The clarity and questions raised by Lara Kilani’s astute essay, “Liberation Is Not Integration: On liberal Zionism, one-state fantasies, and what Palestinians actually want,” and Rima Najjar’s uncompromising response, “The Settlers Are Not Leaving: Decolonisation, not coexistence,” place the discussion of Palestine’s future precisely where it belongs—with Palestinians themselves. These interventions reject the liberal framing of the one-state solution as a multicultural compromise between two equal sides. Instead, they reassert a fundamental truth: Palestine is not a conflict to be managed, but a colonial structure to be dismantled.
From a Jewish anti-Zionist perspective – one articulated for years by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network—the role of Jews is neither to design nor to preside over Palestine’s future. It is to actively dismantle Zionism: as an ideology, a global network of institutions, and a violent colonial project. As Najjar rightly argues, de-Zionisation is not an optional ethical gesture; it is a precondition for Palestinians to imagine liberation on their own terms. Yet the question remains unavoidable: what comes after occupation ends? How does a society emerge from genocide, apartheid, mass displacement, and structural erasure? And is it possible—indeed necessary – to imagine a single, secular, inclusive political community after such devastation?
This essay does not offer blueprints. It outlines conditions, principles, and hard questions—not as liberal aspirations, but as the groundwork of a post-colonial future.
Is This the Darkest Moment – and Can Light Still Emerge? October 7 and its aftermath shattered the last illusions sustaining the so-called “peace process.” The genocide in Gaza has stripped Israel of any remaining moral camouflage. It has also devastated Palestinian society beyond measure—physically, psychologically, and socially. To speak of reconciliation now risks sounding obscene unless it is grounded in justice first.
History, however, offers a grim lesson: the darkest moments often force political clarity. Algeria after French rule, South Africa after apartheid, Rwanda after genocide—none of these societies emerged healed. They emerged fractured, angry, wounded. Yet they also emerged post-colonial, with the coloniser’s political authority broken. In Palestine, dialogue – if it is to exist at all – cannot precede liberation. It must follow it.
What form of dialogue is possible?
The first mistake is to imagine dialogue as a conversation between equals. Under conditions of occupation, dialogue is domination by another name. A meaningful dialogue can only occur after the end of Zionist political supremacy.
Post-liberation dialogue would have three defining features:
- Palestinian centrality: Palestinians define the agenda, terms, and timeline.
- Asymmetry acknowledged: Settlers and beneficiaries of apartheid do not negotiate as equals with the colonised.
- Truth before reconciliation: There can be no “moving forward” without naming crimes – dispossession, ethnic cleansing, mass incarceration, and genocide.
Any dialogue after 7 October cannot be framed as reconciliation between equals. It must be a post-liberation truth process, where Palestinians define the terms, sequence, and limits of engagement. Dialogue, in this sense, is not about harmony but about reckoning, accountability, and historical repair.
No political future is possible without dismantling settlements as structures of power, privilege, and land theft. This means abolishing settlement governance, armed settler militias, and legal regimes of dispossession—not cosmetic freezes or administrative adjustments. Decolonisation requires the end of settler sovereignty, not its reform.
The Palestinian Right of Return is non-negotiable and foundational, not a humanitarian add-on to be deferred indefinitely. It restores Palestinians as a people with history, continuity, and agency, rather than refugees frozen in time. Any one-state vision that bypasses return merely reproduces Zionism in a softer register.
A future Palestine must be secular – not to erase religion, but to prevent any religion from being converted into state power or supremacy. Secularism here is a shield against domination, ensuring equality before the law for all inhabitants. Without it, hierarchy will simply re-emerge under a different banner.
Palestine holds layered histories – Arab, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and more—but none grant exclusive ownership. A Collective Heritage can only be acknowledged after historical erasure and theft are confronted, not as a substitute for justice. Memory must be plural, but accountability cannot be diluted.
Colonial control in Palestine has always been material: land seizure, water theft, labour exploitation, and economic strangulation. A just future requires redistributive justice over land, water, housing, and infrastructure. Political equality without economic repair would be an illusion. Equitable Sharing of Resources must pre-conditioned.
Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners embody the carceral core of the occupation. Their release, rehabilitation, and public recognition are essential first steps toward justice, not acts of charity. No reconciliation is imaginable while resistance itself remains criminalised.
Jerusalem cannot remain a city structured by exclusion, residency revocations, and ethno-religious zoning. As a shared capital, it must guarantee equal access, restored property rights, and freedom of worship for all. The moral character of any future state will be tested first in Jerusalem.
Preconditions: Dismantling settlements and Zionist structures
No one-state framework is conceivable without the dismantling of settlements as political entities. This does not automatically imply the expulsion of all settlers, but it does require:
- The abolition of settlement governance, armed militias, and land expropriation regimes.
- The return of stolen land or its restitution through binding legal mechanisms.
- The removal of Zionism from constitutional, legal, and military structures.
- Decolonization is not coexistence. It is the end of settler sovereignty.
The Right of Return: Non-negotiable, transformative
The Palestinian Right of Return is not a humanitarian request—it is the core decolonial demand. Any one-state vision that dilutes or postpones it reproduces Zionism in another form.
Return will transform demographics, politics, and culture. That is precisely the point. It restores Palestinians as a people with historical continuity rather than a humanitarian problem to be managed. Mechanisms of return will require planning, resources, and transitional arrangements—but its legitimacy is absolute.
A secular state: Protection through equality, not supremacy
A future Palestine cannot be Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. It must be secular, not in the sense of erasing religion, but in preventing any religion from becoming a vehicle of state power. Secularism here is not Western liberal neutrality. It is protection against domination, ensuring that no community – especially one historically armed and privileged – can convert identity into supremacy.
A common heritage without erasure
Palestine’s land holds layered histories: Canaanite, Arab, Jewish, Ottoman, and more. A liberated state would acknowledge this plural inheritance without allowing any group to weaponize history.
Common heritage does not mean equal culpability. It means shared stewardship after accountability.
Equitable sharing of resources
Colonialism in Palestine has always been material: water theft, land seizure, labour exploitation, and siege. A just state must redistribute:
- Water and agricultural land
- Energy and infrastructure
- Housing and urban space
- Economic justice is not secondary to political liberation—it is its continuation.
Palestinian prisoners: The first test of justice
No reconciliation is imaginable while thousands of Palestinians languish in prisons—many without charge, many tortured, many imprisoned as children. The release and rehabilitation of political prisoners must be among the first acts of a post-occupation order. They are not criminals; they are survivors of a carceral colonial regime.
Jerusalem: Shared, not divided
Jerusalem cannot belong to one people or one religion. Nor can it remain the symbol of exclusion it has become. As a shared capital, Jerusalem would require:
- Equal access to holy sites
- End of ethno-religious zoning
- Restoration of Palestinian residency and property rights
- This is not symbolic. Jerusalem embodies the moral character of any future state.
- First, End the Occupation
- All of this remains hypothetical until the occupation ends.
- There is no dialogue without freedom.
- No reconciliation without justice.
- No one state without decolonisation.
All of this remains impossible until one condition is met: the occupation must end. Without liberation, dialogue is theatre; without justice, coexistence is coercion The one-state solution is not a fantasy of coexistence. It is a long, painful, post-liberation process – one that demands the collapse of Zionism, the return of the displaced, the accountability of perpetrators, and the rebuilding of society from ruins. This dialogue would resemble truth and accountability processes, not peace workshops. It would be uncomfortable, accusatory, and destabilising—precisely because it would confront history rather than erase it. Whether light can emerge from this darkness depends not on optimism, but on political courage, moral clarity, and the refusal to compromise on justice. Palestinians will decide what freedom looks like.
The rest of the world – and especially those who benefited from Zionism – must decide whether they are willing to dismantle what made genocide possible. All of this remains impossible until one condition is met: the occupation must end. Without liberation, dialogue is theatre; without justice, coexistence is coercion.
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