The Republican Case for a Democratic Secular Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine |

1.  Preamble

Hamas’s deadly attack on 7 October 2023 against Israeli soldiers and civilian settlements exposed a massive failure by Netanyahu’s government, the Israeli security agencies, and Defence Forces (IDF) to protect Israeli citizens. More than this, it smashed or shattered the empty shell of the ‘Two States Solution’. Yet its destruction was the culmination of fourteen years of Netanyahu’s reactionary policy of establishing a Greater Israel from the river to the sea. Long before 2023 the Israel-Palestine peace process was dead, even if occasionally mentioned with reverence by politicians.

Netanyahu set out to destroy the ‘Two State Solution’. It was wrecked by the Greater Israel policy. It was made impossible by Israel’s refusal to end the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It was made unviable by the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It was made unachievable by the continued blockade of Gaza. It became unthinkable because of the division between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. None of this could have happened without the full support of the United States backed by the UK. 

The original promise of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the hope that ‘Two States Solution’ would end the nightmare of violence and illegal occupation has long since been dashed. A complete loss of trust and hope amongst the Palestinian people and disillusionment with the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority was matched by the neglect and indifference of the United States and the UK. The ‘international community’ simply ignored the silent expropriation and daily violence against Palestinians. 

At the centre of Netanyahu’s strategy was his support for Hamas in Gaza as a counter-weight to the Palestinian Authority. An unspoken alliance with Hamas helped transform an armed group with few resources into a semi-state (‘Islamic Republic of Gaza’). Divide and rule is normal politics for those with power. Hamas would be allowed to control the residents of Gaza and provide a reason why a blockade of Gaza had to be maintained and why Israelis should vote for Netanyahu.  

In August 2019 former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (1999-2001) explained “his (Netanyahu) strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking  – even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] ..… in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah”.⁽¹⁾ In 2023 with Hamas seemingly bought off, the Netanyahu government believed “the chance of a terrorist incursion is almost nil”.⁽²⁾ The main battle for Greater Israel would be supporting Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Israeli Defence Forces reduced their soldiers to a minimum on the Gaza border. It was reported “The IDF took weapons from Gaza border communities in recent years and armed West Bank settlers in the thousands”.⁽³⁾

Ten months before the Hamas assault, Israel faced its deepest ever political and social crisis. Israeli society began to polarise between growing far right fascism and liberal Zionism and secular Israelis. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting in the streets against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms designed to keep the far right in power and him out of jail for corruption. Mass demonstrations and strikes revealed deep divisions within the Israeli state with soldiers and former members of the security services supporting the protests. The Israeli state used water cannons and stun grenades against anti-Netanyahu protesters in Tel Aviv⁽⁴⁾ but in the West Bank they killed 146 Palestinian protesters in 2022 and 288 so far this year.

The responsibility for the events on 7 October 2023 rests squarely with Netanyahu’s far right and neo-fascist coalition government and its US backers. When Hamas soldiers broke out from the Gaza concentration camp they liberated Gaza from the rotting corpse of the ‘Two States Solution’ and made this crystal clear to the rest of the world. Netanyahu took the opportunity to mobilise public outrage, fear and a desire for revenge to extend his Greater Israel policy and kill off his liberal and secular opposition. Now fascism has its opportunity for the “final solution” to the Palestinian question in the destruction of Gaza, with mass murder and the ethnic cleansing its citizens. 

2.  England opposes Netanyahu’s war 

On 12 October His Majesty’s Government dispatched two Royal Navy warships to the Eastern Mediterranean to support the war policy of Israel and the United States.  On 14 October 2023 one hundred and fifty thousand people marched in London, and other cities in England, to protest against Netanyahu’s war against the Palestinian people and oppose the imperialist and Zionist policies of the British Crown and the United States.

