‘From the River to the Sea’: Really?

By Blake Alcott

For nearly 20 years the Cambridge department of the UK Palestine Solidarity Marketing campaign (PSC) has run a stall each Saturday on Market Sq. to distribute details about Palestine, promote olive oil, spices, and occasional cups, and discuss to market guests.

Arguments and discussions with the general public usually finish with the query, ‘I see that the Palestinians have been basically wronged, and have a really sturdy case, however what’s the reply? What’s the answer?’

On the idea of common solidarity with Palestine, I’ve no reply as a result of Palestinian opinion on options is fragmented. Some need a state on the 1967 borders. Some need a bi-national answer between the river and the ocean, with political parity between the Palestinian and Jewish communities. Some need a re-unified Islamic state. Some need a non-sectarian, re-unified Palestine of its residents.

Nearly all need the implementation of proper of return, which meets with the sympathy of most Westerners, and it was straightforward to clarify that this wasn’t appropriate with the two-state answer. However I had no ‘take-home’ message.

What’s ODS?

Probably the most interesting system to Westerners I discuss with is One Democratic State (ODS), the acquainted system of their very own nations. It consists of for all Palestinians citizenship and uncompromised proper of return to their locations of origin inside historic Palestine – and citizenship even for these selecting to not return to Palestine – and lets the bulk determine issues inside the constraints of particular person human and political rights.

For the needs of this text I’m defining ODS as does the Munich Declaration, whereby the ‘Democratic’ half additionally advocates automated citizenship for all current Jewish Israelis – admittedly a really large ask for Palestinians – and solutions the necessity for the safety of ethnic, spiritual and linguistic minorities by enshrining the rights of free expression and affiliation. Some individuals embody underneath an ODS banner options starting from proscribing citizenship to non-war criminals all the best way to an ‘Algerian answer’ – however this isn’t the ODS mentioned right here.

Extra particular questions – property restitution, compensation, native autonomy – are being debated inside the broad ODS neighborhood.

Members of the UK PSC, in addition to solidarity individuals within the different locations I’ve lived, particularly Turkey and Switzerland, are more and more enamored of the thought. Its rival concepts are solely 4 in quantity: 1) the only undemocratic state which has taken over Palestine; 2) the two-state answer the place one of many states is a Zionist one on the 1967 borders; 3) an Islamic Palestine; and 4) bi-nationalism.

With all due respect for Hamas and its Might 2017 A Doc of Normal Rules and Insurance policies, it’s exhausting for me to grasp how a state can’t be each Jewish and democratic but may very well be each Moslem and democratic – however that’s one other dialogue. As for bi-nationalism, it’s virtually unattainable to pin down what it really means; however its premise that there are two politically equal collectives violates the fundamental thought of ODS.

The related rivalry is thus between two-states (a euphemism for Partition) and one democratic one. There should not dozens of ‘solution-flavors’ to select from.

BDS

The closest factor to a common Palestinian trigger appears to be BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). Though not supported by all Palestinians, adherence to it’s vast and public sufficient that we on the stall and in different conversations might level to it as a solution to the Palestinian plight. As a substitute of stammering one thing like ‘Effectively, the Palestinians are divided on what they need’, we might level to the 4 calls for of BDS named within the BDS Name of 2005: self-determination, return, equality inside the 1948-occupied territories and sovereignty for the 1967-occupied territories.

To achieve individuals on the road the succinct calls for of the Name are an enchancment over phrases like ‘Finish the occupation’, ‘Finish the siege of Gaza’, ‘Cease financing Israeli apartheid’, ‘Maintain Israel accountable to worldwide legislation’ or the imprecise ‘liberation of Palestine’. They’re a wanted ideology.

To make sure, an issue arises with the Name’s demanding Israel’s “Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall”. “All Arab lands” on the face of it means all of historic Palestine, which most Palestinians accurately regard as occupied and colonised. “Dismantling the Wall”, furthermore, makes extra sense when erasing the Inexperienced Line is the precise demand – re-creating one state. However some Palestinians argue that this demand refers solely the West Financial institution, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and certainly, one of many three calls for is “recognizing the basic rights of the Arab-Palestinian residents of Israel to full equality”, implying that the Jewish state stays within the image.

ODS as a ‘Resolution’

For twenty years ODS advocacy has grown. Round 2000 seminal articles appeared by Ghada Karmi and Edward Mentioned, the latter mixing it with bi-nationalism. Across the time of the BDS Name the thought was fleshed out in complete books on ODS by Karmi, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ali Abunimah and Virginia Tilley, and since 2007 there have been a couple of dozen worldwide conferences and on-line statements of rules.

