[News] Re-imagining Palestine - Self determination, Ethical De-colonization and Equality
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jul 29 11:20:46 EDT 2009
Re-imagining Palestine
Self determination, Ethical De-colonization and Equality[1]
July 29, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/22158
By Omar Barghouti
INTRODUCTION
With Yassir Arafat's departure, the doubling of the population of
Jewish-Israeli colonial settlers in the occupied Palestinian
territory, the latest Israeli slow genocide in Gaza and the fast
disintegration of the last vestiges of Israeli "democracy," the
two-state "solution" for the Palestinian-Israeli colonial conflict is
finally dead. Good riddance! This was never a moral or practical
solution to start with, as its main objective has always been to win
official Palestinian legitimization of Israel's colonial and
apartheid existence on top of most of the area of historic Palestine.
It is high time to move on to the most just, morally sound and
sustainable solution: the secular, democratic unitary state.
Blinded by the arrogance of power and the ephemeral comfort of
impunity afforded to it by its US partner and a complicit Europe,
Israel, against its own strategic Zionist interests, failed to
control its insatiable appetite for ethnically cleansing more of the
indigenous people of Palestine and for expanding its control at the
expense of their lands, devouring the very last bit of land that was
supposed to form the material foundation for an independent Palestinian state.
With its latest siege of Gaza which culminated in its televised
massacre of more than 1,500 Palestinians, the great majority of whom
are civilians, Israel has entered a new phase in its relentless
policy of making life for the indigenous Palestinians so intolerable
as to compel them to leave: the slow genocide phase.
I shall argue in this essay that a secular, democratic unitary state
in British Mandate Palestine is the most just and morally coherent
solution to the century-old colonial conflict, primarily because it
offers the best hope for reconciling the ostensibly irreconcilable --
the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinians, particularly
the right to self-determination, and the acquired rights of the
colonial settlers to live in peace and security, individually and
collectively, after ridding them of their colonial privileges.
To establish such a state there is critical need for a long,
intricate process of what I call ethical de-colonization, or
de-zionization, involving two simultaneous, dialectically related
processes: reflection and action, to borrow the Brazilian educator
Paulo Freire. [2]
Ethical decolonization anchored in international law and universal
human rights is a profound process of transformation that requires,
above everything else, a sophisticated, principled and popular
Palestinian resistance movement with a clear vision for justice and a
democratic, inclusive society, as well as an international movement
supporting Palestinian rights and struggling to end all forms of
Zionist apartheid and colonial rule and de-dichotomizing the conflict
in parallel. Without vision and reflection, our struggle would become
like a ship without a skipper. Without resistance, our vision would
amount to no more than arm-chair intellectualism, if not irrelevant
sophistry.
THE VISION: ETHICAL DE-ZIONIZATION
Among the most discussed alternatives to resolving the question of
Palestine, the democratic state solution lays out the clearest
mechanism for ending the three-tiered regime of injustice that
Palestinians have suffered from since the creation of the state of
Israel in 1948 on the ruins of Palestinian society: the occupation
and colonization of the Palestinian - and other Arab -- territory
occupied by Israel in 1967; the system of institutionalized and
legalized racial discrimination, [3] or apartheid, to which the
indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are subjected to on account
of being "non-Jews;" and the persistent denial of the UN-sanctioned
rights of the Palestine refugees, especially their right to return to
their homes of origin and to reparations.
A two-state solution cannot adequately, if at all, address the second
injustice or the third, the core of the question of Palestine. A
bi-national solution, also, other than its inherent logical and legal
flaws, cannot accommodate the right of return as stipulated in UNGA
resolution 194, not to mention the fact that it infringes, by
definition, the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinians on
part of their homeland, particularly the right to self determination.
