Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé ( ; born 7 November 1954) is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel. Prior to coming to the United Kingdom, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008). He is the author of ''Ten Myths About Israel'' (2017), ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'' (2006), ''The Modern Middle East'' (2005), ''A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples'' (2003), and ''Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict'' (1988). He was also a leading member of the Israeli political party Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Israeli legislative elections.

Pappé is one of Israel's New Historians; he has, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, offered an unconventional view of Israel's establishment in 1948 and the corresponding exodus of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from the land. He has written that the expulsions were not decided on an ''ad hoc'' basis, as other historians have argued, but constituted a planned ethnic cleansing in accordance with Plan Dalet, which was drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders. In a 2004 interview, Pappé said "The aim has always been, and it still remains, to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible." He has blamed Israel's existence for the lack of peace in the Middle East, arguing that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy, and has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.

With regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Pappé supports the one-state solution, envisaging a unitary state for both Palestinians and Israelis. His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats. Provided by Wikipedia