DECOLONIZING ZIONISM, LIBERATING PALESTINE:

TOWARDS ONE DEMOCRATIC STATE

Jeff Halper

One cannot be in a political struggle without a political program, an endgame. If it is to prevail, struggle must be defined by a guiding vision or ideology, a clear political program, organization, leadership and an effective strategy for summoning the power required for achieving its aims. Palestinians once had that. Engaged in an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism and the settler state it created, only one political program made sense: the total liberation of Palestine. Liberation had (and still has for the vast majority of Palestinians) a clear and straightforward meaning: to liberate, to take back their country. Palestine becomes Palestinian again, a Palestinian nation-state in which the nation and its state institutions of governance and control are in the same hands.

Already in the early ‘70s a growing shift towards pragmatism could be discerned among the PLO leadership. The outbreak of the Lebanese civil war; the steady disappearance of Palestinian land as Israel’s settlements expanded, particularly after Menachem Begin’s election in 1977; Egypt’s signing of a separate peace plan with Israel in 1979; the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, culminating in yet another displacement of the PLO, this time to far-off Tunisia; international isolation; the rising expectations of the residents of the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state in the OPT, leading to fears of being bypassed by the first Intifada – all these drove the PNC to adopt, on November 15, 1988,  the two-state solution as embodied in UN Resolution 242. The PLO had not officially abandoned the goal of liberating Palestine; it viewed national independence, even in the form of a truncated mini-state on only 22 percent of the homeland, as a necessary yet transient step towards liberation. In reality, however, it has shifted from an anti-colonial struggle to negotiations over territory, a strategic and perhaps necessary one if the PLO was to remain in the political game, yet one that saw its own dissolution as the dream of an expanding Palestinian state died as Arafat and Abu Mazen colluded with Israel in ruling over a Bantustan, an archipelago of tiny, non-viable and certainly non-sovereign enclaves within the apartheid regime of a Greater Israel.

The PLO had it right at the beginning; the Palestinians were engaged in an anti-colonial struggle against the Zionist settlement enterprise that intended to take over Palestine, displace its native population, take its lands and then Judaize it – replace an Arab country with a Jewish one, transform Palestine into Israel. By embracing the “two-state solution,” the PLO had ignored (or minimized or not taken seriously) Zionism’s genocidal and territorial aims. It had assumed that Palestinian liberation could somehow emerge out of a colonial structure left intact, as if the Zionists, proceeding to settle all of Palestine between the River and the Sea, would at some point cease their Judaization project and agree to the re-Arabization of the country – the PLO’s hope and plan – or at least to some form of equality between the colonizers and the colonized. That enormously misplaced expectation has led to the present reality. The Palestinians have learned several bitter lessons: co-existence between colonial settlers and those they are actively dispossessing is impossible; settler colonialism can only be defeated through a process of decolonization, not futile negotiations and compromise, meaning that any political program of liberation must dismantle the structures of colonial domination and control before a new, just polity and society can emerge; and, indeed, only a civil democracy offering all the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel both equal civil rights while providing for the full expression of their national and ethnic cultures and religions.

Any just and workable political program, then, must address three critical sets of questions:

1. In terms of Palestinian liberation, does it genuinely dismantle the colonial structures of Zionist domination and control or, as in the case of the two-state solution, a bi-national state, a federation of parallel political institutions, confederation or cantonization, does it merely perpetuate them? Is it capable of reuniting the Palestinians in their historic homeland, restoring their basic national and civil rights and ensuring them sufficient sovereignty, enough authority within a civic and multi-national state to effectively protect their national rights and advance its collective interests?
2. In light of the fact that Israeli Jews will remain after decolonization, will continue to constitute a major part of the population and the economy, and will resist being reduced to a merely ethnic or religious group (as most Palestinians view them), how does the political program accommodate their national presence? Indeed,
3. Will the new but fragile post-colonial democracy be able to withstand the challenges of Palestinian and Israeli nationalism to its sovereignty and authority to govern, not to mention that of Islamic movements? Will it be strong enough to prevent inter-communal conflict, even civil war, as national and religious groups vie for hegemony among themselves? Will it be able to transform political nationalism into cultural expression within the civil polity? And perhaps of greatest import for the future, will it be able to generate a new political community sharing and valuing their shared civil identity? All presuming, of course, that all citizens, including any refugees who choose to return, enjoy equal rights and access to the all the country’s land and resources.