Recognizing national rights of Jewish settlers in Palestine cannot
but imply accepting their right to self determination, other than
contradicting the very letter, spirit and purpose of the universal
principle of self determination primarily as a means for "peoples
under colonial or alien domination or foreign occupation" to realize
their rights, may, at one extreme, lead to claims for secession or
Jewish "national" sovereignty on part of the land of Palestine. A
Jewish state in Palestine, no matter what shape it takes, cannot but
infringe the basic rights of the land's indigenous Palestinian
population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that
ought to be opposed categorically.
Accepting the colonial settlers as equal citizens and full partners
in building and developing a new shared society, free from all
colonial subjugation and discrimination, as called for in the
democratic state model, is the most magnanimous offer any indigenous
population, oppressed for decades, can present to its oppressors. For
such a reality to be attained and sustained, however, the settlers
must shed their colonial character and privileges, accepting justice,
the Palestinian refugees' return and reparations, and unmitigated
equality. The indigenous population, on the other hand, must be
ready, after justice has been reached and rights have been restored,
to forgive and to accept the settlers as equal citizens, enjoying
normal lives -- neither masters nor slaves.
As the One State Declaration [4], issued by several Palestinian,
Israeli and international intellectuals and activists states:
"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;
"Any system of government must be founded on the principle of
equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all
citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on
behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities; ..."
Feasibility aside, there are several key issues that ought to be
scrutinized when raising the slogan of a "Democratic State in
Historic Palestine." For the most part, these questions revolve
around how, even whether, such a vision purports to deal with the
following questions. Any exhaustive answer will undoubtedly demand
massive research; I shall only propose, then, brief answers that lay
out the morally-consistent principles that I believe are required to
address the issues at hand, keeping in mind, throughout, the
pre-eminence of the principles of de-colonization, justice and self
determination as minimal conditions for achieving relative justice.
The Right to Self Determination and the Palestinian People
But why is the right to self determination an essential legal
instrument in the quest for Palestinian rights and a just and
sustainable solution to the settler-colonial conflict in historic Palestine?
The United Nations has called the right to self-determination a
prerequisite to the enjoyment of all other human rights. This right
entered international law, formally at least, in the United Nations
Charter, Article 1(2), which states:
"The purposes of the United Nations are to develop friendly relations
among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and
self-determination of peoples."
Note that equal rights of all people always proceeds the right to
self determination and all other rights as the most fundamental
principle in the UN Charter.
By 1960, with the adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Peoples, GA Res 1514, the principle was
elevated to the position of an unconditional right for peoples under
"alien, colonial or oppressive domination" and called for a "speedy
and unconditional end to colonialism in all its manifestations."
In the following decades, the scope and applicability of the right to
self determination expanded to include indigenous peoples suffering
from consequences of past colonial rule, unrepresented peoples, and
national minorities oppressed by national majorities within the
boundaries of a state.
UNGA Resolution 3236, of 22 November 1974, elevates the applicability
of the right to self determination to the people of Palestine to an
"inalienable" right. The Resolution:
1. Reaffirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in
Palestine, including:
(a) The right to self-determination without external interference;
(b) The right to national independence and sovereignty;
2. Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return
to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and
uprooted, and calls for their return;
3. Emphasizes that full respect for and the realization of these
inalienable rights of the Palestinian people are indispensable for
the solution of the question of Palestine ... .
A morally-consistent, rights-based approach to resolving the question
of Palestine, therefore, necessitates addressing the three
inalienable rights of the indigenous people of Palestine, in harmony
with universal human rights and international law.
Reconciling the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination
with Jewish-Israeli individual and collective rights
Other than the fundamental issue of the inalienable Palestinian right
to self determination, there are several key rights-related questions
that ought to be scrutinized when raising the slogan of a Democratic
State in Historic Palestine:
(1) Equal & Democratic Citizenship: This precludes any privileged
status for citizens on account of their ethnic, religious or other
forms of identity, beyond the initial requirements of justice and
reparations for the dispossessed Palestinians. This citizenship ought
to encompass all Palestinians inside historic Palestine as well as in
exile and refugee camps; it also encompasses all current Jewish Israelis
(2) The right of return and reparation for Palestinian refugees: How
can repatriation and reparation be implemented in such a state? What
should be done with current Jewish-Israeli colonies or settlements
built on Palestinian lands and homes illegally expropriated during
and ever since the 1948 Nakba?
