May 22, 2013

The political stalemate in Palestine and Israel over the two-state solution has finally provoked Palestinians from the occupied territories to declare a strategic change in direction of the one-state solution.

Palestinian activists from different political persuasions and careers paths have made a declaration for a democratic state for all its citizens on the 65th anniversary of the Nakba. One of the founders of the new Popular Movement for One Democratic State, a veteran leader of Fatah, said that it is much different than the PLO’s call for a secular democratic state which Israel has often attacked as an attempt to negate the existence of Israel and the Jewish people.

In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Radi Jarai said that this democratic movement has absolutely no limitations on its citizens between Jews and Palestinians. “We will respect the Israel law of return 1951 and will also defend the Palestinians’ right of return.” Jarai, who spent years in an Israel prison, said that the democratic state that he and his friends are calling for can be “a refuge for Jews and Palestinians.”

Jarai said that without such a one-state idea, born of the deadlock in the political process, Palestinians are bound to continue to live in an apartheid situation for years to come: “Look around, there are racist laws for Arabs and Jews, subsidizing settlements for Jews and separate roads.”

Jarai said that he and a group of Palestinians met on May 15 and signed a founding declaration that they plan to reprint in Arabic, Hebrew and English and possibly in Russian to encourage all people to join their popular movement. When asked how he responds to Israelis who are ideological Zionists, and want a state as Jewish as France is French and Britain is British, Jarai said: “We want a state for its citizens and we refuse to negate any group based on ethnicity, race or religion.” Jarai said that a group supporting his movement already exists in Jaffa and Haifa in Israel. A conference held last year in Haifa was host ro more than 300 supporters of the one state idea, he said.