One democratic state for Palestine

Apart from the fact that Zionism will never accept a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, even in such an imagined case Israel would remain an Apartheid state. Maintaining its Jewish character necessarily means to either oppress or once again expel the native Arabs (the completion of the “ethnic cleansing” that had started with the Nakba in 1948). A Palestinians state, even a Bantustan-type one, would facilitate the justification of the completion of colonisation.

Peace can only be achieved if the right to self-determination of the oppressed and colonised is realised. A democratic state grants this right also to the colonising people, provided that they accept to abandon their colonial prerogatives.

The continued ideological strength of Zionism flows from its capacity to pose as a victim. While the West believes that they have atoned for the Holocaust, those opposing Western rule are accused to come close to commit another Holocaust. Thus the enlightened, liberal and democratic civilisation of the West (Israel included, as it bulwark) acts in self-defence against the barbarian aggressors symbolised by Muslims. This is how “the only democracy in the Middle East” tries to justify is exclusion and displacement of the Palestinians. We refute this contortion and we demand nothing more than realising their claim: democracy – but for all, including Palestinians as well as the millions of refugees.

The last decade of the Second Intifada and the US global war has brought about important changes. Not only that few people continue to believe that Israel will concede a Palestinian state worth its name. After 1989 this was the only significance of left Zionism that had remained and which has since lost its attraction. Its ideological decay for the first time opens a space even within Israel for the one-state position among a post-Zionist environment. This very fact of Jewish forces in favour of one democratic state helps to weaken the Zionist narrative.

The one-state solution is, however, no recent invention. It is the historic demand of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). While it was weakened by the later PLO’s turn towards a negotiated settlement with Zionism, the failure of such a settlement has put it back on the agenda of the Palestinian and Arab resistance. Hamas has not endorsed the one democratic state, yet it has evolved as the strongest Palestinian force, as it has pledged to continue the resistance. Today the support for one single democratic state among Palestinians and Arabs – whether secular or religiously inspired – is once again growing.

Around this renewed movement for one single democratic state in Palestine we struggle to unite across the globe, after hard years of isolation while upholding this position, especially in the aftermath of Oslo., As Israel symbolises the oppression exerted by imperialism and capitalism, the movement for one democratic state provides a general platform for unification against the US empire.