{"id":748,"date":"2019-05-04T11:01:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T11:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.onestatecampaign.org\/?p=748"},"modified":"2020-11-30T20:59:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T20:59:53","slug":"choices-made-from-zionist-settler-colonialism-to-decolonization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/archives\/choices-made-from-zionist-settler-colonialism-to-decolonization\/","title":{"rendered":"Choices Made: From Zionist Settler Colonialism to Decolonization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the years tons of ink have been expended on the seemingly interminable issue of the Palestinians and Israel. The wonderful Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is filled from floor to ceiling with books, films and merchandise on the Palestinians and their struggles, while Steimatsky\u2019s in West Jerusalem offers as much (but less critical) material on Israel. The Association for Israel Studies lists thirteen affiliated institutes and departments of Israel Studies; there are eight Institutes of Palestine Studies in the world. Plus journals specializing in Palestine and Israel, dozens of international conferences on specific issues around Israel and Palestine and thousands of articles in a wide variety of journals. What else could be added to the analysis? What else could significantly alter how we view \u201cthe conflict\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, analysis matters. Seemingly arcane discussions of issues in academic language impenetrable to most readers and outside the activist discourse at time spawn ways of conceiving the political situation that open up new possibilities of reaching a political settlement while eliminating others. Such is the power of settler colonialism, a relatively recent focus of study, maybe twenty years old. Although totally absent from the considerable public discourse and political debate (even as a term \u201csettler colonialism\u201d is too academic and awkward to integrate into popular discussion), it clarifies more than any other term (\u201coccupation,\u201d for instance) the situation in the entirety of Israel\/Palestine while pointing the way to decolonization, the only just and feasible political resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does so by addressing a fundamental issue that has so far proven unbridgeable: Is Zionism a legitimate national movement or simply another case of colonialism? For those arguing that Zionism is a valid movement for Jewish national rights, it cannot be a colonial movement, since it is the Jews that are indigenous to the country. \u201cJewish\u201d rights by definition take precedence over those of Palestinians, whose very existence as a people, and certainly as the indigenous people, is denied. For those casting Zionism as a colonial movement of Eastern Europeans and Russians to take control of another people\u2019s country, it has no \u201cnational\u201d legitimacy. Not only is colonialism illegitimate since it violates the fundamental right of self-determination (and, in its form of permanent occupation, in violation of the 1973 International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid), but the very fact that Jews constitute a nation that even has rights of self-determination is rejected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is this lack of a way out \u2013 conceptually and structurally, as well as practically \u2013 that has led to the present state of Israeli apartheid and to virtual despair over any kind of just resolution. Regardless of the party in power in Israel, Zionism is an ideology and movement that lays exclusive claim to the entire Land of Israel, from the sea to the river. Israel officially denies the very fact of occupation (and, of course, apartheid), and refuses to recognize Palestinian national rights beyond Israeli-defined \u201cautonomy.\u201d It reserves the right to take any unilateral action it wishes in the Land of Israel out of both \u201csecurity concerns\u201d and entitlement. For this reason, and not because of difficulties in negotiations or logistics, Israel never seriously entertained the two-state solution. To do so would be tantamount to admitting that there does exist in \u201cour\u201d country another people with equal claims to national rights and territory. For their part, the Palestinians can never accept the legitimacy of Zionist claims, which to them smacks of legitimizing settler colonialism, although for reasons of political weakness they did accept the two-state solution. So all options are currently closed. The two-state solution because Israel refuses to give up claim to east Jerusalem and the West Bank\/Judea and Samaria; the current apartheid regime (including any adjustments between apartheid and autonomy the Trump Plan might propose) because Palestinians cannot accept permanent subjugation; and even a single bi-national state, because neither Israelis nor Palestinians can recognize the national presence of the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the present analytical parameters any political process is stuck. What is needed is a conceptual shift that offers a way out which, surprisingly, settler colonialism does. It does so by shifting the political outcome from a compromise between a dominant occupying state enjoying the support of governments and a weak occupied \u201cauthority\u201d to a process of decolonization in which, as in South Africa, the settlers remain but the structures ensuring their domination re dismantled. A kind of \u201cdeal\u201d or \u201cswap\u201d becomes possible: we the indigenous will grant \u201cbelonging\u201d (legitimacy) to you settler colonists \u2013 which you will never get any other