The chief motivation for this compilation, and the conference that spawned it, is to seek lessons about resettlement applicable to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The specific resettlement issues in that dispute involve Palestinians already uprooted by previous rounds of that conflict, as well as Israeli settlers who might be uprooted by any future agreement on the occupied territories.

Half of the book consists of case studies of resettlement stemming from previous conflicts in other regions: Greeks fleeing Turkey following warfare in the 1920s, European pieds noirs after Algeria gained independence, Karelians uprooted by fighting between Finland and the Soviet Union, Greek and Turkish Cypriots after the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974, Germans expelled from land annexed by Poland after World War II, and multiple nationalities affected by warfare in the 1990s in the disintegrating Yugoslavia. Most of the remaining chapters concern the Israeli-Palestinian equation more directly. They include examinations of the resettlement in Israel of Iraqi Jews, the dismantlement of settlements in Gaza when Israel withdrew in 2005, and the widely neglected subject of Palestinians who left their homes during Israel's war for independence but remained elsewhere within Israel.

The main message of the volume is not only that there is much to be learned from prior cases about the techniques and pitfalls of large-scale resettlement, but more specifically that such transfers of population can succeed despite the bitterness of the conflicts that caused them. The selected stories are more about success than about failure. Perhaps the overall message would have seemed different if the editors had selected different cases. But the selection is fair; the cases include undeniably difficult conflicts as well as more tractable ones. As Ian Lustick's excellent chapter on the pieds noirs demonstrates, resettlement can work in the long term despite major problems in the short term—in this case, a wide-scale terrorist campaign in opposition to Algerian independence.

Generalizations about resettlement are difficult because the concept embraces several markedly different types of population transfer, ranging from urgent fleeing from an advancing army through various forms of ethnic cleansing to the voluntary movement of a diaspora to a homeland. The editors are quite conscious of this variety and provide in their introduction a useful typology (pp. xvi–xix) of population transfers. Their chief purpose is not to offer a single grand conclusion applicable to all such transfers but, instead, to highlight some of the variables that, as the case studies suggest, tend to be associated with greater or lesser degrees of success. The editors summarize these variables in their conclusion. Some are fairly obvious and/or not subject to manipulation, such as that resettlement goes more smoothly insofar as the resettled population has an ethnic and cultural affinity to the host population. Others are more policy relevant, such as whether a suitable international legal framework is in place.

Although not highlighted by the editors, one of the most significant variables concerns not the objective characteristics of the transferred population but, instead, how the transferees are perceived and categorized—by others, as well as by themselves. Much of the history of resettlement can be usefully assessed from a constructivist perspective that asks whether those being resettled are seen as victims or expelled oppressors, and whether their movement is seen as legitimate or illegitimate. Myths of return, which are part of larger national myths and entail larger national political equities, often are involved. Where in the typology of population transfers any one case fits is often a matter of dispute, or a matter of uncertainty even for those unquestionably sympathetic to those being resettled. The chapter by Esther Meir-Glitzenstein on resettlement of Iraqi Jews, for example, describes the policy dilemma the Israel government faced: whether to call the Iraqi immigrants Zionist idealists or rescued refugees. Israel had reasons to favor each interpretation, but the two interpretations were contradictory and implied different ways of treating the immigrants.

The volume could have profited from more attention to exactly what constitutes success or failure in resettlement. As one of the contributors correctly notes (p. 148), settling refugees is not to be equated with settling the problem that made them refugees. Standards of success are likely to vary widely, depending on whether one is taking the viewpoint of the population being resettled, the host population, statesmen wrestling with the overall conflict, or others with a stake in the conflict. Standards from one perspective are apt to conflict with those from another perspective; analysis of where and how they tend to conflict would have been useful.

Additional applications of lessons learned to the specific resettlement issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also would have been welcome. The editors devote just one page at the end of the book to establishing that this conflict is not altogether unique, with aspects of it having precedents in the other cases studied. Their reluctance to wade any further into the issue with explicit policy implications is perhaps understandable. They point out elsewhere in their conclusion (pp. 210–11) that the resettlement of displaced populations inevitably includes “political and moral dilemmas.” But this means that some of the most important implications of this compendium for the conflict that inspired it are left unstated.

This book is worthy of attention in two respects. First, it is a useful addition to the study of population transfers generally and to the broader literature on the settlement of internal conflicts. Almost all such conflicts involve some resettlement, and so the insights from cases in this volume have widespread relevance. Second, it is a credible reference in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its usefulness in that regard stems not only from the cases studied but also from the very informative chapter by Sergio DellaPergola on population trends and scenarios in Israel and Palestine.