 In Finkelstein 's doctoral thesis , he examined the claims made in Joan Peters 's From Time Immemorial , a best @-@ selling book at the time . Peters 's " history and defense " of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine . <unk> studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman @-@ controlled Palestine , a 94 % majority at the turn of the century , had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration . Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from immigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards . It followed , for Peters and many of her readers , that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda , and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land . 
