Al-Qalam 
The only choices left are permanent apartheid or a single democratic state with equal rights, says Palestine activist Shabnam Palesa Mohamed
I argued for the two-state solution, then the one-state solution, for years. I was wrong. A colleague at Wage Peace put it best. Expecting Palestinians to live alongside Israelis in one state is like expecting a rape victim to live with the rapist who stole her house.
The strongest case for one-state says partition is already dead. Land theft has expanded so far that a viable Palestinian state no longer exists. The only choices left are permanent apartheid or a single democratic state with equal rights. Most Israelis reject both ‘solutions’ with contempt.
But it fails for the same reason the two-state solution fails. A single state would begin from more than 100 years of dispossession, with power still in the hands of the coloniser. Equal rights on paper, inside a structure built to deny them, is not liberation. It is apartheid with a new flag.
Pillay vs Trump
Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize made the world notice what Israel spent years trying to bury. As chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pillay found Israel responsible for “four genocidal acts” in Gaza, committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians as a group: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births within it.
She named the Israeli President, Prime Minister and former Defence Minister as having incited genocide. She described Gaza as “the most ruthless, prolonged and widespread attack against the Palestinian people in history.” Israel called the report “scandalous” and “fake.” Trump said he had “never heard of” her and called the award an “indelible stain” on Norway. He also reshared a post calling her an “unabashed hater of America and Israel.”
Trump’s answer was a “Board of Peace”, ratified in Davos. Yvonne Ridley calls it a “Board of Piss.” War profiteer Jared Kushner unveiled tourism zones and high-rise waterfronts. The board’s charter gives Trump final authority, allows permanent membership for countries that pay $1 billion, and makes no mention of Palestine. A real estate project built on graves.
The rainbow myth
South Africa is not a model to aspire to. We live in the shadow of a settlement called a miracle. Thirty years later, we have one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world, land is still predominantly in corporate hands, townships are still gaping wounds of humanity, and structural violence remains. I do not want Palestinians to inherit our disappointment while we wonder, what if Chris Hani led us.
For Palestine, this is not a political disagreement. This is not two peoples with competing claims to land redistribution. This is a colonial project built on ethnic cleansing, maintained by apartheid and occupation, and culminating in genocide – live-streamed, documented, and ludicrously denied.
We are asked to imagine a future where the architects and beneficiaries of that genocide simply become neighbours. This is not some Hollywood-written, Zionist-funded, award-winning American propaganda film. Our commitment to wage peace must be rooted in authentic reality.
Who can stay?
Prof. Patrick Bond asked whether my position meant throwing Israelis into the sea. I said the only Israelis eligible to stay are those who recognise genocide. Not those who say “both sides” or who call themselves “pro-peace” while remaining silent on crimes against humanity.
The ones who could stay are the tiniest minority, who protest, refuse to serve in the war machine, denounce Zionism, boycott, lobby, who say “not in my name” and mean it. And the ones prepared to leave. The rest chose colonisation. They cannot inherit land they ethnically cleanse. And let me be clear, I will never recognise Israel as a state. This is a position we must not be afraid to stand on.
Only Palestinians must decide
Ultimately, Palestinians are the only ones who determine who stays. Not even South Africa, still selling coal to ‘Israel’, and not prosecuting South Africans complicit in genocide.
Those who cannot stay must go back to where they came from. If they do not, they will target another land. They are colonising Argentina. They are trying to colonise South Africa. There is an agenda to separate the Western Cape from our country. We should be vigilant about who funds it. Watch that video clip with Phil Craig and Afriforum.
There can be no peace built on greed, depravity and impunity. It’s time we commit fully to Palestinian liberation. Our freedom is indivisible. None of us are free until all of us are free.
*Shabnam Palesa Mohamed is an activist, journalist, lawyer and strategist. She is the founder of Wage Peace International, a grassroots movement focused on multipronged strategies to achieve peace.
