AMMAN: The Popular Movement for One Democratic State in Historic Palestine (ODS) is stepping up efforts to increase the awareness and the popularity of its cause.
ODS spokesman Radi Jarai told Arab News that his movement wants to make the concept “much more accessible and understandable to people.”
Jarai, an active member of Palestine’s nationalist Fatah party who has spent years in Israeli prisons, said the movement is currently made up of academics and thinkers, so, “We need to make the idea understandable to the common person so that it begins to gain traction.”
The board of the movement met in Istanbul in early December and agreed on a plan to popularize its credo. “This week, we will tape a number of episodes to be broadcast on Palestine TV with the hope of triggering discussions about a democratic state,” Jarai told Arab News.
Lectures are scheduled at Bethlehem and Al-Quds universities, along with a major conference in Ramallah on March 16.
ODS was founded in March 2013 and welcomes both Jews and Palestinians as members.
“There are Israeli Jewish groups that support our goal but have chosen not to join us at the moment,” Jarai said.
Yoav Haifawi, an Israeli activist and publisher of the Free Haifa blog, told Arab News that he is a longtime supporter of the one-state concept.
“The biggest obstacle we face is that Israel is a privileged country for Jews. Therefore, as a colonial state that gives privileges through discrimination, the decolonization of Palestine cannot happen as long as Israel is strong and Palestinians are weak.”
Uri Davis, a Jewish member of Fatah, told Arab News that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the representative of the Palestinian people.
He continued that, in his opinion, the replacement of the two-state solution with the ODS paradigm is best seen as a process, one which he suggested should begin with some type of negotiation between the PLO and Israel, supported by the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) and mediated by the UN.
The one-state solution, Davis said, would mean a change “from the current state of affairs into a single Palestinian sovereignty (stretching) from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River under a liberal-democratic Palestinian Constitution; single Palestinian citizenship; and a single Palestinian currency, hopefully leading to a socialist democratic Federal Republic of Palestine.”
Few PLO factions have been supportive of ODS so far, but lately more have warmed to the idea, according to Jarai. But he added that the idea is still seen by many as a tactic, rather than an actual change of direction.
“Their minds are still set on the two-state solution and they use the one-state idea as a threat,” Jarai said. “That includes President (Mahmoud) Abbas who wants to change the international sponsors of the peace process, not understanding that Israel doesn’t want peace, regardless of who the sponsors are.”
In his speech at the opening session of the UN General Assembly in September, Abbas mentioned the two-state solution 13 times but warned of what would happen if this vision were to “be destroyed due to the creation of a one-state reality with two systems — apartheid — from the unchecked imposition of this occupation that is rejected by our people and the world.”
Abbas concluded by saying that if the two-state solution were to fail, “We will have no choice but to continue the struggle and demand full, equal rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine.”
ODS Movement looks to popularize one-state solution for Palestine
ODS Movement looks to popularize one-state solution for Palestine
Lebanon to hold parliament session on January 9 to elect president
- State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.
Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns
- Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba
BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.
Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.
A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.
But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.
The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.
There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.
The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.
Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.
Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.
Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north
- Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”
Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession
- Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli military says it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it shot down a drone that was carrying weapons and crossed from Egypt to Israel.
When asked about the latest drone incident, Egyptian security sources said they had no knowledge of such an incident.
In two separate incidents in October, Israel also said it downed two drones smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory.
Israeli officials have said during the war in Gaza that Palestinian militant group Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt’s Sinai region to smuggle arms.
However, Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.