Its pedigree extends a lot additional again. The PLO throughout its first decade insisted on the all-unifying objective of a single secular state earlier than shifting step by step, within the years 1974-1988, in direction of acceptance of Israel and Partition. Earlier than that, within the two years after World Conflict II, Palestinians and their Arab and Indian supporters argued in opposition to each bi-nationalism and the mooted two-state answer in favor of a standard democracy together with all presently resident Jews.

The whole Mandate interval, as properly, beginning round 1920, noticed a gradual stream of Palestinian-penned manifestos and place papers calling for independence as a “consultant democracy” in treaty relations with Britain. The petitioners included the Moslem-Christian Associations, the Palestine Arab Congresses, the Normal Syrian Congresses, the Ladies’s Congresses and the Arab Greater Committees, led by akin to Musa Kazem al-Husseini, Mohamed Osman, George Antonius, Akram Zuaytir, Jamal al-Husseini, Awni Abdul Hadi, Musa Alami, Mrs. Mogannam Mogannam, Izzat Tannous, Izzat Darwaza, Muhammad El Taher, Elias Koussa, Henry Cattan and Isa Nakhleh.

The ODS imaginative and prescient is thus something however an thought coming from exterior the Palestinian polity – in sharp distinction to the two-state answer, which was cooked and canned by each mushy and exhausting Zionists in London, New York and Tel Aviv.

In fact, many Palestinians have argued with good purpose and noble motives for accepting Partition. They could have misplaced sufficient pals, family members, tears, land, homeland and political voice, making them keen, after paying the worth of resistance for many years, to accept one-fifth of Palestine if the Palestinians might there lastly expertise true sovereignty.

Edward Mentioned embraced this answer in his 1979 guide The Query of Palestine (e.g. p 175), and Walid Khalidi, who in 1978 in International Affairs argued for ‘Pondering the Unthinkable’ (recognition of Israel on the 67 borders), made a shifting attraction for it in 1992 after

… taking cognizance of the losses, the sufferings, and the positive aspects of the 2 protagonists because the battle started, in addition to of a historic compromise rooted within the soil of the battle… Solely such a state may have the psycho-political attraction and symbolism for the Palestinians within the Occupied Territories and the Diaspora to behave as a balm to their wounds, to offer redress for the monumental injustices suffered, and to compensate for the lack of fireside and residential and ancestral grave and for the give up of primeval historic rights. (Palestine Reborn, pp 195-96)

Worldwide ODS supporters, who haven’t gone by way of any lived Palestinian expertise, respect this place which tried to rescue the core of a Palestinian nationwide existence within the face of redoubled makes an attempt by Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the Powers to eradicate Palestine as soon as and for all. It was additionally hoped by many who two separate states can be a stage on the best way to a single democracy.

That stated, no one claimed the two-state answer introduced justice. Immediately, even some who lean in direction of help for the two-state answer acknowledge the compatibility of all of the rights of all of the Palestinians with the ODS answer. Nadia Hijab, for example, wrote that “The imaginative and prescient of a one-state answer, as set out by the Palestine Liberation Group (PLO) in 1968, has at all times been extra compelling for Palestinians than that of two states.”

However what if ODS was not potential? One can argue with dignity for the very best answer amongst all potential ones, and declare ODS to be unattainable, however other than the two-state answer’s unjustness – viz., the Palestinian one of many two states is hardly a state, and no phrase is wasted on the Palestinians in exile or these inside Israel – if it has not been potential for the final 30 years, when will it’s?

What is feasible, or ‘possible’, no one is aware of. What does appear clear is that in these final many years the two-state answer has impressed subsequent to no grassroots solidarity exterior Palestine. Was it merely not simply sufficient? Can ODS higher encourage internationals?

BDS and ODS

I believe so, simply as has BDS. However first, what’s the logical relationship between BDS and ODS, which regardless of help from many leaders of the BDS motion isn’t as well-liked? As Noura Erakat referred to as for 9 years in the past – and Yara Hawari extra lately (together with replies thereto and her reply) – it’s fruitful to take a look at what the rights referred to as for by BDS logically entail by way of political conclusions.

If the BDS demand is for ending the occupation of all of Palestine (“all Arab lands”), then along with its name for “the Palestinian individuals’s inalienable proper to self-determination”, BDS strictly implies ODS. If the identical citizen-equality applies to the brand new Palestinian state as that demanded inside present-day Israel, it could not be simply de-partitioned however democratic.

If, then again, a separate state stays west of the Inexperienced Line, and even when Palestinians would outnumber Jewish Israelis as a result of return of hundreds of thousands, the ‘One’ in ODS wouldn’t fairly be the case. Actually, this answer can be TDS, two democratic states.

