Israel-Palestine - by Shlomo Sand & Robin MacKay

About the Book

"Since the brutal massacre perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent terrible war in Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been thrust back to the centre of the world's attention. How can this deep-rooted conflict, stretching back for more than 75 years, be brought to an end? For many years, politicians and citizens of different persuasions have called for a two-state solution but, as more and more settlements were built in the occupied West Bank and millions of Palestinians were forced to live in a situation of de facto apartheid, the two-state solution began to look like an empty formula that no one seriously intended to implement. It was in this context that Shlomo Sand sought to find an alternative way out of the Israeli-Palestine imbroglio. His journey into the dark corners of Zionism's ideological past threw up some surprises. He discovered that some Zionists had rejected the idea of an exclusive Jewish state and had supported moves to create a bi-national federation. They believed that only egalitarian integration within the framework of a common state would ensure that Israel could be a safe haven for all of its inhabitants. While the chances of realizing this egalitarian vision may seem remote in the current context, Sand suggests that a binational state in which Israelis and Palestinians are treated as equals may be the only realistic solution in the end." --

Book Synopsis

Since the brutal massacre perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been thrust back to the centre of the world's attention. How can this deep-rooted conflict, stretching back for more than 75 years, be brought to an end? What kind of political structure might one day enable Israelis and Palestinians to overcome the seemingly interminable cycle of violence and live in peace with one another?

For many years, politicians and citizens of different persuasions have called for a two-state solution - two independent states, Israel and Palestine, co-existing side by side. This was Shlomo Sand's view too: a distinguished Israeli historian and political activist on the left, he had long supported the idea of a two-state solution. But as more and more settlements were built in the occupied West Bank and millions of Palestinians were forced to live in a situation of de facto apartheid, deprived of their basic civil rights and political freedoms, he came to the conclusion that the two-state solution had become an empty formula that no one seriously intended to implement.

It was in this context that Sand sought to find an alternative way out of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio. His journey into the dark corners of Zionism's ideological past threw up some surprises. He discovered that some Zionists and other Jewish intellectuals had rejected the idea of an exclusive Jewish state and had supported moves to create a bi-national federation. They believed that only egalitarian integration within the framework of a common state would ensure that Israel could be a safe haven for all of its inhabitants. While the chances of realizing this egalitarian vision may seem remote in the current hostile context, it may well be that a bi-national state in which Israelis and Palestinians are treated as equals is the only realistic solution in the end.


Also available as an audiobook

Review Quotes

"While Shlomo Sand is not optimistic about the future of Israel-Palestine, he finds some grounds for hope in the inability of anyone to act effectively without recognizing the one-state reality that de facto annexation has created, a transformation in the structure of the problem that pushes all agents within the matrix of Israeli-Palestinian relations to explore new, or at least unfamiliar, strategies for sharing a space filled once again with both Arabs and Jews."
Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania

"calm yet compelling [...] This is an important and informative account that challenges readers to rethink their assumptions."
The Philosopher

"Insightful ... Shlomo Sand shows how Israel today faces a dead end, partly due to the contradictions of its ethnonational project: a state for Jews and Jews only, which alienates and treats its non-Jewish residents as second-class citizens."
Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Boston Review

"A sobering look at the complexities of even beginning to talk about peace in the Middle East."
Kirkus Reviews

"without illusions, and with clarity and honesty, this Israeli historian goes back into the past to pick up a strand of internal critique within the Zionist movement itself that has always been marginal but has never gone away and the warnings of which have been proved right in the current catastrophic situation. This marginal strand is now re-emerging, with a possibility, very remote though it seems, that it could become a very slender Ariadne's thread of hope to guide the two peoples, through the present dark and ominous labyrinth, towards an alternative future."
Jewish Voice for Labour

About the Author

Shlomo Sand is Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. His many books include The Invention of the Jewish People (2008), The Invention of the Land of Israel (2012), How I Stopped Being a Jew (2013) and A Brief Global History of the Left (2023).