Zand prognosis lacks imagination. As a historian, he knows what happened in the past and in other places, and his thinking is limited by this framework. Moreover, his terms of reference are restricted to the history of the last hundred years, as is the other ten thousand years of history were irrelevant. When the Normans moved in mass to the British Isles, did they establish apartheid or native reserves? No. When the Arabs occupied Greek-speaking Sicily, or when the Vandals displaced the Arabs, or many other examples of one people settling in land that other people considers its own. Reality is not limited by the past hundred years, and I for one can imagine and describe several other scenarios. Of course they are implausible for limited historians and journalists, but they are always surprised by the events.
Not all my impressions of Zand are negative. He is objective, considers only facts and not some marginal leader's declarations or bombastic articles in Yiddish papers of the last century (circulation: one hundred fifty) like the despicable Ilan Pappe. I also understand the circumspection of Zand when analyzing the future: he wants to be considered a serious historian with plausible outcomes. Certainly, to consider historical processes before the invention of journalism or to imagine events for which there are no recent precedents, would be almost science fiction. Yet, in my humble opinion, history is bunk and any future will certainly be different from the past, very different.
