We met an activist from the ODSI (One Democratic State Initiative) in Paris, to find out a little about the positions of this grouping, which interests us insofar as we share the same slogan of a free, secular and democratic Palestine, from the sea to the Jordan. More information in French (and English) can be found on their website https://odsi.co/fr/
Can you tell us about the Initiative ?
The One Democratic State Initiative (ODSI) is a political initiative working in Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora to revive the historic Palestinian proposal for a democratic and secular Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. ODSI emerged within the ODS movement, which began to take shape following the Munich Congress in 2012, followed by the Zurich Congress in 2014.
The 2017 Istanbul Congress propelled the political foundations of what became ODSI around 2022. Its foundations are strong markings distinguishing ODSI from other ODS groups, namely the refusal to amalgamate the democratic state with the binational state, considering that the democratic state is a secular state in essence and that the question of democracy is universal, i.e. it supported all struggles for democracy internationally, regionally and above all in the Arab countries bordering Palestine.
What does the genocide in Gaza reveal about the nature of Zionism ?
The genocide that accompanies settlement has clearly emerged as a "structural" element in the Zionist project, not a given "moment" or "event" in a military conflict.
Patrick Wolf has noted that Settler Colonialism, which provokes major events such as genocide, like the 1948 Nakba, represents "a continuous reality", and this reality over time is merely the demonstration of a structure of its own that goes far beyond a simple event of the past (or present, genocide in Gaza).
Genocide, then, is a constituent element of the Zionist project : To create a colonial state with a sociological basis that requires the physical disappearance of the indigenous natives. The creation of this ghetto-colony from scratch can only be achieved by the destructive force of a powerful state and a militarized Spartan society ; This fascist "drift", which is widely shared, is in reality only an essentialist and profound element of the Zionist project : 99 out of 120 Knesset deputies approved the genocide in Gaza (11 abstentions and 10 Palestinian deputies against the genocidal policy) ; Cultural genocide, with the mass destruction of universities, schools, libraries, cultural centers, theaters and the assassination of hundreds of academics, writers and artists (and even the Palace of Justice), accompanies the physical genocide of civilians. It is even its sine qua non, as Richard Ovenden noted in relation to the war in Bosnia. The collective hysteria even reached Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, who approved the genocide in Gaza ; The soldiers' jubilation at scenes of horror : the sadism of an officer who blows up buildings as a present for his daughter celebrating her birthday, the tank that repeatedly crushes the corpse of a Palestinian, etc. ; the list goes on and on, not to mention the unbearable descriptions of inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as the systematic torture inflicted on political prisoners…
Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have become instruments in the hands of colonialism and imperialism. Hamas claims to represent an alternative and to have regained Palestinian political leadership. What can we expect from it ?
While it's true that Fatah is the sole party of the Ramallah authority, we have to distinguish between the two entities, because Fatah, as a large mass organization that includes a consequent number of different segments of Palestinian society, remains linked to the national question and its main constants. That said, it's unfair to blithely lump them together, as there are still forces and groupings within Fatah's ranks that oppose the policy of the Ramallah Authority, even if they are unable to correct the political course of Fatah's leadership.
The Authority has become a functional authority affiliated to Israel and the United States, and this does not apply to Fatah as a whole as a mass organization.
As for Hamas, whose historic dream is to replace the PLO and Fatah to become the sole "representative" of the national cause, it was the first victim of the October 7th attack. This confirms the idea that Hamas is always a victim of its own success :
In 2006, its electoral victory transformed it from a resistance organization into a state organization (at least in Gaza) managing the civil affairs of a stricken area, under full military siege and without resources. Hamas, by transforming itself into a semi-state structure, has lost credibility and popularity (at least among Gazans) and demonstrated its inability to build a regime that respects the legitimate aspirations of its people (excessive authoritarianism, social repression, especially against women, and exclusivity of power vis-à-vis other political organizations).
The other aspect of the failure of the 2006 victory is the insaturation of the first and longest deep division in the history of the Palestinian political class. Added to this is the fact that the Hamas regime in Gaza has been similar to that of the Ramallah Authority in its daily repressive practices.
This situation is dramatic, because on the one hand, Hamas will not be able to occupy the combat sites abandoned by the PLO, and on the other hand, the independent democratic forces (including certain forces within Fatah), have not yet been able to represent a real alternative. We are in a terrifying impasse, particularly in this time of genocide and total war, which is taking place from Gaza to the West Bank.
