To Jews, the creation of Israel was necessary to safeguard their security. For Palestinians, this process meant the destruction of their homeland. As the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president attended peace talks in London this week, two academics from the University of Wales, one a Jew, the other a Palestinian, debate the issues. DAN Cohn Sherbok: Fifty years ago, the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, read out the Scroll of Independence in the Tel Aviv Museum. It said: We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which shall be known as the state of Israel. That was on 14 May 1948, and Jews throughout the world have been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary. But this event took place in the context of bitter conflict between Jews and Arabs. How do you respond to this celebration?

Dawoud Sudqi El-Alami: Four million Palestinians scattered across the face of the globe want to know why the price of the salvation of one people had to be the decimation of another. Many of those who were driven out have been materially successful outside their land, like their Jewish cousins. But many others will mark the passing of 50 years in refugee camps which are now permanent.

Elderly men who have carried the keys to their houses in their pockets for half a century rage at the injustice. A Russian, an American, a Pole, a Moroccan can live in their houses, work, farm and build on their land ? but they can?t. They pass on their pain to generations born in exile, deprived of their birthright, or living under an occupation which deprives them of every fundamental human right.

How would any family react to the prospect of people arriving on their shores from the other side of the world and taking away from them by force, or by deception, their homes and lands where they had lived for countless generations? It seems to the Palestinians that Israelis, non-Israeli Jews, and indeed the world are oblivious to what has been done to the Palestinians, or simply don?t care.

I know you?re not an Israeli, but can you tell me how the Jewish people, whether in the Holy Land or outside, can in conscience accept that the creation of the Jewish state has been achieved at the cost of the displacement and continued agony of another people? Especially when they themselves have been so badly wronged within living memory?

Dan Cohn Sherbok: You are right, the Palestinian people have experienced great suffering. I appreciate that. And at times they?ve been victimised by the Israeli Government. Some time ago I wrote a book about Israel. I stressed the importance of creating a homeland for the Palestinian people, and I emphasised that today the Palestinian people face the same plight as the Jewish people throughout history, as aliens in foreign lands.

But you have to put the creation of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East in the context of the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust. One simply cannot understand it otherwise. The Jewish community today is united in its conviction that there must never again be a Holocaust. And it is accepted among Jews that the state of Israel is necessary to ensure that Jews have an escape route and a place where they are secure.

It?s a mistake to perceive the creation of a Jewish state simply as an unwarranted displacement of one people by another. The situation in the Middle East is far more complicated than that. No doubt Palestinians have been wronged in the process. But in the light of the Holocaust, a Jewish state was a historical necessity.

Dawoud Sudqi El-Alami: But isn?t the very concept of a Jewish state the ultimate in discrimination? This state institutionalises ethnic and religious discrimination which would not be acceptable in any other modern state.

AND even if we accept the concept of a Jewish state, has it been the safe haven, the ideal society, for all Jews that was envisaged? Look at the treatment of the Oriental Jews. The European Jews feared for their own interests, so they greeted Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s by spraying them with DDT on arrival. They forced them to abandon their traditional dress and to suppress their culture. They brainwashed their children. They put them in ghettos and used them for menial work. They wanted to make them conform to a national, in fact a European, ideal. How far removed is this from what Jews went to the Holy Land to escape?

No one would wish to deny the Jewish people peace and security. But true security in the modern world won?t be achieved just by creating a fortress, maintaining military superiority and arming civilians with automatic weapons. There has to be justice, based on recognising other people?s rights. Yet immigration goes on being encouraged, and there?s relentless construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian land. That makes a mockery of the peace process. It suggests to Palestinians that Israel?s declared desire for peace is nothing more than empty words, to satisfy the international community. There?s no genuine intention to share the Holy Land, which is the only way to a true and lasting peace.

Dan Cohn Sherbok: Your catalogue of injustices is, I believe, untrue. The Jewish state was never intended to sanction discrimination. What the early pioneers and later Zionists wanted was to create a bulwark against anti-Semitism. That?s what drove such figures as Theodor Herzl. The refugees who settled in Israel sought a safe haven, and their integration into Israeli life was a natural social process. What you say about them is a distortion.

