Description

"I bought an El Al ticket. Destination Ben Gurion airport. Tel Aviv. Israel. 60 years ago, my mother was born a few dozen kilometers away. In Haifa, Palestine."

So begins the story of the "return" of Ziyad Clot, grandson of Palestinian exiles. In Ramallah, he accepted a position as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and became a negotiator, taking part in the talks that were to lead to the creation of the Palestinian state by the end of 2008. But he soon came to terms with the obvious: "The peace process is a spectacle, a farce, played out at the expense of Palestinian reconciliation, at the cost of bloodshed in Gaza. And I'm becoming, in spite of myself, one of the actors in this drama."

The author plunges us into the heart of the peace process, revealing the pretense, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the parties and the internal and international rivalries that help fuel the fantasy of a two-state solution. This edifying account, steeped in personal history, shows how and why negotiations to create a Palestinian state came to nothing. For the former negotiator, a peaceful solution to the conflict can only be found through a single state in which Palestinians and Israelis will have to live together. This hybrid country, "Israeltine", is already here.