There will be no Palestinian State - A Diary of a Negotiator in Palestine

‘I bought an El Al Israel airline ticket. Destination: Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv, Israel. Sixty years ago, my mother was born a few dozen kilometres away, in Haifa, Palestine.’ So begins the story of the ‘return’ of Ziyad Clot, grandson of Palestinian exiles. In 2007, he accepted a position as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Ramallah 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, in spite of myself, I’m becoming one of the players in this drama.’ The author plunges us into the heart of the peace process, revealing the pretences and manoeuvres of the parties behind the scenes and the local and international rivalries and agendas that help fuel the fantasy of a two-state solution. This enlightening 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 and flawed country, ‘Israeltine,’ already exists and now stands before our eyes.