Some Palestinians believe that the solution lies in resurrecting the PLO, making it more democratic and opening it up to other factions. Is this a solution ?
Yes, some people think there's still a possibility of restructuring the PLO on a new, more democratic basis, but nobody believes that this democratization involves opening up the PLO to these other factions, which are not themselves democratic.
The PLO was created on a system of quotas arbitrarily allocated to different organizations according to the political circumstances of the moment, and this system is hardly democratic. That said, Hamas must find its place alongside Fatah in this rebuilt PLO (if it is to be reconstituted ?) and the other 12 aging factions-empty shells-must withdraw from the political scene to allow other independent social and political forces to develop in order to exist. Personally, I don't really believe that the solution lies in renewing the PLO, which was the product of its time (Cold War, wars of triumphant national liberation, rise of radical leftist movements, etc.), and that time is past.
The Palestinian political imagination must find other ways out of this vacuum of genuine representative power for the Palestinian people.
Why is the Two-State Solution an illusion ?
First of all, it's an archaic, racist "solution" (if it really is a solution), with Palestinians in their state and Israeli Jews in theirs. But in reality, the Oslo Accords, as perceived by the Israeli "left" in power at the time, never envisaged the creation of a truly sovereign and independent Palestinian state. The proof of this is that the 600-page "Accords" do not contain a single word about : Ending the occupation, Ending colonization, or a single word mentioning the creation of a Palestinian state.
Quite simply, it's a crass deception that's been going on for 30 years already. In these times of surreal "negotiations", but highly beneficial for settlement : the number of settlers in the West Bank has risen from 160,000 in 1994 to 800,000 in 2022 (other sources mention a million settlers already installed) and the number of settlements has tripled. The territories presumed to form the territorial basis of the future fictional state have shrunk from 23% of the land of Mandate Palestine to barely 9%.
The two-state "non-solution" was designed and planned by the Zionist establishment to manage the conflict, not resolve it.
Can you explain the difference between a democratic state and a bi-national state ?
ODSI is a continuation of a group formed during the work of the 2017 Istanbul ODS Congress as previously mentioned. One of the points of divergence with other congressmen and other ODS groupings such as the Haifa group has been around this binational question. This controversial question concerning the Israelized Jewish community as a constituted national group or as a culturally and culturally marked community dominated debates over the years from 2018 to 2020. During these years, a minority tendency towards the bi-nationalism of the democratic state began to be lukewarmly expressed within the ODS-Haifa group, giving proactive indications of what would later (and unambiguously) become the position of the "for One Democratic State" Campaign (ODSC). Thus, and under the influence of one of ODSC's leaders, Jeff Halper, we were confronted with the recognition that Jews or Israelis constitute a single nationality (a national group) with the need to grant them specific collective rights, leading us to the conclusion (by extension) that they have the right to self-determination and, consequently, to their national state.
This is incompatible with the principle of a single democratic state, which sees this state as a state of equal citizens irrespective of their cultural and religious specificities, i.e. the democratic state is an inclusive, non-national (post-national) state, neither Jewish nor Islamic, neither Sharia nor halakha state, and cannot be similar to the Western model as a "nation-state". If we accept that their religious specificity as Jews is a national specificity, i.e. if we accept de facto that they constitute a national group that fulfills itself as a nation, a nation whose members enjoy collective rights on the basis of this national bond that unites them. If we accept the idea of the Jewish or Jewish-Israeli nation, we capitulate to the Zionist thesis. We have warned our comrades of this danger of legitimizing the Zionist founding narrative that sees all Jews as members of an eternal nation throughout the ages and in all the countries to which they belonged. Here, we have opposed this drift accepting this Zionist claim as the central support for the establishment of the Jewish state as an exclusive nation-state.
ODSI has produced a text detailing this major difference between a democratic state of citizenship and a binational state. (I can provide you with this document, which we have entitled "ODS or OBS", if you wish.)
What is your view of the Palestinian left, in particular the PFLP ?
The Palestinian left, dependent on the authoritarian and bloodthirsty regimes in Damascus and Teheran, has lost all credibility, especially the Popular Front. The Popular and Democratic Fronts have become formal organizations living off the glories of a distant past of struggle, while their bureaucratic apparatuses continue to exist on the margins of events.
