Carwil Bjork-James
As a descendant of Jews and the African diaspora, I realize that historic trauma casts a real shadow.
But fearing expulsion from A SLOGAN that ends "Palestine will be free," while Gazans are under orders to evacuate 1/2 of the 1.3% of Israel/Palestine they are crowded within??
Carwil Bjork-James
Whatever the relative merits and potential for one-state vs two-state visions for Israel/Palestine, the North Star of one-state solutions for Palestinians, since the early days of the PLO, has been a "secular democratic state" of Jews and Arabs, not expulsion.
Carwil Bjork-James
Freedom for one people does not imply or require expulsion of others.
The supposition that it does is an important mirror of how we settler state residents view the world, though.
Carwil Bjork-James
Prominent Palestinian voices speaking to the entire land "from the river to the sea" have presented a clear vision.
Here's Edward Said in 1999:
"I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such."
Carwil Bjork-James
Here's Saree Makdisi in 2007: "There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation–and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no “natives” and “settlers” and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation." https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secular-democratic-state/
Carwil Bjork-James
"From the River to the Sea" begins with an acknowledgement that there are Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel / "the 1948 territories." People who share a common national struggle.
People who must neither live as permanent second-class citizens, nor as permanently stateless subjects.
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