way \u2013 in return for your recognizing our indigenous sovereignty, narrative and rights. The Constitution of the democratic state that emerges thus represents a kind of treaty between distinct collectives that stops short of a bi-national regime. Ensuring collective and individual rights addresses Israeli concerns over their continued presence in the country while also responding to Palestinian objections over any possibility to perpetuating a colonial situation. No less important, decolonization enables a process of Indigenous\/settler reconciliation while the new state\u2019s citizens collectively get on with constructing a shared civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decolonization as a Political Settlement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Any approach to ending settler colonialism in historic Palestine must begin with Zionism. Regardless of Palestinian policies, responses and negotiating positions, not substantially just political settlement is possible without dismantling the structures of domination erected by settler Zionism. Decolonization must contend with this fundamental asymmetry. It must also direct our attention to Zionist agency. The campaign of settler colonialism was entered into deliberately and the colonial situation constructed consciously and systematically. A political actor was responsible, and that was the Zionist movement, since 1948 the Israeli government. What\u2019s more, Zionism was twice offered the choice of reaching a national accommodation with the Palestinians, at the very beginning of the Zionist enterprise and again in 1988 when the PLO accepted the two-state solution, and in both cases it chose <\/em>to reject accommodation and pursue exclusivist, unilateral settler colonialism. The settler colonial analysis emphasizes Zionist agency \u2013 choices made \u2013 rather than biblical entitlement, Jewish victimization or ein breira <\/em>(\u201cno choice\u201d) that cast Jewish\/Zionist\/Israeli claims either as inherently just, exclusive and unchallengeable or as mere responses to others\u2019 agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of Zionism\u2019s claim to have begun as a genuine national movement, once it chose the form of settler colonialism it made decolonization the only acceptable form of resolution. It is Zionist\/Israeli policies and actions that have eliminated any other form of accommodation other than decolonization. By repeatedly and consistently choosing<\/em> to enforce an exclusive claim to the Land, excluding (and negating) Palestinian national rights and carrying out ongoing policies of displacement and colonization, Zionism rapidly transformed a potentially legitimate movement for Jewish national rights into an unacceptable and unsustainable settler colonial enterprise. Before considering what decolonization entails, let\u2019s briefly trace the transition from a Jewish national movement to Zionist settler colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zionism: A Settler Colonial Project<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One source of clarification that comes out of a settler colonial analysis is a simplified, yet not reductionist, depiction of \u201cIsraeli\u201d history, shown in the chart below. The usual political markers (the Roman \u201cexile,\u201d the Zionist Congresses, the waves of aliyot<\/em>(immigration), 1948, 1967, Oslo, etc.)lose their decisive character, folded as they are into a more continuous process of colonization. And rather than merely offering a most coherent view of Zionist history, it makes an even more important political contribution: specifying what must be done to achieve a genuine but inclusive postcolonial reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(1) The conquest of Canaan.<\/em> Since Zionism invokes Jewish national rights going back to biblical times, it is useful to note that the ancient Hebrews\/Israelites\/Judeans \u2013 not organically related to modern Jews at any rate \u2013 were also settler colonists. Referencing that long-gone history, then, actually strengthens the settler colonial analysis by undermining the notion of Israelite\/Jewish indigeneity and entitlement. It also emphasizes Israelite\/Zionist\/Israeli agency and responsibility, even towards indigenous Canaanites, the targets of Israelite genocide. The conquest of Canaan launches a settler colonial story-line \u2013 ironically at the center of Israeli claims to entitlement \u2013 that takes us through until today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Zionism chooses settler colonialism (1897-1904).<\/em> Jump to the start of modern Zionism. The \u201cHidden Question,\u201d what do we do with the Arabs?, arises already at the very birth of the Zionist movement. Addressing the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, Yitzhak Epstein (1907), who has been in Palestine already 20 years, told the assembled delegates:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the difficult issues regarding the rebirth of our people in its homeland, one issue outweighs them all: our relations with the Arabs\u2026. We devote attention to everything related to our homeland, we discuss and debate everything, we praise and criticise in every way, but one trivial thing we have overlooked so long in our lovely country: there exists an entire people who have held it for centuries and to whom it would never occur to leave\u2026. We must not uproot people from land to which they and their forefathers dedicated their best efforts and toil. If there are farmers who water their fields with their sweat, these are the Arabs. Who could place of value all the toil of the fellah, plowing in torrential rains, reaping in the hot summer, loading and transporting the harvest?\u2026<\/p>