You say that peace and security can never be attained by creating a fortress, protected by military force. Yet all nation states guard themselves in just this way. Security can only be attained through constant vigilance. Surely if there were to be a Palestinian state, the citizens of such a society would seek to arm themselves just as the Israelis have?

As for immigration, it?s a central feature of Israeli policy that Jews must have the right to settle in the land. Otherwise the state of Israel would cease to be a homeland for those who flee oppression and injustice elsewhere.

Both peoples ? Jews and Muslims ? have suffered in different ways in this century. But I think we need to put the past behind us, and look to the future. Peace in the Holy Land must be a fundamental goal, and Jews worldwide are united in seeking it. There can be no world peace without peace in the Middle East.

Israel?s now a reality. There?s no undoing the events of the twentieth century, whatever the rights or wrongs. Both our peoples must find some way to accommodate their different aspirations.

Dawoud Sudqi El-Alami: There may be more to my catalogue of injustices than you?d like to believe. Your natural social process is a euphemism ? like the so-called Palestinians. It is typical of Israeli propaganda.

Nation states don?t guard themselves like this ? apart from those which no civilised country would wish to emulate. They don?t subject civilians to the deliberate humiliation which Israeli border-controls have imposed on Palestinians. Would the world accept a Palestinian state which had nuclear capability and where civilians were allowed to carry M16 rifles? The man who exposed Israel?s nuclear secrets is still languishing in gaol 12 years on.

Before I came to Lampeter I was offered a prestigious legal post in Jerusalem. I was asked to be the head of the legal department in a Palestinian independent commission monitoring human rights abuses of the Palestinian population. I was forced to decline, for I can only enter Jerusalem as a tourist on my British or Jordanian passport, though it was the city of my father and grandfathers. Yet a Jewish immigrant may settle and work in Jerusalem or Israel at any time.

The Holy Land is a tiny place. What happens when Israel?s population becomes too large for it to support? Will it then seek to realise the ambition engraved on the parliament building, the Knesset: From the Nile to the Euphrates?

You refer to both peoples ? Jews and Muslims, as though the conflict were a religious one. But a large proportion of Palestinians are Christians, including some of the most prominent and respected representatives of the Palestinian cause, such as Hanan Ashrawi and Edward Said. Indeed, Yasser Arafat?s wife is a Christian.

Perhaps the answer is a truth and reconciliation commission, as in South Africa. Then wrongs on both sides could be accounted for and scores settled. But this might be too painful to bear.

Dan Cohn Sherbok: You may be right that what?s needed is a truth and reconciliation commission, empowered to call both Israelis and Palestinians to account. But beyond this, what is vital is a political solution acceptable both to the state of Israel and to the Palestinian people. Land is the issue: both sides have irreconcilable claims to the same territory. How to resolve divergent interests?

Perhaps the starting point should be Jerusalem. Previously it was divided between Arabs and Jews. Through armed conflict, Israel was able to secure Jerusalem as capital of the Jewish state. No doubt most Israelis would find it exceedingly difficult to see their capital become an international city, yet such a step must now be taken, it seems to me. Jerusalem should be transformed into a religious centre for all peoples so that it can truly be a City of Peace.

As far as Palestinian statehood is concerned, the Jewish community needs to acknowledge the Palestinian quest for a homeland. That means Israel recognising that a new Palestinian state has to be created, with all the institutions that statehood requires. Arguably it would be most logical to situate such a state within the Occupied Territories.

But inevitably more land will be needed. And it seems to me that this can only be provided if the surrounding Arab states agree to carve out from their own territories land which can be given over to the Palestinian nation. There has to be compromise from all sides. If peace and security are to be achieved in the Middle East after 50 years of bloodshed, both Jews and Arabs must be active in this process.

Dawoud Sudqi El-Alami: The idea of an International City of Peace has been mooted over the years. I agree it?s probably the only realistic long-term solution for Jerusalem. But Palestinians don?t want to take pieces of other people?s territory, they only want what is theirs.

*** Professor Dan Cohn Sherbok is a Jew and Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

***Dr Dawoud Sudqi El-Alami is a Palestinian and a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

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