Israele e i palestinesi in poche parole

In the beginning, there was the Diaspora of the Jews, driven from their land by the Romans after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They were scattered throughout the world for 17 centuries. Then came an endless series of dominations and persecutions, until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when Zionism theorised and organised the return home. The rest was done by the Shoah, the extermination of 6 million Jews at the hands of Nazism. In 1947, the UN divided Transjordan Palestine (smaller than Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta combined) into two states: one Jewish and one Arab-Palestinian. But only the first was born. The Arab ruling classes gambled with the Palestinians, victims of their “brothers” as well as their Israeli enemies, in a Russian roulette of wars (four) and terrorism. And they lost both the wars and the territories. Israel returned the occupied territories to the only Arab country that agreed to recognise it and make peace in 1978: Egypt. Then, in 1993, Arafat’s PLO did the same with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and hope was rekindled, only to be immediately dashed by Rabin’s assassination by a fanatical Jew. Amid ups and downs, violence and attacks, cross-massacres, intertwined rights and wrongs, Israel withdrew from Gaza under the hawkish Sharon. However, a stroke immediately put him out of action, ushering in the long and dark Netanyahu era. Netanyahu sabotaged the peace process with ever new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even supporting Hamas to weaken the moderate Abu Mazen and definitively placing Israel in the wrong. In this accessible book, which reads like a novel, Marco Travaglio recounts the Israeli-Palestinian War of the Centuries with clarity and conciseness, far from the opposing fan clubs of the south stand. He answers all the questions and doubts raised by the latest bloodbaths.