The Case Against Israel by Michael Neumann

The Case Against Israel is a measured but relentless assessment of the long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. It argues that Zionism was responsible for the conflict, and that Israel is responsible for its perpetuation. The argument rests on widely accepted factual claims and impeccable sources. It avoids rhetoric and gratuitous moralizing. There is no attempt to blacken Israel through association with colonialism, imperialism or racism. Instead, Neumann's argument emphasizes the fateful Zionist quest for Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. This questnot the massacres or plans for transfer or other blots on Zionist history made violence inevitable, and compromise impossible. The prospect of Zionists gaining the power of life and death over all inhabitants of Palestine had to be seen by the Palestinians as a mortal threat. They responded accordingly. The tragic consequences of the quest for sovereignty did not follow all at once, but in two stages.The Zionists established a sovereign Jewish state in 1948. Had they been content with that, peace might have followed the 1967 war, when Israel could have backed the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Instead, Zionists pushed to extend Jewish sovereignty, this time through the settler movement. The settlements were a renewed mortal threat to the Palestinians, and once again necessitated a violent response. The only solution is for Israel to withdraw, unilaterally, to its 1948 borders.