Posted on November 25, 2020, by & filed under News, One Democratic State Campaign.


Our One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) has just issued a Call for people to support our initiative for establishing a single democracy between the River and the Sea -- the only just and practical way to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian "conflict." It’s a project we have been working on for several years and we’ve made some meaningful progress. Although a lot of work remains to flesh out, the outline of our program, the fact that more than 200 Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals and activists have participated in the process and endorsed our program, sets it on firm political footing. We must still work hard to get a broad Palestinian buy-in.

This will not be easy. Although the vast majority of Palestinians support the one-state idea, they are exhausted by a century of struggle against not only Zionism and Israel but against governments. The Palestinian people have been fragmented and deprived of their vehicle for liberation, the PLO, which became moribund during the Oslo process. Many Palestinians in the Occupied Territory are merely hunkering down, trying to survive. Abroad, there has been a tendency to forego a political struggle for liberation guided by a clear political program and strategy in favour of a vague, pathless "rights-based approach." The ODSC Call represents a genuine call for POLITICAL action, especially as another Israel-friendly US administration comes into office.

Our initiative has also mobilized quite a few Israeli Jews -- the more critical ones, to be sure, but also many intellectuals and young activists. There is no expectation, of course, that the majority of Israelis will actually rise up and become partners in liberation, although the Palestinians are reaching out with an inclusive vision, one based on equal rights, cultural pluralism and the emergence of a new, shared political community. Instead, we expect to happen in Palestine what happened in South Africa: the apartheid system will have to collapse from both external and internal pressures before the Israelis, like the whites in South Africa, finally accept a transition to democracy.

All this means that your support is crucial. The ANC could not have succeeded without the solidarity and active support of the international civil society -- not governments, but the people acting on behalf of their unwilling governments to bring about the end of apartheid. We already have a strong base for coordinated campaigning throughout the world. Justice in Palestine has become a global issue at the level of the anti-apartheid struggle. What is missing, what the anti-apartheid struggle always had, was an endgame, a political program capable of mobilizing the international grassroots, of giving it direction, purpose and strategy. This is what the ODSC seeks to do.

Read the Call below and contact us to add your support.


Palestinians and Israelis Call for a Single Democratic State

15 November 2020

 

The Palestinian-led One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), comprised of Palestinians from every major community (’48, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the refugee camps and the Diaspora/Exile), together with their critical Israeli Jewish partners, has issued a call for the establishment of a single democratic state including everyone living between the River and the Sea, including Palestinian refugees who choose to return to their homeland.

Over the past three years, the ODSC, founded in Haifa but with working relations throughout the worldwide Palestinian community, has formulated a 10-point political program [https://onestatecampaign.org/all/en-manifesto] setting out the vision and framework of a shared democracy in which all the inhabitants of historic Palestine would enjoy common citizenship and equality under the law in a new and pluralistic political community. After decades in which the justice of the Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonization has been recognized by the international community, after decades of chasing after the chimera of a “two-state solution,” and after decades of asserting Palestinian rights with no viable political expression, the time for an effective campaign of decolonization and liberation is now, and it is urgent. Every day the Israeli government, aided by the international community, imposes draconian and irreversible “facts on the ground,” locking the country’s majority population, the Palestinians, into tiny, impoverished enclaves, perpetuating as well the exile of half the Palestinian population. A democratic state in historic Palestine is no utopia if we organize around a just political program, organize, strategize and effectively mobilize our forces, the global grassroots, the international civil society — you. We call on you to join our One Democratic State Campaign and help us build it into an effective anti-colonial, liberation movement.

For further information, contact us at <contact@onestatecampaign.org>. Much work still needs to be done to flesh out our program. We understand that we all will not agree on every issue, but our task in this historic moment is clear: armed with a clear and compelling political program, we need to fully enter the political arena. We call on the entire international community, and especially civil society, to support our Call for a democratic state in historic Palestine. The time has come.

It is in this spirit of solidarity, as part of a process of liberation, that we are reaching out to you to join us, beginning by endorsing our program. The struggle goes on.

In solidarity,

Awad Abdel Fattah, Galilee
Haidar Eid, Gaza
Diana Buttu, Haifa, Canada
Mohammad Al Helu, Ramallah
Ilan Pappe, Haifa
Nur Masalha, UK
Rafah Anabtawi, Shefa-ʻAmr
Sari Bashi, Ramallah
Jamil Hilal, Ramallah
Areen Hawari, Nazareth
Munir Nuseibah, Jerusalem
Umar al-Ghubari, Triangle
Areej Sabbagh, Nazareth
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Bethlehem
Ghada Karmi, UK
George Bisharat, USA
Radi Jarai, Ramallah
Issam Odwan, Gaza

Nadia Naser Najab, Ramallah, UK
Jeff Halper, Jerusalem
Samah Sabawi, Australia
Rula Hurdal, Galilee
Sami Miaari, Sakhnin
Ramzi Baroud, USA
Hamada Jaber, Ramallah
Bassem Tamimi, Nabi Salah
Susan Abulhawa, USA
Abdallah Grifat, Galilee, South Africa
Ronnen Ben-Arie, Haifa
Raja Deeb, Yarmouk Camp, Netherlands
Yoav Haifawi, Haifa
Majd Nasrallah, Triangle
Bana Shaghri, Kufr Yaseef
Issa Debi, Haifa, Switzerland
Hatem Kanaaneh, ‘Arrabat al-Battuf
Asaad Abu Sharkh, Gaza, Ireland

Livnat Konopni, Tel Aviv
Leila Farsakh, USA
Mohamed Kabha, Galilee
Jonathan Cook, Nazareth
Saleh Hijazi, Ramallah
Jowan Safadi, Haifa
Naji al-Khatib,France
Johnny Mansour, Haifa
Haim Bresheeth, UK
Amir Kaadan, Galilee
Eitan Bronstein, Brussels
Bilal Yousef, Galilee
Mohamed Noman, Jordan
Wehbi Badarni, Nazareth
Miko Peled, USA
Ramez Eid, Eilabun
Nidal Rafa, Haifa
Shir Hever, Germany