I think that today, after 150 years of this clash, there is a way out. Not a way out that can give justice to everyone, for there is no such thing. But there is a possibility of opening some kind of chance of being able to live together without the political aspect of one state, two states, a hundred states... That really doesn’t matter. The very first thing that should be done to get out of this cycle of violence is: stopping the occupation. That is the first thing and it is a necessity, stopping this reality of one nation dominating the other, one nation ruling the other and one nation oppressing the other. It is not Jewish, it is not moral and it must be stopped – the sooner the better. Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, said that ‘oppression naturally creates hostility against the oppressors’.
In 1997, my 14-year-old daughter Smadar got killed during a suicide bomb attack. It was an intensely dramatic moment for my entire family. I was on my way to the airport when my wife called and told me she was missing. When something like this happens, a cold hand grabs your heart. You rush between friends’ houses and hospitals, then eventually you find yourself in the morgue and you see a sight you’ll never forget for the rest of your life. From that moment you are a new person. Everything is different.
