Navtej Sarna

Israel – What Went Wrong? By Omer Bartov Fern Press / Penguin Random House India, 243 pp., Rs 999 (PB) ISBN 978-1-911-71770-6 For decades, the cause of Palestinian statehood had turned and twisted in limbo while Israel’s control over historical Palestine steadily strengthened. The “peace process” was on death watch. Jewish settlements in the West Bank expanded aggressively, leaving place only for Palestinian Bantustans; Gaza, under Israeli siege, resembled a crammed, open-air

The Middle East – or West Asia, depending on where one sits – is the cradle of civilisations, the birthplace of three major religions,...