But let us leave justice and sensitivity aside for a moment and look at the question only from the point of view of feasibility. Let us assume that in the land of our forefathers we don\u2019t have to care about others and we are allowed \u2013 perhaps even obligated \u2013 to purchase all the lands obtainable. Can this type of land acquisition continue? Will those who are dispossessed remain silent and accept what is being done to them? In the end, they will wake up and return to us in blows what we have looted from them with our gold! They will seek legal redress against the foreigners who have torn them from their land\u2026.<\/p>

The principles which should guide us when we settle among this nation are as follows:<\/p>

A: The Jewish people, the foremost with regard to justice and the law, egalitarianism and the brotherhood of man, respects not only the individual rights of every person but also the national rights of every nation and ethnic group.<\/p>

B: The people of Israel, yearning for rebirth, is in solidarity \u2013 in belief and deed \u2013 with all nations who are awakening to life and treats their aspirations with love and goodwill and fosters in them their sense of national identity.<\/p>

These two principles must be the basis of our relations with the Arabs\u2026. We must therefore enter into a covenant with the Arabs which will be productive to both sides and to humanity as a whole.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Forewarned by Epstein and others \u2013 Sephardi figures like Albert Entebbe and Nissim Behar, the Zionist leader Max Nordau who, upon arriving in Palestine in 1897, reported that \u201cthe bride is beautiful but she is married,\u201d \u201cCultural Zionists\u201d such as Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Ahad Ha-Am and Henrietta Szold, and on to Musa Alawi and numerous other Palestinians \u2013 Zionist leaders took deliberate decisions to become a setter colonial movement. They laid claim to the entire country, both denied and violated the national rights of the Palestinians, and embarked on a concentrated campaign of \u201cjudaization\u201d that continues, nearing completion, until today. Although Zionism as a movement emerging out of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia was predisposed to an exclusivist nationalism, it could have endeavored to avoid colonialism by acknowledging and accommodating Palestinian nationalism, but did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(3) Second chance: 1988-1996. <\/em>Whether one marks the formal beginning of Zionist colonialism in the policies already adopted by the Palestine Office in 1908, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the shock of the Arab Revolt (the \u201criots\u201d or even pogroms in Zionist parlance) in 1936, Zionism was always a self-conscious settler colonial movement that kept to its course through such major milestones as the Versailles Conference, the Peel Commission, 1948, 1967, the Oslo Process and on to today\u2019s policy of settlement, annexation and the abandonment of the two-state solution. Within this century and a quarter-long process of colonization, these seemingly profound events become mere details, at most stages, in a unitary, protracted and unilateral process. There was, however, one additional decisive moment when Zionism\/Israel could have fundamentally changed the nature of the \u201cconflict\u201d and moved towards genuine postcolonialism: 1988, when the PLO accepted the two-state solution and recognized the State of Israel within the 1947 armistice lines. One might even say that at that moment Zionism triumphed; it won the opportunity to resolve its differences with the Palestinians, win legitimacy and still keep 78 percent of historic Palestine. Yet despite this more-than-\u201cgenerous offer,\u201d Israel again chose<\/em> to reject it and to continue to the end (full judaization) its colonial campaign. Whatever might have happened had Rabin lived, his assassination in November 1995 and Netanyahu\u2019s election in March 1996 ended any Palestinian postcolonial aspirations. If the First Intifada (1987) erupted as a revolt against occupation, the Second Intifada (2000) represented a much deeper uprising against Zionism, judaization, displacement and colonialism. From this moment on Zionist settler colonialism closed all the options to decolonization except one: the transformation of the entire country into a single democratic state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(4) The \u201ctriumph\u201d of settler colonialism. <\/em>Israel\u2019s rejection of any possibility of accommodation and decolonization \u2013 indeed, its assertion of its commitment