"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." --