Ahmed Moor in WaPo: Harvard One State conference ‘informed by the uncontroversial view that all people are created equal’

Ahmed Moor writing in the Washington Post:

The degree to which the country is a single, indivisible unit is sometimes underscored by the most mundane experiences. A Palestinian friend recently told me about being pulled over for speeding in the West Bank. The person who ticketed him was an Israeli army official.

Yes, Palestine has been colonized out of existence, and the Israeli army is busy policing traffic.

The army’s nearness to the average Palestinian extends beyond settlements. The region has few freshwater resources. In Israel, maintaining access to water is a matter of national security. The mountain aquifer underneath the West Bank’s rocky topography is one major source, and the army regularly destroys “unauthorized” wells and cisterns to secure Israeli hegemony over the scarce resource.

It was awareness that there will never be a viable Palestinian state that prompted me to work with other Harvard students to organize a one-state conference this weekend. Our work has been informed by the uncontroversial view that all people are created equal. Assessing an environment in which Israel controls the lives of 4 million people and deprives them of basic human rights, we ask whether there is an alternative: Can the one-state solution deliver equal rights to everyone?

Critics say that raising the question of equal rights in Israel/Palestine reveals our motives; we seek to destroy Israel, they say. They contend civil rights for everyone in the country will mean “the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”

For some, everything that happens in the Middle East is viewed through the prism of what is best for the Jewish people. But the Palestinians are people, too. Preserving “Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people” is a costly endeavor. And I regret that the cost is borne almost exclusively by Palestinians living under apartheid.

Read the entire article, “One state for Palestinians and Israelis,” here.