Opponents of this war in England stand in solidarity with similar protest movements in Ireland, Scotland and Wales and across the world. As republicans in England, we believe it is not enough to oppose the war policy of the British Crown. We must oppose the very existence of the Crown as an undemocratic and unaccountable power now acting in support of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza. There is crisis of democracy in the UK because of a loss of confidence in the Westminster parliament. This war feeds the crisis and brings a dangerous growth of authoritarianism and anti-democratic ideas such as Loyalism, Zionism and Fascism. 

The people of England must demand an immediate end to the war and a just and lasting peace and condemn the Zionist war policy supported by the Crown, the Government and the loyal Labour opposition

Therefore we call for;

• An immediate ceasefire. We demand an end to the blockade of Gaza, an immediate end to the bombing and shelling, the invasion and occupation of Gaza, the cutting off the supply of food, water and electricity and the repression in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 
• All humanitarian aid needed by the people of Gaza to be provided immediately. 
• The release of Israelis and citizens of other countries held by Hamas and the release of Palestinians held by Israel in detention without trial. 
• An arms embargo on supply of weapons to Israel.
• We oppose any attempt to blame Muslim or Jewish people in England and the rest of the UK for the events in Israel-Palestine and condemn any violent acts against their persons or property.  
• The people of Israel and Palestine to begin a dialogue for a just and lasting peace that is the only guarantee that the horrors of the current war will not continue to wreck the lives of future generations of Israelis and Palestinians.
• A democratic secular federal republic of Israel and Palestine. 

3.  Republicanism and Freedom 

A republican peace is not the kind claimed by the Netanyahu’s government – the pacification by mass killings and ethnic cleansing – the peace of the graveyard. The answer to the continual cycle of violence, hatred and revenge is to find a just and lasting peace supported by the majority of Israelis and Palestinians. Like the Irish Peace process (or Good Friday Agreement) a democratic republican peace must have the endorsement of the people of Israel and Palestine in referenda.

Republicanism is about the struggle of people for freedom against all forms of oppression or domination. It fights for liberty, equality and solidarity between people and for popular sovereignty in a secular state. Democracy is at the heart of republicanism. It is the golden thread that ties republican principles together. The universal aim of republicanism is to establish democratic republican states. 

‘Free Palestine’ or ‘Free England’ are slogans derived from the republican idea of liberty and national liberation and can be supported by the masses of people regardless of class or ideology. This is not to endorse these slogans for today. The republican idea of freedom or liberation from oppression does not stand-alone. It is bound up with equality, solidarity and secularism. 

Republicanism stands for full equality between nations and supports the right of nations to self-determination. It opposes the oppression of one nation by another for example through occupation, annexation or partition. It does not equate the violence of an oppressor nation with the violence of an oppressed nation fighting for freedom. A nation which oppresses another nation cannot itself be free.⁽⁵⁾ Oppressed nations have a right to resist by mass struggle and armed self-defence against the military and police of an oppressor state. 

Working class republicanism takes these principles one-step further by connecting them to the working class and the organised labour movement. The working class is the only class in capitalist society that is ‘naturally’ republican-democratic because of its experience of struggle against oppression and for popular democracy and sovereignty. However republican theory is necessary to turn this instinctive republicanism into a republican programme. 

Working class republicanism recognises that in the struggle between an oppressor nation and an oppressed nation the working class of both nations must become allies. The prime responsibility of the working class in the oppressor nation is to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and against the racism, chauvinism and violence of their ‘own’ ruling class and their false and deceitful patriotism. As internationalists, working class republicans support the closest possible solidarity between people of different nations including the creation of voluntary (i.e. democratic) multi-nation states between sovereign nations.   

The republican case for a just, democratic and lasting peace between the people of Palestine and Israel is about the aims and the means of achieving it. The aim is summarised by the slogan of a democratic, secular, federal republic of Israel and Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’. It is a slogan about freedom from oppression. We will consider different components of this slogan. 