What kind of post-colonial polity, then, would best address these issues, expectations and conflicts? Since it must decolonize Zionist settler colonialism and replace Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (actually one political entity) with an inclusive, egalitarian and multi-cultural state and society, the only sufficiently just and workable program seems to be a single democratic state.

The One Democratic State Campaign, a Palestinian-led organization of which I am a founding member, is the only group that has “thought through” the process of decolonization and reassembly into a new civil polity and society. On that basis, it has formulated a 10-point plan that offers a solid foundation for the formulation of a full-fledged political program around which a critical mass of Palestinians might mobilize – again, a missing piece of the Palestinian struggle today. Space prevents me from presenting even a short description of each point (for that see my book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism and the Case for One Democratic State (London: Pluto, 2021). I will briefly review Articles 1-5 and 7, which convey the sense of the envisioned state.

1. Decolonization 

The only way to resolve a settler colonial situation is through a thorough process of dismantling the colonial structures of domination and control. An inclusive and democratic polity, ruling over a shared civil society, replaces the colonial regime. Once a new political community arises offering equal rights for all, once the refugees return and once all the citizens of the new state gain equal access to the country’s lands and economic resources, a process of reconciliation may begin. Israeli Jews must acknowledge both the national rights of the Palestinian people and past colonial crimes. In return – and based on the egalitarian democracy that has been established – the Palestinians will accept them as legitimate citizens and neighbors, thereby signaling the end of Zionist settler colonialism. Having entered into a new post-colonial relationship, the peoples and citizens of the new state – whose name will emerge through the process of shared life – will be able to move on to the future they and their children deserve.

This first Article begins with the precondition for any post-colonial resolution, the decolonization of the Zionist settler colonial project, which in turn paves the way for an inclusive if multicultural democracy. And that points not only to the end of the settler project and the emergence of a shared polity and civil society, but also to the normalization of Jewish life in the country, what Omar Barghouti calls “ethical coexistence.”

The indigenous population … must be ready, after justice had been reached and rights had been restored, to forgive and to accept the former settlers as equal citizens, enjoying normal lives – neither masters nor slaves… [This] is the most important guarantor of minimizing the possibility of lingering hostility or, worse, a reversal of roles between oppressor and oppressed once justice and equal rights have prevailed. The ultimate goal should be justice, equality and ethical coexistence, not revenge.

2. A Single Constitutional Democracy 

One Democratic State shall be established between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as one country belonging to all its citizens, including Palestinian refugees who will be able to return to their homeland. All citizens will enjoy equal rights, freedom and security. The State shall be a constitutional democracy, the authority to govern and make laws emanating from the consent of the governed. All its citizens shall enjoy equal rights to vote, stand for office and contribute to the country’s governance.

In principle, the post-colonial state “belongs to” all to its citizens, their civil, human and national rights guaranteed by the Constitution. As we have discussed, the transition to a robust civic state in which a new political community and civil identity transcends (but in no way attempts to neutralize) nationalist loyalties, is crucial for empowering the new state to confront and tame nationalist and religious challenges to its authority to govern. Our task, says Mahmood Mamdani in his book Neither Settler Nor Native,

is to define political identities as distinct from cultural identities, without denying that there may be a significant overlap between the two. One way of doing so is to accent common residence over common descent – indigeneity – as the basis of rights… The point is that political communities are defined, in the final analysis, not by a common past but by a resolve to forge a common future under a single political roof, regardless of how different or similar their pasts may be. Our challenge is to define political identities as distinct from cultural identities, without denying that there may be a significant overlap between the two. One way of doing so is to accent common residence over common descent – indigeneity – as the basis of rights.

