“We need a paradigm shift. We must start fighting for civic democracy. One person, one vote. We need a secular democratic state of all its citizens.” — Dr. Haider Eid, Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza and Co-founder of the One Democratic State Campaign
Americans cherish, and continue to demand, our constitutional rights and freedoms as citizens of the United States — a multicultural, non-sectarian, secular democracy espousing equal rights for all — yet while the United States gives more foreign aid to Israel than to any other nation, many Americans are unaware that Palestinians in Gaza have lived under Israeli military siege since 2006, Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military laws of occupation, hafrada and apartheid, and despite its claims to democracy, Israel has no constitution and over 65 laws discriminate against non-Jews in Israel. The fact is that “in the Jewish state, equality for Arabs is impossible by definition.”
Recognizing the “self-evident” “truth” expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that “all men (and women) are created equal,” Common Ground endorses the call for one secular democratic state throughout historic Palestine proposed by Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset in 2018 and affirmed by BDS Co-founder Omar Barghouti in his 2009 article Re-imagining Palestine: Self-determination, Ethical De-colonization and Equality:
“(A)lthough the BDS movement has never taken a position in the one-state/two-states debate, being a rights-based movement, the only solution that can logically accommodate the three basic rights stated in the BDS Call is a one democratic state solution…. By emphasizing equal humanity as its most fundamental principle, the secular democratic state promises to end the fundamental injustices that have plagued Palestine and, simultaneously, to transcend national and ethnic dichotomies that now make it nearly impossible to envision ethical coexistence in a decolonized Palestine, based on equality, justice, and freedom.”
Interviewed in 2015, Dr. Haider Eid, Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza and Co-founder of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), declared:
“The two-state solution is a racist solution. The two-state solution means apartheid because it means a Palestinian state for Muslims and Christians and Israel as a Jewish state for Jews only. This is anachronistic, historically speaking. It’s a 19th Century idea to think of nation states based on exclusive ethno-religious identities…. We need a paradigm shift. We must start fighting for civic democracy. One person, one vote. We need a secular democratic state for all its citizens…. The secular democratic state we are suggesting… should be supported by liberals. If you are a liberal, I don’t think you have a problem with secular democracy, with civic democracy. That’s what you have in the United States of America. Why should you have it in the United States and in South Africa and we should not have it in Palestine? If you are opposed to that, you are either an Orientalist or a racist…. A secular democratic state is pragmatic, practical, and it’s the only solution that can guarantee peace with justice because it is a principled solution. The essence of the Palestinian question is the Right of Return. In principle, you need to allow more than 6 million refugees to return to their homes and towns, and practically speaking, this is the only solution. Our struggle is universalistic. It is non-tribalistic. It is one person one vote. It is a state for all its citizens regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity. This is the minimum that we should be fighting for.” — Boycott From Within: Ronnie Barkan and Haidar Eid (14:20)
In “Enough Fearmongering: Only One Democratic State is Possible in Palestine and Israel” (2017), Palestinian American Ramzy Baroud declares: “It is time to… focus all energies to foster co-existence based on equality and justice for all. Indeed, there can be one state between the river and the sea, and that is a democratic state for all of its people, regardless of their ethnicity or religious beliefs.”
To encourage American support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement, the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as an ethno-religious “Jewish state,” Palestinian-Israeli “co-resistance” to Israel’s colonization, occupation and apartheid, and the Palestinian-Israeli Jewish call to create one secular democratic state or federation throughout historic Palestine, Common Ground facilitates American intercultural/interfaith discussion on how one secular democratic state with equal rights for all and protection of minority rights can guarantee freedom, security and lasting peace for both Palestinians and Israeli Jews in Palestine/Israel.
The heart of Common Ground is our two-fold purpose to:
- acknowledge the truth of inequality, discrimination, apartheid and oppression in de-facto Israel/Palestine, and
- celebrate and uphold the ethical teachings of our cultural, religious and secular humanist traditions that compel us to face, not deny, painful moral truths, take responsibility, rectify injustice and cease oppression so that peace can prevail.
Iyad Burnat, Co-founder of the Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee, and S. Rainsford Rouner, Co-Founder of Common Ground, March, 2016
Hossam Al Jabri, President Emeritus of the Muslim American Society/Boston, and Rabbi Arik Ascherman, President and Senior Rabbi of Rabbis for Human Rights, following an interfaith talk with members of the Islamic Society of Boston, Cambridge, MA, 2008 - photo by Rains Rouner