The general rule, as stipulated in international law, is the right of
every Palestinian refugee to return to his/her home of origin and to
receive full, retroactive reparations. This must be done while
avoiding the infliction of any unnecessary or disproportionate
suffering on the Jewish community in Palestine. There is a need,
then, to make a distinction between two types of pillaged property:
(a) private or collectively-owned property; and (b) property that was
designated as state owned prior to the Nakba.
In the first case, private and collectively-owned property, in
accordance with international law, should be returned to its rightful
owners. When doing so is reasonably expected to cause unjust harm to
a large number of citizens -- fair criteria need to be developed,
inspired by similar ones adopted in Bosnia and elsewhere, to decide
what degree of harm and number of those affected is considered unjust
-- compensation in the form of property of comparable location and
worth should be offered to the original owners.
In the second case, that of state-owned property, current buildings
and structures can remain intact, provided they benefit all the
democratic state's citizenry, without discrimination.
(3) The Jewish community in a democratic Palestine: Has a "national
Jewish-Israeli identity" evolved over the past six decades? If yes,
who is included in it? Regardless, are Jewish Israelis, as a separate
community, entitled to the right to self determination in Palestine?
(a) Some researchers, particularly Zionist ideologues and those
influenced by Zionist assertions, have claimed an inherent or
acquired Jewish right to self determination in Palestine that is
equivalent, even morally symmetric, to the Palestinian right to self
determination, thereby blurring the essential differences between the
inalienable rights of the indigenous population and the acquired
rights of the colonial-settler population. Even if we ignore the
formidable body of evidence refuting the seminal Zionist historical
claim to the land of Palestine, there is no moral parity or legal
symmetry between the modern colonizers and the people that was
subjugated to colonialism, and there has never been in any case of
settler colonialism throughout modern history. The right to self
determination, as defined and applied by the UN, was never intended,
after all, as a tool to perpetuate colonial privileges and reinforce
discriminatory regimes of settler-colonial communities. After more
than 300 years of European settler-colonial domination in South
Africa, for instance, the settlers never made a credible claim to a
right to self determination as a separate people.
(b) A UNESCO conference of experts on the implementation of the right
to self determination, held in Barcelona in 1998, [5] reaffirmed that
the right to self-determination applies to all peoples under
contemporary international law, but emphasized its particular
applicability to "peoples under subjugation suffering colonial,
racist and occupying regimes, whole populations of states, in terms
of the right to determine their political status and their economic,
social and cultural development, as well as groups within the
population of states, indigenous or otherwise, that are considered
'peoples' and suffer under contemporary forms of colonialism, such as
settler-colonialism, which do not fit into the traditional and
arbitrary concept of 'salt water colonialism'."[6] In other words,
the right to self determination is an instrument of promoting a just
peace and ending oppression, not entrenching it.
(c) "Self-determination is achieved by fully participatory democratic
processes among the people who are seeking the realization of
self-determination, including referenda where appropriate. ... It is
imperative to prevent all actions by any relevant actors, which
include governments, international and other organizations,
individuals and corporations, which may result in the denial of the
exercise of the right to self-determination, such as demographic
aggression or manipulation, cultural assimilation and the destruction
of the natural environment of importance to the survival of peoples."[7]
The holding of a referendum is a widely accepted act of
self-determination. However, in areas which the community wishing to
exercise self-determination shares with other peoples and
communities, conflicts may arise. Where those other inhabitants are
settlers, specifically, many experts at the UNESCO conference felt
that "they should not be entitled to take part in such referenda."
"This is particularly true," a conference report adds, "where
settlers have been moved to indigenous regions or encouraged to do so
under a government program aimed at changing the demographic
composition of the region in question. Such practices, whether overt
or covert, have caused many peoples to be reduced to a numerical
minority in their own homelands."