The left-wing fragments that remain in their discourse cannot hide their dependence on the forces that brutally oppress their people (the Syrian regime is not only killing Syrians, but also Palestinians in Syria). We can say without hesitation that there is no longer an organized Palestinian left at present, but there are independent left-wing people and isolated militants within these two organizations.
Do you think that there is a segment of the Israeli Jewish population that could rally to the project of a democratic state ?
We have no illusions that the democratic state will be quickly and broadly accepted, especially in these times of creeping polarization towards popular and institutional fascism. The fact remains that the democratic state is a Palestinian political proposal addressed to Palestinians and Israelis as the two partners of this future state. The worst thing about Israeli society is the blatant expansion of a supremacist, racist right-wing, heir to the late Rabbi Kahane. And to control power, it has had to give pride of place to extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, an avowed admirer of Baruch Goldstein, the man behind the 1994 massacre of Palestinians in Hebron.
It didn't take twenty years for the friends of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin to come to power. In today's Israel, crime pays ! Don't think that Ben Gvir is an isolated extremist in Netanyahu's little miracle playground. He won 10% of the vote. His party is the third largest in the Knesset. And other figures, such as Bezalel Smotrich and Naftali Bennett, rival him in racism and hatred.
In fact, it should be remembered that right-wing politicization, as it is called, is not the sole work of the Right. The Left made a major contribution to it by scuttling itself in 2001, under the auspices of the Ehud Barak-Shimon Peres Labor tandem. The history of the Zionist left is one long decline, of which the results of the last legislative elections are the tragic outcome, with the Labor party reduced to four seats and the disappearance of Meretz. It's all very well to talk about the right-wing trend in Israeli society, but what else can happen when the left-wing parties scuttle each other ?
In this harmful climate that Israeli society is going through, we can state without hesitation that the majority of Israelis are opposed to the ODS theses, because they perceive them as a threat to the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. They fear that a democratic state would lead to a situation where Jews would become a minority, putting an end to the exclusively Jewish character of the state.
Outside this majority, there are minority voices of de-Zionized Israeli Jews, intellectuals, academics and journalists who fight against this propaganda machine that conditions Israeli society and dehumanizes Palestinians to justify the worst crimes. Renowned historian Ilan Pappé addressed his country in November 2023, saying " it's not always easy to stick to your moral compass, but if it points north (towards decolonization and liberation) then it will most likely guide you through the fog of poisonous propaganda. "
Secondly, despite years of Zionist indoctrination and social engineering, there are some segments of Mizrahis (Oriental Jews), Zionist liberals who are trying to free themselves from Zionism and its exclusive Jewish state.
In France, as in many Western countries, the bourgeois media and imperialist governments want to criminalize anti-Zionism, claiming that it's just a variant of anti-Semitism. How do you respond ?
Anti-Zionism has a long and distinctly Jewish history, before it became part of the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist colonial project. The Bund 's history shows that the fight against Zionism is not a new one, and that it was led by Jews who detected its true nature as a reactionary and colonial movement in the service of the bourgeoisie. It's worth noting that there were indeed two paths among European Jews, and Zionists were not in the majority. But the anti-Zionists were all, or almost all, killed, and we know very well that neither the Zionist nor the Western leaders were bothered by this. Afterwards, they use the name of those who were killed for their colonial project. Yet, if anti-Zionism was initiated by Jews who are not naturally anti-Semites, we cannot accuse of anti-Semitism those who fight Zionism today, Zionism as a nationalist and racist ideology at the service of a colonial settlement project.
What do you call the democratic state you're fighting for ? Israeli-Palestinian state ? Secular and democratic Palestine ?
The name of the democratic state will be Palestine, the democratic and secular state of Palestine. All Jews in Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel were naturalized Palestinians, and will once again become Palestinians in their own right. To become Palestinian is to have a political identity linking the individual to the political community, which is post-national, post-ethnic, post-religious. This citizen may have an individual sub-identity that characterizes him or her. There will be a reconciliation between his political identity as a citizen and his own individual identity, and he will be able to live within these two affiliations.
What is the place of religion in a democratic state ?
This question was one of the points of divergence at the ODS Congress in Istanbul. Here, the first controversial issue left unresolved for these years (2018-2019) revolved around the need to define the nature of this promised state, the nature of its political system and the need to couple its secular essence with its democratic politics.