4.  One State

In 1927 British Mandated Palestine (BMP) adopted the Palestine Pound as its currency and established a single market of 1.7 million people. This new currency was linked to Sterling and tied Palestinian economy to the City of London and the British Empire⁽⁶⁾. In 1948 the territory was partitioned by the new state of Israel. Three currencies, the Israeli Shekel, Egyptian pound and Jordanian Dinar began to circulate for trade and investment. After the 1967 Six Day War Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza used the Israeli Shekel, supplemented by the Jordanian Dinar and US dollar.⁽⁷⁾

Today Israeli capital dominates the territory ‘from the river to the sea’ divided into three distinct markets – Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has direct control over seventy seven per cent of the land (22,145 square kilometres similar in size to Wales). The remaining land is divided between the West Bank with 5,860 square kilometres and Gaza with 365 square kilometres.⁽⁸⁾ There are three governments and a complex of laws and discriminatory barriers to work and trade. This structure has been costly, economically wasteful and unproductive. 

The Separation Wall in the West Bank and the economic blockade of Gaza is a symbol of economic and political domination of Israel. Land in occupied West Bank has been subdivided into Areas A, B and C with the unproductive costs of a vast bureaucratic-military infrastructure. West Bank land is being contested between Palestinians and up to 750,000 Israel Settlers supported by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). 

Partition and occupation have created a long artificial land border, which has one of the world’s largest average income disparities on either side of it. Restrictions imposed by Israel have had a devastating impact on the economy by disrupting social networks and the provision of basic services in health and education. It has greatly increased their cost and restricted their supply to most of the West Bank population and imposed a crippling burden on Gaza. 

The West Bank market struggles under many restrictions and burdens. You cannot fly or drive into the West Bank. There is no free movement of people. Olive farmers are being pushed off their land by Israeli settlers. It has placed considerable restrictions on Arab farmers and their ability to export and import by systematically blocking Palestinian trade beyond Israel. Gaza’s economy is controlled by an Israeli blockade. Building materials, energy, food drugs and chemicals and clean water can be switched on and off. Poverty rates are 80% with 50% of people unemployed. The market is depressed by restrictions and exists in a permanent state of austerity and economic stagnation.  

The relations between Israel and the West Bank-Gaza has been compared with South African Bantustans, special homeland areas for a reserve army of labour, impoverished and under industrialised and reliant on subsidies from the apartheid Republic. Bantustans residents provided black labour with less rights and inferior education and social welfare. The economy in Gaza, although nominally independent remains under blockade, supervision and surveillance by the Israeli state (IDF) and Egypt. Border restrictions strangle its economy.⁽⁹⁾

Work permit schemes allow up to 150,000 Palestinians to provide cheap labour in Israel. Last year the Israeli press reported an increase by 20,000 in the Work Permits for West Bank workers. There would be 2,000 extra work permits for Gaza adding to the existing 12,000 Permits. Palestinian traders are shackled by trade restrictions and have been demanding relief for their imports and exports.⁽¹⁰⁾

Advanced and underdeveloped 

Israel is an advanced capitalist economy with a strong globally oriented high tech sector. It receives an annual subsidy of $3 billion per year from the United States. This conceals a productivity gap that constrains the economy as a whole.⁽¹¹⁾  

“There’s the story we tell the world, about Israel as a ‘start-up nation,’ and it’s a very nice story, but it only applies to about five per cent of the population,” says Guy Rolnik of the Israeli financial newspaper TheMarker. He explains, “When you look at the labour market, our economy is backward. We have a very low productivity rate.”⁽¹²⁾  Israel’s productivity rate in GDP per hour worked is about forty per cent lower than the average of the top half of advanced capitalist economies (OECD).⁽¹³⁾

A World Bank report⁽¹⁴⁾ says that the Palestinian economy operates well below its potential. Over the last twenty years the share of Palestinian exports to its Gross Domestic Product as a measure of economic development has fallen steadily. Israel places massive burdens on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza. It collects Palestinian taxes and customs revenue and routinely withholds them. Unemployment is at twenty four per cent. Twenty two per cent of its labour force works in Israel. Hence half the working class is not adding any value directly into the local domestic market.  

