G
goodguy
Guest
"samson" <jungle123us@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:fb4bd005-44b0-4dc8-8352-6868e896ff51@t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
> Democracy: an existential threat?
> A single state in historic Palestine, based on equality, is the most
> promising alternative to the already dead two-state dogma
> Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti, Guardian
>
>
>
> December 31, 2006
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
news:fb4bd005-44b0-4dc8-8352-6868e896ff51@t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
> Democracy: an existential threat?
> A single state in historic Palestine, based on equality, is the most
> promising alternative to the already dead two-state dogma
> Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti, Guardian
>
>
>
> December 31, 2006
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>