settler colonialism \u2013 came with Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 which effectively suppressed not only the Second Intifada but Palestinian resistance in general. Since then, and particularly in the course of Netanyahu\u2019s fourth government beginning in 2015, the process of judaization has been completed: East Jerusalem has been formally annexed to Israel, the existing settlement \u201cblocs\u201d that fragment the West Bank are on their way to annexation and Gaza has been effectively severed from the West Bank, and the Right of Return is not even on the table. Taken as a whole, the Palestinian inhabitants of historic Palestine account for 50% of the population but are confined to 10% of the land, and that in dozens of disconnected enclaves. Unless a process of decolonization can be forced on Israel, Zionism has succeeded in its primary goal: transforming Palestine into the Land of Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(5) Towards postcolonialism: a single democratic state.<\/em>When viewed through the lens of settler colonialism, only a process of decolonization can engender a genuine state of postcolonization, a type of political settlement that addresses the underlying structures and mechanisms of domination, not merely its symptoms. It is only under conditions of thorough decolonization that indigenous\/settler reconciliation can take place and both populations can move ahead towards establishing a common civil society. These are the only conditions in which a settler colonial situation can end without the settlers leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards Decolonization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are only a few ways to end settler colonialism. The settlers might physically leave, thus returning the country back to its native inhabitants. This happened in situations where reconciliation proved impossible and settler domination became unsustainable: the British in Ireland, Kenya and Rhodesia; the French in Algeria; the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique; the South Africans in Namibia. Alternatively, the settlers succeed in either eliminating the indigenous population, as the Spanish did in Argentina, or in reducing it to a marginal position within the independent settler policy, as in Brazil, Mexico and much of Latin America, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The settlers may also succeed in establishing an independent policy but unable to decisively defeat the natives, who remain but constitute a destabilizing population, thus leaving open the possibility of ending settler dominance. Israeli settler colonialism over Palestine is a prime example of this dilemma, as was South Africa before the end of apartheid and Northern Ireland until the end of The Troubles (which still needs resolution).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, only a successful process of decolonization and indigenous\/settler reconciliation can bring an end to \u201cthe conflict\u201d (a term the Palestinian reject since it implies a contest between two warring \u201csides\u201d rather than the unilateral imposition of a repressive settler regime). The history of the \u201cpeace process\u201d over the past half-century has been one that has been restricted to finding some pragmatic formula, a workable compromise. The Palestinians, in their political weakness, have played along with this. For the past 30 years an extremely \u201cgenerous offer`\u2019 to the Israelis has been on the table: we, the indigenous population, will not only recognize your sovereignty over 78 percent of our historic homeland, we will also normalize relations with you and ensure that the wider Muslim world does so as well. But by submitting to a \u201cpeace process\u201d based on power negotiations rather than on international law, human rights, justice or decolonization, the Palestinians have had to accept ever more outrageous \u201ccompromises\u201d up to submitting to an apartheid regime. Such a process has encouraged Israel to see accommodation with the Palestinians as a zero-sum, win\/lose proposition, one which Israel believes it has won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a justice-and-peace process based on decolonization defines a political settlement in terms that address the deeper issues involved, and thus lends the claims of the weaker indigenous greater moral weight as well as equal political weight and visibility. What, then, would the true decolonization of Palestine entail? What would have to be done for an indigenous\/settler accommodation, if not reconciliation, to be realized?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