A case in point is the UN-endorsed referendum in the Western Sahara
in 1975. Setting an important precedent, "The United Nations has
decided that persons transferred to the region or encouraged to move
there by the Moroccan government, since 1975, do not have the right
to vote in the referendum."[8]
(d) Settler colonialism aside, do Jewish Israelis constitute a
people, in the sense of entitlement to the right to self
determination? The widely accepted "Kirby definition," adopted at a
UNESCO International Meeting of Experts on the Implementation of the
Right to Self-Determination as a Contribution to Conflict Prevention
in 1989,[9] may suggest an affirmative answer to the question. It
identifies a people as "a group of individual human beings who enjoy
some or all of the following common features: history, ethnic
identity, culture, language, territorial connection, etc.
However, UNESCO experts further underline that "the group as a whole
must have the will to be identified as a people or the consciousness
of being a people," as the key subjective element common to other
legal definitions of peoples. This subjective element is considered a
necessary condition that is lacking in the case of Jewish Israelis,
who predominantly recognize only a "Jewish nation," not an Israeli,
or even a Jewish-Israeli nation. The Israeli Supreme Court refuses to
recognize Israeli nationality as well. Jewish "nationality," as
embodied in the Israeli Law of Return, is an extraterritorial
construct that includes the entire population of Jews around the
world, in contravention of international public law norms pertaining
to nationality.[10]
(e) Other than being a war crime and infringing the right to self
determination of the indigenous people of Palestine, Israel's
establishment through the premeditated and systematic destruction of
Palestinian society and the forcible transfer of a majority of the
Palestinian people, which Zionist leaders considered a necessary
condition for establishing a Jewish-majority state, cannot give rise
to a right of self determination for the community of Jewish
Israelis, who currently form a majority in the state. This is
according to the general international law principle, "ex injuria non
oritur ius," or no right can be derived from injustice or the
commission of a wrong.
(f) But even if, for the sake of argument, we ignored all the above,
would Jewish Israelis as a group be entitled, then, to the right to
self determination in Palestine? Among other moral and legal factors,
since the right to self determination entails, at one extreme, the
right to separation in an independent state, it cannot apply to a
settler colonial community as that would inherently violate and
conflict with the right of the indigenous population to self determination.
But the realization of self determination can assume one of many
possibilities in a spectrum. After all, international instruments, in
particular the Declaration on Principles of International Law
concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, state
that the modes of implementation of the right to self-determination
extend beyond the right of secession. The Declaration states[11]:
"the establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free
association or integration with an independent State or emergence
into any other political status freely determined by a people
constitute modes of implementing the right to self-determination by
that people ... ."
Although there is no universally acceptable distinction between
"internal" and "external" self-determination, it may be instructive
to investigate the differences between them in the context of the
colonial conflict in Palestine. Internal self determination largely
entails participatory democracy: the right to decide the form of
government and to elect rulers by the entire population of a state as
well as the right of a population group within the state to
participate in decision making at the state level. Internal
self-determination can also mean the right to exercise cultural,
linguistic, religious or (territorial) political autonomy within the
boundaries of the existing state.
External self-determination (described by some as "full"
self-determination), on the other hand, means "the right to decide on
the political status of a people and its place in the international
community in relation to other states, including the right to
separate from the existing state of which the group concerned is a
part, and to set up a new independent state," according to van Praag.
In all cases, since the choice is left to the people entitled to
exercise self determination, one cannot accede to a group's right to
self determination and at the same time restrict that right to
exclude the possibility of separation into an independent state. Even
if we set aside the extremity of secession, any exercise of self
determination by Jewish Israelis in any part of historic Palestine
that excludes the indigenous Palestinians, whether citizens living in
that part or refugees uprooted from it, cannot be legal, as it would
infringe the inalienable right of that part of the Palestinian people
to self determination; nor can it be moral, as it would deny those
Palestinians their basic rights, including the right to equality, the
most fundamental of all rights in the UN Charter and human rights conventions.