The average income of Jewish Israelis was $40,000, Arab Israelis $13,000 and in the West Bank $3,700 (measured at market rates of exchange in 2015).⁽¹⁵⁾ Income disparities between Israelis and Palestinian conceal the fact that the distribution of income and wealth in Israel is amongst the most unequal of the developed capitalist economies. An OECD Report showed that among the world’s thirty-four economically developed economies, Israel is the most impoverished with a fifth of its population living in poverty. Israel had a higher percentage of poor people than Mexico, Turkey, Spain and Greece.⁽¹⁶⁾ The Times of Israel reports that over 2.5 million Israelis live in poverty and among them 1.5 million children.⁽¹⁷⁾ The Centre of Organisations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel reported that around one-third of survivors live in poverty.⁽¹⁸⁾ 

The economic model of partition imposed by Israel on the West Bank and Gaza might be described as a form of internal colonisation. It has led to the underdevelopment of capitalism and productivity and has imposed high levels of poverty on the Palestinians and on a section of Israeli society. Most importantly the partition of markets builds institutional and legal barriers to maintain a divided working class from the river to the sea.⁽¹⁹⁾

Single Market

The state provides the political (i.e. constitutional and governance) framework for a single market with a single currency, common laws, taxes, and an educated productive workforce etc. Larger states such as the United States, China, India or Russia provide bigger domestic markets and larger working classes. A larger single market encourages the growth of the productivity of the labour force and the freer movement of capital and labour evens up the productivity gap between different parts of the economy.

The case for one state ‘from the river to the sea’ is an economic case for a larger single market with a more productive economy and a larger ‘single’ working class. This ‘free’ market is not the neo-liberal idea of the absence of social laws and rights for working people, but in the removal of all barriers, work permits, walls and security gates to the free movement of people, capital and trade and the end of discrimination against productive activity on the grounds of sex, race, religion, sexuality, disability or class.  

In 1994 the UN brokered a deal that Israel, Gaza and the West Bank share a single market. “The idea behind the agreement was that Palestinians would work in Israel and that Israeli capital would flood into Gaza and the West Bank where rich returns were waiting. In reality Israeli restrictions remained in place and the Palestinian economy still depends on hand outs”.⁽²⁰⁾ A single market needs a single state to support it not sabotage it. 

There is a huge untapped source of labour power. The total population of a single unified market is 21.4 million people, consumers and workers. This is made up of 9.2 million in Israel and 5.4 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. There are an estimated 6.8 million displaced Palestinians living as refugees in neighbouring countries, which add significant extra labour power.⁽²¹⁾ The potential productive power of this working class could significantly increase the overall wealth and income generated from a larger single market. 

One state and one domestic market of Israelis and Palestinians, other things being equal, would provide better conditions for the organisation and unity of the working class across a single economic space. The economic interests of the working class are better served by a larger single state with the possibility of building wider, larger and more united trade unions of Israeli and Palestinian workers. A more united working class movement is better able to fight for improved economic and social conditions. 

The economic and social advantages of a single state depend on how it is achieved. The slogan calling for a Greater Palestine or a Greater Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ is a call for a single state. However both are seen as being imposed by military force ‘from above’ and by ethnic cleansing. They are associated with Netanyahu and religious Zionism and Hamas and political Islam. Republicans reject this and consider the question in terms of secular democracy. Our economic case for a single state is supported by a political case for democracy supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians and protected by the right of nations to self-determination. 

5.  Two nations – Israel and Palestine 

The modern idea of nationhood, the Republican Nation, emerged out of the Great French Revolution in which the subjects of the French monarchy became citizens by fighting for liberty, equality, fraternity and popular sovereignty. A nation is the people of a given territory bound by a common identity (for example with language, culture and history) who are, or aspire to be, citizens of a political-constitutional state. An “imagined political community”⁽²²⁾ finds expression in national parliaments, constitutions, flags and anthems.  