The query would then be whether or not there was any purpose to not let ‘develop collectively what belongs collectively’, as occurred with the Germanies. By no means thoughts that hundreds of Palestinians, beginning in 1936, have died combating partition, with many extra wounded and exiled and dispossessed. There nonetheless may very well be good causes to maintain the 2 democratic states separate, and anticipate majorities in every nation to determine the query.

What Motivates?

Within the instances of South Africa and the U.S. Civil Rights motion, solidarity activists might unequivocally level to the objective: citizenship, equality, independence, one individual, one vote. The individuals liberating themselves had been united on the fundamental demand. The ‘Bantustan answer’ was early on rejected by a big majority of South African Blacks, and in North America, nothing lower than full ‘integration’ would do.

The abolition of slavery, girls’s suffrage and, for that matter, Zionism, additionally reached success by way of unity round a easy non-compromising imaginative and prescient. Whether or not there’s a lesson right here for the Palestinian battle, I don’t know. What I do declare, from my very own expertise, is that easy, non-compromising ODS comes throughout properly amongst residents of the highly effective nations who might foment worldwide stress on Israel to surrender its ethnocracy.

Amongst Palestinians, each BDS and proper of return are uncontestedly well-liked – for example in Lebanon – however does this suggest equally widespread help for his or her near-corollary, ODS?

An simply communicable, unifying Palestinian narrative is missing, but can be a boon for the worldwide marketing campaign. To be official it must be backed by a majority of Palestinians. However no one is aware of the numbers regarding what number of Palestinians help this or that – as a result of no one ever asks (all of) them. Polls by the Palestinian Heart for Coverage and Survey Analysis ask solely residents of remnant-Palestine, i.e. these in historic Palestine however not in Israel. One other evaluation, by the Washington Institute for Center East Coverage, dated February 2020, did declare to cowl all Palestinians, discovering that two states had “misplaced majority help”, with “most… preferring regaining all of historic Palestine”, however that “West Bankers and Gazans” stay extra “pragmatic”.

Regarding legitimization, Marwa Fatafta has lately argued the indispensability of reviving the PLO as a physique consultant of the individuals slightly than of political factions. Protecting all Palestinians, it might decide the democratic legitimacy of 1 place or the opposite. However to my data, there may be merely no database of all Palestinians which might allow a definitive referendum.

It’s a worthy objective that these of us in solidarity must be ‘guided’ or ‘led’ by Palestinians, however we will solely ask, ‘Which Palestinians?’ These supporting partition, or these supporting reunification and democracy?

Given this example, many solidarity individuals keep out of it. They keep impartial on the two-state/one-state query, usually self-righteously saying, ‘That’s as much as the Palestinians’, as if there have been any doubt that solely Palestinians have the appropriate to vote on the matter.

Nonetheless, I can’t keep impartial as a result of meaning no less than being open to a Zionist, apartheid answer that leaves an ethnocracy in 80% of Palestine and leaves the returnees out within the chilly. Judged on fundamental moral rules, the two-state possibility is simply too dangerous. For a Palestinian to help or keep open to such an admittedly dangerous end result is one factor, however for a Westerner to take action is one thing else, and in very dangerous style.

We internationals do, I consider, as human beings no matter our ‘topic positions’, have the appropriate to help all of the rights of all of the Palestinians – and we instantly see that this may solely be the case underneath ODS. However do I’ve the appropriate to advocate for denying most of them, as does the two-state answer, within the absence of clear proof {that a} majority of Palestinians take that place? I believe not.

Within the Journal of Palestine Research in 1979 Fayez Sayegh summarised the two-state answer proposed by Start, Sadat and Carter (and the 1979 Palestinian Nationwide Council) thus:

A fraction of the Palestinian individuals (underneath one-third of the entire) could attain a fraction of its rights (not together with its inalienable proper to self-determination and statehood) in a fraction of its homeland (lower than one-fifth of the realm of the entire). … [T]he overwhelming majority of Palestinians is condemned to everlasting lack of its Palestinian nationwide id, to everlasting exile, to the everlasting separation of most Palestinians from each other and from Palestine – in brief, to a life with out nationwide hope or that means. (p 40)

With the secular democratic state possibility so clearly profitable the comparability with this end-game, it is a curious factor to place these two options on any sort of equal footing and never take sides.

