When I travelled through Israel in 2007, it dawned on me why the Arab states are so reluctant to let their countrymen cross over into Israel. They fear that the traveller might make comparisons – between the civil rights in Israel and those in their homeland, for example … he might suddenly see the injustice, the betrayal, to which the Arabs in his homeland have had a lifetime’s exposure in the name of “occupied Palestine”.

Najem Wali pleads for peace - and for freedom for Arab peoples as part of the realisation of the dream of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, in a 1978 letter to the Israeli Sasson Somekh:

“I dream of the day when, thanks to the collaboration among us, this region will become a home overflowing with the light of learning and science, and blessed by the highest principles of heaven.”