As the talk about the transition from the settler colonial state to a democratic state increases, different kinds of expressions are becoming more recurrent in Palestinian and pro-Palestinian discourse. They can be summed up in two categories, the first calling for reshaping of the current structure: "There is a one state reality, now grant equal rights"; "we have one apartheid state, we need one democratic state". The second calling for the dismantling of the settler state of Israel and establishment of the democratic state of Palestine.
Are these simply different iterations of the same vision —in which case we can simply choose the most commonly acceptable wording— or are they different visions? Does the framework of ending apartheid and granting equal rights capture the whole picture?
Understanding settler colonialism
It is true that Israel is an apartheid state that does not grant its citizens equal rights. But the issue goes way deeper: Israel is a settler colonial state. This means that (1) it throws and keeps indigenous out, (2) it gets settlers in to supplant them, and (3) it treats everyone there differently—even outside the scope of rights. All three aspects being identity-based.
(1) Throwing and keeping the indigenous out: The colony was established by ethnically razing Palestine's native population in 1948. This Nakba is ongoing, by violent means such as causing economic distress that forces Palestinians to emigrate or more violent means like the genocide in Gaza. This is not about "equality between citizens", and it falls outside the scope of "apartheid" as defined by Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, for example. The right of return must be granted and the economic and military policies need to be replaced with non-colonial ones.
(2) Supplanting the indigenous with settlers: The colony also enacted a series of laws that grant Jews automatic citizenship and allows Israelis rights to the lands of so-called "absentees"—i.e. ethnically razed Palestinians. This is not about "equality between citizens" and it falls outside the scope of "apartheid" as defined by B'Tselem, for example. Non-citizens as well must not be segregated against on the basis of their religion or identity, and the refugees must have their homes back.
(3) Treating citizens differently on the basis of identity: This includes unequal rights but is not limited to it. The colony also politicizes identity in a number of ways that the "equal rights" lens fails to capture. For example:
- All Israeli citizens have equal rights to education, but there is one curriculum for Jews and another for non-Jews; and both deliberately include Zionist values instead of civic ones.
- All Israeli citizens who wish to run for Knesset are equally required to support the existence of the Jewish state.
- All Israeli citizens have the same rights to water, electricity and sanitation, but government policies favor Jewish areas over non-Jewish areas.
- All Israeli municipalities obey the same laws, but non-Jewish municipalities exercise jurisdiction over only 2.5% of the land for around 20% of the population.
The colony's repartition of capital also reflects identitarian segregation, an aspect of power that falls outside the scope of equal rights (and of bourgeois "democracy" in general, for that matter). For example, the top 11 companies make up 2/3 of the GNP and are owned by Zionists. Employed non-Jewish citizens earn on average less than 60% of what Jewish citizens earn. More than 35% of non-Jewish citizens live beneath the poverty line. And the proportion of Jews going to university is double that of non-Jews, a deliberate result of policies that are based on the premise that "educated Arabs are a problem for Israel".
The wording of the Balfour Declaration is interesting in this regard. It states that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice [1] the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or [2] the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country" (emphasis mine). The rights of both non-Jews in Palestine and Jews outside it are mentioned, but only for Jews outside of Palestine is political status to be respected. This shows how the colony's raison d'être is not to deprive the indigenous of their civil and religious rights (though it may go ahead and enforce apartheid whenever convenient) but to crush and supplant the indigenous society's right and ability for political self-determination.
Understanding what a transition to democracy entails
The above are only some examples of what "Israel is a settler colonial state" (or a Zionist state or a Jewish state) means. One wonders, if all of these aspects of the colony are done away with, what exactly is left of "Israel"? Its being "the nation-state of the Jewish People [where] the realization of the right to national self-determination is exclusive to the Jewish People" is not just the wording of the colony's "Basic Law" that can be repealed, it is indeed what the colony is meant to be, its identity and its essence.
The "Tomorrow's Palestine" Declaration—a statement of what a liberated Palestine would look like, signed by over 20,000 Palestinians—defines the secular and democratic state as a state "that honors the right of the Palestinian people to self-determine … that separates religion from politics and claims no religious legitimacy". If we are to honor the right of the Palestinian people to self-determine, can we imagine them choosing their state to be "Israel"? And if the state claims no religious legitimacy, meaning it does not justify its existence on the basis of representing Jews or on the basis of the Torah, what justification is there for it being called "Israel", the name of the Jewish nation according to the Torah?
This makes all the more sense when we compare Israel to ethno-nationalist states that are not colonial. For example, Shiite Iran or Sunni Saudi Arabia, are the fruit of a preexisting society, not its cause. The regimes currently there were not established atop an existing society by ethnically razing indigenous inhabitants in order to supplant them with migrants. Speaking of democratizing Iran or Saudi Arabia would thus be representative of the extent of the change needed in such countries. On the other hand, Israel itself—the state, but also the entity itself with all its relations of power—was established as a colony. Before the Islamic revolution, there was Iran; but before the Nakba, there was no Israel. There were Palestinian natives (Muslims, Jews, Christians and others) and non-Palestinian immigrants (Armenians, Kurds, Circassians, Jewish Europeans and Jewish Arabs) who were welcome to integrate Palestinian society. Undoing the Nakba means returning to that situation and establishing the Palestinian state through which its society, a society not of natives or settlers but of citizens, will self-determine.
Expressions like "democratizing Israel", or expressions that limit the needed change to equal rights or ending apartheid, fail to adequately showcase the extent and depth of the transition that must be effected. Undoing Zionism means to effectively depoliticize identity, dismantle the existing settler structure and break the colonial relations of power it has imposed—in practice, dismantling the state of Israel and establishing the state of Palestine. These expressions are those that capture the essence of liberation and decolonization.
The Palestinian liberation movement will have to make this vision even clearer, and efforts to accomplish that are well under way. Palestinians, anti-Zionist Israelis and allies worldwide must take part in normalizing a discourse that accurately defines liberation. And, more importantly, to actively organize in political movements that adopt a decolonial political vision.
