James Veverka: Until both nations accept the right of the other to exist, there will be no peace

To The Daily Sun,

In 1895, Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, wrote, “We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.”

In 1937, David Ben Gurion, Israel‘s first prime minister, stated to the Zionist Assembly, “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had.” Later he wrote, “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

How did that "moral" land theft idea and ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians work out? Here we are, 76 years after Nakba, and Israel's leadership has no doubt committed the worst war crimes of this century. The ICC chief prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan has requested arrest warrants for not only Hamas leaders for their crimes against humanity on Oct. 7 but also for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant's war crimes. Israeli leaders told the world they were going to commit war crimes. They listed them.

Khan wrote in the ICC statement, "We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to state policy."

The two-state solution is on the way. Israel has lost. Until both nations accept the right of the other to exist, there will be no peace.

James Veverka

Laconia