In a sense, this is a review of the 2016 book, “The General’s Son,” by Miko Peled, son of Matti Peled, a Zionist Israeli General who was integral to Israel’s victories over Egypt and its other “victories” in the 1950s and ’60s, which established the state of Israel. But perceiving a ticking time bomb of repression, Gen. Peled warned against the occupation of Palestinian territories, became an Arabic scholar, developed deep friendships with leading Palestinian Arabs and died in the late 1990s staunchly opposing what Zionism had become.
As Matti Peled’s son, Miko gradually continues his father’s course — forging collaborative friendships with Palestinians but opposed by his family and Zionist friends — and ultimately reaches the conclusion that Zionism had to be rejected on several grounds, including the damage it had done to Jewish cultural history, but primarily because it would never accept the citizenship equality of Muslim Arabs, as it had already demonstrated in the case of Arab Israeli second-class citizens.
Miko Peled’s solution is, at this point, really the only viable path forward. This hardheaded (bull-headed?) insistence on a Jewish state, a religious autocracy is a hopeless illusion. The two-state solution clearly must be abandoned. It fails, just as religious autocracies always have and always will. With the degree of settler colonialism in the West Bank, a two-state solution is clearly no longer a solution at all. Hence, Peled argues—in the face of scorn from family and friends—that a singular SECULAR State is the only possibility for achieving equality of citizenship for all. One secular state of Palestine with all religions represented and religion only a secondary characteristic of citizenship. I couldn’t agree more. Sure it has its problems, but the potential outcome, the erasure of apartheid, is the only outcome worth the birthing pains.
Highly recommended: The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, 2nd edition, Just World Books, 2016, ISBN 978-1-68257-002-9.