Abstract
Current dominant legal and political discourse narrows the destruction of Palestinian indigenous society in a historical homeland to the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This erroneously assumes that an end to Israel's occupation would effectively end hostilities. Israel has used deliberate demographic engineering in the entire Palestine–Israel region to fragment territory and people to create and maintain dominance of an immigrant Jewish population: demographically, economically and politically. Palestinians are segregated and governed by some form of apartheid and colonialism depending on their location. This article challenges the narrow discourse and examines the Palestine–Israel situation within the context of settler colonialism, apartheid and state-sponsored systematic discrimination. From this perspective, the only sustainable and comprehensive solution is to challenge the validity of the Israeli state based on decolonization, just as apartheid in South Africa was challenged. Decolonization opens up the possibility of reversing fragmentation and restoring territorial integrity and sovereignty to the people of Palestine based on a democratic polity with equal rights for all its inhabitants.
Highlights
Existing hostilities in Palestine–Israel ostensibly appear to be the result of one country (Israel) occupying another separate territorial entity
Israel’s governance and web of settlements in the West Bank are permanent obstacles to any form of Palestinian self-rule or sovereignty in the form of a viable state. These conditions, along with the failure to remedy the official discrimination of the Palestinians inside Israel and the alienation of the refugees waiting for return, fuel the increasing momentum to abandon the paradigm of forced partition for the binational proposal as a more sustainable solution10
Beyond the current rigid and mechanical application of law and politics, justice and fairness dictate that Palestinian national unity be restored
Summary
Existing hostilities in Palestine–Israel ostensibly appear to be the result of one country (Israel) occupying another separate territorial entity (the West Bank and Gaza). The Zionist enterprise and its subsequent Israeli state apartheid, which initially carved out these territorial clusters from a single geopolitical and national entity This discourse assists the settler-colonial project by distracting from the fundamental problem of the existence of a state structure, which, by its very nature, precludes respect for equality and non-discrimination. The fundamental connection between the Israeli control of each of the fragmented groups of Palestinians is that there exists an exclusionary and inherently discriminatory policy that ensures socio-political, economic and demographic domination over the entire Palestinian people and the whole territory of historical Palestine This article challenges both international law and the dominant political and legal discourse, and their focus on Israeli actions and policies in the OPT, rather than the overarching settler-colonial nature of the Israeli state which precludes a genuine sustainable solution. The final part concludes by arguing for decolonization, akin to the Apartheid South African experience, in the form of dismantling the Zionist state and restructuring it as a single democratic state with equal rights
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