(4) The Zionist "Law of return" and the rights of Jewish refugees
from Arab and other states
Being an explicitly racist law that is in contravention of
international law and that has played a key role in the Zionist
settler-colonial project, the Law of Return and all other similarly
discriminatory laws must be abrogated in a democratic state.
As for Jewish refugees from Arab states, they are entitled, according
to international law, to the same rights as refugees everywhere,
including Palestinian refugees: the right to repatriation and reparation.
(5) Ethnic and Cultural Particularities of Palestinian Arabs and
Jewish Israelis
Cultural particularity and identity should be nourished, not just
tolerated, by society and protected by law. Palestine was for
centuries a fertile meeting ground for diverse civilizations and
cultures, fostering communication, dialogue and acculturation among
them. This heritage, almost forgotten under the cultural hegemony of
Zionist colonial rule, must be revived, nourished and celebrated,
regardless of any power asymmetry in the new state. We also must keep
in mind that half of the Jewish Israeli population, the Mizrahi Jews,
have their cultural roots in Arab and other Middle Eastern cultures.
Regardless of the above vital components of the vision, perhaps the
most nagging question that one state advocates face is whether our
vision is feasible, whether it can be realized, and, if yes, how.
Many commentators and analysts, even among supporters of the one
state solution, seem to be obsessed with one question in this regard:
how do you convince Israelis to accept this vision?
THE VEHICLE: RESISTANCE & EFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY
There is a basic problem in the assumed premise in this question --
that a colonial society can or should be persuaded to give up its
racist domination and colonial privileges. Throughout the history of
colonialism, the colonized were only able to end their oppression
through sustained resistance, whether armed, civil, or both -- never
through begging, appeasing or otherwise persuading through
"dialogue." Only after a common ground is reached based on equality,
universal human rights and international law can there be genuine
dialogue and reconciliation. The South African experience is an
important source of inspiration in that regard.
Besides developing and effectively promoting a morally consistent and
compelling vision, organizing for a secular, democratic state
alternative primarily entails developing a corresponding strategy of
resistance aimed at ending all forms of Zionist oppression while
creating fertile grounds for future reconciliation and peaceful
coexistence based on unmitigated equality, justice and universal
human rights. This is what I call the ethical
de-Zionization/decolonization of Palestine, a process that entails a
de-dichotomization of the two main groups' identities involved in
this colonial conflict.
Moral reconciliation between conflicting communities is impossible if
the essence of the oppressive relationship between them is sustained.
The objectively contradictory identities of the oppressor and
oppressed cannot find a moral middle ground. So long as the relation
of oppression obtains, only coercion, submission and injustice are
possible outcomes. Reconciliation and coexistence, then, can only
result from ethical decolonization
What form of resistance and action is needed to bring us closer to
realizing the secular, democratic state solution? I think there are
three central pillars that a Palestinian-led, one democratic state
movement needs to be founded on:
The Palestinian Pillar: The main vehicle that can carry this process
forward must be a unified, democratized and revolutionary Palestinian
movement that represents Palestinians everywhere, includes all
political parties and grassroots unions and institutions, upholds the
democratic state vision, and leads the resistance, in all its forms,
to achieve it. A progressive Palestinian movement upholding equality,
universal principles of morality and international law is more
crucial than ever, particularly given the steadily growing
disillusion with the two-state solution among Palestinians, in all
three segments -- in exile, in the 1967-occupied Palestinian
territory and inside Israel.
The right of return movement, representing the largest Palestinian
constituency, the refugees, has been among the most fervent
supporters of the one democratic state solution, realizing that the
right of return and the two-state solution are basically
incompatible. Palestinian citizens of Israel, in the three historic
documents[12] issued by leading institutions, political leaders and
intellectuals among them, have largely adopted the slogan of "a state
of all its citizens," which lends credence to the one state vision
approach and principles. Even Palestinians in the OPT, recent polls
reveal[13], have been expressing a steadily growing support for one
state, despite the fact that no political party is calling for it.
