[75 years after the Nakba, Palestine-Israel is one state under
Israeli sovereignty but unequal. The struggle for a more equitable and
democratic future will be long and ferociously resisted. That does not
make it any less worth fighting for.]
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AFTER 75 YEARS, WHAT FUTURE FOR PALESTINE-ISRAEL?  
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Ghada Karmi
May 8, 2023
Mondoweiss
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_ 75 years after the Nakba, Palestine-Israel is one state under
Israeli sovereignty but unequal. The struggle for a more equitable and
democratic future will be long and ferociously resisted. That does not
make it any less worth fighting for. _

A Palestinian woman walks along Israel’s separation barrier and the
Jewish settlement of Beit El behind it near the West Bank city of
Ramallah., Shadi Hatem/APA Images

 

It is that time of year when the annual commemoration of Israel’s
creation in my homeland, and the disaster it led to, comes around, yet
again with no end to the conflict in sight. Israel’s land grabs,
ethnic cleansing, and human rights abuses against Palestinians
continue unabated, unpunished, and unaccountable.

Seventy-five years ago, Israel was established on the ruins of
Palestine. In that process, my family was forced to flee our home in
Jerusalem. Israel’s creation, officially declared on May 15, 1948,
marked the start of our long exile, even as our eviction was being
celebrated for installing another people in our place. In the
following decades, we watched helplessly as the new state grew in
strength and dominance to become a regional superpower. Today, Israel
is a nuclear power with an army ranked the fifth largest in the world.
It enjoys the unstinting support of Western countries, most especially
the United States. The U.S. provides Israel with advanced weaponry,
intelligence sharing, and political and diplomatic support. The West
regards it as an integral part of the Western world. The European
Union has accorded Israel a privileged status in trade and access to
EU research programs, exactly as if it were a European state. Marking
Israel’s anniversary this April, the EU Commission president, Ursula
von der Leyen, falling over herself with praise for Israel, even
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Israel had “made the desert bloom.”

As to the victims of Israel’s creation, the Palestinians like me,
who lost out, were not honored, commended, or given any status. The
majority of Arab states (with the exception of Algeria) have regarded
Palestinians variously as a burden or a source of political
instability for their people. Although, in fairness, they gave the
refugees a home and vital support, it was on the understanding their
stay would be temporary while they awaited their return to the
homeland.

That return never happened, and each year the Palestinian situation
only gets worse. Not all the cheery solidarity hullabaloo of
well-meaning people in the world can disguise this basic fact. The
election in December 2022 of a hardline Israeli government composed of
religious extremists and ultranationalist zealots has immeasurably
worsened the Palestinian plight. The new government’s political
program is based on the annexation of Palestinian land, apartheid, and
ethnic cleansing – all underpinned by an assumption of Jewish
supremacy. The effects of this ideology are plain to see in the
increased persecution
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of Palestinians since the new government came in.

That should be no surprise. Israel has pursued an anti-Palestinian
policy program since 1948, either brazenly or covertly. How else to
describe the expulsion of most of Palestine’s population in 1948,
repeated in 1967 and continuing ever since, the military occupation of
the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the settlement building, the
inhumane siege of Gaza, and the apartheid regime imposed on
Palestinians? In a way, the current Netanyahu government should be
congratulated on exposing this ugly reality, in contrast to the
duplicitous presentation of Israel as a democracy on the Western
model.

That exposure should have evoked revulsion amongst the international
community and a firm rejection of Zionism. None of it happened. For
Israel’s Western allies, it is business as usual with a state that
regularly breaks international law, attacks its neighbors, oppresses
the Palestinians whose land it occupies, and imposes an apartheid
system on them. The West has sanctioned Russia fiercely for similar
crimes, but Israel is embraced as a cherished part of the Western
fold.

For Palestinians, it is a different story. Since 1948, as Israel
gained in power and prestige, they have fought every inch of the way
to preserve what remains of their presence on the land, their history,
and collective memory against a formidable Israeli campaign to erase
them. For all its sophistication and Western backing, Israel has never
been able to solve the problem of eradicating the Palestinians in
their midst and regretted
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leaving any of them behind in 1948. That ‘mistake’ had
consequences that would eventually impose its own reality.

Today, the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea is one single entity under the administration of one sovereign
Israeli government. The result is that Israel/Palestine in 2023 is one
state, but an unequal one, with differential rights and classes of
citizenship. Its population comprises 6.8 million Israeli Jews with
full citizenship and rights, 1.8 million Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship but restricted rights, and 4.7 million Palestinians with
no citizenship and no rights. The last group is subjected to a system
of well-documented Israeli apartheid.

Israel has gotten away with this injustice so far due to Western
permissiveness towards Israeli crimes and the existence of the
Palestinian Authority, which has absolved Israel of responsibility for
the occupied Palestinians. As this arrangement begins to unravel,
starting with the unprecedented, communal Palestinian uprisings of May
2021, which were aimed at the PA as well as Israel, and their
continuation until now in hotspots like Jenin, Nablus, the villages
around Ramallah, as well as Gaza, the inevitable outcome of all this
draws near.

"We in exile used to believe we would have a signal role in solving
the Israeli-Palestinain conflict through our activism and strivings to
influence powerful external actors. But we were wrong. The solution
will come from inside."

We in exile used to believe we would have a signal role in solving the
Israeli-Palestinain conflict through our activism and strivings to
influence powerful external actors. But we were wrong. The solution
will come from inside, on the ground, in the bloody face-to-face
confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians. And the trajectory
of their struggle will eventually drive the conversion of Israel’s
current master-slave one-state version into one more equitable and
more democratic.

This achievement will be lengthy, hard won, and ferociously resisted
by Israel. That does not make it any less desirable or worth fighting
for. In the opinion of this writer, there is no other way forward.
Israel, as a foreign, Western-facing entity imposed on a region
inimical to its ethos and culture, was created against the logic of
history. That same logic will see its transformation into a more
harmonious, and more natural part of its Middle Eastern environment.

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Ghada Karmi was born in Jerusalem. Forced from her home during the
Nakba, she later trained as a Doctor of Medicine at Bristol
University. She established the first British-Palestinian medical
charity in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for
International Affairs. Her most recent book is One State: The Only
Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, and her previous books include
the best-selling memoir In Search of Fatima.

* Palestine/Israel; Nakba 75; One State Solution;
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