+ The \u201csettler contract,\u201d <\/em>by which the settlers agreed among themselves that they are entitled to colonize the country, must be undone<\/em>. This opens a space in which they can make the necessary gesture of greatest peril to them: acknowledging the sovereign presence of the indigenous people and their right to self-determination. It is this act that makes the constitutional \u201cdeal\u201d possible: settler legitimacy in return for native rights;<\/p>

+ The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their country <\/em>and, to the degree that it is possible, to the places from where they were expelled, must be implemented. Refugees \u2013 the internally displaced as well as those exiled \u2013 must rebuild their personal lives and to be fully reintegrated into the country\u2019s society, economy and polity.<\/p>

+ A democratic regime <\/em>must be instituted where common citizenship, equal civil rights, restorative justice and respect for collective forms of cultural and religious association combine with acknowledgement of past colonial crimes <\/em>and, in a concession to the settlers, a process of reconciliation.<\/p>

+ The native must be \u201cwritten back in.\u201d<\/em>The \u201cnarrative gap\u201d in which the indigenous story now was unknown, unacknowledged, counter-intuitive, threatening, repressed and resisted by the dominant settler population must be filled. That \u201cgap\u201d rendered the indigenous anti-colonial struggle invisible, concealing and denying the fact of settler colonialism itself. While parts of the settler narrative may be integrated into a new representative one, some of its basic elements \u2013 that of settlers coming to an empty, barren land devoid of history, of violent, unentitled, primitive indigenous people versus peaceful \u201ccivilized\u201d settlers, and in this case of de-judaizing the national narrative \u2013 must be superseded; and<\/p>

+ The structures and mechanisms of domination (de-judaization) must be dismantled<\/em>, in particular of population management, land management, military and security controls, the management of legitimacy and a decolonization of the mind \u2013 settler and colonized alike.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Towards a Political Plan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Defining a process of decolonization, then, brings us closer to an actual plan. As important as resistance, protests, BDS activism, lobbying, campaigning and other actions may be, a political struggle cannot be resolved without an end-game \u2013 and in the case of Palestine\/Israel an end-game formulated and led by Palestinians, with strategic support from critical Israelis and the international civil society. We need to translate the requirements of decolonization into a political plan, a vision of the future, and an effective strategy for getting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), a core group of Palestinians and Israeli Jews that I have been engaged with over the past year (which has a facebook page of that name), has formulated the following 10-point program for establishing a single democratic state in historic Palestine based on the principle of decolonization:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) A Single Constitutional Democracy. <\/em>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\u2019s governance.<\/p>

(2) Right of Return, of Restoration and of Reintegration into Society. <\/em>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>

(3) Individual Rights. <\/em>No State law, institution or practices may discriminate among its citizens on the basis of national or social origin, color, gender, language, religionor political opinion, or sexual orientation. A single citizenship confers on all the State\u2019s residents the right to freedom of movement, the right to reside anywhere in the country, and equal rights in every domain.<\/p>

(4) Collective Rights.<\/em>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.<\/p>

(5) Immigration.<\/em> Normal procedures of obtaining citizenship will be extended to those choosing to immigrate to the country.<\/p>

(6) Constructing a Shared Civil Society<\/em>. The Stateshall 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.<\/p>

(7) Economy and Economic Justice.<\/em>Our vision seeks to achieve justice, and this includes social and economic justice. Economic policy must address the decades of exploitation and discrimination which have sown deep socioeconomic gaps among the people living in the land. The income distribution in Israel\/Palestine is more unequal than any country in the world. A State seeking justice must develop a creative and long-term redistributive economic policy to ensure that all citizens have equal opportunity to attain education, productive employment, economic security and a dignified standard of living.<\/p>

(8) Commitment to Human Rights, Justice and Peace. <\/em>The Stateshall uphold international law and seek the peaceful resolution of conflicts through negotiation and collective security in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The State will sign and ratify all international treaties on human rights and its people shall reject racism and promote social, cultural and political rights as set out in relevant United Nations covenants.<\/p>

