29 November, 2009

Dear Friends:
Sunday [29 November] is the anniversary of UNGAR 181, the “Partition Resolution”. Partition remains the elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it. The supporters of the so-called “2 state solution” don’t talk about Partition because they don’t question the justice of Partition or its inevitable consequences. They recognize the State of Israel’s “right to exist”. Like the supporters of UNGAR 181, they deny the right of the people of Palestine to exercise sovereignty over Palestine. What about the dissident supporters of the so-called “one-state solution”? They don’t turn their minds to how one gets from here to there. They somehow believe that a democratic one-state solution will fall from the sky, peacefully, without revolution. That is why these same well-meaning people attribute no role to the actual social and class forces living under Israeli rule and suffering from Israeli rule in besieged Gaza and the refugee camps. By not recognizing the need for revolution, the one-staters take no interest in the people who have an interest in revolution, those who can and will make a revolution, those for whom the daily struggle contains within it the unripe seeds of that revolution.

As a result of Partition, only the Zionist state was formed in former Mandate Palestine. For the Zionists, Partition presented a “sh’at kosher” – an opportunity, a pretext – to carry out what was always inherent and implicit in the Zionist program – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. First, incrementally and reactively starting in December 1947, then deliberately, proactively and following a plan, 1/3 of the indigenous people of Palestine were driven out before the target date for the implementation of Partition. After the target date, the newly formed Jewish state, legitimized by Partition, acted aggressively to carry out its political program: settler colonialism, racist discrimination, and ethnic cleansing.

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