If I knew that 90% of Palestinians had been reluctantly behind some such imaginative and prescient, I might do my bit to help them. However at this time, if the PA Ambassador to London, or Bern, referred to as for a rally supporting the two-state answer, I might not go. Going can be normalizing Israel. It could even be repudiating the lately well-liked objective of de-colonization, seeing as all of Palestine has lengthy been colonized – by Istanbul, London, or Tel Aviv. How can de-colonization translate into something however a single Palestine?

What we’re inspired to shout at rallies – and wish to shout – is From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free. However how does this jibe with something however a single state of Palestine, on all of historic Palestine, from the river to the ocean, stuffed with returned Palestinians, as Ali Abunimah lately underscored.

Rights Solely

A second means for non-Palestinians to remain on the fence is to help solely Palestinians’ rights, normally as enumerated within the BDS Name – even when, once more, not all Palestinians help BDS. I’ve tried to point out that BDS does have ‘answer’ implications – both Two Democratic States or One – though its most well-known exponent has argued for “avoiding the prescription of any specific political system.” This nevertheless results in a query incisively raised, for example, by Tamara Ben-Halim, who attests that

Many individuals inside the motion internationally are nonetheless determining how necessary it’s to be working in direction of a specific finish recreation, or whether or not it’s enough in the meanwhile to be struggling for rights, in absence of unified management.

My very own means of figuring this out has led me to consider it’s higher for internationals to ‘err on the facet of’ justice. And by the best way, whereas Palestinians, even some in exile, usually run existential dangers by supporting ODS – or BDS, for that matter – we shouldn’t have this excuse.

Hazem Jamjoum has argued, extra basically, that limiting Palestinian calls for to these for the success of the rights they in actual fact have has meant relinquishing the political realm to others. By thus “shifting the emphasis to legalist frameworks, the Palestinian battle, no less than on a global scale, dangers shedding sight of its basically political nature.” I don’t know if he helps the political ODS message, however I do know that arguing solely from rights ideas, whereas staying strictly silent on options, is comparatively ineffective at stalls such because the one in Cambridge – each as a result of rights and options are logically tied collectively and since individuals need to know – they insistently ask – what the end-game is.

Our ‘Topic Place’

Supporting these Palestinians (and Jewish Israelis) who help ODS – selecting and selecting from among the many positions – isn’t the identical as ‘telling the Palestinians what’s good for them’. Initially, no Palestinian has to take heed to a single phrase we are saying. Supporting a rock-solid Palestinian thought, even when it isn’t supported by all Palestinians, isn’t ‘telling’ anyone something. Two-staters Joe Biden and Josep Borrell might need to be listened to, however not we.

Even when we’re expressing an opinion on what ‘ought to occur’ in Palestine – as we’d on what ought to occur in China, Cuba or the united statesA. – I consider there’s a distinction between saying, as a superb buddy of mine did lately, that ‘The 2-state answer, all issues thought of, is the very best’, and saying ‘I’m for all of the rights of all of the Palestinians, and that means ODS’. The one objectively denies many Palestinians the better a part of their rights, whereas the second, within the absence of any Palestinian consensus, appears an inexpensive beginning place – no matter compromises Palestinians may conform to if and when Israel ever involves the desk.

On the very least, I hope it’s comprehensible that for a non-Palestinian the two-state answer can’t have wherever close to the motivating energy of the one-democratic-state answer. And if worldwide opinion is necessary in any respect, it’s lacking a trick to not faucet this reservoir of help.

Worldwide Stress

I assume that worldwide opinion issues. I don’t know the relative significance of Palestinians-only thought and exercise, versus that of the remainder of the world. To make sure, the BDS Name seeks help from the “worldwide neighborhood”, from “worldwide civil society organizations and other people of conscience everywhere in the world”. And I do assume {that a} change in worldwide opinion in direction of the fulfilment of Palestinians’ rights might ultimately change the stability of energy.

However what’s the concise, easily-grasped message we must always unfold “everywhere in the world”? Nadia Hijab has identified, relating to each Palestinians and internationals, that

It’s pure {that a} individuals in quest of nationwide and human rights and their allies ought to need readability about and unity on the tip political objective. As well as, the rising break up between these arguing for one state or a civil rights battle, a lot of whom are Palestinian activists and their grassroots supporters, on the one hand, and people espousing two states on the opposite, of whom many are Palestinian officers and businessmen (in addition to liberal Zionists), has been detrimental to the Palestinian capacity to coalesce round collective motion.

I believe worldwide stress can be strengthened by an “finish political objective” as clear, easy, acquainted and provoking because the ANC imaginative and prescient for South Africa.

An ODS Name?

A number of years again my spouse, who additionally helps these Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who help ODS, ventured that what is required is a Palestinian Name for ODS. Just like the BDS Name, and by the identical logic, it could come from Palestinians solely. Calls thus formulated have authenticity.

