What came to mind for me is that my father still holds the key to his house in Tabaria which his family was forced to leave. He still lives on the hope of return to that home which his grandfather built.

Because of the suffering of the occupied Palestinians from the very beginning of the state of Israel, I believe they have the right to lead the resolution of this conflict. Palestinians have been denied autonomy and unfortunately even many of the activists who wish to support their struggle end up overpowering their voices. Solidarity activists should in my opinion support Palestinians’ right to autonomously choose the outcome of their country which was invaded by an ethnic-cleanser and occupier not so long ago.

Instead, many activists from Israel and abroad, holding on to what I consider the colonial mindsets of their home countries, believe they can ‘know better’ what a just solution is.

No, expelling all Israeli Jews is not practical and is rarely discussed as a solution in Palestinian circles. However, a just right-of-return must be negotiated and to me this means returning to the original villages (if still standing) and homes.

In South Africa when apartheid ‘ended’, the land was never returned to the black owners and thus the power remains in largely white hands and the slums remain exclusively black.

For long, we thought about an endgame to the conflict, and having decided that endgame, we went ahead and decided our immediate steps. I don’t think we should do that anymore. I think NIZ gets close to the better approach when he says that for now we “only need direction,” and the direction is to fight against violations to basic human rights and dignities.

I agree that Israel, being in the comfortable place it is, will not simply choose to end its injustices and must be brought to end them. But what I’m asking you to remember is that bringing Israel to that point will take not only so many years, but also so much integration, universality, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchange, cooperation of civil-societies — it will take so much of these things (along with their ensuing social implications on both societies) to a point where what we now think is “unrealistic” will seem readily plain and implementable then.

@Max- I want to go further into Zionism and Judaism. Zionism was not created 2000 years ago. Zionism is a bi-product of European nationalism- it’s purely an Ashkenazi delirium. The Sephardim never produced such an ideology for many reasons that we still see it until today. The Ottoman empire and the Arab world are not a racialized place. If you speak Arabic even if you are in Sudan you become an Arab. The jews were not seen in the Arab east as a ‘race’ but as a ‘millet’. Till now the Arabs cannot conceive of the jews as a race or an ethnic group. The jews in Europe were seen as a race, this is why they were never assimilated. Basically the Jews in Europe could not do anything about their condition- they were going to be eternally “dirty” because of their ethnicity. In the Arab east that was not the case, Jews were seen as part of the ethnic composition, they were seen Arab- part of the fabric (this does not mean that they were not discriminated against). It makes sense that zionism then started in Europe and not in the Middle East. The Arab Jews they continued the Jewish tradition of looking at ‘Israel’ as a religious utopia and not a physical ethnic origin. Until today and you have to understand that, the Arabs look at the Jews as ‘European’- and do not conceive of them as an ethnicity. They are either a religion or an imperial imposition. Zionism for me destroyed beautiful communities of Yemeni Jews and Iraqi Jews while all the symbols of oriental Judaism was appropriated by the Ashkenazi narrative. That is a real tragedy to Judaism itself. (I claim my Jewishness as well by the way- Elijah is also our prophet- Elias dots the Levantine streets from Palestine to Damascus, Egypt, Iraq and beyond). This is why i do not acknowledge the Jews as an ethnic group, and i separate the Sephardim from Ashkenazim and so on and so forth). The disease- the real disease is nationalism.

@ Richard,

ehhh… I forgot to mention that when you say Zionism was an emancipatory experience for ‘jews’, again you refer to a strictly European Ashkenazi experience. The Arab jews were obliterated in the process toward a monolithic conception of Jewishness. Of course the Baath and Arab nationalist parties did the same- eradicated difference for a constructed fictitious understanding of what it means to be an Arab.

That is that both communities currently think of their rights as national, at least as pronounced as they think of their rights as individual.

An individual rights campaign is likely to be effective. A national rights campaign is likely to be a zero-sum (war).

But, for Palestinian nationalists to adopt an individual rights campaign, is to adopt living in New York, when they don’t live in New York. Their claim to identity is a continuity with the more provincial past, transformed into a national movement, not into an individual civil rights movement.

Its a difficult decision process I’m sure. That decision process is the Palestinian community’s responsibility.

One can blame Israel for difficulty and suppressions, but not for the failure of the Palestinian community to discuss, to unify, along principles that are feasible in the modern world (which include consideration of what would be ratifiable among Israelis.)

We are not passive any more. We are free in ways that weren’t possible really anywhere confidently a century ago.

That shift in consciousness, that pride, is not as soluble as idealists would imagine. There is a substantive basis to it.

To my understanding, the two-state approach, with features to facilitate interaction and relatively free travel, then free residence, then possible federation, is a much quicker and much much less violent path to bi-national integration, than any resistance movement.

Also, the palestinians have not yet understood or conceived of the ability to live together with Israelis in one state. Maybe they have, but it resides in their unconscious- probably too afraid to acknowledge it. You have to understand that this conflict – like Israelis- has become part of our narrative, of how we see the world. This is a historical process. The Palestinians and Israelis through non-violent actions and as this article testifies have started conceptualizing such an outcome. The bankruptcy of the PA, Fatah, and Hamas will pave the way for new political forces. As i said before it has not matured yet. It will gradually manifest itself. This gradual process is also occurring in Israel. The solution that I have is not real- it is still floating like an unfulfilled vision for thundering Elijah. But in order to get the bicycle moving you only need direction. The direction is clear: No separation, equality, & freedom of movement.