The establishment of a civil state opens up a civil space – a civil “we” – that has not existed in Palestine since the start of the British Mandate and cannot exist under any political regime besides a civil state, as shown in light gray in the following figure. If the new state (which does not yet have an inclusive name) offers the political structures, democratic processes, laws and public institutions that are seen by the public as genuinely serving their collective purposes, and if the national economy is strong (as it should be) and inclusive, the civil space will immediately attract populations that share common interests, values and lifestyles such as the middle classes, secular or moderately religious Palestinians and Israeli Jews, and especially the younger generations eager to get on with their lives. Other groups disassociated from ethno-nationalism – the large population of economic immigrants, many from Africa, for example, or ethnic Russians and other minorities – would also gravitate towards a more open civil space.

The process of constructing and expanding the civil space, key to the success of the new state and society, highlights a feature of Palestinian/Israeli society that is completely ignored: cross-cutting relationships that exist in embryonic form but cannot come into existence as long as the society is polarized along strictly sectarian lines. The Israeli and Palestinian economies both possess vibrant hi-tech industries, but they exist parallel to each other rather than in mutually enrichening forms. Middle-class Palestinians share values, individualized lifestyles, education, professional skills and aspirations with their Israeli Jewish counterparts far more than they do with, say, Palestinian farmers or Palestinians espousing strong religious views. Even in the religious and political spheres already existing relations across sectarian lines hold promise of growing social ties. The entrance of Ra’am, an Islamic party connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, into the right-wing Bennet-Lapid government is but one dramatic example. And let’s not forget those from disparate national, ethnic, religious and political communities and factions who came together in the anti-colonial struggle. It is they who will take a leading role in steering their communities into the shared process of nation-building. Having forged strong personal and political ties during the struggle, possessing the political legitimacy and authority to lead the civil-national rebuilding project, they will form the nucleus of the new political community.

The closer a population is to the expanding civic space, the more disposed they are to enter into it. Thus, in the (darker grey) Palestinian space, Christians are more inclined than religious Muslims to become part of a larger society (especially politicized Muslims like members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad), while working-class Palestinians in general, though their religious and national identities remain important, will likely be brought in as the job market opens to them. As for the Israeli Jews, there is no compelling reason, given their lack of choice, why all Israeli Jews would not enter the civic space, again, retaining affective ties to their national and religious identities. Already engaged in the country’s political, economic and cultural life, retreating into a constricted national space rather than participating fully in the life of the civic-nation would make no sense. The two exceptions are religious nationalists (primarily the Israeli settlers in the West Bank), who will resist entering into close relations with Palestinians, and ultra-orthodox Jews who keep away from Israeli civil society as well, preferring to enclose themselves in their homogenous communities. Finally, Israel possesses a large population of “Others” – for the most part African asylum-seekers, currently numbering around 30,000, and foreign workers, many of whom have married Israelis and acquired residency or citizenship – many of whom will likely remain in Israel permanently. Although asylum-seekers are under constant pressure to leave, international law prevents Israel from expelling them. They are now entering their second generation of life in the country and will undoubtedly grab the opportunity to enter the new polity as equal citizens.

The role of religion in the new state represents a major issue – and undoubtedly one of the most contentious – that will have to be addressed. By adopting the civil form of statehood as well as the democratic principle that “the authority to govern and make laws emanates from the consent of the governed” rather than from religious law, the ODSC (One Democratic State Campaign) is following the PLO’s position of non-sectarian government, the separation of state and religion.

3. Right of Return, of Restoration and of Reintegration into Society

The single democratic state will fully implement the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948 and thereafter, whether living in exile abroad or currently living in Israel or the Occupied Territory. The State will aid them in returning to their country and to the places from where they were expelled. It will help them rebuild their personal lives and to be fully reintegrated into the country’s society, economy and polity. The State will do everything in its power to restore to the refugees their private and communal property of the refugees and/or compensate them. Normal procedures of obtaining citizenship will be extended to those choosing to immigrate to the country.

