibility and began what later would be called "ethnic cleansing," a process they continued, as well, after that war.
The book, as the blurb in the back tells us, is "meticulous," that is, thorough. And I wish that Benvenisti had written at least two; one, a passionate overview, including some of the details in this book; the other, a more academic study. This study is extremely broad, covering the expropriation of Arab land by Israel governments (in my opinion, the most damning part of the book), Arabs in Israeli literature (superficial and outdated), holy sites, the cult of archaeology (in which the Arab presence is usually not mentioned or destroyed), etc. Its thoroughness makes the book hard-going at times and rather boring, when the subject should awaken outrage.
This is an extremely important book, and quite balanced. While its focus is on the injustices done to the Palestinians, Benevenisti criticizes the Palestinians for not taking responsibility for the 1948 War and for creating an imaginary Canaanite history in response to the Jewish/Israeli history. My only criticism -- and to my mind, an obvious weakness -- is that he often writes about the thousand years of Palestinian presence, but the only examples he gives with dates are often later. Not that 600 years isn't enough, but it would have been proper for him to justify this claim, as well.
The book is little known and in my opinion a must-read for anyone who wishes to know about the current situation in Israel. Not a happy book by any means. You may find yourself throwing up your hands in despair.