(9) Our Role in the Region. <\/em>The ODS Campaign will join with all progressive forces in the Arab world struggling for democracy, social justice and egalitarian societies free from tyranny and foreign domination. The State shall seek democracy and freedom in a Middle East that respects its many communities, religions, traditions and ideologies, yet strives for equality, freedom of thought and innovation. Achieving a just political settlement in Palestine, followed by a thorough process of decolonization, will contribute measurably to these efforts.<\/p>

(10) International responsibility<\/em>. On a global level, the ODS Campaign views itself as part of the progressive forces striving for an alternative global order that is just, egalitarian and free of any oppression, racism, imperialism and colonialism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The ODSC program envisions a multicultural democracy that is thoroughly democratic but recognizes and protects the collective rights of all the peoples living in the country. As a constitutional democracy, the new state provides for one common citizenship, one parliament and thoroughly equal civil rights for all the country\u2019s citizens. The authority to govern and make laws would emanate exclusively from the consent of the governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decolonization requires, of course the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return back to their homeland. It also entails the dismantling of all structures of domination and repression. No group or collectivity can have any special privileges (save affirmative action designed to help the Palestinian population as well as Mizrahi Jews and other disadvantages communities achieve parity), nor will any group, party or collectivity have the ability to leverage any control or domination over others. Other forms of governing one\u2019s personal life, such as religious laws and customs, will be respected within their communal settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decolonization must be accompanied, however, by a positive process of moving towards postcolonialism. Having ensured the integrity of collective identities and associations, the ODSC vision is that offorging a new, shared civil identity, society and institutions. The following illustration depicts this postcolonial country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Towards a Strategy of Decolonization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Analyses, plans and even organization are necessary parts of any struggle, but for any campaign to succeed, a focused and effective strategy must be developed, of which activism is a crucial part. The stakeholders, in this case Palestinians with the support of their Israeli Jewish allies, must mobilize their supporters abroad and give them their marching orders. Only a Palestinian-led movement can bring the direction and leadership needed for turning supporters into effective advocates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the whites in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggles, Israeli Jews will never be active partners in a struggle for the decolonization of Palestine. As settler colonials they are benefitting from the situation they have created and have no motivation to fundamentally change it \u2013 certainly not to decolonize, which they view, like all settlers, as a form of suicide. The best we can aim for strategically is to \u201csoften\u201d them through an inclusive plan of decolonization to a point where, as in South Africa, they will not actively resist the transition to postcolonialism that, in the end, will have to be imposed upon them. Taking a leaf out of the playbook of the ANC, this means forging a Palestinian\/international civil society alliance, in which Israeli Jewish allies will also play a key role. The ultimate goal of such an alliance is to generate broad-based support among the international public \u2013 trade unions, churches, intellectuals, academics and students, the activist community and the broader public \u2013 that will \u201ctrickle up\u201d and eventually change government policies in support of a single democratic state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time has come for the decolonization of Palestine and for a new, inclusive state of genuine postcolonialism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years tons of ink have been expended on the seemingly interminable issue of the Palestinians and Israel. The wonderful Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is filled from floor to ceiling with books, films and merchandise on the Palestinians and their struggles, while Steimatsky\u2019s in West Jerusalem offers as much (but less critical) material …<\/p>\n

Choices Made: From Zionist Settler Colonialism to Decolonization<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07.png",695,617,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07-300x266.png",300,266,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07.png",695,617,false],"large":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07.png",695,617,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07.png",695,617,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/05\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-18.00.07.png",695,617,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"author","author_link":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/archives\/author\/author\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Over the years tons of ink have been expended on the seemingly interminable issue of the Palestinians and Israel. The wonderful Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is filled from floor to ceiling with books, films and merchandise on the Palestinians and their struggles, while Steimatsky\u2019s in West Jerusalem offers as much (but less critical) material…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onestatecampaign.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}