"We are not wanted there."

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Our guest is Sabri Jiryis, who for more than half a century has been among the most important Palestinian intellectuals trying to understand Zionism and promote Palestinian freedom. As a young man, he helped found al-Ard, the first Palestinian political movement in Israel, which called for Palestinian national rights and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1966, he wrote The Arabs in Israel, his landmark book on the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the Nakba. In 1970, Jiryis was exiled to Lebanon, where he became a close advisor to Yaser Arafat and director of the Palestine Research Center, the research and publication center of the PLO. In 1977, he published the first volume of his seminal Arabic-language book, A History of Zionism, and followed it up with a second volume in 1986. That book has now been translated into English by his daughter Fida. Following the Oslo Accords, Jiryis was one of the few Palestinians allowed to return to Israel and now lives in his native village, in the Galilee. We discussed his understanding of Zionism, and his extraordinary life.