By Chris Williamson
Ten days later, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government would recognize the state of Palestine in September.
I’m not claiming our campaign forced Starmer’s hand. It’s the public outrage against the Israeli regime—now reaching fever pitch—that seems to be concentrating Starmer’s mind.
He has refused to describe the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians as genocide, and he has previously publicly stated his unqualified support for Zionism.
So, Starmer’s announcement was nothing more than political expediency—an attempt to give the impression that he is responding to public pressure.
Recognizing the state of Palestine while allowing the genocidal Zionist colony to remain in place would be wholly inadequate.
But even Starmer’s mealy-mouthed proposition will not go ahead, it seems, if Israel agrees to a ceasefire and revives what he described as “the prospect of a Two-State Solution.”
But, importantly, there is no such thing as a “Two-State Solution.”
The 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords were supposed to pave the way for a two-state solution, but Israel reneged on the agreement signed by then-Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and then-US President Bill Clinton.
The only credible and long-term resolution to this 77-year-long injustice is one singular state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea where all citizens have equal rights.
It must also afford the absolute right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants who have been ejected from their homes, going right back to the Nakba in 1948.
The truth is that the creation of Israel was an abomination from the very start. There was no justification for Britain to offer a land that didn’t belong to it to a people who had no legitimate claim to it, at the expense of the people who lived in it.
The decision followed a lengthy campaign of terrorism by Zionist extremists that went on for decades.
Not content with the UN’s proposed borders for the planned Israeli "state," which encompassed a significantly larger area than that allocated to the Palestinians, Zionists made a land grab in 1948. Yet the Jewish population was around half that of the indigenous Palestinian population.
Zionists then made a further land grab in 1967 and have been illegally occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights ever since. Now, the Knesset has voted by a majority of 71 to 13 to formally annex the occupied West Bank.
The arrogance of the Zionist regime is off the scale. In addition to its illegal occupations, the Knesset passed the so-called "Nation-State Law" in 2018. This legislation officially relegated non-Jewish inhabitants to second-class citizens.
It enshrined Jewish supremacy into law by asserting that only Jews have the right to national self-determination and downgraded Arabic from an official language.
The international community has shamefully turned a blind eye to Israel’s failure to abide by its legal obligations, which has led directly to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. These failures are numerous and have allowed Israel to think it can act with impunity.
They have stood by while Israel atomised the occupied West Bank, constructed a 9-metre-high separation wall, and populated the territory earmarked for a future Palestinian state with 700,000 Zionist settlers.
This illustrates the implausibility of a Palestinian state being established alongside a Jewish supremacist state.
By contrast, the One-State Palestine campaign advocates a unitary democratic state—a single sovereign body encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories, guaranteeing equal citizenship to all inhabitants, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.
This model draws inspiration from other historical transitions from outright racist regimes to democracies, such as the end of apartheid in South Africa.
It was Nelson Mandela himself who said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Under such a system, all residents would enjoy equal voting rights, freedom of movement, access to land and resources, and protection under the same laws.
Jews and Palestinians alike could maintain their cultural and religious identities within a shared civil framework. Hebrew and Arabic could remain co-official languages, and both historical narratives could coexist in public discourse and education.
But there is a crucially important caveat: just as it would be inconceivable to establish a sovereign Palestinian state alongside a Jewish supremacist state, the same is true for Palestinians and Jewish supremacists coexisting in a unified state.
It would be entirely wrong to expect Palestinians to live alongside the very people who have been oppressing them since the Zionist colony was created.
At the end of World War Two, the Allied powers initiated a denazification process to remove Nazi ideology and influence from German and Austrian society.
It involved eliminating Nazi symbols, Nazi laws, and Nazi personnel from public institutions in order to dismantle the Nazi regime's structures and prevent the resurgence of Nazi ideology. It also saw prominent Nazis being tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
There are clear parallels with Israel today. When the Zionist entity is eventually toppled, I suspect that those Israelis with dual nationality will go back to where they originated.
But for those who remain, there will need to be a comprehensive de-Zionisation process similar to the denazification of Germany and Austria, because Jewish Israelis have been radicalised.
A poll published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in June this year found that 82% of Israeli Jews support the expulsion of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries. Furthermore, 56% even wanted to see the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel to other countries, too.
It is clear that a dangerous derangement has gripped the Jewish Israeli population, which will have to be exorcised to secure a long-term, harmonious future for a unitary state.
Achieving the goal of a One-State Palestine is undeniably difficult and will be beset by enormous challenges. But the principle at stake is the moral imperative of the twenty-first century.
No group should have supremacy over another, and everyone should be treated as equals under the law.
I believe that the One-State Palestine proposal that we are advocating offers the best chance of achieving that. I know that some people say that our idea is outlandish and unachievable.
So, let me conclude by quoting Mandela again, who said, “It always seems impossible until it's done.”
Sign up to support One-State Palestine here: onestatepalestine.org
Chris Williamson is a former Labour MP and Shadow Minister, who served in British Parliament from 2010–2015 and 2017–2019. He also hosts Palestine Declassified show on Press TV.
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