This secular question is still a subject of debate given the "resistance" of traditionalist and Islamist currents against its adoption, but in these debates we insist on the idea that the only state that respects religion is the secular state, because this state is the guarantor of respect for all beliefs, including religious ones. We introduce a number of points into these open debates, not least the State's "neutrality" towards the various beliefs of its citizens, and the fact that the State itself has no declared religion.
The persistence of these debates prompted ODSI, at a conference last July, to address this explosive subject in order to formulate clear answers, given the important role played by Islamic popular culture and Islamist political philosophy in Palestine. How can we manage these trends and convince people of our vision ?
Indeed, political Islam presents a significant obstacle due to its prescriptive nature and the strengthening of the Hamas and Jihad movements over recent decades. Prior to this conference in July, we also discussed this issue last May with an Israeli-American Jewish group (Shoresh). The question concerning the role of religion was posed in the term "how do you imagine the idea of a secular state could work given the central role religion plays both in peoples' identity, self-determination and governance ?"
We have formulated the answer that there is a problem in Orientalist thinking in the West (and by extension among Israelis), and that problem consists in seeing religion as something essentialist, immutable, enduring, unchanging, non-evolving ; frozen in time… In reality, these are just preconceived ideas that real life denies. Religion, like any system of values and ideological thought, and as one of the components of a collective identity, is subject to change, acculturation and adaptation. Political power plays a major and crucial role in these changes, adaptations and modifications : It is enough for the law to address the individual directly, without the intermediary of community or religious sub-powers. The individual, the citizen, must exist as an individual and not as a member of a community. The State and its institutions are neutral in relation to this citizen. This inclusive state will establish common values of political citizenship, not ethnic or religious ones. The secular, democratic state is the sole representative of its community of citizens ; it is first and foremost a political community. Identity will be political, not ethnic or religious. Under these conditions, religion and particular identity remain confined to the private sphere. It goes without saying that the law of this state will exclude sharia, halakha and their dictates imposed on individual behavior.
How can we imagine the return of refugees, a key demand of the Palestinian national movement and a touchstone of Zionist colonialism ?
The question of return is doubly essential for the Palestinians and for the Israeli colonization project. For the Palestinians, there can be no reconciliation with the Israelis unless the latter recognize the injustice they inflicted on the Palestinian people in 1948. The only possible reparation for this crime is the return of the Palestinians to their homeland. With regard to this hold-up of the last century, the Zionists' refusal to recognize the Palestinian people's right of return means the thief's refusal to return the stolen object to the owner. Acknowledging the right of return means that the founding act of the State of Israel was based on the theft of Palestinian land, on ethnic cleansing and massacres to expropriate the whole of Palestine in order to transform it into an exclusively Jewish state where there is no place for the native Palestinian.
How can we overcome the hatred accumulated over the decades ?
By politicizing hatred, bringing justice and accountability to war crimes.
What initiatives has the Initiative undertaken to date, in Palestine, Israel or abroad ? What are your next initiatives ?
We are a young organization and we (ODSI) are not yet strong enough, but we do have the strength of proposal ; we have led several initiatives in Palestine with a view to creating alternative alliances to combat this vacuum in the Palestinian leadership. In 2023, we began discussions with the Palestinian democratic movement, which groups together several tendencies, including the "Congress of 14 million" led by "Omar Assaf", an independent figure in the West Bank. We also held intensive discussions with Moustapha Bargouthi's movement, the Palestinian National Initiative. And on the Israeli side, we took part in the launch of an Appeal addressed to Israelis entitled "To Our Other", which provoked "many" reactions and debates with those Israelis who are beginning to move away from Zionist ideology. We have also begun discussions and joint work projects with an Israeli-American group (Shoresh).
Abroad, we launched an "Appeal to our Jewish friends", an appeal which received good reactions from both sides : 14,000 Palestinians signed the Appeal in the first week of its launch, and hundreds of young Jews, particularly Americans, joined in. As a result of these activities, we have established contacts with the "Jewish Voice for Peace" group in the USA. https://odsi.co/en/statements/open-letter-jewish-allies/
Last March, we took part in a conference in Brussels with the participation of several political forces, specifically the PTB and intellectuals such as Ilan Pappé.
In June, ODSI published its Manifesto "Tomorrow's Palestine", signed by 20,668 Palestinians. https://odsi.co/fr/statements/declaration-tomorrows-palestine
We will shortly be launching a campaign to create a Palestinian democratic movement in Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora.
