Is Democracy an Existential Threat to Israel? Ali Abunimah & Omar Barghouti

Guardian Comment is Free December 30, 2007

As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state

solution to the Arab- Israeli colonial conflict, we intended to

generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet

another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian - and some

radical Israeli - intellectuals to the "destruction of Israel". Some

pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and

critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a "utopian" dream.

Inspired in part by the South African Freedom Charter and the

Belfast Agreement , the much humbler One State Declaration, authored

by a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international academics and

activists, affirms that "the historic land of Palestine belongs to all

who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since

1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current

citizenship status". It envisages a system of government founded on

"the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural

rights for all citizens".

It is precisely this basic insistence on equality that is perceived by

Zionists as an existential threat to Israel, undermining its inherently

discriminatory foundations which privilege its Jewish citizens over all

others. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was refreshingly frank when

he recently admitted that Israel was "finished" if it faced a struggle

for equal rights by Palestinians.

But whereas transforming a regime of institutionalised racism, or

apartheid, into a democracy was viewed as a triumph for human rights

and international law in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it is

rejected out of hand in the Israeli case as a breach of what is

essentially a sacred right to ethno-religious supremacy

(euphemistically rendered as Israel's "right to be a Jewish state").

Palestinians are urged by an endless parade of western envoys and

political hucksters - the latest among them Tony Blair - to make do

with what the African National Congress rightly rejected when offered

it by South Africa's apartheid regime: a patchwork Bantustan made up of

isolated ghettoes that falls far below the minimum requirements of

justice.

Sincere supporters of ending the Israeli occupation have also been

severely critical of one- state advocacy on moral and pragmatic

grounds. A moral proposition, some have argued, ought to focus on the

likely effect it may have on people, and particularly those under

occupation, deprived of their most fundamental needs, like food,

shelter and basic services. The most urgent task, they conclude, is to

call for an end to the occupation, not to promote one-state illusions.

Other than its rather patronising premise - that these supporters

somehow know what Palestinians need more than we do - this argument is

problematic in assuming that Palestinians, unlike humans everywhere,

are willing to forfeit their long-term rights to freedom, equality and

self-determination in return for some transient alleviation of their

most immediate suffering.

The refusal of Palestinians in Gaza to surrender to Israel's demand

that they recognise its "right" to discriminate against them, even in

the face of its criminal starvation siege imposed with the backing of

the United States and the European Union, is only the latest

demonstration of the fallacy of such assumptions.

A more compelling argument, expressed most recently on Cif by

Nadia Hijab and Victoria Brittain, states that under the current

circumstances of oppression, when Israel is bombing and

indiscriminately killing; imprisoning thousands under harsh conditions;

building walls to separate Palestinians from each other and from their

lands and water resources; incessantly stealing Palestinian land and

expanding colonies; besieging millions of defenceless Palestinians in

disparate and isolated enclaves; and gradually destroying the very

fabric of Palestinian society, calling for a secular, democratic state

is tantamount to letting Israel "off the hook".

They worry about weakening an international solidarity movement that is

"at its broadest behind a two-state solution". But even if one ignores

the fact that the Palestinian "state" on offer now is no more than a

broken-up immiserated Bantustan under continued Israeli domination, the

real problem with this argument is that it assumes that decades of

upholding a two-state solution have done anything concrete to stop or

even assuage such horrific human rights abuses.

Since the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo agreements were signed in 1993, the

colonisation of the West Bank and all the other Israeli violations of

international law have intensified incessantly and with utter impunity.

We see this again after the recent Annapolis meeting: as Israel and

functionaries of an unrepresentative and powerless Palestinian

Authority go through the motions of "peace talks", Israel's illegal

colonies and apartheid wall continue to grow, and its atrocious

collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza is

intensifying without the "international community" lifting a finger in

response.

This "peace process", not peace or justice, has become an end in itself

-- because as long as it continues Israel faces no pressure to actually

change its behaviour. The political fiction that a two-state solution

lies always just around the corner but never within reach is essential

to perpetuate the charade and preserve indefinitely the status quo of

Israeli colonial hegemony.

To avoid the pitfalls of further division in the Palestinian rights

movement, we concur with Hijab and Brittain in urging activists from

across the political spectrum, irrespective of their opinions on the

one state, two states debate, to unite behind the 2005 Palestinian

civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, as

the most politically and morally sound civil resistance strategy that

can inspire and mobilise world public opinion in pursuing Palestinian

rights.

The rights-based approach at the core of this widely endorsed appeal

focuses on the need to redress the three basic injustices that together

define the question of Palestine - the denial of Palestinian refugee

rights, primary among them their right to return to their homes, as

stipulated in international law; the occupation and colonisation of the

1967 territory, including East Jerusalem; and the system of

discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Sixty years of oppression and 40 years of military occupation have

taught Palestinians that, regardless what political solution we uphold,

only through popular resistance coupled with sustained and effective

international pressure can we have any chance of realising a just

peace.

Hand in hand with this struggle it is absolutely necessary to begin to

lay out and debate visions for a post-conflict future. It is not

coincidental that Palestinian citizens of Israel, refugees and those in

the diaspora, the groups long disfranchised by the "peace process" and

whose fundamental rights are violated by the two-state solution have

played a key role in setting forward new ideas to escape the impasse.

Rather than seeing the emerging democratic, egalitarian vision as a

threat, a disruption, or a sterile detour, it is high time to see it

for what it is: the most promising alternative to an already dead

two-state dogma.