Israel watchers are predicting a government openly committed to one “Jewish” state between river and sea, with no interest in allowing even a shadow of Palestinian sovereignty in the occupied territories. Indeed, the Israeli “center” and “left” are shattered, and the possibility exists that the Labor party that founded the state will disappear from the parliament in the next election.
The two state solution has been killed by Israeli expansion, and Jonathan Kuttab argues for the development of a program for one hybrid state that would be a truly unified democracy by allowing both Jews and Palestinians to “validate the essential elements of both Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism,” while rejecting those elements in each “which degrade or deny the Other.”
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Haidar Eid writes that the only way to honor those who have been lost since the 1948 Nakba is to make sure that their descendants live in a just society where all citizens are equal.
The One Democratic State Campaign is calling on international civil society to join them in building an effective anti-colonial, liberation movement to create a democratic state in historic Palestine.
22 percent of Jews under 40 support boycott of Israel, according to exit polling. That’s shocking news for liberal Zionists who would constitute the mainstream Israel lobby under a Joe Biden presidency.
Sheen Arackal argues “Israel was established as a binational state by the UN in 1947 and remains a binational state to this day because all refugees have an inalienable right to return home.”
In advocating for one state in Israel and Palestine, Peter Beinart has been dry or vague about the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced out of their homeland. But he has also conceded the moral validity of that right, and opened up a discussion liberal Zionists don’t want to have, as they enjoy the fruits of that ethnic cleansing.
Peter Beinart is so important in Jewish culture because he insists on humanizing Palestinians, and refuses to use the Holocaust lens of perpetual victimhood when considering Palestinian resistance. Palestinians are not driven by Jew hatred, as so many pro-Israel leaders argue, but by a natural response to dispossession and occupation.
Dershowitz says Peter Beinart seeks a “Final Solution” for the destruction of the Jewish state, “from the river to the see,” and that typo is just the beginning of a torrent of foolish mistakes by the Israel apologist.
Peter Beinart’s embrace of the struggle for equal rights for Palestinians in one state puts huge pressure on liberal Zionist organizations to drop the beastly talk about “separation” and demographics and take concrete steps for Palestinian rights. And how long before the Jewish youth group IfNotNow endorses BDS?