Summary
The 2007 declaration which, in Chapters 10 and 11 of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, described the Zionist movement as having initiated a “settler-colonial project in Palestine” (Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, PDF p.285).
Details
-
It is one of the Vision Documents of 2006-2007; with the Future Vision it stressed a democratic binational state guaranteeing full equality within the Green Line (PDF p.285).
-
Chapter 2 of Stateless Citizenship (2013) treats the Declaration in full: published on Nakba Day, May 15, 2007 by Mada al-Carmel, it articulates the collective vision of the Palestinian community in Israel, “in their effort to assert their national identity, national rights, and their right to democracy and equal citizenship” (The Haifa Declaration, May 2007, 5, at PDF p.101), their identity sustained by an “uninterrupted relationship” to the land and “continued connection” to the Palestinian people against its truncation into an “Israeli Arab” affiliation (PDF p.102). Of all the vision documents it is the only one seriously acknowledging the Jewish narrative of persecution: “We are aware of the tragic history of the Jews in Europe, which reached its peak in one of the most horrific human crimes in the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews… We believe that exploiting this tragedy and its consequences in order to legitimize the right of the Jews to establish a state at the expense of the Palestinian people serves to belittle universal, human, and moral lessons to be learned from this catastrophic event” (The Haifa Declaration, 15, at PDF p.102). Selections are republished as Molavi’s Appendix II.
-
Appendix II of Stateless Citizenship (2013) reproduces selections from the Declaration (PDF p.247-251): its signatories ground their identity against its truncation into a misshapen “Israeli Arab” one, name their own society’s sectarian and patriarchal structures and Israel’s “divide and rule” exploitation of them, and define their citizenship by the Nakba — “were made citizens without the genuine constituents of citizenship, especially equality” — so that “This democratic citizenship that we seek is the only arrangement that guarantees individual and collective equality for the Palestinians in Israel” (PDF p.249-250). Its reconciliation terms require Israeli recognition of responsibility for the Nakba, implementation of the Right of Return under UN Resolution 194, an end to the Occupation and Palestinian self-determination, alongside Palestinian and Arab recognition of the Israeli Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and its vision is “to create a democratic state founded on equality between the two national groups” (PDF p.250-251).
Related pages
Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Vision Documents, Settler Colonialism, Stateless Citizenship (2013), Mada al-Carmel