Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.
Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.
Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.
His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, is an attempt to explain that indifference. The book, which was published on Tuesday, is a detailed account of how Israel was transformed from a hopeful nation that in its founding document promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” into one intent on what he bluntly terms “settler colonialism and ethno-nationalism”.
They will have to go somewhere. Under my proposal they will stay in the West Bank, but it will be controlled by Egypt. There will be no humanitarian crisis.
You’re missing the point. Your proposal makes zero sense for any of the parties involved. Your reasoning is not sound, your claimed benefits aren’t real, and the compromise is incoherent.
It makes zero sense for Egypt to give the Sinai. That’s very strategic land that keeps the Suez Canal firmly in Egyptian control while also acting as a buffer between Israel/Palestine and the Egyptian heartland.
It makes zero sense for Israel to over the Sinai as it’s just a massive patch of desert. They already controlled it once before and they gave it up in exchange for recognition. That’s how worthless it was to Israel. The West Bank, unlike the Sinai is actually habitable, fertile land that solves one Israel’s biggest geopolitical problems, which is that the current core of the Israeli heartland is too thin and exposed.
It makes zero sense for the Palestinians in the West Bank to be ruled by Egypt which is not similar to them culturally nor is it connected to them physically. They’ll just end up being a neglected after thought by the government in Cairo.
Your proposal does not answer the question of what will happen to the 700k+ settlers in the West Bank, or how any of the parties would feel about them leaving/staying. It doesn’t answer how the relocation of the 2 million Gazans is going to go. It doesn’t answer how the West Bank is going to absorb the 2 million Gazans, when the West Bank only has a population of 2.5 million itself, meaning that the population would literally double.
Like it’s just a flawed proposal all around. I’m not sure why you’re doubling down on it when you could easily come up with a better proposal.