"I bought an El Al ticket. Destination Ben Gurion airport.

Tel Aviv. Israel.

60 years ago, my mother was born a few dozen kilometers away. In Haifa, Palestine.

" So begins the story of the "return" of Ziyad Clot, grandson of Palestinian exiles. In Ramallah, he accepted a position as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and became a negotiator, taking part in the talks that were to lead to the creation of the Palestinian state by the end of 2008.

But he soon came to terms with the obvious: "The peace process is a spectacle, a farce, played out at the expense of Palestinian reconciliation, at the cost of bloodshed in Gaza. And I'm becoming, in spite of myself, one of the actors in this drama.

" The author plunges us into the heart of the peace process, revealing the pretense, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the parties and the internal and international rivalries that help fuel the fantasy of a two-state solution. This edifying account, steeped in personal history, shows how and why negotiations to create a Palestinian state came to nothing.

For the former negotiator, a peaceful solution to the conflict can only be found through a single state in which Palestinians and Israelis will have to live together. This hybrid country, "Israeltine", is already here.

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