Coursing throughout the ODSC plan is a commitment to human rights. Article 3 acknowledges, prioritizes and fully intends to implement the right of Palestinian refugees and their families to return to their homeland. But the refugees do not possess only the right to return. By the political logic of a state based on citizenship the refugees have never stopped being citizens. Just because people flee a conflict or are driven out or merely choose voluntarily to reside elsewhere, they do not lose their civil status. Their return is a right but more significantly it represents an in-gathering of all the country’s citizens, including those kept out of the settler state by force. The repatriation of the refugees and their descendants merely restores to them a civil status they should never have lost in the first place. This conforms to UN Resolution 194, adopted in December 1948, which resolved that

refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

The ODSC program then goes beyond the return and re-enfranchisement of the refugee community. Recognizing that this population is in large part traumatized, impoverished, undereducated and under-skilled, it points to the need to reintegrate them into society. Part of that process, of course, requires the restoration of properties lost by the refugees and, if that impossible, compensation. Certainly programs of affirmative action and economic investment will be called for, as well as reparations. Palestinian architects are working with Zochrot, an Israeli organization dedicated to perpetuating the memory of the Nakba and preparing for the refugees’ return, in planning new villages and towns so that the refugees will have a place to return in the region where they originated, if not to their homes which have likely been demolished. Hence Article 3 affirms that the new state “will help them rebuild their personal lives and to be fully reintegrated into the country’s society, economy and polity. The State will do everything in its power to restore to the refugees their private and communal property of the refugees and/or compensate them.”

4. Individual Rights 

No State law, institution or practices may discriminate among its citizens on the basis of national or social origin, color, gender, language, religion or political opinion, or sexual orientation. A single citizenship confers on all the State’s residents the right to freedom of movement, the right to reside anywhere in the country, and equal rights in every domain.

The post-colonial democracy envisioned in the ODSC plan guarantees equal rights to all citizens regardless of their national, religious or ethnic affiliations. This alone goes a long way towards dismantling the Regime of Dominance Management. It also reorients Arab-Jewish relationships around the principles of equality, shared human rights and coexistence, thus paving the way for the emergence of a shared civil society. Decolonizing relationships is, after all, an integral part of the overall process of decolonization.

5. Collective Rights 

Within the framework of a single democratic state, the Constitution will also protect collective rights and the freedom of association, whether national, ethnic, religious, class or gender. Constitutional guarantees will ensure that all languages, arts and culture can flourish and develop freely. No group or collectivity will have any privileges, nor will any group, party or collectivity have the ability to leverage any control or domination over others. Parliament will not have the authority to enact any laws that discriminate against any community under the Constitution.

Article 5 of the ODSC program addresses perhaps the most difficult part of the process of putting together a functioning state: how to reconcile the conflicting claims to sovereignty between the state and the national groups residing within it?

For the vast majority of Palestinians, liberation means liberation. Palestine becomes Palestinian again, Palestinian national rights are restored and a Palestinian nation-state arises out of Zionist settler colonialism. There is no doubt that this vision of total liberation is the most just, moral and compelling of all possible post-colonial outcomes. But does it provide workable solutions to the questions we raised earlier? In terms of decolonizing Palestine, establishing a Palestinian state and bringing home the refugees, the answer is a definite “yes.” Palestinians finally achieve their right to self-determination in a nation-state of their own. Ethno-nationalism founders, however, when it comes to the question that bedevils all nation-states that nonetheless comprise many national, ethnic and religious groups: To whom does the state belong?

Although further discussion is necessary (virtually all Palestinians either reject or have fundamental issues with the notion that Israeli Jews comprise a national group, preferring to see them merely as an ethnic or religious group), the sense of the ODSC program, as we presented it earlier, is to support the establishment of a civil state belonging to all its citizens rather than a Palestinian nation-state. Nonetheless, the advocates of a civil democracy recognize that the political, religious and cultural ties of the country’s peoples to their own collectives far outweigh their identification with the broader civil society composed, in the early stages at least, of strangers and former enemies. Indeed, this lack of a strong attachment to the new polity constitutes the greatest challenge to its very survival, challenged as it will be by stronger national and religious forces. The demise of fragile states and their descent into inter-communal conflict, chronic instability, authoritarianism and de-development is, alas, the bitter experience of most post-colonial states in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In order to avoid this and foster instead a non-confrontational relationship between the state and the national and religious groups it contains, a space is required in which they are free to express their cultures, in which citizens not yet committed to the civil state or needing communal support are able to congregate. This is represented by the darker grey in the illustration above. Although the communal space should shrink over time as citizens begin to integrate into the public sphere, it offers an arena of “sufficient sovereignty.” This is crucial for the process of transforming national and political-religious groups into cultural entities able to coexist with the civil state as well as other collectivities. It serves to ensure them that while the state is a unitary one of all its citizens, it is also multicultural, so that they will continue to enjoy a meaningful degree of cultural self-determination.

