For a Peace based on Justice and Reconciliation

There is another way.

I think the document referred to below, and which can be seen in its entirety here, is an exciting development, and I think it deserves widespread support and dissemination. Its philosophical basis is already part of a movement that we see happening in Israel, however small, in building a common resistance (note the participation of Israelis in the resistance movement to the building of the Wall) to all forms of racism, & separation based on ethnicity, and towards a future based on coexistence with justice.

The Palestinian people have what I see as a parallel movement, called the Palestinian National Initiative, which springs from the failures of both the PLO and groups like Hamas in furthering the cause of peace, and instead provides a way forward based on justice, coexistence, and secular democracy. (see this)

The Olga Appeal is also a counterpoint to those here in the U.S. "progressive community" that, however well-intentioned, still would have us cling to the status quo of embracing the colonial ideology of Zionism, and/or would have us seek to continue on the miserably failed path of support for the misnamed "peace process" (e.g. supporting the Geneva Accords).

The Olga Appeal.

"We are united in a critique of Zionism, based as it is on refusal to acknowledge the indigenous people of this country and on denial of their rights, on dispossession of their lands, and on adoption of separation as a fundamental principle and way of life. Adding insult to injury, Israel persists in its refusal to bear any responsibility for its deeds, from the expulsion of the majority of Palestinians from their homeland more than half a century ago, to the present erection of ghetto walls around the remaining Palestinians in the towns and villages of the West Bank. Thus, wherever Jew and Arab stand together or face each other, a boundary is drawn between them, to separate and distinguish between the blessed and the cursed."

This is taken from the statement which originated in June 2004 at Givat Olga and which has now been signed by more than 200 Jewish Israeli academics, journalists and activists, calling for the recognition of crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people and acknowledging the legitimacy of the right of return of those who were driven from their homeland in 1948 and their right to participate equally in determining the future of the state now existing on their soil.
Please see the full declaration here