Salameh Kaileh
Naji El Khatib
Text jointly written by S. Kaileh and N. El Khatib
It was published as OSDS Group(20/07/2018)
Published on 2018-07-29
The Zionist Knesset approved “the law of Jewish Nationality” which recognizes that “the land of Israel is the historical land of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel has been established as the nation-state of Jewish people, the place where they exercise their natural, cultural and religious right to self-determination. The text of the law states that “the practice of self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusively reserved for the Jewish people only, meaning that the Zionist state of Israel is “the state of the Jews” only in all the land of Palestine. It also means that the land of Palestine is the land of Israel, so that the Palestinian population is foreign to their own country, no state to them and they have no rights in the current state of Israel.
This Law clearly shows that the Zionist Knesset announces the death of the two-state solution, the annexation of the rest of the lands of the West Bank and the establishment of an integrated system of racial segregation that has already begun with the construction of the separation wall, military checkpoints and bypass roads and barriers.
This measure undeniably establishes the apartheid regime and transforms the “Palestinian Authority” into an “autonomy of self-governance”, separated from the Zionist state but completely under its control. This would dismantle all illusions on the “two-state solution” and emphasize the need to rebuild the Palestinian national project as part of the secular and democratic option that combines the struggle of the Palestinians for their legitimate rights with the struggle of all Israeli Jews believing in the possibilities of “living together”.
In the secular tendency, we believe that there is no substitute for the Zionist state that the Secular and Democratic State of Palestine for all its inhabitants in which the Palestinian natives have recovered their rights, and the settlers become citizens without privileges.
After this development, all Arab political parties represented in the Knesset must rid themselves of illusions about the nature of this apartheid state and the cheating of the so-called possible struggle for “civil rights”. These parties must reconsider their programs as part of a Palestinian national project for all of Palestine, aimed at deconstructing the Zionist state to build the secular and democratic state.
We believe in those young people who are fighting against the Zionist state. We hope that they will regulate their activities, unify their forces to play a more decisive role in the construction of the future secular and democratic Palestine.
We call on all Arab members of the Knesset to resign from this purely Jewish establishment and to declare themselves as a nucleus of a Palestinian parliament that can include all Palestinians from Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora. A step towards issuing a founding declaration of “historic rights of the Palestinian people”, including the rights of all inhabitants who are fully entitled to citizenship as an integral part of the new Palestinian state.
Now, this “law of Jewish nationality” has put an end to illusions, either a “Jewish state” or a secular and democratic state in Palestine.
Henceforth, all the struggle must focus on this objective.