‘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 typically finish with the query, ‘I see that the Palestinians have been basically wronged, and have a really robust case, however what’s the reply? What’s the answer?’

On the premise of normal 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 resolution 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 suitable with the two-state resolution. 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 contains 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 resolve issues throughout 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 folks embody underneath an ODS banner options starting from limiting citizenship to non-war criminals all the best way to an ‘Algerian resolution’ – however this isn’t the ODS mentioned right here.

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

Members of the UK PSC, in addition to solidarity folks within the different locations I’ve lived, particularly Turkey and Switzerland, are more and more enamored of the concept. Its rival concepts are solely 4 in quantity: 1) the one undemocratic state which has taken over Palestine; 2) the two-state resolution 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 Basic Ideas and Insurance policies, it’s exhausting for me to know how a state can’t be each Jewish and democratic but might be each Moslem and democratic – however that’s one other dialogue. As for bi-nationalism, it’s virtually unimaginable to pin down what it truly means; however its premise that there are two politically equal collectives violates the fundamental concept 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 an alternative of stammering one thing like ‘Nicely, 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 throughout the 1948-occupied territories and sovereignty for the 1967-occupied territories.

To succeed in folks 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 regulation’ or the obscure ‘liberation of Palestine’. They’re a wanted ideology.

To make certain, 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 appropriately 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 ‘Answer’

For 20 years ODS advocacy has grown. Round 2000 seminal articles appeared by Ghada Karmi and Edward Stated, the latter mixing it with bi-nationalism. Across the time of the BDS Name the concept was fleshed out in whole 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 ideas.

Its pedigree extends a lot additional again. The PLO throughout its first decade insisted on the all-unifying purpose of a single secular state earlier than transferring 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 Struggle II, Palestinians and their Arab and Indian supporters argued in opposition to each bi-nationalism and the mooted two-state resolution in favor of a standard democracy together with all presently resident Jews.

The complete Mandate interval, as properly, beginning round 1920, noticed a gentle 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 Basic Syrian Congresses, the Ladies’s Congresses and the Arab Increased Committees, led by equivalent 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 concept coming from exterior the Palestinian polity – in sharp distinction to the two-state resolution, which was cooked and canned by each tender and exhausting Zionists in London, New York and Tel Aviv.

After all, many Palestinians have argued with good motive and noble motives for accepting Partition. They could have misplaced sufficient associates, relations, 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 Stated embraced this resolution in his 1979 guide The Query of Palestine (e.g. p 175), and Walid Khalidi, who in 1978 in Overseas Affairs argued for ‘Pondering the Unthinkable’ (recognition of Israel on the 67 borders), made a transferring attraction for it in 1992 after

… taking cognizance of the losses, the sufferings, and the good points of the 2 protagonists for the reason that 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 present redress for the monumental injustices suffered, and to compensate for the lack of fireplace 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 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 person claimed the two-state resolution introduced justice. As we speak, even some who lean in direction of help for the two-state resolution acknowledge the compatibility of all of the rights of all of the Palestinians with the ODS resolution. Nadia Hijab, for example, wrote that “The imaginative and prescient of a one-state resolution, 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 one of the best resolution amongst all potential ones, and declare ODS to be unimaginable, however other than the two-state resolution’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 or not it’s?

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

BDS and ODS

I feel 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 shouldn’t be as widespread? 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 have 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 folks’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 will 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 resolution can be TDS, two democratic states.

The query would then be whether or not there was any motive to not let ‘develop collectively what belongs collectively’, as occurred with the Germanies. By no means thoughts that 1000’s of Palestinians, beginning in 1936, have died combating partition, with many extra wounded and exiled and dispossessed. There nonetheless might be good causes to maintain the 2 democratic states separate, and anticipate majorities in every nation to resolve the query.

What Motivates?

Within the circumstances of South Africa and the U.S. Civil Rights motion, solidarity activists might unequivocally level to the purpose: citizenship, equality, independence, one particular person, one vote. The folks liberating themselves had been united on the fundamental demand. The ‘Bantustan resolution’ 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, ladies’s suffrage and, for that matter, Zionism, additionally reached success by unity round a easy non-compromising imaginative and prescient. Whether or not there’s a lesson right here for the Palestinian wrestle, I don’t know. What I do declare, from my very own expertise, is that straightforward, non-compromising ODS comes throughout properly amongst residents of the highly effective nations who might foment worldwide strain on Israel to surrender its ethnocracy.

Amongst Palestinians, each BDS and proper of return are uncontestedly widespread – for example in Lebanon – however does this indicate 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 authentic it must be backed by a majority of Palestinians. However no person is aware of the numbers regarding what number of Palestinians help this or that – as a result of no person 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 folks moderately than of political factions. Overlaying all Palestinians, it might decide the democratic legitimacy of 1 place or the opposite. However to my data, there’s merely no database of all Palestinians which might allow a definitive referendum.

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

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

Nevertheless, I can’t keep impartial as a result of which means at the least being open to a Zionist, apartheid resolution that leaves an ethnocracy in 80% of Palestine and leaves the returnees out within the chilly. Judged on fundamental moral ideas, the two-state choice is simply too unhealthy. For a Palestinian to help or keep open to such an admittedly unhealthy consequence is one factor, however for a Westerner to take action is one thing else, and in very unhealthy style.

