Sari Hanafi

Chaim Gans

Eyal Benvenisti

This book offers diverse perspectives on the Palestinian refugee problem and the possible ways to facilitate its resolution. It contains contributions of Israeli, Palestinian and other scholars, and its main goal is to initiate an informed dialogue that will bridge the "knowledge gap" between the different camps. The book provides a comprehensive picture of the various aspects of the problem and of the possible means of its resolution.

Israel and the Palestinian Refugees

For over half a century, the legitimacy of Israel's existence has been questioned, and Zionism has been the subject of an immense array of objections and criticism. Here, Chaim Gans considers the objections and presents an in-depth philosophical analysis of the justice of Zionsim as realizedby the state of Israel. Today, alongside a violent Middle Eastern anti-Semitism that refuses to accept Israel's existence, there are two academically respectable arguments for the injustice of Zionism that dominate: it is an exclusivist ethnocultural nationalism out of step with current visions of multiculturalnationhood, and the Jewish right of return unfairly stigmatizes non-Jews on ethnocultural grounds. While many therefore claim that Zionism is on balance an unjust political philosophy, Chaim Gans seeks out a more nuanced ground to explain why Zionism, despite its manifest flaws, is just. Its flawsstem from the current situation, where exigencies have distorted its application, and from historical forces that have ended up favoring the notion of Jewish hegemony. For Gans, the justice of Zionism is not a black and white proposition. Rather, it's a project in need of repair, which it can do byreconceptualizing Jews' relationship with the Palestinian population and by adhering to a significantly more limited version of Jewish hegemony. Ultimately, A Just Zionism offers a concrete, historically and geographically rooted investigation of the limits of contemporary nationalism in one of the world's most fraught cases.

Chaim Gans

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