Nations are embodied in nation-states. Some are part of multi-nation states. (e.g. Scotland and Wales, Catalonia ) and some nations are divided and incorporated into different states (e.g. Kurdistan, Kashmir). Nations aspiring to become nation-states can be defined as oppressed nations engaged in struggles for freedom and self-determination. Israel is a nation and a state and Palestine is an oppressed nation denied the right to self-determination. 

Nations and national identities are invented, evolve and can be reinvented or liquidated through mass struggles and wars etc. Powerful economic and social forces shape the process of change. In particular, the uneven development of capitalism is combined with popular and class struggles and redefine nations, identities and constitutions.

White South Africa was established as a self governing dominion of the British Empire in 1910. The National Party came to power in 1948 and formally codified white minority rule in the system of apartheid that led to South Africa becoming a racial republic in 1961. It was ended in 1994 and replaced by a liberal democratic republic. The nation of South Africa remained with a new constitution and a new national identity as the ‘Rainbow Nation’. Unlike South Africa, England is a nation without a constitutional revolution in the post war period. Yet it is not the same nation today as it was in the 1950s. Over the past seventy years there has been considerable change in the size, ethnic composition, cultural values and attitudes of English people. Another England is already emerging from political class struggles.

Zionism and the Jewish nation 

Zionism is a political ideology of Jewish nationalism. It believes that all the Jews in the world are citizens of a Jewish nation. It was originally an intellectual theory and a political movement in search of a territory. It did not originate in Palestine but was exported there after the 1917 Balfour Declaration.⁽²³⁾

Zionism was a particular response to European anti-Jewish racism that hated Jews and wanted to exclude them as citizens. English Jews were not really English and German Jews not really German. A racist conspiracy theory, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, promoted the idea that greedy Jewish bankers, responsible for the evils of capitalism, were taking over the world. This anti-Semitism helped the Nazis to power and led to the death camps of the Holocaust.   

Zionism accepted the racist idea that Jews were aliens who did not really belong in the country where they lived. The answer was for Jews to found a nation of their own which would provide them with a safe home. The horrors of the Nazi Germany that culminated in the Holocaust boosted the support for Zionism amongst Jewish refugees escaping to British Palestine.  

The ideology of Zionism has parallels in ‘black nationalism’ as a response to white racism. This idea argued that black people in the United States should set up their own separate black nation. For some it meant a return to an African homeland. It is understandable that people oppressed, suffering discrimination and racist murder might turn to Zionism or Black Nationalism. These ideologies do not defeat the idea of racial supremacy but invert it and reproduce it.

The Jewish Republic

Zionism reached its highest expression in the Jewish Republic of Israel. This is one example of many ethno-religious republics defined by race or religion. Republicans are opposed on principle to these kinds of republics – for example the Islamic Republic of Iran, a Hindu Republic in India or a Catholic Republic in Ireland. We are equally hostile to a White America or an Aryan Germany.       

Ethno-Religious republics establish a racial or religious hierarchy, which turns those with the ‘wrong’ ethnic or religious background into second-class citizens. They are subjected to discrimination and violence. In times of social crisis, second-class citizens can be targeted and made scapegoats by reactionary forces. This was the fate that befell German Jews in the 1930s.

Republicans are opposed to a Jewish Republic in Israel not because of hostility to Jewish people but on democratic secular grounds. It is for the same reason we oppose the Islamic Republic of Iran or an Islamic Republic of Palestine. Republicans support secular states giving equal freedom to all religions but no political privileges to any religion.

Israel – the eighty-twenty nation 

In 1947, Arabs, Christians and Jews were living under the British Mandate of Palestine. There was no nation of Israel or Palestine. However the decline of Britain as a colonial power, the mass murder of European Jews in the Holocaust and the exodus of Jewish refugees to Palestine created conditions for Zionists to make their Declaration of Independence in 1948.

