ABOUT
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ABOUT •
A real solution
Since the crisis of European colonialism came to Palestine in the form of Zionism, countless “solutions” have been proposed. The 1947 Partition, the 1967 borders, the 1993 Oslo Accords. For many in the West, these words conjure hope. For Palestinians, they mean only deception and despair.
Two-state proposals have been alluring to many, but they’re based on lies. They demand Jim Crow ethnostates in place of true togetherness. They ignore 75+ years of failed negotiations. And worst of all, they prevent everyone who cares about this land from understanding what’s destroying it: Zionism.
Zionism has weaponized Jewish trauma for European theft and Palestinian death. It has tricked Jews into thinking that the only way for them to be safe is by segregating themselves and evicting others. It is supported by the same European leaders who supported the Holocaust, and is indeed a continuation of Holocaust logic, based on the lie that the only defense against one genocidal ethnostate is another. And it has turned Palestinians into “the victims of the victims,” a people without home, without justice, and without peace.
Now, Zionism is again at war with Palestine. Palestinians are bravely fighting for their lives and their freedom as their friends and family are killed. Jews and their allies bravely call for ceasefire as they come to grips with their own communities’ roles in this conflict. And the same old Jim Crow proposals— for two “equal” states, or “one” binational state, or a “democratic” ethnostate— have returned.
Palestinians know the meaning of freedom, but a century of destruction has forced some to settle for band-aids. Jews know the meaning of justice, but their own memories of trauma scare some from supporting it. Across the world, people are asking: what would a Free Palestine actually look like?
River2Sea seeks to help answer that question. We’re a multiracial research collective, design studio, and advocacy group imaginatively uplifting a Palestinian vision of a single State of Palestine from the river to the sea.
The vision of the state we’re uplifting has three main qualities:
Democratic: It would ensure that political, economic, and environmental decisions are made equally by all.
Secular: It would not discriminate based on religion, and would guarantee freedom of worship, movement, and all other rights for people of any or no religion.
Pluralist: Rather than assimilation or erasure, it would champion encounters of commitments from people of all gender, sexual, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.
We believe there are three main steps to achieve this vision:
Palestinian Right of Return and Reparation: Palestinian Right of Return is the right of Palestinians and their descendants displaced by Zionist settler colonialism to return to their homes, in accordance with international law. In cases where return to Palestinians’ physical homes is impossible, they will have the right to return to adequate housing in their homelands. A reparations process would also be available to Palestinians.
Truth and Accountability: Truth and accountability would be the process of revealing, addressing, and beginning to resolve the injustices caused by Zionism. This process would learn from the successes and limitations of similar historical processes.
Dezionization: Dezionization would be the process of replacing relationships around Palestine based on Zionism, the European colonial ideology of Jewish supremacy in Palestine, with relationships based on justice and humanity.