Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, author of the controversial book “How Were the Jewish People Invented,” has published a new work entitled “Two Peoples for One State?” It supports the idea, which has been defended by many Zionist intellectuals since the end of the 19th century, which is the establishment of a bi-national state for Israelis and Palestinians.
Sand said – in an interview with him, summarized by Julie Conan for the French newspaper La Croix – that what is happening in the Gaza Strip is dangerous because no one in the Israeli authority knows what to do, and because aimless wars are dangerous, and almost turn into genocide.
When asked why he specifically rejects the term “genocide”? He explained that he believes that Israel is committing murders in the Gaza Strip, but genocide is an act aimed at eliminating an entire people, and this is a very rare phenomenon.
He gave an example of what the Nazis committed when they decided to eliminate the Jews and Roma, and what happened in Rwanda when the Hutus decided to eliminate the Tutsis and almost succeeded.
But he pointed out that the French liquidated half a million Algerians, and this was not considered genocide, but rather war crimes, and what Israel is doing now are war crimes in Gaza, in which it makes little distinction between civilians and soldiers.
suicide
The historian highlighted what he said was adopted by the philosopher Hannah Arendt in 1948, when she said that if there was an exclusive Jewish state, there would be a war every 10 years.
This is what Sand commented on by saying that Israel, after 75 years of almost continuous war, must realize that trying to continue living as a Jewish state in the Arab Middle East is suicide.
The Israeli historian explained that he never supported a bi-national state and was not against it, but after the 1967 war, he supported the two-state solution.
But after all these years of settlement, the idea of a two-state solution has become more and more hollow, because we have been living for half a century in a bi-national state under a clear apartheid system, in which people live side by side but with different rights, as he put it.
Hamas leaders from the Land of Israel
When asked about the two-state solution, Sand said, “I do not believe in love between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Israelis, but the historical situation forces them to live side by side. I believe in a federal state more than an independent Palestinian state, as defended by French President Emmanuel Macron and American Joe Biden.”
Sand believed that it was Europe that vomited the Jews onto the Arabs of Palestine, and for this reason “the behavior of the Europeans bothers me a lot.”
Speaking to the Europeans, he added, “You are responsible for long-term tragedies. For all my life, I have been surprised that people who claim that they were taken from their land two thousand years ago do not recognize the rights of those who were taken from their land 75 years ago. Israel does not want to recognize this, despite the fact that all Hamas leaders, such as Yahya Al-Sanwar and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin come from the ancient land of Palestine, from Ashkelon and Ashdod, which is considered the land of Israel.”