Israel was invented as a state in the constitutional form of a Jewish republic but without a constitution. At the heart of the Jewish republic was a contradiction between Orthodox religious Jews and Secular Jews. This remains an undecided question until the 2018 Nation State law. Yet the contradiction between Jewish and Secular appeared in the 2023 mass demonstrations in Israel against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms.

Israel was born out of an armed struggle by Zionist settler-colonists who ethnically cleansed the local Arab population. Over the next three decades an Israeli nation was created with Israelis living in a definite territory with the Knesset as its sovereign parliament. The new republic remained in a precarious position in relation to surrounding Arab states until the 1967 Six Day War. 

The Israeli nation should not be equated with the so-called Jewish nation. It is comprised of eighty per cent Jewish and twenty per cent Arab Israelis. The Israeli nation is equated in the public mind with Jews and Zionism. It is necessary to remind ourselves that Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel. Arab Israelis may be ignored or forgotten or treated ‘second class’ citizens but they exist as part of the Israeli nation. 

Republicans make a sharp distinction between Jewish people and Zionism. Many Jews are anti-Zionist. We make a similar distinction between Israel and Jews. Most Jews are not Israelis and twenty per cent of Israelis are Palestinian Arabs not Jews. The Israeli nation should not simply be conflated with Jews or the ideology of Zionism. Whilst Zionist ideas of Jewish history, culture and language dominate, Israel has evolved as a political nation in its own right with its own history where the majority of Israeli citizens were born, educated and live as citizens of Israel. 

Today the Israeli nation (80-20) has become established over seventy-five years. The idea of abolishing it is reactionary, except in a world where humanity has freed itself from the need for nations. The Israeli nation could only be abolished by ethnic cleansing or genocide. However the identity of the Israeli nation and its constitution is not fixed and is evolving as a consequence of the class struggle. It is not anti-Jewish to be against a Jewish Republic and in favour of a secular Israeli republic. The events of 2023 show the disastrous consequence of a Zionist Israel for Palestinians and Israelis.

Palestinian Nation

There are about eight million Palestinians – in Israel, the occupied territories and abroad. Palestinians are largest group of refugees in the world with about one in three living in camps. In the 1950s and 60s the resistance to Zionism was identified as Arab rather than Palestinian. The Arab League established the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964 under the sponsorship of President Nasser of Egypt. 

Resistance to Israel reflected Pan-Arab nationalism, secularism and socialism associated with Egypt, Syria and Iraq and the Baa’th party. In 1967 after the Six Day War Israel took West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt and established an illegally occupied Palestinian territory. In the late 1960s the PLO became a broad front of Palestinian resistance to Israel including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine Peoples Party (formally the Communist Party).⁽²⁴⁾

In 1988 the PLO accepted a two state solution at the Palestine National Council held in Algiers where Yasser Arafat declared the state of Palestine. The Palestinian nation and a national identity forged in struggle against Zionism. It was created out of resistance and influenced by secular republican ideas, which could unite Palestinian Christians, Muslims and secular nationalists. After 1979 the Iranian revolution established an Islamic Republic and political Islam would became a powerful factor in Palestinian resistance.

Today the Palestinian nation has been divided between secular forces associated with the PLA and Fatah in the West Bank and political Islam in the form of Hamas. Widening this divide has been the policy of Zionism to weaken the PLA and encourage Hamas to make a political case for a strong right wing Zionist nationalist government. The PLA has lost credibility with the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and is seen as ineffective and corrupt   

Gaza is not a nation and its people identify as part of the Palestinian nation isolated by its geographical location. It is like an Islamic state with its own government and armed militia and laws – it has adopted Sharia law. Before the present war Gaza was like an open-air prison with 2.3 million people facing boycotts, divestment and sanctions with electricity water and food cut off. It was compared with the Warsaw ghetto where Jewish armed resistance were called terrorists by using armed struggle and guerrilla tactics.   

