The 'One Democratic State Campaign' program for a multicultural democratic state in Palestine/Israel

http://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/democratic-multicultural-palestine
http://socialistproject.ca/2018/05/the-one-democratic-state-campaign-for-a-multicultural-democratic-state-in-palestine-israel
Date Written:  2018-05-03
Publisher:  Mondoweiss
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX22629

As the Leonard Cohen song goes, ":everybody knows" the two-state solution is dead and gone. Zionism’s 120-year quest to Judaize Palestine – to transform Palestine into the Land of Israel – has been completed. Every Israeli government since 1967 has refused to seriously entertain the notion of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

Abstract: 
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Needed: A New Political End-Game

As important as protests, activism, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and other campaigns and actions may be, there is no substitute for a political settlement that will finally end the oppression and violence. One cannot be in a political struggle without an end-game, and in our case it must address two key processes: achieve restorative justice through dismantling the structures and ideologies of domination on the one hand, while replacing them with structures of social, cultural, political, economic equality, accompanied by a process of reconciliation. For that dual political process to succeed – the first most urgent for Palestinians, the second most important to sell to, or impose upon, Jewish Israelis – we need a plan, a vision of the future, and an effective strategy for getting there. This is the challenge before us, and it is urgent and crucial. If we, the stakeholders, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis together, do not offer our own peoples a mutually acceptable way out, and if we do not offer you, individuals and organizations abroad dedicated to the cause of justice in Palestine/Israel, a political program for which to advocate, we will lose. Justice does not prevail by magic. Unless it is empowered politically, it remains a vague and far-off aspiration. Worse – and this seems to be happening – activists and supporters will simply drift off to other urgent causes if there is no movement or prospect of success. Mobilization over time requires movement, direction and strategy, and only a political end-game provides that.