Common Ground affirms Tzedek Chicago’s recognition that “the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day.”
To rectify this injustice, we laud Peter Beinart’s 2020 declaration I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State, 2021 explanation Why I no longer believe in a Jewish state, 2021 advocacy A Jewish case for Palestinian refugee return, and 2023 acknowledgment You Can’t Save Democracy in a Jewish State. We invite Palestine solidarity groups to endorse the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s demand to be recognized as an ethnoreligious “Jewish state,” and repudiate recognition of any enthnoreligious state in historic Palestine, be it Jewish, Muslim or Christian.
Building intercultural/interfaith bridges to support equal rights for all citizens in historic Palestine, Common Ground hosts Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis to discuss the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s 2014 ‘Jewish state’ demand, the Palestinian-Israeli petition to repeal Israel’s 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law “that constitutionally enshrines Jewish supremacy,” the One Democratic State Campaign call for Palestinian-Jewish equal rights, democracy and intercultural unity, and Palestine solidarity strategies to overcome Israel’s “regime of Jewish supremacy” and “apartheid” — acknowledged by B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Council and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic — dismantle “settler-colonialism,” and uphold “freedom, justice and equality” for all in historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Common Ground invites Palestine solidarity groups to:
- endorse the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s demand to be recognized as an ethnoreligious “Jewish state,” as the Arab League endorsed the Palestinian rejection in 2014 and as solidarity groups endorse the Palestinian call for BDS,
- promote the Palestinian/Jewish-Israeli call to create one secular democratic state with equal rights for all and protection of minority rights in historic Palestine — “a state of all its citizens” — as proposed by Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset in 2018,
- endorse the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), One State Foundation, One Democratic State in Palestine (ODS), One Democratic State Initiative.
Ayman Nijim, Grassroots International Solidarity Program Officer for the Middle East, Common Ground Advisory Board Chair
Iyad Burnat, Chair of Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, and Rains Rouner, Common Ground Co-Founder and Executive Director