Liberation of Israel and Palestine from Zionism

No nation that oppresses another can itself be free. Zionism is a racist ideology that justifies and extends the oppression of the Palestinian people and denies their right to self-determination. As the official ideology of the Jewish Republic, it has a damaging and corrupting influence on the Israeli people. The greater the oppression of the Palestinian people and the more resistance to Israel’s armed forces and police the more appeal that right wing national chauvinist and neo-fascist policies have to a fearful population and the greater the unending cycle of violence and death.  Israel and Palestine must be free from the river to the sea.

6.   For a democratic secular federal republic of Israel and Palestine

The demand for a federal republic of Israel and Palestine – one state and two nations – is about building a democratic secular state from the river to the sea. This aim has to grow from the people who are resisting occupation in Gaza, taking to the streets in anti-war protests in Israel, the West Bank and the mass demonstrations taking place across the world. It can and should reflect the democratic aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians and win international support from democratic and working class movements.  

The first demand is for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of all Israel forces from Gaza and the provision of all necessary humanitarian aid. There is no prospect of peace whilst the Netanyahu government remains in place supported by the US and UK. Building opposition to his racist and neo-fascist government bent on genocide is an immediate priority. 

Of course this goes much deeper than one man. It goes back to British Palestine, the Holocaust, the founding of the Jewish Republic and the racist ideology of Zionism. It is a problem for the world and not just for Israelis and Palestinians. Working class republicans in England and the rest of the UK must do what we can to support the anti-War movement and contribute to a democratic republican peace. 

Federal republic  

Federalism provides the way in which two nations can co-exist in one state without internal borders and barriers or the oppression of one nation by another. In a democratic republic power comes ‘from below’ from direct participation of citizens in local assemblies and for their representatives to be regularly elected, accountable, subject to recall and paid the average wage.

A federal state of two nations should have three law-making parliaments. At the base should be citizens assemblies for local self-government. Above this should be two national parliaments, the Israeli Knesset and the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, making laws and electing a government for each nation. Then comes a federal parliament to represent the affairs of the whole state, with Israeli and Palestinian MPs elected by each nation. The federal parliament should elect and hold to account an executive acting as the federal government.

A democratic federal republic state would have a written constitution based on the application of secular democratic principles to all state institutions. This should include the democratic and social rights and civil liberties of all citizens of both nations and the right of the two nations to self-determination. The constitution should be drafted and debated in a constituent assembly and in nation wide debates. The draft constitution would be put to each nation for ratification in a referendum. 

The constitution should ensure that all state institutions are secular (non-religious) so that all citizens are treated equally regardless of whether they hold religious convictions or are non-believers. All religions will be free to practice their religion – Christian, Jews and Muslim and Atheists etc. – with rights identified and protected in the constitution. All young people of both nations will have a free secular education provided by the state. 

Self-determination and federalism

The right of nations to self-determination is a core principle of the federal republic. It concerns the freedom for a nation to join the federation and the right to leave it. First, when two or more nations agree to unite in one state it must be exclusively by voluntary means. They have to be free, as sovereign nations, to agree democratically to unite in one state. Second, nations in a federal republic must have the freedom to leave. There would be a legal-constitutional right to call a referendum to leave the federation without let or hindrance. 

These two republican freedoms, to join or leave, are about opposing national oppression and coercion. The right of nations to self-determination is essentially internationalist in spirit, bringing nations closer together by building trust and confidence between them that they will not be forced into a federation or imprisoned in it. Of course this right can, and often is, subverted or denied by imperialist powers as it is in the case of Palestine. Nevertheless it must be fought for. 

In the case of Israel and Palestine, where the formation of two nations has been bloody and violent with ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation, the idea of being united in one state is almost inconceivable. The idea of one state ‘from the river to the sea’ is viewed narrowly as a threat of a Greater Israel using its military power to take over all Palestine or as military takeover of Israel by a Greater Palestine. The demand for a federal republic, one state and two nations based on self-determination, is a very different democratic idea.     