A thorough and critical reassessment of the entire Palestinian
strategy of resistance is urgently needed, in order to creatively
mobilize Palestinians from all sectors and geographic locations in
the struggle. To this end, promoting civil resistance, as in the
campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, is a top priority.[14]
To this end, the PLO needs to be reconstructed from the bottom up
with mass participation, particularly by democratic grassroots
unions; it must be governed by unfettered democracy, upholding the
principle of proportional representation.[15]
The Arab Pillar: Any reading of the history of the Arab region tells
us that transformations cannot be sustained or developed in one part
without the maturity of nurturing conditions in its surrounding
context. Being part of the Arab nation, with all its geo-strategic
importance, is one of the basic factors that has spared the
Palestinians the fate of Native Americans and other aboriginal
populations that were subjected to full-scale genocide in the "new
world." And although most Arab regimes today are autocratic,
despotic, unrepresentative of their respective peoples, and mostly
reliant in their survival on Western protection, the Arab masses are
more aware of and committed to the Palestinian struggle than ever, as
evident in the -- admittedly mostly emotional -- outpouring of
support during the Israeli criminal war of aggression on Gaza.
The Palestinian factor is largely regarded as a domestic factor, not
just in the countries surrounding Palestine, but also in Arab
countries as far as Morocco, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. The
emergence of a Palestinian leadership that advocates a democratic
state solution, therefore, has every potential to mobilize wider Arab
grassroots support, eventually becoming a political force to be
reckoned with. Already, boycott of Israel and of companies that are
viewed as perpetuating its oppression is spreading throughout the
Arab world, albeit without an organized leadership, for the most
part. The so-called "peace dividend" that Israel has banked on since
Oslo without conceding any land or rights in return is quickly
disappearing. Israel is again being viewed as the Arab nation's
strategic enemy and as an inherently belligerent, artificial entity
whose existence as a racist and colonial outpost cannot be tolerated
or normalized.
The International Pillar: As in the struggle against South-African
apartheid, connecting the struggle for Palestinian rights with
international social movements, trade unions, faith-based
organizations, cultural and academic groups, among other civil
society bodies, is indispensable. If international civil society
solidarity groups, committed to BDS to isolate Israel have started to
emerge ever since the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in
2001, now, four years after the Palestinian Civil Society Call for
BDS was launched, these groups are starting to look and act like a
movement that is guided by the Palestinian Call and that is taking
root in several countries, from South Africa to Sweden, and from
Australia to Canada, not to forget the United Kingdom, of course.
This resolutely anti-racist, diverse movement is guided by the
principles of inclusion, gradualness, sustainability,
context-sensitivity and the primacy of international law and
universal human rights. And although the West, owing to its
overwhelming political and economic power as well as its complicity
in perpetuating Israel's colonial and apartheid domination, remains
the main battleground for this nonviolent resistance, the rest of the
world should not be ignored. The boycott movement should reach China,
India, Malaysia, South Africa, Brazil, and Russia, among other states
which seek to challenge the West's monopoly on power. Zionist
influence in those states remains significantly weaker than in the
West. Indeed, South African civil society is today the single most
committed supporter of the Palestinian BDS struggle.
Can BDS change anything on the ground, though, given Israel's
formidable influence over Congress, the White House and, by
extension, the EU? The still-young Palestinian BDS campaign, modeled
after the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, has already shown
ample evidence that it has the potential of unifying Palestinians and
international solidarity movements in a resistance strategy that is
moral, effective and sustainable. In the last few years alone, many
mainstream and influential groups, unions and institutions have
heeded the Palestinian BDS Call and started to consider or apply
diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel.
