'Israel needs war to exist'

A former Israeli lecturer has said the entity depends on wars for its existence, warning that the hostility only invites disaster for Tel Aviv.

It is only constant confrontations and standoffs which keep the Israeli society from falling apart, said Ilan Pappe, who used to work as a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa in northern Israel.

He also said that the current Israeli government is the result of a colonialist movement. Colonialists, who did not have a country anywhere across the world, were obliged to remain here.

The Israeli regime, therefore, is constantly seeking to ignite new wars; against Lebanon and maybe soon against Iran, but future wars would not succeed and would instead lead the entity into disaster, he added, speaking to the German daily Junge Welt last month.

Israel waged two wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, with the second round of offensives killing about 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians. The forces, however, withdrew on both occasions without having achieved any of their objectives.

Tel Aviv, meanwhile, has variously threatened to target Iran, accusing Tehran of leading nuclear activities for military purposes.

An outspoken anti-Zionist, Pappe taught at the university from 1984 to 2007, when he was effectively fired from the university after his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine hit the shelves. The publication states that Israel's formation was pre-planned and based on rendering Palestinians homeless.

Pappe says he was dismissed from the scene of post-graduate education in Israel following practical obstructions put in the way of his educational activities.

Israel was formed in 1948, when it militarily invaded vast expanses of the Arab territories. It was subsequently forced to return much of what was captured, but went on to occupy and later annex more portions of land in 1967.

My social studies led to me adopting my anti-Zionist positions, Pappe told the daily, saying that the challenges he was faced with mounted to a point when he could not hold any seminars.

He also favored a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which he said, would actually equal the end of Zionism.

The Israeli society is by no means a uniform one, Pappe said. He also that Jews who have come from Arab lands live in far worse conditions than the European migrants, Pappe said.

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