A nation must be, or become, a sovereign republic, free to choose whether to form a voluntary federal republic with other nations. The formation of a federal republic of England, Scotland, and Wales for example begins with the establishment of sovereign republics which can freely decide to federate or not.  This same principle applies to the Palestinian people. Palestine must first become a free sovereign independent nation in order to choose federation with Israel. There must be an immediate end to the occupation and the continued oppression of the Palestinian people. This could be termed a confidence building measure consistent with self-determination and the goal of a federal republic.

7.   Conclusion

In the midst of the horror and inhumanity of the War on Gaza and the murder of thousands of civilians and children we have to fight against the racist ideology of Zionism. It has revealed its depravity to the world in Netanyahu’s reactionary neo-fascist government and its crimes against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. These crimes have been enabled and encouraged by the United States supported by the British Crown and Starmer’s Zionist Labour Party.  

The mass opposition from across the world to this slaughter must present an alternative road to peace, justice and democracy. Palestine is an oppressed nation and the Jewish Republic is a powerful military oppressor state. No nation that oppresses another can be free. In different ways Israel and Palestine are both victims of the false prophet of Zionism. 

The people of Israel have to free themselves from Zionism by establishing a democratic secular republic of Israel, a nation with eighty per cent of Jewish Israelis with equal rights with the twenty per cent of Arab Israelis as citizens and neighbours. It is a country that has ended its illegal occupation, killings and imprisonment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Living next door is a free Palestine, a secular democratic republic, with Jewish Palestinian citizens not Zionist settlers.   

 The aim of building a real and lasting peace must be a democratic secular federal republic of Israel and Palestine – one state and two nations – from the river to the sea. Twenty one million people including Palestinian refugees, living in peace, with a more united working class movement and the hope of building a democratic commonwealth for all its citizens. 

• Stop the War and end the occupation. 
• Free Israel and Free Palestine from Zionism 
• For one state and two nations can be free from the river to the sea. 
• For a democratic secular republic of Israel and Palestine 

4 November 2023

Notes

(1)  Adam Raz Haaretz 20 October 2023. 

(2)  Yaniv Kubovich Haaretz 20 October 2023.

(3)  Adam Raz Haaretz 20 October 2023.

(4)  Isabel Kershner New York Times 1 March 2023 

 (5) V I Lenin, Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Collected Works Vol. 20, Progress Publishers 1972 pp 393- 454 

(6)  Palestine Centre – Currency in Palestine – gopalestine.org accessed 25 October 2023.

(7)  Palestine Centre – Currency in Palestine – gopalestine.org accessed 25 October 2023. 

(8)  Living where you don’t make the rules: Development in Palestine – one of the world’s last colonies – Keith McDonald 11 August 2015). 

(9)   The Gaza Bantustans – Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip – Al Mezan 29 November 2021

 (10)  Danny Zaken Al-Monitor 17 June 2022

 (11)  McKinsey and Company Israel’s productivity opportunity 17 January 2023

 (12)  Israel’s surprising poverty, Ruth Margalit, The New Yorker 4 June 2013. 

 (13)   McKinsey and Company Israel’s productivity opportunity 17 January 2023

 (14)   Times of Israel 2 May 2023

 (15)   Living where you don’t make the rules: Development in Palestine – one of the world’s last colonies – Keith McDonald 11 August 2015. 

 (16)  Israel’s surprising poverty Ruth Margalit The New Yorker 4 June 2013 

 (17)  Ricky Ben-David Times of Israel 23 December 2021. 

(18)  PBS NewsHour Ilan Ben Zion and Isaac Scharf Associated Press 27 January 2022. 

 (19)  Living where you don’t make the rules: Development in Palestine – one of the world’s last colonies – Keith McDonald 11 August 2015. 

 (20)  Economist War by other means 21 October 2023. 

(21)  Living where you don’t make the rules: Development in Palestine – one of the world’s last colonies – Keith McDonald 11 August 2015

(22)  Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson Verso 1983

(23)  Balfour Declaration Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org accessed 1 November 2023

(24)  University of Michigan https://lsa.umich.edu accessed 30 October 2023.