Not solely does it go with out saying that it’s the Palestinians who must stay with the results of any envisioned answer, but in addition, till there’s a clear Palestinian name for a plan of action, any advocacy past common help for ‘Palestinian rights’ and in opposition to ‘Israeli apartheid’ lacks legitimation if not backed up by a big, seen group of Palestinians.

Parallel and linked to such an initiative can be one organized by, and talking on to, Jewish Israelis.

A Optimistic Imaginative and prescient

In 2012 Noura Erakat wrote that,

Palestinians ought to undertake a one-state answer as a political imaginative and prescient that goals for the equality of all individuals no matter nationality, ethnicity, faith, or race. By endorsing a one-state answer, we’re calling for the dismantlement of institutionalized racism that privileges Jewish nationals above their non-Jewish Arab Palestinian counterparts slightly than supporting the creation of two ethnically homogenous states. In a way, this imaginative and prescient sacrifices nationalism for a extra liberal idea of equality and democratic pluralism. … In impact, Palestinians should settle for the everlasting presence of Israeli nationals in Mandate Palestine and the simultaneous elimination of its Zionist id and structure.

Palestinian nationalism shouldn’t be given up, that’s, however re-defined.

I believe Erekat is correct in calling this a “imaginative and prescient”, and because it expresses each what it’s in opposition to and what it’s for it’s extra constructive than mere anti-Zionism, de-colonization, anti-apartheid or ‘ending the occupation’. It may be argued {that a} profitable motion wants positivity.

The ODS Marketing campaign, primarily based in historic Palestine, additionally has asserted the need for a “political program”, a set of concrete targets to rally round:

In recent times, the thought of a one democratic state in all of historic Palestine as the very best answer to the battle has re-emerged. … The 2-state answer, which is principally an unfair answer, is clearly useless. … [W]e contend that the one approach to obtain justice and everlasting peace is dismantling the colonial apartheid regime in historic Palestine and the institution of a brand new political system primarily based on full civil equality, and on full implementation of the Palestinian refugees’ Proper of Return…

A “system”, or a “imaginative and prescient”, has in my opinion stronger motivating energy than both a name for a set of rights or a set of issues one is in opposition to. In fact, whereas being in opposition to colonization and so on. follows from what one is for – whether or not the older ‘secular democratic state’ or ODS – destructive framings go solely thus far.

I’d additionally wish to counsel that Palestinian messages be measured compared to the Zionist message-juggernaut with which we’ve got been carpet-bombed for a century. After the abandonment of the only secular state imaginative and prescient thirty or forty years in the past, Palestinian messages have been not solely contradictory (one state, two states? rights, options?) however, as compared with Zionism’s demand for the whole lot, timid. The (positively-framed) ideology of Zionism takes the stage unabashedly, and overturning it maybe requires an equal quantity of direct ambition.

Libraries and on-line media are stuffed with detailed written, filmed and photographed accounts of Zionism doing its each day work; the indictment at that degree has been composed and is out there to all. The speculation of Zionism, as properly, has been uncovered for what it’s in dozens of books and essays within the English language alone, not to mention in Arabic. However worldwide opinion is now stranded on the stage of seeing and condemning Israel’s worst crimes however nonetheless accepting Israel as a state. What I believe is lacking is extra data, readability and particulars ‘on the different finish’ of the narrative: What does the simply answer appear like? The general public nonetheless merely is aware of little about it.

I don’t know the ins and outs of intra-Palestinian considering or mental battle, however do have this concrete query for the neighborhood which has coalesced round Al Shabaka and befriended organizations: How do they choose the resonance of ODS amongst Palestinians and – a lot of them are well-acquainted with the West – amongst internationals? Can the two-state answer, and the Palestinian Authority which helps it, now be each safely and profitably repudiated?

I consider ODS is probably extremely popular within the West, however not solely there. As Nadia Hijab and Ingrid Jaradat Gassner have argued, the “worldwide framework of decolonization” – one thing solely ODS embodies – “mobilizes solidarity and help” significantly “amongst previously colonized nations”. I believe it could have much more traction if the Palestinians who help it could make a Name for it.

– Blake Alcott is a retired cabinetmaker and ecological economist who has been a solidarity activist since 2010, now residing in Zürich. He’s Director of ODS in Palestine (UK), an NGO working to make ODS extra comprehensible to the general public. His forthcoming guide, The Rape of Palestine: A Mandate Chronology, consists of 490 cases of the dialogue, such because it was, between the British and the Palestinians throughout the years 1917-1948.