We internationals do, I consider, as human beings no matter our ‘topic positions’, have the best 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 best to advocate for denying most of them, as does the two-state resolution, within the absence of clear proof {that a} majority of Palestinians take that place? I feel not.

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

A fraction of the Palestinian folks (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 world of the entire). … [T]he overwhelming majority of Palestinians is condemned to everlasting lack of its Palestinian nationwide identification, 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 which means. (p 40)

With the secular democratic state choice 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 immediately, if the PA Ambassador to London, or Bern, referred to as for a rally supporting the two-state resolution, I might not go. Going can be normalizing Israel. It will even be repudiating the lately widespread purpose 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, full of returned Palestinians, as Ali Abunimah lately underscored.

Rights Solely

A second manner 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 indicate that BDS does have ‘resolution’ implications – both Two Democratic States or One – though its most well-known exponent has argued for “avoiding the prescription of any explicit political system.” This nevertheless results in a query incisively raised, for example, by Tamara Ben-Halim, who attests that

Many individuals throughout the motion internationally are nonetheless determining how essential it’s to be working in direction of a specific finish sport, or whether or not it’s enough in the mean time to be struggling for rights, in absence of unified management.

My very own strategy 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, typically run existential dangers by supporting ODS – or BDS, for that matter – we do not need this excuse.

Hazem Jamjoum has argued, extra basically, that limiting Palestinian calls for to these for the success of the rights they in truth have has meant relinquishing the political realm to others. By thus “shifting the emphasis to legalist frameworks, the Palestinian wrestle, at the least on a world scale, dangers dropping 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 folks need to know – they insistently ask – what the end-game is.

Our ‘Topic Place’

Supporting these Palestinians (and Jewish Israelis) who help ODS – choosing and selecting from among the many positions – shouldn’t be 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 concept, even when it isn’t supported by all Palestinians, shouldn’t be ‘telling’ anyone something. Two-staters Joe Biden and Josep Borrell may need to be listened to, however not we.

Even when we’re expressing an opinion on what ‘ought to occur’ in Palestine – as we would on what ought to occur in China, Cuba or the united statesA. – I consider there’s a distinction between saying, as pal of mine did lately, that ‘The 2-state resolution, all issues thought-about, is one of the 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 higher a part of their rights, whereas the second, within the absence of any Palestinian consensus, appears an inexpensive beginning place – no matter compromises Palestinians would possibly 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 resolution can’t have anyplace close to the motivating energy of the one-democratic-state resolution. And if worldwide opinion is essential 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 certain, the BDS Name seeks help from the “worldwide neighborhood”, from “worldwide civil society organizations and folks of conscience all around the world”. And I do assume {that a} change in worldwide opinion in direction of the fulfilment of Palestinians’ rights might finally change the steadiness of energy.

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

It’s pure {that a} folks in quest of nationwide and human rights and their allies ought to need readability about and unity on the tip political purpose. As well as, the rising break up between these arguing for one state or a civil rights wrestle, 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 feel worldwide strain can be strengthened by an “finish political purpose” as clear, easy, acquainted and provoking because the ANC imaginative and prescient for South Africa.

An ODS Name?

A couple 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 will come from Palestinians solely. Calls thus formulated have authenticity.

Not solely does it go with out saying that it’s the Palestinians who should reside with the implications of any envisioned resolution, but in addition, till there’s a clear Palestinian name for a plan of action, any advocacy past normal 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 related to such an initiative can be one organized by, and talking on to, Jewish Israelis.

A Constructive Imaginative and prescient

In 2012 Noura Erakat wrote that,

Palestinians ought to undertake a one-state resolution as a political imaginative and prescient that goals for the equality of all individuals regardless of nationality, ethnicity, faith, or race. By endorsing a one-state resolution, we’re calling for the dismantlement of institutionalized racism that privileges Jewish nationals above their non-Jewish Arab Palestinian counterparts moderately 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 removing of its Zionist identification and structure.

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

I feel 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 concept of a one democratic state in all of historic Palestine as one of the best resolution to the battle has re-emerged. … The 2-state resolution, which is principally an unfair resolution, is clearly useless. … [W]e contend that the one technique to obtain justice and everlasting peace is dismantling the colonial apartheid regime in historic Palestine and the institution of a brand new political system based mostly 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. After all, whereas being in opposition to colonization and many others. follows from what one is for – whether or not the older ‘secular democratic state’ or ODS – unfavourable framings go solely thus far.

I’d additionally wish to recommend that Palestinian messages be measured compared to the Zionist message-juggernaut with which we now have been carpet-bombed for a century. After the abandonment of the one 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, compared with Zionism’s demand for every little thing, 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 full of 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 feel is lacking is extra data, readability and particulars ‘on the different finish’ of the narrative: What does the simply resolution 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 resolution, and the Palestinian Authority which helps it, now be each safely and profitably repudiated?

I consider ODS is doubtlessly very fashionable 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 feel it will have much more traction if the Palestinians who help it will make a Name for it.

– Blake Alcott is a retired cabinetmaker and ecological economist who has been a solidarity activist since 2010, now dwelling 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 through the years 1917-1948.