‘Tomorrow’s Palestine’ — A Declaration of the One Democratic State Initiative (ODSI)

INTRODUCTION

By Mya Shone

As we step up our efforts to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, Palestinians are posing the essential question of what next. Members of the One Democratic State Initiative (https://odsi.co/en) in the West Bank, Gaza, and the diaspora crafted a declaration for “Tomorrow’s Palestine” that garnered over 20,600 Palestinian signatories within a few days.

“Our people,” asserts the Declaration, “must drop all kinds of non-solutions, including two-states, bi-nationalism, confederation and seeking “equal rights within the Jewish state”; and instead return to our historical vision for liberation.” This is “one democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea … a state for all its citizens with no discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, culture, language, sex or gender…”

The Palestinian people are speaking out and we, in Socialist Organizer, endorse their effort. The Fourth International opposed the partition of Palestine by the United Nations in November 1947 and we have never wavered from the struggle for a democratic and secular society in all of historic Palestine. At this critical moment in the Palestinian struggle for self-determination “Tomorrow’s Palestine — A Declaration” returns to the original Palestinian vision for liberation to shine a guiding light for the path forward today.

We call upon our Palestinian comrades and friends to sign the declaration and distribute it widely.

We call upon all others to endorse this effort, too. Join us in the effort to give substance to the call for a Free Palestine from the river to the sea. 

(Mya Shone is a member of the editorial board of The Organizer and a steering committee member of Socialist Organizer. You can contact us at http://www.socialistorganizer if you are interested in workin on this important campaign.)

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‘TOMORROW’S PALESTINE’

WE DECLARE:

Ever since its inception, the core of the Zionist project has been a settler colonial one, aiming to occupy the totality of Palestine and establish a “Jewish state” on it to turn it into “Eretz Israel” by supplanting its native population by means of occupation, terrorism, displacement, apartheid and genocide. For this reason, any past, present or future solution is contingent on the defeat of the Zionist project and the establishment of its fundamental antithesis: One democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea.

This is what was proposed both before and after the Nakba, up until the Palestinian Liberation Organization dropped focus with the 1974 “ten-point program” and the slogan of the “independent Palestinian state” on 22 % of Palestinian land. These concessions culminated in the 1993 Oslo accords that recognized the “legitimacy” of the Zionist state, dropping 1948 Palestinians and diaspora Palestinians out of the Palestinian equation, in an essential deviation from the Palestinian vision for liberation and national constants (thawabet).

Our people must therefore drop all kinds of non-solutions, including two states, binationalism, confederation, and seeking “equal rights within the Jewish state”; and instead return to our historical vision for liberation: Dismantling the Zionist entity, liberation and return to one democratic and secular Palestinian state, i.e.:

• A Palestinian state, whose capital is Jerusalem, that honors the right of the Palestinian people to self-determine and expresses its sovereignty over the entirety of its land, honors the right of Palestinian refugees to return and extends Palestinian citizenship to all Jews who have broken free from Zionism and who wish to remain in it as Palestinians. This state will be the culmination of the liberation of Palestine, including the liberation of the Palestinian people from Zionist colonization and the liberation of Jews from Zionist ideology.

• A democratic state, a state for all its citizens with no discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, culture, language, sex or gender, thus preserving the distinctiveness of the Palestinian heritage in its cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity; not a duplicate of capitalist colonial models, but a state, i.e., a functional administrative tool, whose society actively takes part in politics and through which its society expresses its political will and chooses how to administer its affairs.

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