During and ever since Israel's war on Gaza, Palestinian civil society
has stood more united than ever in urging people of conscience all
over the world to hold Israel accountable for its crimes by treating
it as South Africa was under apartheid rule. In response, unions,
academic groups, faith-based organizations, political parties, social
movements and others have adopted creative, context-sensitive and
sustainable BDS campaigns, from South Africa to Norway, from
Australia to Canada, from Britain to Venezuela, and even from the
podium of the President of the UN General Assembly.
Israel's state terrorism in Gaza, enabled by virtually unlimited
support from the US and Western governments in general, was a key
catalyst in spreading and deepening BDS around the world, prompting
advocates of Palestinian rights to feel that our South Africa moment
has finally arrived. Israel is now widely perceived, at a grassroots
level, as an international pariah that commits war crimes with
impunity and that needs to be held accountable to international law
and basic principles of human rights.
With every achievement that the BDS movement charts, the long path to
the one democratic state solution becomes shorter. After all,
although the BDS movement has never taken a position in the
one-state/two-states debate, being a rights-based movement, the only
solution that can logically accommodate the three basic rights stated
in the BDS Call is a one democratic state solution. The spread of the
compelling BDS message around the world is inspiring new sectors in
international civil society to join the struggle for Palestinian
rights; it is quite effectively raising awareness about Israel's
three-tiered system of oppression of the Palestinian people; and it
is unintentionally convincing many that only a democratic, unitary
state is worth fighting for.
By emphasizing equal humanity as its most fundamental principle, the
secular democratic state promises to end the fundamental injustices
that have plagued Palestine and, simultaneously, to transcend
national and ethnic dichotomies that now make it nearly impossible to
envision ethical coexistence in a decolonized Palestine, based on
equality, justice and freedom.
[1] Based on two presentations, the first to the International
Conference on the One & Two State Solutions for Palestine/Israel,
Boston, 28-29 March 2009, sponsored by the Trans Arab Research
Institute (TARI) and the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Its
Social Consequences of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and
the second to the conference titled Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models
of Statehood and Paths to Peace, Toronto, 22-24 June 2009, sponsored
by Queen's University and York University, Canada.
[2] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books, 1993.
[3] Even human rights reports issued by the US State Department have
condemned Israel's "institutional, legal and societal discrimination"
against the indigenous Palestinians. For example, see the 2008
report:
<http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/nea/119117.htm>http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/nea/119117.htm
[4] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9134.shtml
[5]
<http://www.unpo.org/content/view/446/83/>http://www.unpo.org/content/view/446/83/
[6] Amy Maguire, Law Protecting Rights: Restoring the law of
self-determination in the neo-colonial world. In Law Text Culture,
Volume 12, Issue 1. 2008.
<http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=ltc>http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=ltc
[7] UNESCO conference of expert, ibid.
[8]
<http://www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/98unesco.htm>http://www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/98unesco.htm
[9]
http://www.unpo.org/downloads/THE%20IMPLEMENTATION%20OF%20THE%20RIGHT%20TO%20SELF.pdf
[10] For more on this see: United against Apartheid, Colonialism and
Occupation - Dignity and Justice for the Palestinian People.
Palestinian Civil Society Strategic Position Paper. October 2008.
<http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf>http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf
[11] http://www.whatconvention.org/en/conv/0703.htm
[12] The Democratic Constitution (2007):
<http://www.adalah.org/eng/democratic_constitution-e.pdf>http://www.adalah.org/eng/democratic_constitution-e.pdf;
The Haifa Declaration (2007):
<http://www.mada-research.org/archive/haifaenglish.pdf>http://www.mada-research.org/archive/haifaenglish.pdf;
The Future Vision
(2006):<http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/dec06/tasawor-mostaqbali.pdf>http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/dec06/tasawor-mostaqbali.pdf
[13] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10497.shtml
[14] <http://www.bdsmovement.net/>www.BDSmovement.net
[15] For more on this see:
<http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=6804&jid=1&href=fulltext>http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=6804&jid=1&href=fulltext
----------
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL:
<http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22158>http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22158
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