This cultural space would be composed of a vast array of elements: neighborhoods, community centers, museums and places of cultural expression, certain educational facilities outside of the public sector, the celebration of national, ethnic or religious holidays, community-based media, a vibrant life of literary, music, film, foods and other cultural expressions. At the same time cultural communities would have meaningful control of their resources, important to them for material as well as symbolic reasons. Sacred sites and locales of historical significance to them, of course, but also cultural resources such as tourist sites and craft industries. Other resources integral to their collective life and generating significant income include land (recovered from the settlers), olive groves and historical sites.

This national space is particularly important for sectors of the population not yet ready to adopt the civil-national identity or seek integration into the wider society. Premier among these groups are the Palestinian refugees. After more than 70 years in often brutal exile, they want to come home – to Palestine, as Palestinians. They have had little if any experience with a civil society comprised of equal individuals and most have never had citizenship in any state. Over years of isolation from Palestine, they and their succeeding generations have lived in the hope of total liberation, of returning to a Palestine resembling what it was before 1948, one without Israelis. The reality they will confront upon their return will be jolting, to say the least. The majority of refugees will likely reject – initially at least – the very notion of sharing a new civic-national identity with those who dispossessed them, the source of their suffering and the usurpers of their land and peoplehood. For some time after their return, many will need that collective space in which to reorient themselves, overcome the traumas of exile, transit into normal lives, acquire the skills needed for a modern economy and take in what citizenship means in a pluralistic democracy. This process will take time. Refugees cannot simply be pushed into a civil society.

The collective space also cushions the entry of Israeli Jews into a unitary state, especially after they have lost their sovereign ethnocracy and understandably fear for their fate in a Palestinian-majority country. Israeli Jews, of course, harbor their own fears of a unitary democracy – and, indeed, of any political arrangement that leaves them at the mercy of others. Those fears are understandable, especially in light of experiences of minorities in ethno-states “belonging” to others, Jews perhaps foremost.

Contemplating a civil state rather than a Palestinian one, and a civil state that acknowledges Israeli national identity as well as Palestinian, is extremely difficult for Palestinians. And yet, that identity exists, whether it should or not. Denying it or, worse, suppressing it, is a recipe for instability, inter-communal conflict, perhaps even civil war. The Palestinian/Israeli political philosopher Raef Zreik seems to agree:

For the Palestinians, injustices of the past cannot be overlooked, and the way the colonial past has shaped the relationship between the two communities must be tackled and unpacked….  The settler cannot simply one day stop being a settler as if there is no past: the past injustices and dispossessions must be settled and addressed.

The collective communal and national aspect must also be taken into account for the Israeli Jews. Any forward-looking solution must take the collective Israeli-Jewish identity into account and give an answer to people’s need and interest in their culture, religion, nationality, and history. In this sense, the category of citizenship does not aim to comprehensively replace these interests, but rather to create a space where a conversation based on an equal footing can take place. Citizenship, in this regard, stands for the new “we,” based on equal terms of engagement. It does not abolish identity but puts it in its place and tames it.

7. Constructing a Shared Civil Society, Ultimately a New Civic Community

The State shall nurture a vital civil society comprised of common civil institutions, in particular educational, cultural and economic. Alongside religious marriage the State will provide civil marriage.

The ultimate goal of civil nation-building is the decolonization of social relations and the emergence of a shared civil identity that informs daily life – “civil” signifying a desire to transcend sectarian differences in order to nurture a new political community of citizens.

This, then, is a vision promoted in the one civil state program which can be viewed in its entirety at <onestatecampaign.org>. Again, other one-state conceptions exist as well. Most Palestinians, as I mentioned, envision a Palestinian state that offers equal civil rights to Israeli Jews but no recognition as a national group. There remain many issues yet to be ironed out as we move from decolonization to nation-building, including how we get there, the subject of another paper (but also covered in my book). By highlighting these issues by way of the ODSC program, I hope this paper will generate some good and heated discussion.

(Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and founding member of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC). He can be reached at [email protected]).