Strict Separation Is Not the Answer for Palestine and Israel | by Yanis Varoufakis - Project Syndicate

coherent Palestinian identity, and the ability of the Palestinian people to clearly define for themselves who they are, what they want, and what values they stand for, is of course crucial for the security of Israel, the region, and the rest of the world, but it is mostly crucial for the future of the Palestinians themselves. The Palestinians must

While in Israel there were voices who advocated relinquishing lands so that the two people might live side by side, the PLO was hardly open to compromise. Its attitude to Zionism was explicit in its charter: Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goals, racist and segregationist in its configurations

Even if turning down the Peel proposal resulted in no state for the Palestinians, that was preferable to allowing even a tiny, noncontiguous state for the Jews. When the British convened a meeting between the parties, “the Arabs would not sit in the same room as the Jews.”

Creating a strong Palestinian state next to a strong Israel will require Palestinians to give up their unrealistic dream and Israel’s dreaded nightmare of several million people returning to Israel who claim to be refugees from Israel. This so-called Palestinian right of return, more than any Israeli action, including the misguided continued occupa